Stuff like THIS is the reason Housing is a Joke -- SE please do something about this!

[LineageRazor]

FFXIV's housing is the way that it is because of Yoshi P's original vision for housing. He wanted actual living neighborhoods, where you could stroll around and see other folks' houses - something you simply can't do with instanced housing, no matter how you slice it. To see someone's house, you have to first enter their instance.

Unfortunately, the director SEVERELY underestimated the hardware requirements for such a vision, and had to backpeddle a lot, first by merging player housing into FC housing (originally, they were going to be seperate, with player housing being Much More Affordable (tm)). All of our current housing woes have been built upon this initial mistake, to the point where tearing it all down and rebuilding it from scratch would be very expensive to do, and likely alienate a lot of the folks who DO own houses since no one would be able to see the work they put into decorating them.

As it is, new wards aren't something they can dynamically add according to need. They can't just automatically add new wards as old wards fill up, because each new ward requires installation of new servers and other hardware to host those wards. That's why we get new wards in batches - each time we get a new batch of wards, you can bet they've installed another machine to host them. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that housing accounts for more physical equipment than the rest of the game put together. (I don't know if that's true or not, but it would not surprise me if it were.)

For now, Apartments are their answer to the desire for instanced housing. They don't provide any way to place Outside Furnishings, but aside from that they offer just about everything you can have in a personally owned house. (Gardening, being an Outdoor Furnishing, is limited to what you can garden in indoor pots, of course.) And, to my knowledge, Apartments haven't run out on any server.

[Seraphor]

They need a hard lock on one personal house per server, per account.
Outside of that, they need to expand apartments, to include larger size options (like the house options) and instances gardens.

[SannaR]

If people with Alts were able to make them roomates there would be less inclined to buy more for their alts. Unless it was for an rp situation. Then there's giving people with apartments the ability to have roommates and somehow give them the ability to crossbreed plants.

It would be nice if apartments were bigger or acted like the mog rooms from XI that before the game went into maintenance mode they gave those rooms a 2nd floor. Apartments stay around until you choose to get rid of it or delete your character.

[Veis_Alveare]

I mean given that that person is talking about hiring decorators to turn houses into bars and restaurants and the like it sounds to me like they're at least doing something with their ward and that it might actually be for an RP.

I'm still not a fan of the idea of one person owning all that personally but like... at least they're doing something with their ward? More than a lot of players do with even their single house.

[Stormfur]

And this is precisely why an instanced system would be far better. I gave up my Medium house when I stopped playing for a year. I sincerely hope whoever has it now enjoys it, it was a good spot. But while I was there, for the years and years I owned that plot, I only ever saw my neighbor maybe twice. This vision of a grand neighborhood is just not possible hardware-wise. I'd rather everyone have a place that they can call their own (and also visit their neighbors) than some grand expansive thing that shortchanges most players.

[worldofneil]

They need a hard lock on one personal house per server, per account.

That is actually already the case for personal housing and has been for a long time (since patch 4.2 - January 2018). Some users were grandfathered in getting to keep their personal houses if they had more than one, but this appears to be a tiny amount of people and as those houses are demolished that grandfathered status is removed.

However, FC housing is different. Back in 4.2 SE originally locked down FC housing to have the same restrictions, but removed those those same restrictions only a week later (for whatever reason have never updated the housing mini website). Why was the restriction removed? They've never said. Personally though I think it was due to incompatibility with the forced leader transfer (where the FC leader is automatically transferred to the next viable person after 35 days of them not logging in) and those restrictions probably meant that the people who should have been transferred leader, had a potential to be skipped over just for having an alt in another FC with a house.

So right now anyone can buy up to 8 FC houses per server, assuming they have the money and have a rank 6+ FC (requirement for housing) and if they can actually find a house. Aside from that one week, it's been this way since patch 2.1 (December 2013).

Outside of that, they need to expand apartments, to include larger size options (like the house options) and instances gardens.

I agree, that would be helpful.

[Seddrinth]

They need a hard lock on one personal house per server, per account.
Outside of that, they need to expand apartments, to include larger size options (like the house options) and instances gardens.

Agreed 1 house per server, per account.

1) no fc houses, all players can only buy a personal house
2) allow alts to share your house
3) all players must deal with housing timers, no instant relocation if you already have a house

[Seraphor]

3) all players must deal with housing timers, no instant relocation if you already have a house

Relocation doesn't deplete the number of available plots though.

[wereotter]

FFXIV's housing is the way that it is because of Yoshi P's original vision for housing. He wanted actual living neighborhoods, where you could stroll around and see other folks' houses - something you simply can't do with instanced housing, no matter how you slice it. To see someone's house, you have to first enter their instance.

Unfortunately, the director SEVERELY underestimated the hardware requirements for such a vision, and had to backpeddle a lot, first by merging player housing into FC housing (originally, they were going to be seperate, with player housing being Much More Affordable (tm)). All of our current housing woes have been built upon this initial mistake, to the point where tearing it all down and rebuilding it from scratch would be very expensive to do, and likely alienate a lot of the folks who DO own houses since no one would be able to see the work they put into decorating them.

As it is, new wards aren't something they can dynamically add according to need. They can't just automatically add new wards as old wards fill up, because each new ward requires installation of new servers and other hardware to host those wards. That's why we get new wards in batches - each time we get a new batch of wards, you can bet they've installed another machine to host them. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that housing accounts for more physical equipment than the rest of the game put together. (I don't know if that's true or not, but it would not surprise me if it were.)

For now, Apartments are their answer to the desire for instanced housing. They don't provide any way to place Outside Furnishings, but aside from that they offer just about everything you can have in a personally owned house. (Gardening, being an Outdoor Furnishing, is limited to what you can garden in indoor pots, of course.) And, to my knowledge, Apartments haven't run out on any server.

I would add that this seems to be a larger problem in NA/EU

If you look at the population of players in JP compared to the other two regions, with maybe one or two outliers, the highest population JP servers have fewer players on them than do the lowest population NA servers. But the housing wards are identical, which means less competition in JP for housing since with new players per server there the obvious of fewer people going for personal housing, but also it would be safe to assume there are fewer FCs.

And since in many ways the game does tend to look at major issues in game effecting Japan first, until the housing crisis is so bad it's effecting them as badly as the rest of the world, I don't see us getting any sort of overhaul to the system.

[Avatre]

Outside of that, they need to expand apartments, to include larger size options (like the house options) and instances gardens.

I would love for them to expand on apartments.

Make it so you can upgrade to a suite with a few rooms in it or a penthouse with 2 floors and 3-4 rooms. They basically already have the instancing built for the floor plans, could possibly copy that over to use when you enter your apartment.