Another housing delay, imagine that.

[Anvaire]

First, I want to say that I think what Russia is doing is an abomination. It's disgusting, both what is being done to the Ukrainian people, and the restarting of the cold war. This post is in no way intended to diminish anyone's tragic circumstances, in Ukraine or anywhere else.

That being said, it's time to accept the fact that there will ALWAYS be tragedy somewhere in the world, and it's not a legitimate excuse to ruin a huge aspect of your game, nor to ruin a large number of paying subscribers' experiences.

We need housing, and you have refused for a decade to invest in the necessary hardware required to give housing to everyone who wants it and can afford it. It's old. Your excuses are old. There would be no need for a lottery system if you had just provided enough housing to begin with. The fact that you are implementing a new system means you aren't going to invest in enough server space to give everyone housing even after the new neighborhood FINALLY drops, and including the island.

Why is a feature you advertise actually an unfair competition? That's what PVP is for.

I was one of those people who lost their job to Covid. I had to go back to school for a new degree. It was 3 semesters before I could play again, and I lost a personal house and a guild house while I was gone. I come back and there's zero houses for sale. Ever. I got NONE of my stuff back. But it's OK to make the whole suffer for just a few now? You didn't stop demolition for people like me. And this is a game, not real life.

Since you refuse to spend the money on hardware, the least you could do is start demolitions back up. But the real problem your refusal to provide enough housing in the first place. There should ALWAYS be a lot of every size for sale. Always. If there isn't, you aren't doing your job, and you're ripping us off.

The design behind housing is that its an achievement and not meant for everyone. The Aspect of house design is available to everyone through Apartments and through FC Rooms. The only aspect that is limited is Gardening.

In terms of stoping Auto Demolition whenever a World Crisis happens I can only support it. Its empathy for those who wont be worrying about a pixel house, but rather their lives. I am assuming the philosophy behind it is that even if they are losing things in their lives, they dont have to worry that the in game stuff will be taken too. Its a small gesture that i imagine will have impact. Not that I think any Ukrainians are currently sitting thinking about ffXIV at all. They have more important things to worry about right now. But at some point, when they come to rebuild their lives, that this war has shattered, it will be a nice thing to find they still have the house they put time and money into. This is why i can support the demolition suspension and likely always will.

The issue around having enough housing is simply explained, they already do, but the housing isnt in the location or the size that people want. An Apartment offers all of the same benefits with the exception of two things, multiple floors i.e design space and Gardening. But even then Gardening can be experienced via fc's and tenanting. This is why i honestly dont think its an issue in the grand scheme of things. If anything the fundamental issue is that the housing approach was ill thought out. The design was about creating neighbourhoods, but this only really happens where there are fc's with a large active membership and a penchant for socialising in and around the house. Majority people who have a house, use it as an afterthought. Because of this districts which were envisioned to be large player communities are dead for the most part.

They could resolve the issue with automatic ward expansion, but all that would happen is the medium and Large houses would be bought up and then the smalls would empty as people migrated to availble mediums and large houses in new wards Effectively resulting in ghost wards of very few houses.

Personally the mistake has and always will be that medium and Large houses are available as personal housing. I think they should always have been limited to FC's only. This wont elleviate the issue with housing initially, but it would mean that natural hubs would form around large and medium housing as they would be utilised by fcs. They then could add a different "instanced" housing system for player housing. I really hope island Sanctuary is something like this and maybe operates in the same way that Genshin Impact's Serenity Tea Pot housing works.