Honestly, I'm not sure the housing system can be adequately fixed

[KayRadley]

Full disclosure: I have a house. A rinky-dink small plot in the Goblet. It was one of the least desired plots in the least popular housing area, and I stayed up through the night to snag it when personal housing opened up during Stormblood's run.

That said: I'm fairly certain Square painted themselves in a corner when they made the housing system. As I read on another thread, the idea of neighborhood wards instead of instanced housing like other MMOs came about because Square didn't have much faith in 2.0's release, going off of 1.0's poor reception and tiny playerbase. This wound up biting them in the butt when 2.0 took off and became a potential WoW-killer, but now they have hundreds of thousands of potential homeowners, and not enough plots to accommodate.

Another issue is what resources Square has available to them at a given time to work on FFXIV. Fixing the housing situation would require a massive overhaul, the likes of which would be on not a dissimilar scale to the change from 1.0 to 2.0. Now, imagine for the sake of this discussion: Square allocated the FFXIV team 100 million yen for the fiscal quarter to work on the game. What would be a better way to use that money? Performing the overhaul for the housing system would take almost all of that money. On the other hand, that money could be used to add more content to the game in other areas: more dungeons, more raids, seasonal and crossover events, costumes on the Mogstation, story content. Ultimately, the housing system will have to take a back seat to stuff that would affect and enrich more players.

In the end, I don't really think there's a hell of a lot Square can do about the housing system, so my best suggestion would be to get an apartment and relax.

[Arrhin]

I think they should just add on to, and expand the apartment system. Give some more space, maybe a little more interesting architecture inside, and a balcony that can be used for outdoor type furnishings and gardens. Allow for a local mailbox and the ability to tp right into it if desired, heck, make a nice big, whatever style apartment that can be used as FC headquarters. I mean the open world stuff will still be most desired but if they could replicate that experience as much as possible in the apartments it could go a long way.

[Feronar]

I think adding instanced rural housing might work. Each instance would be a private piece of land with only 1 housing plot on it by itself surrounded by wilderness, rather than other houses. I don't think it would take much more effort than the current apartment system, and it would also cause less server load than the wards, since each house would only need to be loaded when a player is present, as opposed to the wards which have to be loaded 24/7. This system, like the apartments, could be implemented on top of the currently existing ward system, which would continue to work as before.

[Jojoya]

We know they are working on housing issues, so it's not neglected in the budget. Changes just aren't happening fast enough to satisfy the players who wanted to buy a house yesterday.

We need to stay patient while keeping the discussion going in constructive fashion instead of using "you suck, do this or I quit!" ultimatums. That will never get a good response.

[Rufalus]

As I read on another thread, the idea of neighborhood wards instead of instanced housing like other MMOs came about because Square didn't have much faith in 2.0's release, going off of 1.0's poor reception and tiny playerbase. This wound up biting them in the butt when 2.0 took off and became a potential WoW-killer, but now they have hundreds of thousands of potential homeowners, and not enough plots to accommodate.

It sort of worked in the beginning, it was just made with different intent than what players have come to expect and demand from it. It was viewed as more of a luxury than a need, with exorbitant plot prices out of most people's reach. Plots of all sizes remained unsold and available week after week (most worlds) while people saved diligently. If you wanted house access you just joined one of the FCs that owned one and that's housing working as intended. A little fluff side thing.

The high volume of complaints started when personal housing was added to the game later on, sharing the same wards as FCs rather than being built on a new separate system as had previously been indicated. Now just owning an instanced private room inside an FC estate wasn't enough for people and they coveted their own land, but the old neighborhood ward system couldn't support such demand.

I think it's not just big growth of the playerbase that took s-e by surprise but also the percentage of those players who NEED personal plots rather than players just seeing it as an option alongside FC rooms, apartments, tenancy sharing plots, inn rooms. They might've begun with something more scalable if they had that hindsight.

[Big_Bap]

It sort of worked in the beginning, it was just made with different intent than what players have come to expect and demand from it. It was viewed as more of a luxury than a need, with exorbitant plot prices out of most people's reach. Plots of all sizes remained unsold and available week after week (most worlds) while people saved diligently. If you wanted house access you just joined one of the FCs that owned one and that's housing working as intended. A little fluff side thing.

The high volume of complaints started when personal housing was added to the game later on, sharing the same wards as FCs rather than being built on a new separate system as had previously been indicated. Now just owning an instanced private room inside an FC estate wasn't enough for people and they coveted their own land, but the old neighborhood ward system couldn't support such demand.

I think it's not just big growth of the playerbase that took s-e by surprise but also the percentage of those players who NEED personal plots rather than players just seeing it as an option alongside FC rooms, apartments, tenancy sharing plots, inn rooms. They might've begun with something more scalable if they had that hindsight.

Amen, you should post more often in here.

[Shurrikhan]

In the end, I don't really think there's a hell of a lot Square can do about the housing system, so my best suggestion would be to get an apartment and relax.

Then what about at least making Apartments compelling?

[EternalAmbrosia]

I have never owned an apartment in FFXIV, I've always wanted a house (I own one now, thanks to paying for a server transfer...). People say settle for apartments but houses are a thing and they are multi-leveled with a yard and garden capabilities as well as mail, etc and you have the ability to be a tenant in your partner's house to design it together.

I would prefer to see instance housing being an option for those who don't want an apartment.

I really don't think they'd scrap housing over apartments, but I could see apartments being more appealing if they have an outdoor garden with a cute balcony or even windowsill gardens. I'd also be inclined to get an apartment if they came in sizes similar to houses, not just one room... and have the ability to co-own an apartment with a spouse or couple of friends (It's fun to design a house together).

[Big_Bap]

Then what about at least making Apartments compelling?

Compelling?

They are permanent.
They cost 16-20x less than a small house on your server when housing was released. If you were not around for that, small houses didn't even have a basement.

Some people just want to have it all...

[Alyanna_Elingval]

SE made two mistakes that really messed up their housing market and will be hard to fix without completely overhauling the system.

1) They didn't have rules in place to limit purchases to one private and one FC house from the start. People should never been allowed to buy multiple private or FC houses.

2) This was probably the worst mistake they made. They drastically lowered the costs of houses across the board. They significantly increased the demand by doing this, while not creating equivalent supply.

There's really no way to unring that bell, and housing doesn't negatively affect enough people for SE to devote the resources to completely overhauling it or creating something like instanced housing.