In today’s producer letter, Naoki Yoshida announced a shake-up of the housing system in Final Fantasy XIV in patch 4.2. The patch is set to go live on January 30th at around 10 AM our time.
For a long time, there have been too few houses in Final Fantasy XIV, or in other words: The existing houses are unfairly distributed. While some cannot afford a house at all, wealthy players control blocks of houses in neighborhoods and live it up there.
Additionally, there are brokers who drive housing prices to heights that are unattainable for regular players.
These chronic problems will be addressed by Final Fantasy XIV later this month. This was announced in a new producer letter.
Houses for All!
As promised by the development team, a lot of new houses will be coming in the patch. The four residential areas Mist, Lavender Beds, Shirogane, and Goblet will each receive 6 additional districts and subdivisions.
The sale of these houses will only begin a week after patch 4.2 hits the game, to give players enough time to enjoy other content from the patch.
Strict Conditions for Purchase
However, a whole number of things will change when acquiring the plots:
- First and foremost, from now on there will be houses that can only be purchased by Free Companies. These must have at least 4 members.
- The purchase of private houses will be unavailable for an indefinite time. The developers will monitor the situation and then decide when sales will start. Additionally, players will only be able to own one house per server and per service account. However, the option to relocate is not affected by this restriction.
- The more severe restriction is that players will only be allowed to have one private estate and one FC house per account and per server starting from patch 4.2.
But what happens to players who have already violated these regulations? Will they lose their houses? In response to our inquiry with Square Enix, it was stated that no specific information can be provided at this time. So it remains to be seen what will be stated on the official site regarding the new system.
Example of the New Housing Rules
If you have two characters (A and B) on one account and A is a member of a Free Company that owns a house, then character B cannot buy a house for their FC. If B is transferred to another server, they can buy a house there.
Rooms and apartments are not considered plots and do not affect the acquisition of these. They are also exempt from the restrictions mentioned above.
A Blow to the “Brokers”
The resale of houses at exorbitant prices has long been a significant problem in FFXIV, which the development team will address with patch 4.2. To at least make resale more difficult, the plots will not be available for purchase for a certain period after being vacated.
Furthermore, the moment when the plot goes back on sale will be determined randomly and will not be disclosed to players.
As great as the new regulations sound for players right now, it still remains to be seen how exactly they will turn out in the end.
We reported on a case where 2 players owned particularly many houses:
