Nope you didn't add enough plots SE...

[Penthea]

Why are active players getting punished when the pandemic isn't their fault, either?

Because SE created an awful housing system that is punishing a huge amount of players whether demolition is on or off.

It's also very very bad PR to leave a limited resource in the hands of those who have quit playing while your active paying customers are left without. It says that the active paying customer means nothing to the developer despite that active paying customer being the reason the developer still has a job while others have lost their jobs due to a lack of paying customers at the businesses they worked for.

Yes it is bad pr to do things as they are now but no matter what SE do it's bad pr. Why? Because their housing system is bad. Their housing system is literally bad pr.

However we have no way of knowing how many players are no longer paying for their sub. A lot of people who aren't logging in are overworked, not without a job or a home. Almost everyone I know in the medical field barely has time to watch a movie never mind play a mmo.

Sorry, but the demolition timer needs to be reenabled if SE isn't going to create a housing supply that meets demand. People have had 7 months to straighten out their real life situations to the best of their ability. Either they're stable and able to resume playing, or they won't be returning for a long time to come and a virtual house in an online game is useless to them.

This is extremely unfair to say and it's clear you haven't thought about this much. What makes you think anyone negatively impacted by the pandemic has had 7 months to sort themselves out? I know people who lost their jobs due to covid just this month. I know others who lost them more than two months ago and cannot find any work. A friend of my family went to icu with covid only three days ago. He doesn't play FFXIV but if he did, well he certainly hasn't had seven months to sort out his life since covid had a huge negative impact on him.

COVID isn't the only reason autodemo is suspended at this point. We've had 3 cat3+ hurricanes so far, the riots in the US, the dam breach, wildfires in western US, shit tons of flooding. Have you just not been reading the news? And that's ONLY in the United States, let alone elsewhere.

These people certainly haven't had seven months to sort out their lives.

[Almagnus1]

Can we stop encouraging SE to, microtransaction us even further in game which we buy to play and pay subscriptions for?

inb4 "Optional Content."

Yeah, the entire "give us microtransactions for housing!" thing seems a bit... off... here.

Doubly so when instanced housing would be a good compliment to the current system and would help alleviate many of the issues we've seen for a long while.

SE could improve upon apartments so that they are upgradeable for gil to condos/penthouses with balconies for gardening and workshop access to reduce demand on ward housing. That seems the most feasible improvement.

As cool as balconies are, I could see this running into some technical issues with how the ward is interacting with the balcony. If the balcony is facing away from the ward... that would (hopefully) be a very doable thing. Facing towards the ward and the devs would need tech similar to phasing. That said, it'd still be cool if they could pull it off and would also make apartments **A LOT** more interesting as a housing alternative, as cross-gardening is the one crucial thing that they need to be a compelling alternative to houses IMO.

[cythus]

I can't speak for other people, but the main reason why I wanted a house was for gardening and making hybrids. My house could be freed up for someone else that's more interested in the decoration aspect if SE added an instanced "greenhouse" to apartments and other features to bridge the gap between apartments and housing. I like TwistedTea's ideas about apartment upgrades mentioned above.

But the solution that would probably make people /happiest/ is just adding more plots.

[Chione]

SE could improve upon apartments so that they are upgradeable for gil to condos/penthouses with balconies for gardening and workshop access to reduce demand on ward housing. That seems the most feasible improvement.

I honestly think this is the best idea for improving things. Apartments will never be subject to the demolition timer, so if they were a little more equal, I feel like it'd go a long way to easing up the competition for ward housing.

The Bokairo Inn rooms already make a decent example of what the outdoor area attached to the instanced apartment could look like. Bonus if there's no zoning required to reach it. In addition to a garden upgrade, a loft upgrade could allow a second floor for decorating.

As for workshops, I wonder if apartment buildings couldn't be equipped with a communal workshop similar to the way their chocobo stables work. With several projects ongoing at once and being locked to the person that started them. But also allowing other apartment owners from the building to contribute if they're feeling generous for whatever reason.

[SSakuras]

I can't speak for other people, but the main reason why I wanted a house was for gardening and making hybrids. My house could be freed up for someone else that's more interested in the decoration aspect if SE added an instanced "greenhouse" to apartments and other features to bridge the gap between apartments and housing. I like TwistedTea's ideas about apartment upgrades mentioned above.

But the solution that would probably make people /happiest/ is just adding more plots.

^ This tbh... I mostly only wanted a house to do gardening. I wanted a medium so I could have 2 gardening plot sections, but I ended up with my small instead. I'm not tooooo huge into the decorating aspects of housing. It's fun seeing what everyone does, but doing it myself? Meh. Which is why I hired a decorator to do it for me lol. So if they just allowed apartments to somehow get gardening I'd be all for giving up my house and just sticking with an apartment.

I also agree though that the best way to make the most amount of people happiest will be to add more wards and plots. Problem is I was reading through all the old posts from 3 years ago in 2017. One post mentions there were 12 wards currently, and they wanted it to be doubled. Well, 3 years later and it has FINALLY doubled (exactly doubled actually, now that we have 24 wards)... but there's STILL a housing shortage. So simply doubling the plots over a length of time isn't helping. It's like they need to do it all in one fell swoop, then maybe people will be happy.

[Moonlite]

Outdoor space isn't for everyone. Don't see much change on the outside. But if they made apartments with an interior larger then a large house and 500+ placable items i bet a decent amount of people would move.


People that talk about apartments might not have looked very close. They didn't add apartments really. They made a FC room available without being in FC apartments even have same amount of rooms as FC house. Who wants to bet that fixing apartments requires them to fix FC housing as well. It wasn't a fix and probably isn't something they can expand on. It was a bone for the some players to beat other players who think housing is poorly implemented.

[ICountFrom0]

^ This tbh... I mostly only wanted a house to do gardening. I wanted a medium so I could have 2 gardening plot sections, but I ended up with my small instead. I'm not tooooo huge into the decorating aspects of housing. It's fun seeing what everyone does, but doing it myself?.

If I could have more gardens on a small, by giving up having a house, I'd actually do that.

[Almagnus1]

If I could have more gardens on a small, by giving up having a house, I'd actually do that.

If we had something in game like https://www.gartendeck.de/ in Hamburg, Germany that would be like what you're talking about.

I imagine decoupling gardening from housing would help reduce some demand for housing as right now people want a house because that's the only way to do cross breed gardening.

[Theodric]

If everybody has access to gardening, however, it ceases to be profitable altogether.

[ICountFrom0]

I don't care about making money with it, I just enjoy the concept.