Square Enix responds to Final Fantasy 14's housing crisis

Update: Final Fantasy 14's game director, Naoki Yoshida, has announced that additional wards are being added to each of the game's housing areas. Each of the instanced wards contains 60 plots. They'll be arriving with patch 4.2.

Yoshida also noted that the team has received "considerable feedback" in regards to how new plots should be implemented, specifically when it comes to purchasing them.

Another announcement will be made at a later date detailing exactly how many wards will be added and how they will be sold. Given the issues with players and guilds snatching up multiple plots, one of the changes might impose some limitations on the number of homes you can buy, but at this point Yoshida isn't giving away too much, to avoid speculation.

Original story: Buying my home was one of the most stressful moments in my life, but in comparison to Final Fantasy 14’s prospective homeowners, I had it easy. There’s a real estate crisis in Eorzea, with too few homes to keep up with demand. And after the 4.1 update, The Legend Returns, things don’t seem to have improved.

While most MMOs with player housing use instances to ensure that everyone has a chance to snatch up a plot, Final Fantasy servers only contain a specific number of homes, and when one of them is purchased, that’s it taken off the market.

Until 4.1, servers contained three housing areas with just over 2,000 plots available. For the entire server. And despite the low number of homes, guilds and players can snatch up multiple plots. Some players are already demanding that a limit be imposed.

So there’s obviously a great many people clamouring for property. Unfortunately, 4.1 only added 720 more homes. According to infuriated players on the forums, they got bought up so quickly that most didn’t have a chance to buy them. When the update went live, login queues kept even the early birds from getting to the houses they wanted to purchase. And even those who got in in time had to contend with other players trying to stop them by opening trade windows.

It’s a demonstrably bad system, especially in a game where people pay money expecting to be able to access all of its content eventually, and adding 720 more plots has clearly not alleviated the issues. Right now, the only alternative is purchasing an apartment, of which there are considerably more, though they’re not nearly as striking and they are still, ultimately, limited in number.

Cheers, Kotaku.

Fraser is the UK online editor and has actually met The Internet in person. With over a decade of experience, he's been around the block a few times, serving as a freelancer, news editor and prolific reviewer. Strategy games have been a 30-year-long obsession, from tiny RTSs to sprawling political sims, and he never turns down the chance to rave about Total War or Crusader Kings. He's also been known to set up shop in the latest MMO and likes to wind down with an endlessly deep, systemic RPG. These days, when he's not editing, he can usually be found writing features that are 1,000 words too long or talking about his dog.