Is FFXIV fixing the housing feature?

[Quarterafter]

Should I hold out some hope for housing or is it too late?

I've seen countless complaints about the housing system but little when it comes to fixes/changes that are coming to housing except for the recent addition of housing to Ishgard and lottery system. It honestly feels like the housing feature was made just for jokesies, especially with the new update. Luckily I didn't have to go through this struggle but the number of people who narrated their experience walking up to the placard to collect their gil while the new owners were there was just sad + threats/insults after winning a house.

Someone else asked why the housing feature is only available for a lucky fraction of the players and not everyone when we're all paying a sub aaaand, I'd really like to know the answer too. Not to be entitled but it's a game and well, if I'm paying to play the game, shouldn't I be able to access all the features? Or be able to work for it? Or pay extra to access it? No?

After doing some quick research I discovered that the housing feature was originally made for FCs. I get that there are issues now because of that and some other more technical stuff that I won't get into because I don't know enough to speak on it. But I think housing should be available for everyone and if FFXIV agrees with this (not sure if they do) and knows that many players are frustrated and upset at the current state of housing then why aren't they trying to add a more permanent fix rather than putting a bandaid over the problem by adding a residential district in Ishgard? Does this lead to something else?

[Oizen]

There is barely any communication about this at all, but seeing as we just got a overhauled system, its going to take a year or two of it failing before they do anything else to it.
Its the way it is because the developers like it that way, they say they like how it brings the community together, even if it mostly does the opposite.

Your best bet is praying that the Island Sanctuary's big reaction made them reconsider it actually being instanced housing or not, but they have openly stated to lower your expectations on that feature.

So as of right now they do not even see an issue with the system.

[Masenko]

It's been too late for about 10 years.

[Theox]

No, they're not.

[Risvertasashi]

Should I hold out some hope for housing or is it too late?

I've seen countless complaints about the housing system but little when it comes to fixes/changes that are coming to housing except for the recent addition of housing to Ishgard and lottery system. It honestly feels like the housing feature was made just for jokesies, especially with the new update. Luckily I didn't have to go through this struggle but the number of people who narrated their experience walking up to the placard to collect their gil while the new owners were there was just sad + threats/insults after winning a house.

Someone else asked why the housing feature is only available for a lucky fraction of the players and not everyone when we're all paying a sub aaaand, I'd really like to know the answer too. Not to be entitled but it's a game and well, if I'm paying to play the game, shouldn't I be able to access all the features? Or be able to work for it? Or pay extra to access it? No?

After doing some quick research I discovered that the housing feature was originally made for FCs. I get that there are issues now because of that and some other more technical stuff that I won't get into because I don't know enough to speak on it. But I think housing should be available for everyone and if FFXIV agrees with this (not sure if they do) and knows that many players are frustrated and upset at the current state of housing then why aren't they trying to add a more permanent fix rather than putting a bandaid over the problem by adding a residential district in Ishgard? Does this lead to something else?

Depends on how you define fixing. Fixing as in correcting the recent technical error? Yes.

...but from your post, you seem concerned more about long term availability. Is that being fixed?

The short answer is SE has not shared any plans to fix long term availability. There's various speculation (such as that island sanctuary might be instanced housing), but it is only that, speculation. Nothing is confirmed. From SE's past patterns of behavior, they may add new wards in a year or two, which may give you a small chance of housing at those intervals.

After doing some quick research I discovered that the housing feature was originally made for FCs. I get that there are issues now because of that and some other more technical stuff that I won't get into because I don't know enough to speak on it. But I think housing should be available for everyone and if FFXIV agrees with this (not sure if they do) and knows that many players are frustrated and upset at the current state of housing then why aren't they trying to add a more permanent fix rather than putting a bandaid over the problem by adding a residential district in Ishgard? Does this lead to something else?

Hey, I was there at ground zero the day housing launched so let me fill you in.

At the time, given the state of the economy, housing was extremely expensive, but defenders justified it saying FCs were meant to work together to afford it. But then, of course, there were many questions along the lines of "What about personal housing?" You can find the quote to this day of Yoshi assuring people that personal housing would be separate from FC housing and "far more affordable."

Fast forward to the day of the personal housing launch patch. SE's gone with a complete lockdown on communication. People are concerned personal housing might not launch after such, for so long has SE gone completely silent despite many inquiries. The servers go down for maintenance. The patch notes go up (there were no preliminary patch notes back then) and... reveal that it's exactly the same as FC housing, at exactly the same price.

If you trusted SE and weren't farming gil like mad, you wouldn't be able to afford one. But on large servers that didn't really matter - all the houses were gone before the servers were officially supposed to be back online. And then Yoshi graced us with another post saying he considered demand fulfilled because dead servers (no cross world friends, travel, or PF back then) still had plots.

And that pretty much sets the tone for housing for the next 7 or 8 years till now. The system's messed up. You have very few opportunities to ever get a house. SE and some players like it that way, and based on their behavior of the past near-decade, aren't going to be open and communicative.

[Jojoya]

We have no reason to believe they're going to change the housing system considering they've stuck to the same basic formula since Apartments were added mid-Heavensward (almost 6 years ago). They're too attached to the ward system despite its flaws and inadequacies.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't keep asking for improvements. Just don't get your hopes up that they will ever happen.

[Sindele]

There are what seem to be major underlying architecture problems that limit any possible solutions - 6.1 brought back the familiar 'extreme server load' lockouts on populated servers blocking people from entering houses, even well after primetime in some cases. This is undoubtedly part of what lies behind the seemingly-arbitrary limits on apartments, too: the architecture simply cannot scale gracefully to meet the level of demand. In that light, "no instanced housing" is less a design choice and more a hardware limitation.

There's generally no easy fix to something like this - it's near-always months of engineering work by your most talented developers, laboring on what is most likely your most byzantine code that also happens to serve as the underpinnings for the entire game and cannot brook any significant level of failure.