Naoki Yoshida says negative comments from trolls are "tiresome"

[Avenger]

His statement predates apartments even being a concept.
He also said the combat in XIV was going to encourage player expression around the same time.

Interesting - how do you know for sure that he had no concept in mind of possibly introducing apartments (or something similar, like mog houses in FF11) when he said that? To my mind the statement accurately resolved with the subsequent introduction of apartments (perhaps with the addition of island sanctuary for outdoor furniture.)

You may very well be correct - in that case it may just be an example of them changing their plans/mind, which certainly happens (e.g. I think they said at one point they might allow user UI extension scripts in Lua (?) which would enable DPS meters, and obviously they decided not to do that.)