Why is this not the solution?

[PredatoryCatgirl]

They didn't stop to think what makes real world neighborhoods feel active and populated then incorporate those things into the wards to keep them busy.

Wards don't feel like neighborhoods. They feel like abandoned towns. I'd be happier living in an isolated part of the countryside than living in a suburb where no one else goes.

The original intent wasn't to have 30 players in a neighborhood, but 30 FCs. They should have never made wards open to players, and instead made instanced housing for them.

[Nepentha]

The original intent wasn't to have 30 players in a neighborhood, but 30 FCs. They should have never made wards open to players, and instead made instanced housing for them.

I hesitated a moment, but yeah, I think you're right. Instanced housing for individual characters and neighborhood style housing for FCs would have been more ideal.

[Lihtleita]

The original intent wasn't to have 30 players in a neighborhood, but 30 FCs. They should have never made wards open to players, and instead made instanced housing for them.

in another timeline there are restricted fc neighbourhoods that arent occupied by 4 alt fcs, and individual player apartments that are a decent size and link to the city states properly through those gates that were never used.

thats a happier timeline

[Jojoya]

The original intent wasn't to have 30 players in a neighborhood, but 30 FCs. They should have never made wards open to players, and instead made instanced housing for them.

They did make instanced housing - apartments - even if it came an expansion later. But players don't want to own a room. They want to own a house.

SE could have kept the wards FC only but they would have remained empty wards. What they didn't think about is that FCs aren't rich. They have no way to make gil without a house. It's the individual players that are rich, and they aren't going to donate millions of their personal gil to a FC when they're not going to have control over what's done with that gil.

SE designed things backwards. They should have given FCs ways to earn gil then added houses as a way for FCs to spend what they earned. Instead, they designed it so FCs could only earn gil once they had purchased a house. Of course there were few FCs buying. That's led to the shell FCs being used by players to get rich through the gardens and workshops while blocking access to house ownership for other FCs and players who simply want to have a house, not a gil-making machine.

SE isn't accomplishing anything by sticking to a system that isn't serving the player base needs the way it should. They should have stopped all the way back in ARR and gone "This isn't working as we intended. What should we be doing to meet player needs?" and moved to a different system instead of continuing to pour money into this system for another 6 years.

[Arielen]

SE could have kept the wards FC only but they would have remained empty wards. What they didn't think about is that FCs aren't rich. They have no way to make gil without a house. It's the individual players that are rich, and they aren't going to donate millions of their personal gil to a FC when they're not going to have control over what's done with that gil.

SE designed things backwards. They should have given FCs ways to earn gil then added houses as a way for FCs to spend what they earned. Instead, they designed it so FCs could only earn gil once they had purchased a house. Of course there were few FCs buying.

Agreed. They wouldn't have had the problem in the first place if credits were usable to buy a house at something like that. They seem to think that people would deposit a bunch of gil into the chest to pitch in for a house as a group, but that's rarely what happens.

[Dewslam]

They did make instanced housing - apartments - even if it came an expansion later. But players don't want to own a room. They want to own a house.

Aside from the fact that apartments are, functionally, still not as useful as having a house (as there are mechanics gated behind an FC house); a lot of apartments were snapped up by people who owned FC plots and private plots already. People want rooms, they want apartments, but they can't because most of them are taken up by greedy people who already have FC's, private plots and apartments and want more and more and more.

The way I see it, there are three solutions. One, the least likely of all, is that they just add more servers until everyone can have a house. This will never happen: the game keeps getting bigger, servers are expensive and there's a shortage. Square also has shown almost no interest in this despite having had literal years to do this and the problem only growing exponentially worse. Two: instanced housing. Give everyone their own house in their own private plot. If they care so much about neighborhoods creating that lived-in vibe they could let people choose who their neighbors are so the game will load up your friends houses or whatever when you leave your house to hang in your lawn and you can visit their house like you would an apartment (knock at the door, instance into it) so people can decide if they want to live next to their best friends, the coolest looking houses - or just live alone. This even allows for a brand new avenue of revenue and itemization in the form of customizing our private plots, taking a page out of PSO2's housing system! Add a new item - let's call them memory crystals or something. You shove one in to your private home's little allegan terminal or whatever and suddenly the terrain looks different. They could use this as a means to add unique styles and designs during events, story missions or even on the mog station (I'm sure people would pay a good few dollars to have their home plots look like nice renders of their favorite FF locations...) Finally, and most radically of all, the third solution is to simply limit housing. Account-wide one plot per-person. It is absolutely dire that we're at a situation where some people can own entire wards, that people who already have plots are vastly more likely to be double or triple dippers while the vast majority of players can't even get a single one. If square can't get their shit in order the least they could do is straighten out their own janky mechanics on this front, set a date and reimburse the players for whatever plots they have to give up.

[ItMe]

People want rooms, they want apartments, but they can't because most of them are taken up by greedy people who already have FC's, private plots and apartments and want more and more and more.

Is that true?
Do you have a source for this?

[Jojoya]

Is that true?
Do you have a source for this?

It is true on Balmung. Apartment buildings have filled up. A player would have to join a FC that already has a house and enabled purchase of private rooms to get any sort of personal housing there. That would be awkward for those players who are in a FC with their friends but their FC can't get a house. Or they can try to paying someone with an apartment to relinquish it so they can purchase it, the same road we've already gone down with houses.

It's not true on other worlds, at least not yet. A few weeks back, someone was throwing around the names of a couple of Aether worlds as not having apartments available but I checked on my Aether alt and had no problem finding buildings with less than 30 apartments occupied. It's always possible that those will be gone by the time Endwalker releases as more new players who started this summer meet the requirements for purchase but we're not to that point yet (except on Balmung).

[Nepentha]

Hooboy there is so much to unpack here.

Aside from the fact that apartments are, functionally, still not as useful as having a house (as there are mechanics gated behind an FC house); a lot of apartments were snapped up by people who owned FC plots and private plots already. People want rooms, they want apartments, but they can't because most of them are taken up by greedy people who already have FC's, private plots and apartments and want more and more and more.

People using available resources are not the problem. They limited it to 1 personal house per account, and gave us apartments for alts, funsies, people who didn't want to be in FCs (or their FC didn't have housing). Apartments weren't meant to be a finite resource in the first place. We were assured when they were made available that if SE needed to, they could just add more easily, unlike adding new housing wards.

So let's dispense with referring to people who have apartments as greedy, please and thank you.

Snip for length about instanced housing.

Actually, I agree with you on this front. I wish SE would finally give up on the idea of neighborhood style housing wards. There is no way they can acquire enough hardware to meet the demand players have for it, especially as the game grows. I wouldn't demolish the neighborhoods though. Let them remain, a premium housing remnant of the old way of doing things. If you really /have/ to have one of them then you wait for one to demo and hope you win the lotto for that plot.

But then implement instanced housing. Every character gets their own private plot. (Or each server you get a plot you can share with the rest of the characters you have on that server. Whichever.) Let people pay for upgrading their instanced plot. You get a box sized apartment once you hit lvl 50 and the appropriate rank with your Grand Company. Upgrade it to a small house size for 3 million. Medium space? Pay 20 million for that. On and on. Put premium interior changes in the cash shop, or things you can only get from dungeons and quests or achievements or PvP or whatever. If one isn't bound by the neighborhood, let them experiment.

Make FC halls or headquarters, all instanced. Players can choose to hitch their instanced plots to it so you can go directly to someone's instanced home from the door inside the FC hall.

Make premium areas you can buy an instanced plot in. Live in the Sea of Clouds if you want, or in the sands of Ala Mhigo or the Crystarium even. Make them even more expensive if you want. 50 million to live in Idyllshire or something. Charge to transfer plots to another region.

I dunno, I'm shooting from the hip here at some of the things they might be able to do with instanced housing. And don't put a demo timer on them. That would make them even more of a perk. You can log out and take a break from the game (as Yoshi-P has said he'd prefer people to do) and not have to fret they'll lose their home and all the love and hard work they put into it to a demo timer.

Come on, SE, you /can/ and /should/ do better by your players than this.

[ItMe]

snip

Yeah, apartments are selling out.
But is it true this is specifically because

a lot of apartments were snapped up by people who owned FC plots and private plots already. [...] most of them are