if it's going to be random anyways..

Listen, please hear me out..
These timers are awful. it's random, there is no clue when it will release and things can be bought.
If it's going to be random anyways, why not just put this lottery system in place.. We all know SE loves it's RNG.. so if we are going to have a 99% chance at failure, at least don't make us suffer for 24 hours over it.

SE is obviously too lazy to make things instanced or bearable.. I mean a timer that is random and can be anywhere from 30 mins-24 hours.. just let people place themselves in the lottery and leave it at that.. Then people can rest, medicate, go to their jobs, ect.

There is no excuse for this type of punishment to players. People have lives, but we shouldn't have to sit here and loathe each other cause we need/want a house.

And no, I'm not defending SE on this absurd laziness to fix a horrendous aspect of the game. But as it is, this is probably the only option they are probably willing to accept. :mad:

Agree, allowing people to just throw their names in a bowl would be merciful at least.

Yup. People could at least get sleep, feed their families, go to their jobs, do content in the game itself, take the family dog to potty. Heck, even go potty themselves without the worry of losing out to some random person that appeared the moment they went to stretch their legs after waiting 16 hours for a plot?
What's in place now is unbearably cruel.
A random timer that can last what? 48 hours, and has a second time that devalues it every 6?
What will it take for them to pay attention to this, someone dying?
Housing has been out for a long time now, it needs to be fixed asap.

I don't really think SE should be held accountable for how high you hold Housing. It's not like you need a house in order to do Endgame content or anything beyond FC-gating. People who lose sleep or hurt themselves over a virtual residence really only have themselves to blame.

I'm not saying the system is perfect, but rather that it's not entirely SEs error in this regard. The system itself could be better, but the people who are "Ride or die" for a bunch of 1s and 0s need to take a step back and re-evaluate their priorities.

That house isn't going to do you much good if you end up being hospitalized from the ordeal.

I'd recommend buying an apartment and/or joining an FC which owns a plot and/or becoming a tenant of one or more friends who own plots and/or transferring to a lower population world with vacant plots while still playing with friends via world visit feature and cross world linkshells. Quite a lot of features to help us out now that I think about it.

The best time to consider buying a house is when the players are finished with the patch and waiting the next patch a month and a half later (or at the end of expansion when there's no content coming till the coming years next expac). I've managed to move to three different data centers, and able to buy a house in each without issues so far. Bought a new one over at goblin and didn't even wait long.

Alternatively, standing out near the house during the next maintenance is also another option, as this has never really failed me so far when ever purchasing a house in the past.

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Originally Posted by Kenky

I don't really think SE should be held accountable for how high you hold Housing. It's not like you need a house in order to do Endgame content or anything beyond FC-gating. People who lose sleep or hurt themselves over a virtual residence really only have themselves to blame.

I'm not saying the system is perfect, but rather that it's not entirely SEs error in this regard. The system itself could be better, but the people who are "Ride or die" for a bunch of 1s and 0s need to take a step back and re-evaluate their priorities.

That house isn't going to do you much good if you end up being hospitalized from the ordeal.

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oh I dont disagree, but at the same time. I want it, it's something offered. However it shouldn't be this exhausting to get.
You see, housing offers something you can't get anywhere else.. subs and airships. I want those. I plan on getting them. The thing is, what SE is doing, ignoring players pleas on this horrid timer, is cruel.

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

I'd recommend buying an apartment and/or joining an FC which owns a plot and/or becoming a tenant of one or more friends who own plots and/or transferring to a lower population world with vacant plots while still playing with friends via world visit feature and cross world linkshells. Quite a lot of features to help us out now that I think about it.

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All great advice, really. Except I'm trying to buy a home for my fc, I have a personal home, and an apartment. But my fc members do not have a home at all. I would like to give that too them, as well as be able to start airships and subs. Outside of that..
I'm not going to abandon them for a fc that already has a house.
I also dont want to leave my server.

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Originally Posted by Elkanah

The best time to consider buying a house is when the players are finished with the patch and waiting the next patch a month and a half later (or at the end of expansion when there's no content coming till the coming years next expac). I've managed to move to three different data centers, and able to buy a house in each without issues so far. Bought a new one over at goblin and didn't even wait long.

Alternatively, standing out near the house during the next maintenance is also another option, as this has never really failed me so far when ever purchasing a house in the past.

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I'll keep that in mind, thanks!

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Originally Posted by Satty

Listen, please hear me out..
These timers are awful. it's random, there is no clue when it will release and things can be bought.
If it's going to be random anyways, why not just put this lottery system in place.. We all know SE loves it's RNG.. so if we are going to have a 99% chance at failure, at least don't make us suffer for 24 hours over it.

SE is obviously too lazy to make things instanced or bearable.. I mean a timer that is random and can be anywhere from 30 mins-24 hours.. just let people place themselves in the lottery and leave it at that.. Then people can rest, medicate, go to their jobs, ect.

There is no excuse for this type of punishment to players. People have lives, but we shouldn't have to sit here and loathe each other cause we need/want a house.

And no, I'm not defending SE on this absurd laziness to fix a horrendous aspect of the game. But as it is, this is probably the only option they are probably willing to accept. :mad:

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You know that friend you have that rolls that minion you wanted every dungeon run and gets it 5 times in a row?
Or that friend who you go with to those player events where they roll random numbers and give out prizes and he/she wins like 8 times while you only once?
How about that friend who always ends up with a better grouping of random players in their roulette while you get paired with all the useless people every single time?

Yeah that randomness can happen here too and will. And you know all these people will rage when people start posting how they've won lottery more than once on several occasions. And then we'll be here again with people saying lottery was the worst idea and how whoever came up with it is a POS. :)

Now if I was one of those house flippers, how would I bypass a lottery... hmmmmmm oh right, multiple accounts logged in on multiple computers to participate in the lottery giving myself the clear advantage in probability of winning. That would be so much better than clicking a placard for hours when I can just call up multiple accounts and friends with multiple accounts and we just mass apply for houses with an advantageous #. Power in numbers baby :)

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Originally Posted by Satty

oh I dont disagree, but at the same time. I want it, it's something offered. However it shouldn't be this exhausting to get.
You see, housing offers something you can't get anywhere else.. subs and airships. I want those. I plan on getting them. The thing is, what SE is doing, ignoring players pleas on this horrid timer, is cruel.

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Correction. FC offers Subs and Airships. Not houses in general. That and they're not "ignoring player pleas". The housing community is a pretty vocal minority, when the rest of the playerbase just want more content, like more Eden or more dungeons / story. On top of that, if they truly did ignore your pleas, then they wouldn't be talking about "looking into housing" later down the line. Their focus right now is 5.05 / 5.1 content, after that then it's probably up to us. Like Yoshi-P said in one of his interviews. It's up to the Playerbase if we want / get more Housing Districts.

(Please go look at the Ishgard Housing District Thread in the Housing subforum to get what I mean. Its just a snippit, but it's there)

IMO What they should have done is left it up to a silent auction kind of thing. You see a house for sale, you throw up what you would be willing to pay for the house and whoever offered the highest gets it after the 24 hour bidding period from when the house went "For Sale". It's honestly the only reasonable way to go about it because unless you tell other people what you bid, you can somewhat determine how much the house is worth it to you. Additionally if you really want it you can just throw a large amount of money at it. If someone still managed to bid more than you, well they clearly wanted it more.

Fortunately I have myself a house already located in Lavender Beds but it was beyond annoying to camp a house for hours, someone shows up for a significantly small fraction of that time and ends up getting lucky on when they pressed it.

So you're saying the ONLY people who deserve housing are the richest players? While that would raise the plot value (which is generally a good thing. More of a gil sink so people aren't walking around with 4B+) it comes with far more outcry than I think you'd be aware of.

Making it a lot draw would only increase the amount of competition there is.

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Originally Posted by Kenky

So you're saying the ONLY people who deserve housing are the richest players? While that would raise the plot value (which is generally a good thing. More of a gil sink so people aren't walking around with 4B+) it comes with far more outcry than I think you'd be aware of.

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This is a logical fallacy you're committing. Not only the richest players are out for houses but the basic rule and honestly the most fair system regardless of how you want to frame it is the person who is willing to throw more money at it should get it. Eventually when all the rich players have their houses, and as it stands most of them already do, it will fall back to the people who don't have money. Houses will go up for sale, people move, people quit.

If I really wanted a house and threw 10 million at a small for example, then someone threw 11 million at it, I wouldn't be mad that I lost it. They clearly wanted it more than I did and were willing to offer more. That isn't "Muh evil Capitalism just favors the rich" line of thinking you're subtly trying to work into the discussion, that's just basic reality. If someone has one item to sell and multiple people want it, it always defaults to who will offer them more.

People need to start understanding that there is no such thing as fairness in this world, there are only the most fair of the options which are still always going to be inherently unfair in some capacity for some reason or another. Draw names from a hat? Not entirely fair to the person who has been trying for months and gets shafted by RNG every single time. Leave it up for silent auction? Not fair to people who don't have the gil to compete until you get down to the point where the only people still seeking houses are all generally poor and playing with roughly the same range of money. It isn't going to default to being like you're just the poor little soul with four million gil to their name praying desperately for a house but everyone else has billions of gil to throw at a house. It'll be more like you have four million, someone might have 8 million. As long as they don't know what your limitations are they're likely going to overpay to assure the house which keeps gil inflation low.

About the only way leaving it to a silent auction isn't the least unfair means available is if someone drops 50 dollars and buys a ton of gil. At which point they're risking a permaban for a house so they REALLY want it.

But I grew up with this stuff. I remember working my arse off on Ultima Online desperately to get the gold so I could buy a house. And that was a game where houses took place in the physical world where there was finite space, not much different than the old order of things with housing here. So this misconception people have that everyone should have a house and that it must be in the most convenient way possible requiring the least from them is very lost on me.

You may want to check yourself, as the comment I stated has no real sway towards any capitalist or communist (since its considered the opposite) hint. On top of that, the "eventually all the rich players will have houses, so they won't need to do it anymore" doesn't work.

You are aware there are people that own entire wards, purely for the e-peen factor, correct? If they can make other people annoyed, they will more than likely do so. Even if it means alternate accounts and FCs to keep the trend going.

While I agree with you that people need to start understanding that the systems in place are not MEANT to be fair, I feel more pity or empathy to the people who are genuinely trying their hardest to get a plot, only for someone to take the cheap way out and Bot. Being one who lost plenty of plots to bots who just 'showed up' to spam-grab the plots. It's pretty disheartening. Though I now own a small in the Goblet through perseverance. The system in place definitely needs a rework, but there are more important things that need to be fixed before housing can be put under the metaphorical microscope.

Housing should remain finite and a demand must remain, otherwise if everyone simply "gets a house" then there'd be no point in bothering. No more showing status or proving ones skill (or the weight of their wallet, sadly). It'd just be another system that hardly anyone uses.

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Originally Posted by Kenky

You may want to check yourself, as the comment I stated has no real sway towards any capitalist or communist (since its considered the opposite) hint. On top of that, the "eventually all the rich players will have houses, so they won't need to do it anymore" doesn't work.

You are aware there are people that own entire wards, purely for the e-peen factor, correct? If they can make other people annoyed, they will more than likely do so. Even if it means alternate accounts and FCs to keep the trend going.

While I agree with you that people need to start understanding that the systems in place are not MEANT to be fair, I feel more pity or empathy to the people who are genuinely trying their hardest to get a plot, only for someone to take the cheap way out and Bot. Being one who lost plenty of plots to bots who just 'showed up' to spam-grab the plots. It's pretty disheartening. Though I now own a small in the Goblet through perseverance. The system in place definitely needs a rework, but there are more important things that need to be fixed before housing can be put under the metaphorical microscope.

Housing should remain finite and a demand must remain, otherwise if everyone simply "gets a house" then there'd be no point in bothering. No more showing status or proving ones skill (or the weight of their wallet, sadly). It'd just be another system that hardly anyone uses.

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I can detect the undertones and it's not that hard to draw from how you're framing your argument.

Also, they cant buy out entire wards anymore unless they feel like buying a bunch of accounts in order to do that. Do you have any idea just how much in real life money and in gil that costs them to do? 30 * 15. 450 a month JUST IN SUB FEES ALONE, not counting how much it costs to actually buy the game for these accounts, as well as requiring that the houses already be open for sale which is impossible, then the absurdly high gil cost of which that will require to buy those houses.

The only reason there's the TWO PEOPLE who have this is because they did it BEFORE the account changes and got grandfathered in because it wouldn't be fair to just revoke their houses. Now they just have to keep refreshing them so they don't go up for sale.

Don't tell me you're actually ridiculous enough to believe this would be a problem.

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Originally Posted by JennytheJester

Also, they cant buy out entire wards anymore unless they feel like buying a bunch of accounts in order to do that. Do you have any idea just how much in real life money and in gil that costs them to do? 30 * 15. 450 a month JUST IN SUB FEES ALONE, not counting how much it costs to actually buy the game for these accounts, as well as requiring that the houses already be open for sale which is impossible, then the absurdly high gil cost of which that will require to buy those houses.

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If they were to start right now, they can own 1 personal house and 8 fc houses per server per account. For 30 houses they would need a total of 4 accounts at $52-60 a month (depending on how much they pre-pay and even less if any of the accounts are legacy).

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Making it a lot draw would only increase the amount of competition there is.

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but still more merciful than what they have in place now.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Making it a lot draw would only increase the amount of competition there is.

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A more fair competition and healthier of the person as well

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Originally Posted by Satty

but still more merciful than what they have in place now.

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That highly depends on the amount of competition. Entering a lottery would be near zero effort so the competition would inevitably rise. Dramatically so on some servers. You could also game the system by entering on multiple accounts. So while you would no longer have to placard spam, instead you could lose the lottery over and over again for months or even years.

Lottery would just swap one problem for another. Just like how the introduction of the placard spam swapped one problem for another. The root of the problem is the distribution of houses. Tackling this would fix availability issues. We need instanced housing or else there will always be a glaring problem with acquisition unfairly leaving out too many players.

Rng will never be a good answer to housing issues.