The minimum acceptable situation

[PredatoryCatgirl]

What, in your opinion, would it take for housing to be acceptable in FFXIV?

My personal opinion is that most servers are there. Some of the high pop ones aren't, but most are. I'll elaborate.

Every FC can get a house. Maybe not a medium or large, but a house. Having even a small house gives you access to the workshop, aetherial wheels, and a place for people to apply in you're not online. It also gives members a place to congregate and to make FC rooms. The jump in quality and features from no house to small house is far bigger than small to medium or even small to large. Every FC needs a house to be able to access all of the features of getting an FC.

Every player has some kind of personalized space. This is accomplished with apartments. Houses were originally FC only things, and FCs should be given priority.

Please remember that this is what I consider the minimum, not the ideal. Ideally, every player and FC would have whatever size in whatever zone they want, and I would support an instancing system if it allowed that. But right now, housing in FFXIV gets a barely passing grade.

[Nepentha]

Instanced housing for personals. You can keep the wards as they are, and institute housing that isn't the breadbox of an apartment sized. Perhaps even gate it behind MSQ content. (I mean, Smileton is right there on the moon waiting to be used.)

It's a great opportunity to rethink housing in general.

[Reinha]

Available small houses to all fcs and private owners who want a house / want to relocate. Europe has already reached this acceptable situation. Now we just need auto-demolition back at some point, so this situation can be maintained.

[CatStarwind]

Better enforcement of the plot requirements. Maybe even a second attempt at plugging in the loophole. Though considering the rank permission is still beyond broken that might take a while.

[Jojoya]

Every character (not just player) and FC able to get the house or apartment of their choice provided they meet the requirements (level 50+, 2nd Lt in GC, have the gil to purchased the desired location, for personal, and Rank 6 entitlement for FC) without having to compete against others to get it.

We know it can be done because we've seen it in other games. It's up to SE to make it happen.

[Khryseis_Astra]

Keep the wards as they are but add instanced so everyone can own a house of their choosing. Housing shouldn’t be a competition or an “if you can luck into it” thing. There’s lots of people here that have put forward so many good ideas of how it could be done, and with 30 wards already, SE needs to look at options to solve the scarcity issue without putting more stress on the servers. And I understand that this is mainly an NA region issue. But the fact that NA’s problem is overcrowding also suggests that this is a huge chunk of your customer base, and maybe worth some attention. lol

Auto-demo has helped a little bit, but those houses will be gone in probably 2-3 lotto cycles. And really it’s another “feel bad” part of the system right now that the only hope some people have for a house is that someone else gets theirs demolished. It feels bad to lose every lotto, because it’s all RNG. It feels bad to walk back to that placard to collect your money. The system as it is now just feels bad all around, and it’s sad that a game that has done so many other things so well has kinda dropped the ball in this area.

Also, adding new worlds is great for those just getting into the game, and those that don’t have any strong ties to keep them from transferring. But you can’t just say housing is meant to foster community, and then say leaving the community they’ve built up over years is the only solution to the housing shortage.

There’s a way for everyone to have what they want, it just needs to be worked on. And that’s what I want to see… because again, the current system just feels bad and creates animosity between players.

[Sindele]

For personals, I honestly think all that's really needed is size-upgradeable apartments with uncapped availability. If you want to load balance availability between wards, add an NPC that can point you to wards with availability.

It's the cheapest and easiest solution and the relative losses are marginal. So much so, that the fact that it hasn't already happened raises red flags with me about any other potential solutions.

FCs are more complicated. I have serious reservations about the scenarios that would arise from an uncapped number of FC workshops, and the solutions that would make it more permissible aren't terribly pretty either and mostly render the whole thing pointless.

[Elevin]

The largest mistake was mixing FC and Personal housing.

If they were to double current capacity and keep FC and personal split combined with auto demolition, there would be no issue with European servers for space.

But the main issue thereafter is people wanting medium and large houses so the next step would be to make dynamic housing.

-Dynamic housing would require a complete redesign of the wards, and make plots scale in size with enough space to scale a house from small to large. The owner can then upgrade their house over time. Bear in mind that not everyone will want to go large, some just love medium houses.
-Make it so that there are as few undesirable plots as possible. That means each house must have a decent view, and be able to see over other if they are on a slope like in Mist or Shirogane. Currently, A LOT of houses have undesirable views.
-More market boards and summoning bells around. Ishgard, goblet and lavender beds have some of the worst locations and distance to travel to get to MBs and Summoning bells.

[Themarvin]

Make the FC's instanced guildhalls you can enter from the GC you made it out from... and make housing for people be the ward system... there will be alot of free room whenall the pocket FC's disappear and also every one making an FC will not have to struggle to find an FC house or pay a ludicrous amount of real life money or ingame money for a plot from a FC reseller.

[Themarvin]

Instanced housing for personals. You can keep the wards as they are, and institute housing that isn't the breadbox of an apartment sized. Perhaps even gate it behind MSQ content. (I mean, Smileton is right there on the moon waiting to be used.)

It's a great opportunity to rethink housing in general.

It would be better to make the FC's instanced and housing free then the trade with FC's on cool wards stops... and you can't trade normal housing as it is now.