Housing for everyone?!

[Brynne]

I really like this idea, though I think it's unlikely that they would implement it due to the development resources required. I like the idea of an instanced housing system alongside the current wards (kind of a 'best of both worlds' option) and I've often thought about how versatile instanced housing could be. You could purchase upgrades without needing a free plot, and they could continue to build on it, adding all kinds of cool stuff that just wouldn't work with wards right now based on how they are implemented. It'd be amazing to have something like this but in a small, expandable neighborhood, where your friends could still live nearby. Really, that would be the dream.

I'm holding out some hope for Ishgard right now. If there is a housing system, it's going to be tied to the endgame content for crafting and gathering somehow. Unless that content is some kind of server-wide effort, having it unlock the same old wards feels... awkward. It would make more sense to me if we get to a certain point with the restoration and were given the opportunity to build and/or purchase a personal house that's instanced. But we'll have to wait and see.

[TenraiNagi]

I'm holding out some hope for Ishgard right now. If there is a housing system, it's going to be tied to the endgame content for crafting and gathering somehow. Unless that content is some kind of server-wide effort, having it unlock the same old wards feels... awkward. It would make more sense to me if we get to a certain point with the restoration and were given the opportunity to build and/or purchase a personal house that's instanced. But we'll have to wait and see.

It would be interesting if the housing in ishgard was related to the restoration of the city but I doubt it. In my opinion, Ishgard will turn into a large “enclave” like project with different ways to advance in its restoration because it would need DoH/ DoL classes. And housing will drop like it did in Shirogane. My doubt stems mostly from the idea that they won’t do something unique to Ishgard without applying the same rules to the other housing areas as that will cause player outrage lol, but as you said we’ll have to wait and see and hopefully pleasantly surprised

[Bright-Flower]

I'd love some way to get everyone at least a small plot. Or even a small plot that can be eventually upgraded to a larger house a la Animal Crossing, with the ability to easily visit houses open to the public so that RP events can be held easily in them.

Unfortunately I don't expect this to happen, but maybe they'll do something with Ishgard.

[LaylaTsarra]

Ishgard housing will most like be a ward based system but I suppose we could be surprised. I wonder if they are planning to update apartments. They did seem to say awhile back that they were considering small, medium and large versions where you could upgrade them as you go. Those are probably the closest we'll get to instanced housing. It would be nice if there were options for gardening and the like. They really haven't said much about housing since they released Shirogane and one can hope we'll get some news in a live letter soon.

[ERMITANYO]

Ishgard housing will most like be a ward based system but I suppose we could be surprised. I wonder if they are planning to update apartments. They did seem to say awhile back that they were considering small, medium and large versions where you could upgrade them as you go. Those are probably the closest we'll get to instanced housing. It would be nice if there were options for gardening and the like. They really haven't said much about housing since they released Shirogane and one can hope we'll get some news in a live letter soon.

I do hope that upgrades for apartment housing becomes a reality from the small studio type to a medium 1 bedroom, and a large 3 bedroom, all with balcony for some outdoor items atleast, that way it will be somehow enticing to own an apartment.

[Nalien]

I honestly think they just need to make plots instanced... Just have one version of the Lavender Beds/etc, and lock off the plots so you cannot enter the building space anymore (maybe add a gate to the fence), instead you zone into the plot by selecting the placard or something. That way SE should be able to do two things; Provide more plots and remove the scarcity players hate. And increase the cap on how much garden furniture we can place, since it would now be instanced... Heck thinking of it, you could do away with the garden/indoors concept completely and just let us walk through the door instead of zoning into the house, maybe make use of that upstairs balcony door...

You'd just be able to walk around the housing zones, maybe the plots themselves display randomly selected plots players have made. That keeps the whole neighbourhood concept we have going, right? Honestly not even a concept worth having at this point IMHO, SE did nothing with it... We basically had one Christmas event that sent you to interact with peoples furniture and that was it... I honestly think most seasonal events should have something like that, and not just once and then never again, make it an every year staple of the seasonal event... Trick or Treating at Halloween? An Easter Egg hunt in the housing wards? There are a lot of fun ideas you could do with the system we have...

Perhaps I'm mistaken that instanced housing would be a panacea to cure all housing demand issues though... Honestly though, I'd prefer just having 1 Lavender Beds/etc. than the current 36 mirrors of it we have... Not a great deal of reason to visit those other 35 versions... If it was just the 1 zone, with the plots randomly selecting which house to display when I enter? I'd see a lot more peoples houses, probably...

Either way, I think housing needs a complete rework in this game... It's too good a reward to have crippled like this with limited availability... Turns what is, in my opinion, one of the better aspects of this game, into a huge frustration for most of the playerbase... Drop a Dalamud on the housing wards and rework the concept from the ground up, please... Everyone should be able to have the plot they want... If adding more housing servers is too much of a cost to be viable, rework the system completely...

[Dyvid]

We have instanced housing, everytime you enter a house or apartment, it's an instance. Only the wards are zones that take place in the world server maps.

[Shougun]

We have instanced housing, everytime you enter a house or apartment, it's an instance. Only the wards are zones that take place in the world server maps.

Probably could use more clear wording than just simply "instanced housing" but I think it's pretty clear what people mean when they ask it though, especially given context of what people ask for. Unlimited instanced housing, or more particularly an instanced house available for every single player and FC (don't need more houses than there are people who could possibly use them).

[ERMITANYO]

Any admins forwarding suggestions to devs. Inbox?

[Shougun]

The decoration system we have in ffxiv is great, even though I’d like them to make the glitching methods part of the normal way to place things rather than glitch them there, but overall it’s great. In my idea, decorations would be as we have them now, limited to the house and it’s garden (with the item limit increased ofc because it’s instanced).
So the player would have a decoratable house and a customizable pre defined neighborhood where the areas we unlock are fixed (similar to the enclave) but the player customizes what shall be placed in the unlocked area with preset structures. So if 2 players choose to place a beach area, then they would look the same (except the location might change depending on which unlocked area each player decides to place it on)

Wild Star. What was that? Wild Star.. Who's talking? Wild Star. Wild Star. lol.

You could scale things up and down and put them in silly positions in that system (allowing people to create statues and entire cities)! I agree if we had our own zone / space then having an unrestricted placement on the x, y, z axis with scaling / rotation would be A M A Z I N G. It's part of the reason why I think people who think they're fine with the current system would realize how green the grass could get when they're given their own zone and unlocked housing system. Where they can still easily invite people to come visit, social power doesn't die unless you don't care to foster it.. which is pretty much how the system already is anyways lol (people who go out of their way to make it social can do so, and for the rest of us it's about features and accessibility).

I'm sure no matter what grand features you could introduce some will prefer it exactly how it is now (so I don't want any system to be destroyed) - like some people actually like the limited housing (that there are not enough larges for demand) but I just have to say "we will always disagree, forever" when it comes to if limited housing is a good idea or not. If I don't like having to balance 100 variables in real life to find a house I like there is no way I'm going to enjoy doing it in a video game where it's even more limited than real life lol (and is often a race). I can understand some people might like that, like some people might like perma-death in an MMORPG, that however is not me lol.

Probably one of the top items in things I wish FFXIV did differently (overall pleased and love the game so I like making suggestions here and there just as a fan, but this issue I talk about because it actively disappoints me with the "y tho" feeling lol). Makes me sad as well coming from FFXI where it seemed like they had the right idea ages ago where everyone get's a place to call their own and just needed to make it much better. Of course I assume that the problem is the whole 1.0 to 2.0 issues, and that if Yoshi-P / Programmers could snap their fingers that we'd have a lot less issues with the system. They had a chaotic building point to go from and an insanely short period of time to work with to get the ball rolling again, it's pretty great how they've done so far. Still even though I can imagine why we have the problems I find it worth demonstrating displeasure, in the off chance they decide to invest resources into solutions or even if team works on a new MMORPG (so they can not repeat the issues of this system).

Any admins forwarding suggestions to devs. Inbox?

In a general statement they've both said yes and I feel like they do, on a more nuanced level I'm not sure what the exact protocol is for things to be forwarded. Not sure who does the forwarding either, I imagine it might be our community managers (mates with the cool avatars). Like I've heard they translate the top ten or so threads every week to be read by the team, but are there any specific posts or ideas that get translated or concentrated outside of that? No idea. I know there were a few old ideas I had wanted that I saw happen and they weren't exactly jackpot posts in popularity (could be because I described something already asked for by the Japanese community or was already a plan in development).