Please Remove the Inactivity Timer

[Shougun]

Due to the limited state of the wards and the purpose of the neighborhood system I think it would be unwise to remove the inactivity timer.. However I do think your house should go into an instanced space (with your whole house, inside and out) rather than losing the house. You'd lose your place in the ward but not your house, because their purpose is defeated by inactive houses.

"Housing is for everyone"
Also wrong. While yes, everyone deserves the right to have a go at housing, not everyone is going to GET a housing plot.

It should be (for everyone, strongly imo). Like Wildstar- the best mmo housing I've ever seen and probably the sole reason it lasted as long as it did, also imo lol, but other mmorpgs do this too- even WoW, though technically the ability to customize is significantly lower in WoW compared to FFXIV..

Though I do believe FFXIV might find a way to give everyone a space, a large space (given time/upgrades) even, and add another gil sink opportunity while still dodge changing the housing system in the idea of basically making an airship Garrison (WoW's house, which is more of a node based concept with a few slots to "decorate"). Since they're nodes it would take a lot less information (than a house, even compared to an apartment), and would be useful to both housing owners and not. As well it seems your point on people not decorating them could be addressed in the idea that the node is more of an auto decorate feature, like in skyrim where you buy a theme and it does the rest for you.

The Housing Plots need to remain a finite resource in order to keep a demand. If everyone could get one, then there goes a major gil-sink for the game. It's doing its job. What people seem to enjoy ignoring is the apartments out there for people to own a house.

A major gil sink would not go away, it's possible it wouldn't even be reduced and might (should..) even grow (though it wouldn't vanish entirely either way). If SE has a shirt that is rare ex (can't be sold or traded) and they limit the shirt to 500 a month (or total even) they've reduced their own gil sink (assuming demand is high, supply limited and fixed, non-trade able/sell-able, and price is fixed- in that scenario you'd want to produce more shirts to sell more of them because people want to buy it). Allow everyone to buy the shirt, the gil sink will be greater. People want a house to want a house, want a shirt to wear a shirt, get a mount to have that mount. Now there is the whole price reduction (devaluation) over time mechanic, so technically you'd need more people buying then lost by going around that system (assuming devaluation prices are ignored, if devaluation price mechanic is maintained somehow then the gil sink is definitely going to be stronger). Also the more people in the housing system potentially more people buying from the market, meaning a larger gil sink (because there are taxes on the market board). So it's entirely possible your gil sink becomes much larger. Not only that but more people who can buy seasonal items off the mogshop meaning more money for FF.

And before anyone says "Apartments aren't houses" or they're not proper instanced housing? Stop being picky. Yeah, you may not get every system with an apartment, but apartments don't auto-demo, they're permanent and about 3/4 the size of a Small (interior at least). For the price you're asked for its purchase, it's a pretty great deal. For everything else, just join an FC and get permissions to grow / water plants. Boom. There you go. All of the systems at your disposal.

Apartments are not houses, in the context of features, and as you detail later in your own post (showing that there are differences, they're not the same). Also no I wont stop calling them that way or allowing/defending people to be picky about it, at least until more is added to the feature set which very well may be coming. People are allowed to push SE to improve their housing system, which is where of the desires to make instanced house(s) come from. People are not required to be satisfied with a system, though of course they shouldn't be threatening/yelling SE- just letting them know they're not happy with X. You're allowed to leave of course but should avoid dangling the sub like it's a blackmail tool, rather just say "I'm leaving because I found X game which did this, I liked Y, and may come back if Z improves"- which while annoying to players who will just say "can I have your gil?" or shrug it is important info for SE to see where hiccups may be found. Of course vs "I'm going to keep playing but the entire time I play I'm going to threaten my sub like we're in an abusive relationship". That's the point anyways, of the forums, to leave feedback.

It's true the apartment wont demolish but none of the houses in FFXIV should demolish (given an instanced full feature house system like other mmos employ, wards can remain limited), though to Vidu's point they should be moved off the open ward system and into their own instanced space if they're not used after a certain amount of time (to keep the ward alive). I would like to protect the wards for people who like them, though their existence is not really important to me personally when discussing optimal housing experience as I visit the wards every day and have yet to have an experience worth enough to defend the costs it brings. Like the lack of upgrade-able choices (SE can't easily give people larger yards), sharing space requiring limited number of objects, dealing with other people's weird decorations lol, etc.