My Infographic of the Results of the Latest Private Housing Lottery

https://i.redd.it/k51007sghu291.png

Sorry for the large size!

I made this off of data I collected from the Second round of the Private Housing Lottery on Sargatanas.

I tracked data from the first round of the lottery for private sales as well. I approximated that 2595 individuals took part in the first round, competing for the 360 housing plots. Between rounds 1 and 2, we saw a 18.34% decrease in participants. 360 of that decrease were explained by winning the prior round, but 116 seem to be lost demand. Additionally, between rounds 1 and 2, the average chance of success decreased by 7.36%, from an average of 11.8%. Meanwhile, the available houses had decreased from 360 to 94, a remarkable 73.9% decrease in supply.

It is my assessment, that demand is far outstripping supply. If even 50% of participants did not own a home, Square Enix would need to add an additional 4 Wards to each Housing Zone. Assuming that the demand is genuine, they would need to add an additional 7 Wards to each zone to meet demand. While a lot of housing is contained in the FC Wards currently, there simply is not enough houses present to fulfill demand in any way. Finally, the demand for this housing is not declining fast enough with each lottery round, and supply is not keeping up with demand.

Minor corrections:
Bidders are the same thing as Participants.

Thank you for posting this! It's insane to think that this isn't even a high pop server and the chances of getting a house are that low... I'm scared to see what the other servers are like.

Funnily enough the small house across from the one I bid on in the FC area didn't get a single bid. Lots of FC smalls are left, too. People had lots of time to make their own dummy FC and get a house so I figured there'd be more competition. But judging by the housing bids, I guess people just don't want a small.

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Originally Posted by hydralus

Funnily enough the small house across from the one I bid on in the FC area didn't get a single bid. Lots of FC smalls are left, too. People had lots of time to make their own dummy FC and get a house so I figured there'd be more competition. But judging by the housing bids, I guess people just don't want a small.

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Ya, they definitely overdid it on the FC side of things. My HOPE(and I don't have evidence of this it's just something that would make sense to me) is that they did this so they can accurately gauge the exact need for FC housing so they can gradually strike a better middle ground where FCs can find houses easily but there's still a good amount of personal housing... but based off of what they've said in the past, I think they just see personal housing as unimportant and don't care about the people who see it as their end-game...

It never made sense to me how scarce and cheap these plots are if we look at the demand.

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Originally Posted by Elesh

Ya, they definitely overdid it on the FC side of things. My HOPE(and I don't have evidence of this it's just something that would make sense to me) is that they did this so they can accurately gauge the exact need for FC housing so they can gradually strike a better middle ground where FCs can find houses easily but there's still a good amount of personal housing... but based off of what they've said in the past, I think they just see personal housing as unimportant and don't care about the people who see it as their end-game...

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I would normally agree that they must not consider personal housing important, except they literally list it as one of six side-activities players can experience in this game. At-least, if you assume they don't mean you can experience housing only as part of an FC.

I feel like the actual solution to this is just end private housing. People who already have one can keep one but there's just no way they'll ever be able to meet this demand.

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Originally Posted by TrainDubs

I feel like the actual solution to this is just end private housing. People who already have one can keep one but there's just no way they'll ever be able to meet this demand.

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Hello private FCs!

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Originally Posted by Xerkrosis

Hello private FCs!

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A good point. I'm really not sure what the solution is. Maybe have FCs be non-instanced with wards and roll all private housing into an instanced system? It's just so clear that unless they're willing to spend hundreds of millions on servers just for housing there's no way they can meet the demand.

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Originally Posted by TrainDubs

A good point. I'm really not sure what the solution is. Maybe have FCs be non-instanced with wards and roll all private housing into an instanced system? It's just so clear that unless they're willing to spend hundreds of millions on servers just for housing there's no way they can meet the demand.

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Pretty simple, just put out an instanced housing system that goes alongside the current system. People who want the neighborhood feel can still compete for those plots, people who don't and just want a house to decorate can have an instanced house. Also, if you provide instanced housing, there would be less competition / demand for the ward plots as well.

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

Pretty simple, just put out an instanced housing system that goes alongside the current system. People who want the neighborhood feel can still compete for those plots, people who don't and just want a house to decorate can have an instanced house. Also, if you provide instanced housing, there would be less competition / demand for the ward plots as well.

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You'd still need more servers though. Presumably if it was instanced, the house instance would be spun up when you or someone else visits and spun down when you leave, so you need capacity for that - presumably during busy periods you may not be able to access your house if the instance server is congested (same thing happened with Inn rooms during the EW congestion as I recall). Plus you still need to store all the relevant data regarding house fixtures and fittings, colours, etc.

I'm sure on a per-house basis it would be less resource-intensive than the housing wards, but it still requires some hefty investment in additional server architecture.

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Originally Posted by hydralus

Funnily enough the small house across from the one I bid on in the FC area didn't get a single bid. Lots of FC smalls are left, too. People had lots of time to make their own dummy FC and get a house so I figured there'd be more competition. But judging by the housing bids, I guess people just don't want a small.

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Its more like people dont want to leave their FC/friends only for a chance of an FC house.

If i was in a diff FC on Brynhildr, i'd definetely do it on a heartbeat (i'd have a medium already by this point).

The only time SE ever did a housing rollout well was the last expansions in the 4 wards. They advertised it months in advance did not bring the servers up early and everyone who did due diligence had an equal chance to get a house. They should have done it for this rollout but instead made everything behind the scenes rng vs active rng.

All this tells me is that they need to invest some resources into redesigning the layout of wards so that FC specific wards are comprised almost entirely of Large and Medium sized houses with a select few smalls that can't be easily combined with other lots and that they need more private wards across the board for all the solo players.
Or redo apartments in such a way that people can get access to larger interiors through gil purchased upgrades since it's all instanced anyway and puts not load on the server unless someone is inside unlike an entire housing ward which is constant.
Heck maybe a combination of both.
Most people would probably be content with just having an apartment if it meant having the same interior space as a house. There would be a lot less people fighting over housing plots if the only thing they'd really be fighting over is lawn space.

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Originally Posted by hydralus

Funnily enough the small house across from the one I bid on in the FC area didn't get a single bid. Lots of FC smalls are left, too. People had lots of time to make their own dummy FC and get a house so I figured there'd be more competition. But judging by the housing bids, I guess people just don't want a small.

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I bet that'll change with the next lottery, as desperate shell FCs just bid on whatever they can now that the mediums and larges are gone.
What a bummer. So many of these smalls could've made individual purchasers happy.

That was an amazing collection of statistics and the best part of all of it is that it is actually useful data. I seriously wonder if SE hasn't already done these analyses as well. If they have, I wonder why they have done done anything about it. Is it possible that SE considers such an investment in additional infrastructure as not be able to pay for itself?

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Originally Posted by ChiefDork

The only time SE ever did a housing rollout well was the last expansions in the 4 wards. They advertised it months in advance did not bring the servers up early and everyone who did due diligence had an equal chance to get a house. They should have done it for this rollout but instead made everything behind the scenes rng vs active rng.

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Uh, no. Let's not try rewriting history and claim that SE has ever done it well.

SE has never done a true rollout during ward additions. A rollout would imply part of the available supply is withheld to be released at staggered intervals to give those online later a chance to purchase. SE has never done that.

Everything was sold out (at least for NA) in the 5.35 ward addition within an hour of the servers of coming online. There were many, many players left out not due to a lack of due diligence but due to very long log in queues caused partly by players trying to get in on what they saw as their only chance to get a house.

Players unable to log on when the servers came online (real life obligation doesn't stop for most people) were left fighting over the placard scraps for the next several months.

The 5.1 ward addition only saw some plots still available weeks later because there was a personal purchase moratorium so only FCs could purchase in the new wards, or existing owners could relocate (no one was going to bother relocating to the less desirable smalls). Plots opened by relocation again saw a lot of placard camping. The small percentage of houses still available in the new wards when the moratorium was lifted also disappeared almost immediately.

Now back in 4.2-4.3 we saw houses available for months because they increased the number of wards by 50% and the player base hadn't yet experienced the massive growth that occurred at the start of 2019 and again in 2021. We're at a point now that it would take more than a 50% increase to meet demand, especially if SE is going to begin reserving the majority of wards for FCs.

Just goes to show there is an incredible demand for housing, and it's not being met! Only instanced housing can fix this issue!

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Originally Posted by Eraden

That was an amazing collection of statistics and the best part of all of it is that it is actually useful data. I seriously wonder if SE hasn't already done these analyses as well. If they have, I wonder why they have done done anything about it. Is it possible that SE considers such an investment in additional infrastructure as not be able to pay for itself?

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Thank you! Honestly, it's the transparency of the lottery system that has enabled me to collect such raw data in the first place. I spent an hour, maybe two, traversing the housing zones and recording the participant data for my server in a spreadsheet. I wanted my graphic to spur discussion, and hopefully inspire others to do the same and collect data.

I cannot speak to whether Square has decided the costs outweighed the benefits-- but given the global chip shortage greatly spiking the cost of hardware, covid causing the disabling of the auto-demolition, and the great WoW migration and Endwalker causing a population boom, it has certainly resulted in inaction, and demand for housing has seemingly outstripped supply by a large amount. Anecdotal reports from others seem to indicate that Sargatanas was not an outlier, and if anything, that other servers have had worse shortages of housing this round. If Square was not collecting data, they simply must be now due to how the lottery system works, and I can only hope that it spurs them to action in improving the housing situation. As someone who loves their housing system and this game, it makes me sad to see a listed "side activity" of the game limited for a significant portion of the player-base. (I know apartments exist, but by all accounts, they are not expansive enough, and are missing features present in full houses.)

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Originally Posted by Pankzers

I cannot speak to whether Square has decided the costs outweighed the benefits-- but given the global chip shortage greatly spiking the cost of hardware, covid causing the disabling of the auto-demolition, and the great WoW migration and Endwalker causing a population boom, it has certainly resulted in inaction, and demand for housing has seemingly outstripped supply by a large amount. Anecdotal reports from others seem to indicate that Sargatanas was not an outlier, and if anything, that other servers have had worse shortages of housing this round. If Square was not collecting data, they simply must be now due to how the lottery system works, and I can only hope that it spurs them to action in improving the housing situation. As someone who loves their housing system and this game, it makes me sad to see a listed "side activity" of the game limited for a significant portion of the player-base. (I know apartments exist, but by all accounts, they are not expansive enough, and are missing features present in full houses.)

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One thing your data can't reflect (though SE should be able to see on their side) is how much of the demand seen in the lottery is from players who are trying to buy their first house and how much is from players trying to relocate their current house to a new location they prefer (and which still may not be the location they actually want).

The latter is still a valid concern but it can't be addressed in the same way that the general need for more houses is. Try to address the demand for specific plot sizes and you end up with what most FC wards in Empyreum look like at the moment - a bunch of mostly empty wards because it's not the small houses most players really want. Even full wards feel like ghost towns most of the time. Half empty wards are even worse.

Don't address the demand for specific plots and you end up with revolving drama over what players are worthy enough to own the most desirable plots. It breeds toxicity, as evidenced by a story someone shared in the Housing forum yesterday morning. They got lucky and won a large in this last lottery. Some of those who didn't get the plot started sending them obscenity-laced tells. That's toxicity bred by the system. If each of those players had been able to get the plot they wanted, none of those tells would have happened.

SE really needs to take a step back and look at both how and how much players utilize housing as part of their game experience. It should be designed around how players actually engage with the content, not some pipe dream that we'll be forming happy little friendly neighborhoods where everyone is dancing together 24 hours a day.

Again why I think they could maybe do away with apartments and rework them into instanced small houses instead it would perhaps help this demand

Cool and informative post, OP. Thank you for sharing.

Thank you for collecting the data and posting OP.

We knew things were bad and that demand was much greater than supply but this shows us just how bad things are.

I do hope the devs note the desire for medium to large properties and also that some properties are much more desirable than others. If we do get some sort of instanced house (something I would like to see in the future alongside the wards), I'd like them to design it with a lot more thought than has been put into the wards. So many houses seem to have been plonked down randomly with little thought to the view or closeness to things like swimming areas and the Market Board.

If the devs insist on sticking with the ward system, it might be nice to see a new design rolled out where most properties have a good, unobstructed view and ideally, where there are significantly more large and medium houses.

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Originally Posted by Avoidy

I bet that'll change with the next lottery, as desperate shell FCs just bid on whatever they can now that the mediums and larges are gone.
What a bummer. So many of these smalls could've made individual purchasers happy.

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That's exactly what will happen. Everyone wants a larger size home. Not the smalls. They all tried their luck at the large and mediums. Now that they're gone, they'll sweep up the smalls in the next wave or two. Which if the homes were opened to personals from the start, then this would be a lot of homeless FCs now. It's clear they wanna make sure that the FCs get priority over personals. Wither or not that's the right thing to do, I don't know.

"demand is far outstripping supply"

Welcome to SE's endless problem to their housing system. Orz.

When the system was announced, basically 10 years ago, I said this would be an endless thorn and now I get to grab my walking cane and go find the decayed salty horse in the back and beat it while I shake my fist angrily at the sky.

It's also much worse, imo, than face value issues too. For example right now the large fight is being made for FC. This shows you the demand for specific plots, and specific sizes, is very high (over mediums, smalls or not so great locations, or just location themes as some areas are more popular than others). So not only is there just a problem, but there are problems within those problems. So for the worlds that run out of all houses, that's awful. But for the places that still have them in like Goblet smalls, that does NOT mean the system is delivering satisfaction as there is very very likely people who would leap on a 'large shirogane' for example.

I understand the monumental potential investments that might be needed to fix the system, as well as the unique and unexpected circumstances of taking a dying game (1.0) and turning it into an incredible hit, but at the same time I cannot help but say I greatly detest the ward system and wish in the next SE MMO that they immediately toss that idea into the bin to not be used again. At least, not exclusively (might come up with interesting hybrid options so everyone can have the best of the worlds they're interested in- but absolutely not just 'wards' again.. please god lol.).

More on point though, I like infographics- it was nice of you to put the effort into collecting and compiling it :).

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Originally Posted by Elesh

Ya, they definitely overdid it on the FC side of things.

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Alternatively, they could've just set it so that every ward was FC only until they decide to lift restrictions.

At least private owners got a piece of the action this time.

Great job to the OP for gathering that data.

There is one missing piece of data to your infographic though:

Number of players clicking placards for 12-24 hours hoping to get a house: 0.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

Great job to the OP for gathering that data.

There is one missing piece of data to your infographic though:

Number of players clicking placards for 12-24 hours hoping to get a house: 0.

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Just because it's better in one way doesn't mean it doesn't still suck.

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Originally Posted by Avidria

Just because it's better in one way doesn't mean it doesn't still suck.

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I remember people who were against the lottery idea, before implemented, and I pretty much felt as much while still being in support of the idea lol.

"You're right, it will suck- but I think it will suck less" haha.

It's like the idea to fix housing demand by making houses cost 10x (or more), might actually fix some of that demand... yet it just doesn't feel right to me either, but at this point until we change systems we're all going to be picking the poison we're most willing to 'take'.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

I understand the monumental potential investments that might be needed to fix the system, as well as the unique and unexpected circumstances of taking a dying game and turning it into an incredible hit, but at the same time I cannot help but say I greatly detest the ward system and wish in the next SE MMO that they immediately toss that idea into the bin to not be used again. At least, not exclusively (might come up with interesting hybrid options so everyone can have the best of the worlds they're interested in- but absolutely not just 'wards' again.. please god lol.).

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I'm going to point to Wildstar's neighborhood concept. As many probably already know Wildstar players could "plug" their housing plots into a super plot. It had its limitations of course. The sockets were static with a fixed orientation. The superplot only came in one size so if you didn't have five plots to add you had quite a bit of dead space[1]. OTOH the superplot owner could choose who they'd let plug in. It was an awesome feature that gave a legitimate neighborhood feel because everybody there wanted to be together.

[1] This was rare because it was dead simple to just add your alts.

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Originally Posted by GeminiReed

I'm going to point to Wildstar's neighborhood concept. As many probably already know Wildstar players could "plug" their housing plots into a super plot. It had its limitations of course. The sockets were static with a fixed orientation. The superplot only came in one size so if you didn't have five plots to add you had quite a bit of dead space[1]. OTOH the superplot owner could choose who they'd let plug in. It was an awesome feature that gave a legitimate neighborhood feel because everybody there wanted to be together.

[1] This was rare because it was dead simple to just add your alts.

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I've been a huge supporter of that system, when discussing FFXIV's housing and particularly when people are like "but I like being next to someone and you CAN'T DO THAT IN INSTANCED HOUSING, SO NO WE CANT HAVE IT!" and then I go "OH BUT YOU CAN!" and point out a game like Wildstar lol. There is very little that the ward system does that a proper instanced system couldn't do better in EVERY single way. To which the things that a ward system may actually do better, I'm not sure even the majority want those particular benefits, to which I would say the wards work well for a subset of the player base in the best of times, and in the best of times will still provide worse for everyone else. To which noting we're obviously not even in the best of times with FFXIV's housing system lol. Like theoretically we could point out LotR Online's which is very similar concept, but their system as far as I read last time auto grows for demand (so plots don't just run out).

. . . . . Just not freaking wards, as we have them now, hahaha /cry, like ESO doesn't have that really cool Wildstar ability but you can own like 40+ houses.. 40.. freaking FORTY.. you can barely own one in FFXIV. Sometimes, depending on server, you can barely even own an apartment. Lets not forget in Wildstar it was something like 2000 external objects and 2000 internal objects, and in ESO some houses have near 1000 objects you can place. So not only are the systems easier to get into, they're just plain more powerful in basically every fashion imaginable.

That's honestly just an embarrassing joke, imo.

Like I still will shill FFXIV if someone is asking for an MMO to play, but I wont sugar coat the housing system. I plain think it's bad, was bad, is still bad, and has always been straight out bad. Objects are nice, which is why I differentiate at system (though the system could make objects even better, like how in wildstar you can Z axis and scale objects.. imagine being able to z axis scale a flat surface for FFXIV... so many of those fancy designs you see on reddit would become far far easier to do with far less waste in repeat objects).

There are so many cool things I believe our system holds us back on because of how it is, that you can readily see applied in other MMOs. :/. . .

WoW currently has Garrisons which of course don't quite have the housing touches, though certainly they do have a personal space (hopefully our Island Sanctuary can do better in regards to this concept, better home vibe, less damage to other systems with bad things like the 1 hour war table, etc).. That said WoW devs have recently opened up on the housing idea saying it could be a future thing they don't have resources for at this time (for Dragonflight expansion). If WoW can get every single player a house, with their already fairly powerful and useful (depending on what you are doing) Garrison system, and FFXIV has a fairly un-useful Sanctuary (we know nothing about it, I'm suggesting a dark timeline hypothetical) that has relatively no homely vibes (just a rock to own lol)... Then that's going to look bad. Beyond the fact that one of FFXIV's absolutely massive QoLs being the job system, it appears, WoW is closing the gap on with even more friendly alt systems. If WoW could substantially close that gap then that would be a major pillar benefit for FFXIV that WoW might theoretically be doing better.

Hope SE is ready / paying attention (expansion isn't out, and even if WoW did a good job it wont cause immediate death, so I'm not calling it the death throe or something lol, I'm just looking at the horizon and feel /potentially/ there is a much stronger war of competition brewing).

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Alternatively, they could've just set it so that every ward was FC only until they decide to lift restrictions.

At least private owners got a piece of the action this time.

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There was once a time where Personal owners had to wait a cooldown timer in order to buy the house (the old system) but FC owners originally could bypass it. Like I said before, for whatever reason, they want housing to go to FCs/Guilds first. Probably because in theory, FCs should be going towards more people since it's a social function. Of course this doesn't prevent people from making a solo FC. But honestly, most people I know have a personal and a solo FC with house regardless of how they approaching housing.

I remember when I got venom spat at me when I implied there weren't even enough houses to meet 5% of the demand.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

I remember people who were against the lottery idea, before implemented, and I pretty much felt as much while still being in support of the idea lol.

"You're right, it will suck- but I think it will suck less" haha.

It's like the idea to fix housing demand by making houses cost 10x (or more), might actually fix some of that demand... yet it just doesn't feel right to me either, but at this point until we change systems we're all going to be picking the poison we're most willing to 'take'.

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Personally I'm dipping out entirely. This system is trying to cater to two entirely different purposes (FC/social and personal housing) and doing both a disservice in the process. And I'm tired of being disappointed by missed plots, and now lost lotteries. Was planning a break from the game anyway, so it's as good a chance as any to just cut off the housing system and save myself the monthly sub for a bit.

At least I can still store stuff in my apartment though. :')

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Originally Posted by Oizen

I remember when I got venom spat at me when I implied there weren't even enough houses to meet 5% of the demand.

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Hard to tell what the overall demand truly is. Don't forget we need to take into account the existing housing when figuring out overall demand numbers and also those players who might want a house but aren't even trying because they feel like they're always unlucky and won't have a chance.

But working with numbers available to us:

We have 7200 houses per world. There's probably about 500 unoccupied houses in the FC wards at this point on most NA worlds. That's a demand for 6700 houses satisfied.

From the infographic, there is still a demand for roughly 2000 more houses on Sarganatas. 500 of that demand could be met by the unoccupied houses in the FC wards, leaving an unmet demand of 1500. 1500 + 7200 is 8700 total demand. 7200/8700 is about 82% of demand met.

And of course this is going to vary a lot world to world. Demand very well could be met on many of the JP worlds since their player populations are about 1/2 to 2/3 the size of NA and EU worlds.

But that's small consolation for those trying but unable to get a house and for new players who would also like to get a house once they meet purchase requirements.

If 1500 unmet demand is the average for all NA worlds, that's 36,000 total. We'll have 28,800 added toward the end of this summer when SE sets up the new NA data center with 4 new worlds.

That would satisfy about 80% of the remaining unmet demand except we know there won't be that many players willing to transfer to the new data center just to get a house. In addition there will be more unmet demand generated in the 2-3 months we have to wait for the data center to open plus the additional 2-3 months we'll probably have to wait for SE to even open housing on the new data center.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Hard to tell what the overall demand truly is. Don't forget we need to take into account the existing housing when figuring out overall demand numbers and also those players who might want a house but aren't even trying because they feel like they're always unlucky and won't have a chance.

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Adding to all of this: We'll never get a reasonably accurate measure of "supply" until auto-demolish is allowed to run non-stop for, like, a year or more.

4% on average means it already includes the less populated worlds...