Lottery System, Real Estate, Odds - Failure

Losing Battle:
Loss after loss, how is this a fun in-game experience? It is not. I actually camped houses before and found it similar to camping NMs. There always seemed to be houses available. Yes, I would take that over this! This constant losing feels like there is no hope and the odds provide nothing to look forward to. Personal houses on Hyperion have well over 50 contestants every time. Mediums have 200 participants. Being realistic or feeling jaded, either approach makes the housing lottery the worst part of this game. I would rather pay tens of millions of gil to some player for plot relinquishment then purchase the plot from scratch again. At least then there was hope! Either through raising gil or finding a potential seller. Now there is a weekly ritual of entering, waiting, losing, and guess what, it hurts! Even if my alt get's one, I cannot even make my main a tenant. How many years will I need to wait to get a house?

Fairness vs Opportunity:
There are different variations of fairness. Fairness sure, the lottery is fair that everyone who enters has a chance, but now the housing market has been removed from the player. We have lost the power to engage in real estate in game. There are many people who have had favorite numbers or matched their name to their housing plot that acquired houses through non-gil selling/RMT related means. Now that option is gone.

Suggestion:
There may not be a perfect variation of housing in FFXIV but this lottery is not a fix. What would have been a fix would have been allowing the real estate market to continue and adding a lottery to houses which had become demolished. At least the players would still have some power over their property instead of being terrified of losing their home and having to chronically log in. Because the odds are against a player if their house is demolished or relinquished and they want one back.

FC vs Personal and Grandfathered vs New Interest:
Limiting the number of personal houses over FC houses is another issue. At least half and half it, but to toss personal houses to the last 6 districts feels like a slap in the face especially to people who want personal housing. And those who got in or had a house before all these restrictions are what, lucky? Grandfathered? Good for them, not saying they should be taken away, but there is no fairness is in a system that allows a person and their alts to own 4 houses but a regular player cannot own one thanks to the new lottery implementation by limiting the means of acquisition. In an attempt to bring balance the system has become unbalanced.

Continued to next post....

Continuation...

Buying Schedule and Statistics
The weekly cycle is as follows:

1. PREV. WEEK Results announced June 18th at 8 am (PDT).
   4 days including 18th - 21st
2. Players must claim their winning bids by June 22 at 7:59 am (PDT).
3. The next entry period should begin on June 22 at 8 am (PDT).
   6 days including 22nd - 27th
4. Players should place their bids by June 27 at 7:59 am PDT.
5. The next results period should begin on June 27 at 8 am PDT.

Cycle = 10 days, opportunity for 1 house every 10 days.

Observation:
Personal Housing Average, Odds < 1/50, 2%.
So every 10 days a potential small plot buyer has less than a 2% chance to purchase a small personal house.
Based on the sale of medium houses:
Medium Housing Average, Odds < 1/200, 0.5%.
So every 10 days a potential medium plot buyer has less than a 0.5% chance to purchase a small personal house.

Bottom line, there was a loss of opportunity with the sole introduction of the lottery system. A long wait ahead, much disappointment and no room for negotiation for future buyers

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Eclipse

Bottom line, there was a loss of opportunity with the sole introduction of the lottery system. A long wait ahead, much disappointment and no room for negotiation for future buyers

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The issue with your take is that the demand has been there for a couple of years but most of the players looking for a house were locked out of the system due to the need to placard camp. Not everyone has the time to spend hours waiting at a placard, and they would like to be playing the rest of the game as well with what time they had available.

So loss of opportunity for those with plenty of leisure time on their hands but a gain in opportunity for those who didn't but still pay the same subscription fee each month to play the game and get access to content.

A limited resource system like this will never be able to please everyone regardless of what purchase method is implemented. There will always be those unable to gain access.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

A limited resource system like this will never be able to please everyone regardless of what purchase method is implemented. There will always be those unable to gain access.

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This. The lottery did make housing more accessible to everyone, but since it became more accessible, it's made more people hopeful that they can try to get a house. It's less of a commitment than the hours of clicking. People are blaming the increase in demand for housing on the lottery system, but the demand has always been there. They've just had no hope, or time, to try using the previous distribution method. The issues with the housing system have always been there. The lottery isn't any more RNG than placard clicking; the placard came up at a random time, and whoever clicked it first got it. It's just that now, instead of spending hours on it and potentially causing yourself injury, you click once and come back a few days later to be told that you've lost.
The issue with housing isn't the method of distribution at all; it's the fact that it's in unbelievably low supply in comparison to the number of people who actually want a house, especially when it comes to housing of the larger sizes. The only fix is to change the method in which houses are created in order to make something that can provide for the growing player base. I refuse to get my hopes up that this'll ever happen, though.

I just hope people actually scream at square enix to solve the core issue now after seeing how hilariously lopsided the supply/demand is instead of going for worthless bandaid systems like the Lottery was.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Eclipse

Suggestion:
There may not be a perfect variation of housing in FFXIV but this lottery is not a fix. What would have been a fix would have been allowing the real estate market to continue and adding a lottery to houses which had become demolished. At least the players would still have some power over their property instead of being terrified of losing their home and having to chronically log in. Because the odds are against a player if their house is demolished or relinquished and they want one back.

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Strongly disagree. The real estate market had plenty of botters. No legit human player can significantly compete against 24/7 bots. On highly populated servers, the bot housing resellers monopolized the market.

That's terribly unfair.

Also, why is this your solution instead of asking SE to address the core issue; supply?

What we need. is SE to acknowledge that access to the limited ward housing is horrible game design. There's a reason why other major MMOs with housing, go the fully instanced route.

Suggestions to improve housing supply:

1. Keep the existing ward housing for those who want to fight it out for exclusive/flex houses.

2. Improve upon apartments. Make them upgradeable for gil all the way to condos/penthouses. This way they will serve as an additional gil sink.

3. Maybe Island Sanctuaries can be fully instanced housing.