Yet another housing complaint. Unfortunately.

Apologies if I did this wrong, I don't normally bother with forums.

Solutions first.
Off the top of my head, I have this little list of potential fixes that I've read in a number of places.

Apartments - Luxury options
Larger size.
Size expansion.
Deco number placement expansion.
Balconies for planting crops and using outdoor deco. (still instanced)
Potential FC options.

Housing
Instanced housing options. (same programming as an apartment/FC personal room but with a yard)
Housing on these little stardew valley islands.
Mog-station purchase options for INSTANCED HOUSING ONLY.

Complaints last.
You've set up another rigged system that benefits the rich.
The more money you have, the more bids you can make using FC officers.
Give money to your officers, get more than 1 bid on a single FC plot. Refunds for the "losers", no money lost.
Spread bids around your officers and you can take your pick of the winning plots while accepting a gil loss. For those with billions, this doesn't even matter. They had nothing to spend it on, anyway.

You've only further minimized the chances of newer players getting a property of their own by pitting wallet sizes against each other. This "lottery" helps with a few things, namely afk bots and scripts, but it is a solution like all that came before it. Temporary.

Do better. Listen to your players. They're a fiercely loyal bunch, many of them, and have been around for years. Some have waited that long just to have a yard for the colorful trees dropped in 4 year old treasure maps. That's sad. It shouldn't be that way. None of your players should be refused a staple part of the game, a Free Company house, for something so trivial as a limited supply of digital property.

I've put in my own bid but, considering how easily that bid can be buried in gil, my expectations are low. That also shouldn't be that way, not after having waited for so long. Many of these players are fans of Final Fantasy, of many "Squenix" titles, that want to enjoy the game.
Let them enjoy the game.

Good luck, good gaming, and good vibes.

Yes.
Yes.
Yes.

All of this and more. There is so much that could be done with housing. I get it... the task of designing a housing district is daunting. SQE needs to look past that and focus more on instanced housing. I could care less about decorating a yard, but if I could pay a premium for it, even with RL money, I would. Give me the upgraded penthouse apartment with 3 floors and a luxury balcony. Take all my money, take all my gil. It's what players need. I wouldn't even care if that's all the expansion was: The Housing Update. Base the story around that and how the WoL helps the displaced families or something. I'd play it.

Add a roommate option on FC Houses, so someone can work on the house without having to join the FC

So, FCs with a lot of players and a lot of gil can put in more bids. And they can split the refund equally or whatever. One might say those FCs have more need than an FC of 4 or 5 people. I know not all servers are the same, but I just finished checking medium and large plots on my server. There are plenty of larges with just 1-2 bids. And many mediums with 0 bids. 0. I didn't get an accurate count of smalls with 0 bids since there are so many per zone. But a spot check of smalls in/around the larges and mediums I was checking, many have 1 but many also had 0 bids.

I think FCs with less buying power need to consider reality. Do you put in a bid on a large where there are 20 bids already? Maybe 20 from the same FC? Or do you go to the large with only 2 bids and you have a 33% chance?

Now, I fully expect these numbers to all change by the time the lottery ends at reset in 12 hours. However, the reality of the situation is that 1,080 FC-only plots were added. It will only get harder to win a plot after tomorrow. Either go for a small with 0 bids and have a high chance (possibly even 100%), go for a medium with low bids, or go after that large where you have a tiny chance of winning. Keep in mind that there won't be 1,080 FC-only plots next time. A few winners will relocate, but I'd be surprised if a server has 200 FC plots left, unless of course many smalls have zero bids and the lottery just rolls over on those.

Probably should add that FCs generally want Large and Medium houses, while private buyers want small and medium. Combine that with way too many wards being strictly FC wards and you start seeing tons of small houses that no one has bid on at all in the lower numbered wards.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Colt47

Probably should add that FCs generally want Large and Medium houses, while private buyers want small and medium. Combine that with way too many wards being strictly FC wards and you start seeing tons of small houses that no one has bid on at all in the lower numbered wards.

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Cleverly, I wonder if that is Yoshida-san's grand plan. Allow a few lottery periods to make sure all current FCs have time to get a large/medium to help them form their communities, then open it up for everyone the smalls.

And a nice advantage is, people will feel they have more chances, as more wards slide into personal stage. If you enter in 5 raffles over 3 months, it's better than entering in 1 raffle in 10 days.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shibi

Cleverly, I wonder if that is Yoshida-san's grand plan. Allow a few lottery periods to make sure all current FCs have time to get a large/medium to help them form their communities, then open it up for everyone the smalls.

And a nice advantage is, people will feel they have more chances, as more wards slide into personal stage. If you enter in 5 raffles over 3 months, it's better than entering in 1 raffle in 10 days.

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That would be beautiful, but I think you're giving him a lot of credit that he hasn't really earned with regards to housing over the years...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shibi

Cleverly, I wonder if that is Yoshida-san's grand plan.

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Another benefit from this exercise is they can actually gauge demand from this. The old system just told them "you don't have enough housing" since all vacant plots were snapped up the minute they became available for purchase.

With 1 hour to go in the lottery on my server, there are currently 1400 bids on 36 larges. That will obviously go up from there. But the point is, there's lots of players with gil and this latest drop of housing only handled about 2% of the demand. Maybe they can use this information to figure out what to do in the future.

None of these are bad ideas or observations. Data is data and that is always useful.

I do think it's rather unfortunate that we're looking for the silver lining on something that could have been fixed years ago. Easily fixed.
If SWTOR can figure out housing, Squenix shouldn't have any problems.

With the way this is currently set up, I'll feel guilty if I do win the single bid that I put in because that will mean I am the reason that so many others lost.
No player should feel guilt for owning something they worked hard for.
Luckily(?) I didn't win so no guilt for me, only mild amounts of dissatisfaction in knowing that I will now never be able to purchase that plot for me and my friends.

While this is arguably better than clicking a sign for 24 hours straight in hopes that my Street Fighter thumb-speed training paid off, it's far from ideal.