GMs/SE, Please do something about macro users/botters who are cheating to get a house

I keep running into people who are clearly using a macro or bot program to spam the placards and buy houses. The only thing more heartbreaking than someone relocating into a plot you've been trying to get for hours is watching it happen with someone who has a suspiciously exact timer for selecting/dropping the placard over and over and over again for hours...

I would be great if they could but its so wide spread and they have to catch the person in the act. There isn't really away for them to feasibly do this.

The only way to stop this is to remove the reasons that make people want to do this. These botters and players who use clicker software are a symptom of the utterly broken housing system.

And no removing the placard timer isn't a fix because it would get replaced with other awful things instead, as we have seen before with cottages going for 50 million on some servers.

We need instanced housing to have a completely fair system in which the actions of one person cannot possibly affect another.

I know I'm gonna get some hate, but I don't like the idea of Instanced housing. I like the neighborhood feel, and wandering around and checking out random people's houses. I've made a couple of friends this way. Instanced housing would destroy that aspect. I think the timer should be reduced to a 4-6 hr window. Or they implement a lotto system so you don't have to stand their and wait (also I get the reasoning of why Relocation bypasses the timer - it ultimately still leaves an open plot but its ridiculous , and I'm saying this as someone who has benefited from it).

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Originally Posted by Azurith

I know I'm gonna get some hate, but I don't like the idea of Instanced housing. I like the neighborhood feel, and wandering around and checking out random people's houses. I've made a couple of friends this way. Instanced housing would destroy that aspect.

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I have made friends this way too. Yes it would be a shame for the real neighbourhood aspect of the current wards to be gone but keeping that doesn't outweigh the gain of letting everyone participate in stress-free housing.

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Originally Posted by Azurith

I think the timer should be reduced to a 4-6 hr window. Or they implement a lotto system

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ANY rng system is going to result in a lot of unhappy players. Rng needs to be completely removed from the housing system. All that lottery will do is trade placard spam for increased competition on every plot due to the little effort needed to participate. Placard spam in itself is a lottery anyway. You can't cure the presence of lottery by replacing it with another lottery system.

I would love to see something in which players and/or fcs can buy a large instance with a huge plot of land inside, and in there they can build as many houses as they can fit. That way neighbourhoods can still exist and can be occupied by fcs, groups of friends, house hoarders or a single player in one house surrounded by countryside. The instances wouldn't exist until bought so the purchasing habits of one player cannot possibly affect someone else.

If we had a good instanced housing system the majority of threads in this forum would be about furnishing ideas, sharing housing designs, new features they would like to see, etc. But because we have an awful system most of the threads are players complaining because the system itself is blocking them from accessing content.

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Originally Posted by Azurith

I know I'm gonna get some hate, but I don't like the idea of Instanced housing. I like the neighborhood feel, and wandering around and checking out random people's houses. I've made a couple of friends this way. Instanced housing would destroy that aspect. I think the timer should be reduced to a 4-6 hr window. Or they implement a lotto system so you don't have to stand their and wait (also I get the reasoning of why Relocation bypasses the timer - it ultimately still leaves an open plot but its ridiculous , and I'm saying this as someone who has benefited from it).

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I agree with you in part. And I would argue for a much shorter timer than 4-6 hours; not sure what a longer length contributes other than frustrating players who are actually present and clicking.
Don't support the lotto idea though.

Housing has always been somewhat difficult (at least on high-pop servers) - you have to continue to check the wards for available housing. The timer has changed the experience up a bit, but I think if they lowered the timer cap it would offer some relief.

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Originally Posted by Poisonous

I keep running into people who are clearly using a macro or bot program to spam the placards and buy houses. The only thing more heartbreaking than someone relocating into a plot you've been trying to get for hours is watching it happen with someone who has a suspiciously exact timer for selecting/dropping the placard over and over and over again for hours...

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GMs aren't allowed to handle bots/cheaters. That's completely up to the special task force that consists of a handful of people in Japan. Unfortunately they only investigate reports and they're not likely too look into it until the person you report isn't doing what you reported.

shameless bump

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Azurith

I know I'm gonna get some hate, but I don't like the idea of Instanced housing. I like the neighborhood feel, and wandering around and checking out random people's houses. I've made a couple of friends this way. Instanced housing would destroy that aspect. I think the timer should be reduced to a 4-6 hr window. Or they implement a lotto system so you don't have to stand their and wait (also I get the reasoning of why Relocation bypasses the timer - it ultimately still leaves an open plot but its ridiculous , and I'm saying this as someone who has benefited from it).

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Instanced housing can still give the neighborhood feel if there's central hub acting as the access point to all the instanced plots. Imagine taking all the current wards in Mist or LB or Goblet or Shiro then stacking them on each other so when you walk up to a plot, you get a menu like we have for apartments to select which instanced plot you want to visit.

SE is even working on technology that might allow you to see activity in the central hub from inside the instanced plot. That came up in their response to being able to use the balcony door in mansions at one of the FanFests. It could be they're very close to a leap in their housing technology but don't want to say too much yet that player might take as a promise.

It doesn't matter what they do to the current system to change how plots are purchased if it doesn't create enough plots to meet player demand for houses. No one is going to end up happier because they lost a plot to lottery RNG instead of losing a plot to someone who clicked faster than they can.

We need better instanced housing. It's that simple.