Attach a prize people want to a lottery and they forget yoy have to win the lottery to get the prize. Its not til after they enter and lady luck chooses to crap on them who know how many times that they wake up.
so the lotto is just going to make this a who has more gil game, the rich will just lotto bid on every single house... can someone say incoming RMT boom?
I doubt people are going to resort to RMT to buy multiple lottery tickets. Assuming that's even possible of course, far more likely players will be limited to one ticket per account per drawing. If they're going to go the RMT route, they'll just buy from a flipper with a house in a FCFS ward or that's selling a FC with house.
This just triggered another question in my head.
For the lottery FC wards, how will the game track ticket purchases for a FC if there's a limit on the number of tickets that can be purchased? I would assume that members with a rank allowed to purchase property would be eligible to buy a ticket for the FC but that number will vary from FC to FC depending on how the leader has set up ranks. It's doubtful that SE would limit ticket purchase to FC leader only since they could be a problem for FCs with a leader who can't currently play due to things like a business trip or hospitalization.
YoshiP said there would be separate first come, first server and lottery wards. He didn't say wards would switch from first come, first serve to lottery after being filled.
Even the latter does little when it comes to house flipping. Flipping would continue to occur through the transfer of FCs. It's not like you need to be a member of a FC to do things with the members in that FC other than converse through FC chat. My FC has extended membership through our Discord. A lot of former members and just general game friends are effectively part of our FC without being in it.
There already are plenty of players who set up (or bought) shell FCs solely to get a house because it was the faster route for getting one when there were private purchase moratoriums on new wards or easier once the moratoriums were lifted but everything was sold. They're technically not abusing the system because they have just the one FC house allowed under the rules. They're just claiming what they're allowed as a FC because they were having difficulty getting it as a private player.
There are only two ways to kill house flipping:
Kill the wards and move to a purely instanced system that lets every player/FC buy the exact plot type they want. Clearly SE has no intention of doing that with the way they keep throwing effort and money at more wards even though nothing they are doing is solving any problems.
Kill FC housing and make all wards personal only through lottery purchase only. Doubt they're going to do that either because that means they'll have to come up with another system to give FCs a shared private space for their members to meet along with host the FC only features that currently require house ownership.
Oh wait, make that three ways:
Kill housing altogether. Can't flip what doesn't exist. That would be a disaster for them. It wouldn't kill the game since there is a sizeable chunk of the player base that cares nothing about housing but it would plant that seed of doubt in people's minds about what might be next to go.
There's nothing that'll stop the FC trading unless SE takes a look at FC master turnover. If they made it so you can't turn over FC master to a PC that hasn't been part of the FC for X number of days, it'd curb that though not completely kill it. Shouldn't cause a problem in FCs either. An MIA FC master right now will eventually hand down the position to an active member after what... 45 days?
Make it more difficult for these resellers to pass off acquired housing to their lvl 1 alts to hold, then transfer FC master to buyer. Again, wouldn't kill it, but it'd make it a lot more difficult.
But it'd have to be done with a second punch of a relocation cooldown. 5 minutes is laughably short. I'd go with a 30 day timer. You transfer to a new plot, you're there for the next 30 days. (This also has the benefit of stopping trolls relocating just to mess with people.)
Those two options combined would finally make FC resellers and relocation resellers lives a bit more difficult.
Certainly better than something inane like apartment rent.
That's the result of SE ignoring the core problem. As long as there aren't enough houses, there will always be complaints and unhappy players.
There will also always be those who abuse the system for personal gain, whether it's buying to sell for profit or buying from those who do to bypass the purchase system limitations.
A lottery system isn't ideal, though it makes things fairer than having people stand around clicking a placard for hours on end. It discourages that unhealthy habit, at least.
the lotto isnt supposed to fix supply, it's supposed to fix the procurement problem, because it's unhumanly terrible.
the supply problem requires hardware/resources/whatever. making the aquisition system not *the most retarded system I have ever seen* is one seriously low hanging fruit that needs to plucked. if servers grew on trees they would have added more already.
I like the idea of FC wards and lotto system. However I'll repeat that apartments need to be upgraded to reduce demand. It certainly doesn't help when some seasonal events award you with an outdoor item many people can't use, just rubs salt in the wound.
Tbh, the lottery would solve the clicking problem. Like recently there was a small house auto-demolished in my Goblet ward. I was checking on it periodically and quite often there was a group of 10 people or so just sitting there clicking the placard. Considering how terrible the random timer system is, it's definitely for the better at least in that regard.
Solves the clicking problem but does not solve the supply problem.
People who watch the placard campers are going to get the wrong idea about how easy it will be to get a house under the lottery system. Those 10 people clicking the placard were just the ones who were willing to give up playing the rest of the game to get a house. They're only a tiny fraction of the players who would like to buy a house.
Once the lottery is enacted, it's not going to be a 1 in 10 chance to win the house. It's going to be a 1 in 500 (or perhaps worse) chance. All those players who preferred playing the rest of the game over placard camping will now be buying tickets to get their chance at a house because there's minimal time investment required for that chance. They will be doing it with every newly available plot that appears within what they can afford until they finally get a house.
You're also going to get a lot of players who don't particularly care about housing to buy tickets because why not? Doesn't cost them anything meaningful to enter nor even if they win because they've already got so much gil they aren't using. That way if they ever did decide they wanted to do something with housing, they'd already have a house and not have to worry about trying to win one in the lottery.
So we finally have an official source on this, from:
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5614790
More band-aid fixes for an ongoing problem that could be so easily remedied with instanced housing.
As mentioned above and I agree to that.. the lottery system would make it worse as in 10 people camping the same spot... because they dont want to play the game... but then if lottery, it will be much tougher as not just 10 tickets for the plot... but maybe a few 100 more in the lotto, for that single plot creating lesser than 1% chance to get it.
how will there be a lottery and a first come first serve for housing?
So you can be there before all other and still get it? And then the lottery people will just have to sit back and sulk again?
I suggested a lottery system ages ago, one that did not even constitute a major change to the whole system as it was. It was basically that you set a timer, and all that came to the plot from its avaliability to the timer actually made it possible to buy it, would be allowed to put down gil for the plot and thus have a lottery spot.
Ones the timer went off, it would close and draw among those that put down gil.
The winner got a mail with the deed, and the rest one with their gil back.
Then they could go on and try their luck again next time. Ofc taking in to account you can only go for one at the time, so people will be encouraged to go for the one they really want and not just swap about ones they get one.
But all we gotten so fare been half arsed, rubish and made so people would ruin it and just mess stuff up, and in the end the housing was just as horrible and you would still end up clicking buttons for hours on end till your wrist swells up and your elbow hurts. And yes I have been there... twice! First one was 8 hours, and you manage to hear quite a lot of podcast in 8 hours while clicking.
The other one was 10 hours clicking. And after that my wrist was swollen, and I decided to not bother with housing one bit ever again till they made it less dangerous for my poor wrists. (and yes I could have stopped, but being like 90% of players, I greed for a house to stuff my trophies in to and make a little bit of Eorzean decoration show out of.)
This is what we have so far. I don't think any specific information beyond this has been released via third party interviews, probably because they're still working out the details.
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5614790
I don't expect to see more details until the first Live Letter for 6.1 (which will probably be in January if they're on their usual patch publicity and release schedule).Quote:
A lottery system will be implemented for purchasing housing plots. Relocation rules will be adjusted, and there will be designated areas for purchasing plots via lottery, or first come, first served. These are currently in preparation for the release of the housing area in Ishgard.
Players will only be permitted to enter the lottery if they meet the requirements necessary to own housing. A number of features have been prepared to prevent RMT and troublemaking, such as depositing the gil upfront and disallowing participation on Free Trial accounts. Furthermore, there will be a gil penalty for those who do not purchase a plot after being selected in the lottery. Please note that this penalty will be quite strict.
Additionally, certain areas will be reserved for purchase as personal or free company housing. Details regarding this and other housing-related updates will be shared later.
Until then, we're left guessing based on what we've seen them do in the past.
The part I bolded raises questions. It sounds like you're not getting a house for a prize, you're getting a "license to buy".
Are they going to wait for X number of houses to be available on a world before holding a lottery? Are they going to hold a lottery at specific times (say 2nd and 4th Saturday of every month) then select a number of winners equal to the number of available plots at the time?
Are those available plots now a FFA for those who were picked as winners so the winners fight over who gets what? How long do they have to buy before their "license" expires and they get penalized?
Wards will be designated either as one or the other. We don't know how it will impact existing wards (could be they remain first come, first serve then all new wards added in the future are lottery, could be mixed, could be the entire thing is getting used as a beta test for them to figure out which works out best in practice).
They did say relocation rules are changing. I would imagine relocation will be limited to the FCFS wards, leaving the lottery wards pure lottery though that's still just a guess on my part.
Players are going to be sitting and sulking even with a lottery because a lottery doesn't fix the supply problem and they still can't get a house. It's amazing how many can't understand that the lottery is going to make it harder to get a house, not easier, because the amount of competition for what few houses are available will increase several fold.
what will this mean for people who already own housing? do we keep our plots and then if they become available later on this will be implemented on them or are we gonna have to move too? might be a stupid question but im unsure and as per usual SE have only told us its being implemented and not full details
They don't have a habit of taking away things when they change the rules so I doubt current owners need to fear losing their house (other than through demolition as usual). Attempts to relocate would be affected by the new rules, though.
Then again, we don't know anything for certain because they're only giving us vague information at this point. Maybe they'll decide they want to wipe all the wards clean to put every player on a level playing field when it comes to obtaining a house. No more multiple house grandfathering, etc.
If they were actually doing something that would improve the housing system to serve all players equally (ie guarantee that every player who wants a house can get one) instead of just the lucky ones who manage to get through the log in queues first, I could accept losing my house and starting over. But the indications are they aren't interested in fixing the housing system. They seem to be more interested in shuffling the problems around for the sake of looking like they're doing something.