Why FFXIV’s Housing System Is Failing Its Players, and Why It Must Change

[s32ialx]

The housing system in Final Fantasy XIV is long overdue for reform.
While many players have asked for instanced housing and fair access, the combination of limited plot availability, toxic auto-demolition policies, and the dismissive claim that "apartments are enough" continues to hurt the community, especially the most vulnerable among us like myself.


Apartments Are NOT a Substitute for True Housing

While apartments are technically available to all players, they are not a feasible alternative to personal or Free Company housing. Here's why:

• No Outdoor Space: Apartments lack yards, gardens, and exterior customization, stripping away a huge part of the housing experience.
• Limited Storage & Decor: Only 100 indoor furnishings can be placed, compared to 200–400 in houses. Outdoor furnishings? Not allowed. Different Interior Skin? Nope
• No Estate Sharing: You can’t share your apartment with friends or FC members. It’s isolating, not communal.
• No Prestige or Visibility: Apartments are tucked away in lobbies, invisible to the world. Houses are landmarks, apartments are footnotes.
• No Workshop or Gardening: FC workshops, crossbreeding gardens, and chocobo stables are exclusive to houses.

Claiming apartments are "good enough" is like saying a broom closet is a fine substitute for a home.


Auto-Demolition: A System That Punishes Vulnerability

The auto-demolition timer, which destroys a house if the owner doesn’t enter it within 45 days, is cruel and toxic:

• Mental Health Penalty: Players who need time away for burnout, depression, or hospitalization risk losing everything they’ve built.
• FoMo & Anxiety: The fear of losing a house forces players to log in compulsively, even when they’re not well.
• No Grace for Emergencies: There’s no way to pause or appeal the timer for medical or personal crises.
• Loss of Irreplaceable Items: Furnishings, trophies, and sentimental creations vanish, many of which are untradeable and irreplaceable.

This system punishes players for being human. It’s not just bad design, it’s emotionally damaging.


Gatekeeping: The Toxic Defense of a Broken System

Those who defend the current housing system often engage in gatekeeping, a behavior that excludes others from a community based on arbitrary standards. Here’s how it manifests in FFXIV:

• "You didn’t try hard enough": Invalidating players who lost lotteries or couldn’t camp plots due to real-life obligations.
• "Just get an apartment": Dismissing legitimate concerns with a subpar alternative.
• "I earned my house, so should you": Ignoring systemic scarcity and luck-based acquisition.
• "If you can’t log in, you don’t deserve it": Shaming players for prioritizing health or personal crises.

This elitist mindset fosters exclusion, resentment, and emotional harm. It turns a community-driven game into a hostile environment.


What Square Enix Must Do

To align with the values of empathy, inclusivity, and creativity that FFXIV is known for, Square Enix should:

Implement instanced housing so every player and FC can own a home
Remove or extend auto-demolition timers, especially for medical or mental health reasons
Introduce better preservation options, like plot suspension or grace periods
Create a support system for players who need time away


Final Thought

FFXIV is a game built on storytelling, emotion, and connection. Its housing system should reflect those values, not punish players for being vulnerable, creative, or human.

If you’ve spent thousands of hours building a sanctuary, you deserve to keep it, even if life pulls you away.

[s32ialx]

#HousingReform #MentalHealthMatters #NoMoreFoMo #ApartmentsArentEnough #CompassionInEorzea

[Shistar]

Small corrections:

[*]No Workshop or Gardening: FC workshops, crossbreeding gardens, and chocobo stables are exclusive to houses.

Chocobo stables are not exclusive to plot housing. Every apartment building comes with easy access to moogle mail, a mender, a housing vendor, a summoner bell, a marketboard and a chocobo stable. Also, teleporting without having to spend any item slots on a mini aetheryte.


About the FC workshop, that's just standard for everyone across the board. A private estate doesn't have a workshop either, it's exclusive to FCs, and FCs can't have apartments (we're not counting FC rooms in this, because you must have an FC plot in order to have an FC room, and if the house is gone, so are the rooms in it)

The auto-demolition timer, which destroys a house if the owner doesn’t enter it within 45 days, is cruel and toxic

The autodemolition system is in place because players asked for it. Unfortunately, due to how access to housing and the wards are designed, one could buy a plot and leave it there, eventually making it impossible for an active player to get a house because all of them were "occupied" by players who hadn't logged on for years. I agree it should be longer, or make it possible to request an extension once or twice per year through a specific system or the GMs for these emergencies.

Implement instanced housing so every player and FC can own a home

EDIT: I know it was not specified, but all FC houses have access to workshops, so my reply assumes that instanced housing would work exactly the same as current FC housing, and allow everyone to build a workshop.

I don't think FCs (or anyone, specially private estates) should be given a workshop for free. That would only make it easier for the RMT bots to amass tons and tons of gil, or even for a regular player to get seriously rich doing AFK jewelry farming. You'd think it's not bad to be rich, but inflation is no fun. It only takes a few to ruin it for everyone, and for workshops to get completely removed from the game because we know how SE handles these cases more often than not.




The rest I generally agree with.

[Solowing]

Your post is filled with half truths and emotional arguments.

[s32ialx]

Small corrections:
Snip

You're absolutely right that apartment buildings come with shared amenities like chocobo stables, summoning bells, and marketboards. But these are communal utilities, not customizable features. The stable outside an apartment building is not the same as owning one on your personal plot:

• You can’t decorate or place the stable yourself
• You can’t control access or personalize its use
• You can’t integrate it into your outdoor design

So while technically available, it’s a limited and impersonal version of what plot owners enjoy.

On FC Workshops and Instanced Housing

I agree that FC workshops are tied to FC plots, and private estates don’t have them. But that’s exactly the problem, access to workshops is locked behind housing scarcity. If instanced housing were implemented, it could easily include workshop access for FCs, with safeguards to prevent abuse.

As for the concern about RMT bots exploiting workshops: they already do. Bots farm gil through gathering, crafting, and even housing resale schemes. Denying legitimate players access to features out of fear of bot abuse is punishing the wrong group. The solution is better bot detection and moderation, not withholding content from the community.
Multiboxing bots bidding on houses, and then selling them.
Bots buying housing.

On Auto-Demolition and Player Requests

Yes, auto-demolition was introduced to free up inactive plots, but that doesn’t mean it’s fair or humane in its current form. Players asked for housing access, not punitive timers that erase thousands of hours of effort. And while you agree the possibility of requesting extensions, there is no formal system for this. GMs rarely intervene, and players facing medical emergencies or mental health crises are left with no recourse.

The system needs:

• A grace period for emergencies
• An opt-in preservation option
• A way to pause demolition for verified cases

This isn’t about entitlement, it’s about compassion.

Apartments and shared stables are better than nothing, but they’re not a substitute for true housing. And defending the current system by citing bot abuse or technical limitations only reinforces the need for a complete overhaul, one that prioritizes player well-being, creativity, and fairness.


I think we both want a better FFXIV, we just see different paths to get there, and to make it perfectly clear with your statement that you don't think FCs (or anyone, specially private estates) should be given a workshop for free. I don't recall saying any of this had to be free?

[Shistar]

The stable outside an apartment building is not the same as owning one on your personal plot:

• You can’t decorate or place the stable yourself
• You can’t control access or personalize its use
• You can’t integrate it into your outdoor design
• You can’t use it for gardening or crossbreeding, which is exclusive to estate plots

The stables in apartments are better than the ones you can place in your own plot because you don't have to waste an item slot or any of your own resources obtaining and placing it, if someone else cleans it you also benefit from it. Unless you're strategically placing your stable on top of your crops so your chocobos can "fertilize" your crops in your imagination, I don't know what that last point has to do with everything else... they're two different things that never interact with each other. The only customization stables can have is dyeing them, and there's generally no point in placing a chocobo stables if you are in an FC that already has them or have an apartment, it's just a waste of item slots for the majority of players. Of course, they can choose to place it if they want, but it's not the smartest thing to do imho. Specially since it has very limited uses, in a system that is largely outdated nowadays. And this is coming from someone who has trained multiple chocobos.

I think we both want a better FFXIV, we just see different paths to get there, and to make it perfectly clear with your statement that you don't think FCs (or anyone, specially private estates) should be given a workshop for free. I don't recall saying any of this had to be free?

I generally agree with your point, I'm just making corrections because many of the things you're saying are flat out wrong and are easy to prove as such... if you're making a post like this, it's a good idea to double check that everything you're saying is correct before posting, or at least correcting the information if you find out you made a mistake for the future readers.



"For free" in the sense that if all FCs have access to a house, then all FCs will simply have a workshop because it's dirt cheap to build one. If you have the gil to get even a small house, you absolutely have the gil to make a workshop or will have it very soon. I understand not wanting to block players from engaging with the content, but you're also making it extremely easy for RMT bots to do their thing if you just enable it as it is. Just because it's already happening doesn't mean you should let it run rampant and make it even easier for them to do so, quite the opposite.


Instanced housing for personal estates, I'm all for it. I don't care what people do with their personal houses. For FCs, the system will have to be much, much more strict about who can make and maintain an FC and the requirements for a workshop should be even stricter. A real group of players would be able to meet them realistically, but it'd be enough of a bother for bots to have to shell out more money and time maintaining this stuff. Or you know, they could actually crack down on them harder, but that's not really our business unfortunately lol if the appropriate safeguards to prevent abuse are put in, again I don't care what people do with their houses, I hope they have fun! But this is SE we're talking about; they'd sooner remove the workshop than prevent bots from exploiting it without having players face the repercussions...

[s32ialx]

The stables in apartments are better than the ones you can place in your own plot because you don't have to waste an item slot or any of your own resources obtaining and placing it,

Ha, well clearly I was getting my wires crossed in anxiety thinking about crops and plots and misreading land permissions, And since I've never really looked too much into stables or FC stables I figured you could do Chocobo breeding for the Gold Saucer or something more unique. I agree, accuracy is essential when pushing for reform. I’ve acknowledged that one of my earlier points was off, and I appreciate you helping to keep the conversation grounded.

But even with that, the core issue remains unchanged:

• Plot-based stables allow personal placement, creative integration into your outdoor layout, and the ability to control access, none of which apply to apartment stables.
• The ability to choose what goes in your space and where is a huge part of why personal housing matters to so many players, even when the functional difference is minor.
• You can help care for your friends or FC members Chocobos in a personal or FC stable. At least from my understanding how the permissions work at least?.

Calling something a “waste” because it isn’t functionally optimal misses the point for players who care more about expression than efficiency. FFXIV isn’t just a game about systems, it’s a game about stories, imagination, and customization. That includes the freedom to use space in ways that aren’t strictly utilitarian.

And above all, this thread isn’t just about stables. It’s about mental health, compassion, and how the current housing policies, especially auto-demolition, fail players who step away to care for themselves. That’s what I came here to advocate for, and that remains my focus.

If you have the gil to get even a small house, you absolutely have the gil to make a workshop or will have it very soon. I understand not wanting to block players from engaging with the content, but you're also making it extremely easy for RMT bots to do their thing if you just enable it as it is. Just because it's already happening doesn't mean you should let it run rampant and make it even easier for them to do so, quite the opposite.

You're right that workshops are relatively cheap once a house is secured. But the real barrier isn’t the gil, it’s housing availability. If FCs can’t get a plot, they’re locked out of workshop content entirely. That’s why many players advocate for detaching workshops from housing, or making them accessible through instanced systems.

As for RMT bots: yes, they’re a problem. But punishing legitimate players by withholding features isn’t the solution. The better path is implementing safeguards, like:

• Requiring FC rank or member count to unlock workshop access
• Adding cooldowns or contribution thresholds for workshop projects
• Monitoring suspicious activity more aggressively

These ideas have already been floated in community discussions, and they strike a balance between accessibility and abuse prevention.
"The real fix to the housing crisis."
Why are workshops and extra rooms FC-exclusive?

The heart of my original post was about mental health, and how auto-demolition punishes players who step away to care for themselves. Whether it’s a solo player or an FC leader, no one should lose their home because they needed time to heal.

So while I welcome corrections and deeper discussion, I hope we can keep the spotlight on the bigger picture: building a housing system that’s fair, compassionate, and resilient, not just technically functional.

[ShadowyZero]

Your post is filled with half truths and emotional arguments.

and your reply's are not emotional arguments? calling the kettle black cause everytime you seem to interact with housing posts you deny, deflect, an object to anything that would remotely improve the way the system works or would give everyone a house with all things included that current owners already enjoy for themselves.

[ShadowyZero]

The housing system in Final Fantasy XIV


Implement instanced housing so every player and FC can own a home
Remove or extend auto-demolition timers, especially for medical or mental health reasons
Introduce better preservation options, like plot suspension or grace periods
Create a support system for players who need time away


Final Thought

If you’ve spent thousands of hours building a sanctuary, you deserve to keep it, even if life pulls you away.

yes we need to have a form of instance housing strictly for individual players which can have estate sharing as an option for people who have a significant other or just want to share a space with their most cherished friends.
and it should have things readily available for use that normal houses already have such as gardens,stables, market board, retainers etc.
and this would alleviate so much stress on the game and the community cause then the system won't be taxed by constantly needing to add more wards or districts to accommodate every single player and the players would finally be able to take breaks if needed for their health or world events that trigger unplanned emergencies etc.

i think they should still keep the demolition timer but extend it like you mentioned too a lengthier period of time i'd argue 100 days max would be more than enough to prove someone is no longer interested in keeping the plot or logging back in.
i think the neighborhood system should return to just being FC only an the new and improved instanced housing should replace solo ownership not saying for anyone to get kicked out of their home if they already have one but i think the devs should at the very least add a gil incentive if the person chooses to demolish like sort of give them a refund of the property plus interest of a certain percent to make it easier for them to decide on the move etc.

[Solowing]

yes we need to have a form of instance housing strictly for individual players which can have estate sharing as an option for people who have a significant other or just want to share a space with their most cherished friends.
and it should have things readily available for use that normal houses already have such as gardens,stables, market board, retainers etc.
and this would alleviate so much stress on the game and the community cause then the system won't be taxed by constantly needing to add more wards or districts to accommodate every single player and the players would finally be able to take breaks if needed for their health or world events that trigger unplanned emergencies etc.

i think they should still keep the demolition timer but extend it like you mentioned too a lengthier period of time i'd argue 100 days max would be more than enough to prove someone is no longer interested in keeping the plot or logging back in.
i think the neighborhood system should return to just being FC only an the new and improved instanced housing should replace solo ownership not saying for anyone to get kicked out of their home if they already have one but i think the devs should at the very least add a gil incentive if the person chooses to demolish like sort of give them a refund of the property plus interest of a certain percent to make it easier for them to decide on the move etc.

If you gave me a 100 days to log in.I would be required to log in 3 times a year to keep it. The lottery system is going to take place about once every three months.

It benefits those who own a plot already. But if you don't own one , your wait for one just got far worse