I'd like to take an extended break from the game, but...

[Vaer]

Do both, keep the current wards but also have an instancing system where you can get whatever size since one of the reasons why people care that it gets blown up is because they probably won't be able to get it back. If you can just come back then rebuy the plot and get your stuff from the reclaim NPC, it's a lot less annoying.

One issue I see with an instanced system is that it might be quite a gil sink if people could buy a large amount of houses indefinitely which might affect the economy with all the gil being flushed down the toilet.

[saber_alter]

Honestly they should remove auto demolition completely, set up a system where players can 'demolish' their houses at any time they choose and get their Gil refunded, and set it up so that houses are limited to one per account. Housing is a total mess right now.

That isn't the best idea, though there should be a way to hold your possessions for people who do intend to return.

[Naunet]

I'm still upset that SE went back on their promise of not tying house ownership to upkeep/subscription.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Can anyone explain the Cons of instancing this stuff to me? The only one I can think of is it lowers immersion a bit. But the benefits are that housing becomes more accessible and doesn't disappear if you have to go for whatever reason.

You can even fix this by having instanced neighborhoods; no more than five lots per instance. Think of it like Sims 4. Unfortunately, the devs won't let go of their immersion argument despite the housing system being a complete mess. It's the same issue that plagued PvP for years. They finally gave in and allowed us not to queue as our Free Company because queue times were embarrassing low. At this point, I think plenty of people would accept less content in one patch cycle if it meant instanced housing and the current system was scraped.

[Moonlite]

NO, sorry to be mean. But they need to be able to provide enough before they fix other issues. The move feature shouldn't even be implemented till they get a stable system in place. Fix problem A, decide what problem B is fix it and work your way down the list.

[Dustytome]

One issue I see with an instanced system is that it might be quite a gil sink if people could buy a large amount of houses indefinitely which might affect the economy with all the gil being flushed down the toilet.

That's not an issue though as housing is an intended gil sink.

Have an option to "store" houses. All decor, furnishings and workshop progress will be saved and you will be given a ticket that can be redeemed on an equivalent empty plot (e.g. If you stored a large house, when you come back you can only redeem it on an empty large plot). When you redeem the ticket your house will be reloaded as it was when you left.

I think it would be better to just let the workshop/airship progress be kept regardless of the house, but nothing directly tied to house size. Any furniture you want to keep, you're in charge of storing or accept you'll have to go on a buying/crafting binge IF you manage to get a house when you return. In your example, a returning fc would have to find a large plot (of which there are only 216 per world at the moment) upon returning in order to redeem the ticket. Until they found a replacement large lot they would be stuck without anything they've unlocked.

[Maero]

Instanced housing would have been better if implemented from the start..
The whole demolish of property because players do not log in simply shows how bad shape housing is. One should not be worried about loosing their home because they decided they needed a break from FFXIV.
I have not played many MMo's so could not say about others games except ESO which have recently added instanced housing

[Vaer]

That's not an issue though as housing is an intended gil sink.

Notice I said might. When they add new wards there is a set amount of gil being removed with a margin of error since once they are all bought out the gil being removed isn't quite as much, they even lower the plot prices when they check how much gil is in the system. If there are a lot of larges you can buy whenever you want there is no longer a limit. Just saying it could possibly spiral out of control.

[matteoxyz]

If it were me, I'd just unsub. There's no point playing JUST to hang on to some imaginary possessions. Your time is infinitely more valuable than anything in this game. If you're burnt out, and you don't take a break, it won't get better, you'll just end up hating FF more and more.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

Can anyone explain the Cons of instancing this stuff to me? The only one I can think of is it lowers immersion a bit. But the benefits are that housing becomes more accessible and doesn't disappear if you have to go for whatever reason.

The way I see it, a soldier deploying for a year being able to keep their stuff as it was when they left sort of trumps the reasons for not instancing.

There is a potentially major downside, but it comes back to how their instance server code and hardware is setup, something that only the devs know. Back at the game's launch, the game had very few 'instance' allocations, which led to wait times for Amdapor Keep (The one and only dungeon that gave weekly tomes back then till wanderer's palace had mythology added) potentially an upwards of an hour+, regardless of role, regardless if you had a full 4 man party ready to go, simply because there wasn't enough instance allocations to go around.

I can only make assumptions as only the devs know how the instancing works, but assuming their server hardware is limited when it comes to total instances they can allocate, I can assume the choice of 'neighborhoods' was made to keep the total housing instances on each server down to 36 instances (12 wards * 3 housing areas) vs 2160 instances (12 wards * 60 plots * 3 areas for houses that potentially need instances). and once again, just making an assumption, but if every 'instance' reserves itself from a collective 'pool' of instances that are limited, then having 2160 per server being potentially occupied could very well lead to that same problem of 'not enough instance severs to go around'. and that's just low balling it, because with instanced housing, there wouldn't just be a 2160 house cap anymore, a server like Balmung could very well have 20k~ instances needed for its housing.

Instanced housing would solve the situation, but could present a technical and catastrophic nightmare from the dev's side of things if implemented in haste without proper testing, or the proper hardware to handle it.