Please Stop Hiding Functionality Behind House Acquisition

[Elesh]

As the title says. Stop locking the gardening plots, fc voyages, fc workshop, etc. behind buying a house.

A lot of people ONLY have houses to get access to some piece of specific functionality. There's no real reason not to allow people to rent gardening plots from the grand company(or the botanist guild or somewhere) and allowed FCs to access their workshop from the grand company...

It's clear you'll never make enough houses to make everyone happy... so at least don't lock people out of functionality as a result of it.

[Raim]

I'd almost reckon that island sanctuaries won't have any housing at all, but will have these features to sort of make up the difference in terms of utility. Though I also bet they nerf the gil from subs soon so it wont wreck the economy.

[Avatre]

I'd almost reckon that island sanctuaries won't have any housing at all, but will have these features to sort of make up the difference in terms of utility. Though I also bet they nerf the gil from subs soon so it wont wreck the economy.

I think the only things that won't be on island sanctuaries is the airship/submersible stuff. Gardening is highly likely(if not confirmed, can't remember if it was said to be 100% in there in one of the live letters). Having a small house - that can be later upgraded - there would be nice, but not holding my breath for that to happen.

From what I do recall from the live letters, is that it will be a garden/minion roaming zone. Would be neat to see some of the mounts roaming around(those that would make sense to roam at least)

[Martynek]

I agree. The issue with housing isn't that it's so limited, it's that there are incentives to want a house beyond simply wanting a house for its own sake.
Personal housing was a mistake and apartments should've filled that purpose, except we got monkeys pawed on that and ended up with some crap that can't do 90% of the things you'd want a house for in the first place.

tl;dr: Put anything that you'd want a house for into either Apartments or Island Sanctuary. Keep housing's primary purpose as a social space for FCs (And maybe linkshells, if there's some way of making that work?)

[Elesh]

I agree. The issue with housing isn't that it's so limited, it's that there are incentives to want a house beyond simply wanting a house for its own sake.
Personal housing was a mistake and apartments should've filled that purpose, except we got monkeys pawed on that and ended up with some crap that can't do 90% of the things you'd want a house for in the first place.

tl;dr: Put anything that you'd want a house for into either Apartments or Island Sanctuary. Keep housing's primary purpose as a social space for FCs (And maybe linkshells, if there's some way of making that work?)

I wholeheartedly disagree that personal housing was a mistake, just to be clear. Personal housing is one of my wife's greatest joys with the game. Having a space that is her own with both an indoor and an outdoor component that she can decorate and let some of her creative instincts flow to gives her tremendous joy.

The only mistake regarding THAT is that they focused too heavily on 'maintaining the neighborhood feel' instead of going to some form of instanced or partially instanced housing to allow everyone to have their own.

But... that's off topic for this post. This post is specifically to say that housing should be about HOUSING. It should be a thing for people who SPECIFICALLY want their own space to decorate like that. It should not be 'mandatory to unlock functionality'.