How do you feel about incoming housing updates?

[Antoine_Lenheim]

More specifically, the "Tardis" housing system (the ability to upgrade the interior of your house to a bigger variant, having a Large house layout in a Small house).

Do you think this idea makes sense? I mean, on the creative and accessibility fronts, it does, especially when combined with increased slots, which should come with this new system. People who were unlucky with the lottery could finally get the chance to decorate a Medium or Large house, even if they only own a Small (that is, I wonder if the upgrade also increases the slot limit to match the related interior).

But I kind of think this is stupid. In many ways. First, the most obvious way - it just doesn’t work unless you bring "magic" into the equation. Like, I kind of wanted this system, but for apartments, not for houses. You could upgrade your apartments to fancy multi-levelled condos or penthouses. That would be quite cool. But to make a small house have a large interior - how does that even work? How can you not ruin immersion when you walk into a small cute cottage and see a massive manor interior inside?

I mentioned magic because something like that happened in the Harry Potter universe. There was a certain spell called "The Extension Charm", which expanded the internal dimensions of an object without affecting the external dimensions, enhancing its capacity and rendering its contents lighter. So, Hermione was able to have a house worth of space inside her handbag. But is this really what we’re going to resort to, to make it work?

The second reason why I think this is bad, a much more serious problem than the first: this WORSENS the housing shortage situation. I get it, they "kind of" wanted to fix the housing shortage by allowing everyone to own a house they couldn’t get. You always dreamed about owning a Medium or even a Large, but the lottery only allowed you to own that pesky Goblet Small? Fear not, now you can upgrade!

But, yeah. Now even those pesky Goblet Smalls that no one wanted before will all be taken over in an instant. Meaning, even FEWER houses will be available to the players. Gil and house hoarders will now swoop over wards to claim all the Smalls, to convert them to Larges, and regular players, who could before at least get a Goblet Small, which even on a populated server wasn’t a rare thing to see, will now live in a cardboard box. Kinda defeats the purpose, huh? I guess it makes the game mechanic better for people who already own one, and makes housing "gameplay" better and more accessible to those people. And that’s exactly what is the main problem with housing right now! /sarcasm mode off

The third problem that I see, probably the mildest one and can be ignored, is that it makes actual Large houses obsolete. Now, you only get a Large house if you want the exterior of one, a larger garden, and maybe for the specific place/view. That’s it. That is, assuming upgrading to a large interior won’t have some limitations, like you still have furniture slot limit from a Small house, or maybe you can only place a certain number of aquariums and NPCs and other stuff that differ depending on what size of a house you have.

So, yeah, to summarise, it feels like they focused on a completely irrelevant part of housing. Let’s be real, what is the main problem with housing right now? One that’s been discussed for, I think, the entirety of the housing system’s lifespan in FF14? The housing shortage. How does this exact system fight housing shortages? It doesn’t. On the contrary, it worsens it. Instead of focusing on finally giving us instanced housing, or any other means of increasing housing availability, they focus instead on making the house-owners’ lives easier. I mean, kudos to them, I guess…

[0blivion]

I have a question, what is the source on this? Because I'd love this change, but didn't find it anywhere.

[Carin-Eri]

I have a question, what is the source on this? Because I'd love this change, but didn't find it anywhere.

It was referenced in Live Letter #83.

From the translated summary of that one:
Housing Updates

Players will now be able to select a different interior design for their estate

New interior designs will be added for use in this system, in addition to the default interiors already seen in-game (you can get rid of the default columns if you want, woohoo!)

Housing items that have already been placed in the estate will be stored while you change the interior design

Coming in a future patch: the ability to change the interior size of your estate (will cost a lot of gil)

[0blivion]

Oh, that's neat. I have some houses I would redecorate if not for space constraints. Neat.

[Altina_Orion]

If yoishi-p didn't put a date on it, you might as well pretend he didnt say it. He promised viera hats when viera came out. We may not get this for years.

[Alahard]

Until getting a house becomes a reasonable venture, I can care less about the " housing updates"

Honestly I fell any updates is a waste of time when the housing market is more saturated than the real world, and they decide to spend developer time making larger house interiors, instead of using that limited space to host that data to maybe host another ward.

"Oh here is content that you can't access because we purpousley didn't make enough for the playerbase. Now peasants fight with the 40 other people in the lottery every week."

[Antoine_Lenheim]

Until getting a house becomes a reasonable venture, I can care less about the " housing updates"

Honestly I fell any updates is a waste of time when the housing market is more saturated than the real world, and they decide to spend developer time making larger house interiors, instead of using that limited space to host that data to maybe host another ward.

"Oh here is content that you can't access because we purpousley didn't make enough for the playerbase. Now peasants fight with the 40 other people in the lottery every week."

True. Couldn't agree more. Instead of this nonsense, they should just add new housing zones.

[Eastwall]

They should just add this feature to apartment. Just letting the houses having it is not that attractive

[Khryseis_Astra]

Small is my preferred layout anyways, so I probably won’t take advantage of this feature unless they apply it to apartments somehow.

While I agree the main problem with housing is that not everyone can get a plot on most worlds, which is why I’m a big supporter of adding an instanced system to the game, I do think that innovations like this are a good thing. My hope is that rather than just copy/paste this to apartments/FC rooms, that those will get their own unique range of sizes/layouts. And over time, either create more layouts and/or more customization options.

But yeah, being able to have a large interior inside a small house isn’t really going to matter to someone who can’t even get a small.

[Themarvin]

I feel lied to about it all, it has taken too long.