Would you pay for instanced housing

[Avoidy]

Square Enix should be on their hands and knees thanking their players for even putting up with a monthly sub in the year 2023, especially for how sparse the content rollouts are in this game. That "pay monthly or don't play at all" style of monetization is phased out pretty much everywhere except, I guess, WoW? I can't think of another game that even does it anymore. Some games will have monthly subs but it'll be to obtain extra stuff; you'll still be able to play the base game without paying a sub. But this game will log you out when your sub expires and that's pretty rare afaik. In that vein, Square is super fortunate to have players who're willing to buy the base game, pay a monthly subscription, and have a separate cash shop while they roll out like 3 major updates a year and then sit on their asses doing nothing but updating the cash shop monthly.

In that vein, hell no I wouldn't pay for instanced housing. SE gets enough of my money. Instanced housing is something they should've figured out years ago. Island Sanctuary should've been the key; they had instances with housing elements, but instead they discontinued further production of it because loooool of course they did. Gotta keep homeowners on a tight leash, right? After all, if people don't fear permanently losing a residence, they might unsubscribe while your devteam's pulling another 4-6 month down-period where nothing worth subbing for is happening, but there's still a subscription fee

Hell, I'll keep it real for a minute. With how many players don't even play the game but stay subbed so they can enter their house and keep it, they are essentially paying for a house already. I know this isn't what you mean, but I'm just saying -- consider how many people don't even take up space on this game's servers but they still hand the company money like they're just paying rent. the housing situation and the game's monetization in general are both atrocious. It's amazing that SE gets away with it with almost 0 vocal criticism from the community while other games that're at least free to play might have a similarly priced cash shop to XIV and get raked through the coals. If some f2p game sells level skips and time savers, it's awful! But when XIV sells job/story skips? Crickets. Free game has a 40 dollar mount? Disgusting! XIV has a 40 dollar aCcOuNt wIdE mount? "What are you, poor? If you don't like it, don't buy it!" MMO gamers are weird (putting it nicely) and deserve everything they get. Myself included, ngl