Implement a lottery for house plots

[Vladmiere]

It's not a personal atrack, but an observation of what it appears your motives are behind this, honestly, terrible suggestion. What I think is unfair is that of the tens of thousands of players who can not get a house, only a couple of hundred per server will be available. I could not care less about the timing the housing is offered. That has never been the real problem.

But what does my motive have to do with the actual discussion of the topic? In short it doesnt.

[Maero]

Instanced housing would definitely solve the problem, but what we have is what we've got atm, so people are trying to come up with ideas on how to make the system we have work better.

Oh i agree with you it is just very frustrating how we all must rush to get something, meanwhile in ESO which i have played less then a year i casually logged on after housing was released a month after the fact and had no problem getting a house. SE has known about the housing issue but have not cared to even look at it

[Wade]

Everyone who is eligible has a shot. Whether or not you're willing to take it or not is entirely on you, the player.

So if someone has a job that refused to let them have the the time off, they should do what? Or if you have to suddenly stay late at work due to an emergency and not dealing with it could cost you? Or you get stuck in traffic on the way home?

The OP suggested a fairer way and so many people cannot grasp that not everyone can log in at the right time and thus miss out. For a game that loves to dumb its ass down for everyone, housing is a constant failure.

[Vladmiere]

The idea is a sound suggestion and my reason has been given as to why it is a better system then what is currently in place. And my motive is pointless because it does not even matter in the context of the topic. And to be frank my motive is because it should be fair for all who play a sub. I do not care personally because I have bought several houses for people in Balmung over the last 4 years and given them away to people in our roleplaying community so yes your observation is purposely meant to try to steer the conversation away from its topic.

The game is advertised as being casual friendly and its not having the time invested but just either who you know or when you can log in which is a silly system to determine who should get a house. Which is a huge chunk of the game as it is.

[Wade]

If anything, this would lessen the potential plots. What stops someone with five alts making a bid on multiple plots? You've just made it easier since now they wouldn't have to log out and battle the queues.

Purely statistically this is extremely unlikely but possible. The benefits, I would argue, outweigh that risk based on pure numbers.

[LittleSparrow]

In my opinion, instanced housing would be awful. I love checking out other gardens and I love that they can see mine. I'm pretty proud of my gardens. Also very proud of my girlfriend's garden.

I believe when it comes to housing that a lottery isn't the answer. It's too RNG and right now the system rewards more dedication and effort.

That being said, I do think that the housing issue we have right now would be solved with atleast three times the amount of wards. I know they say server restraint is an issue, but Square Enix is a billion dollar company. I'm sure they have the resources, the only question is if they will ever be willing to spend it.

[Vrankyl]

Problems with this idea. 1) There is a potential for the system to award all houses to individual players and none to FCs. This would of course result in a massive backlash, just like it would if it did the exact reverse. Yet if we make it a weighted system it is no longer 'fair' to everyone or random. Instead it is a system based on what SE determines a reasonable factor to be awarded a house, which may differ from ours. 2) Alts. Once again if you make it weighted to exclude those who already own plots on other characters then it is no longer a lottery system but a weighted system with predetermined qualifications needed to be awarded a plot. And again, this would be qualifications determined by SE not us. 3) If you don't think people wouldn't game the system by using alts then clearly you haven't been paying attention. If people didn't game the system then two people would NEVER have purchased an entire ward for themselves the way they did on Mateus.

[Paladinleeds]

In my opinion, instanced housing would be awful. I love checking out other gardens and I love that they can see mine. I'm pretty proud of my gardens. Also very proud of my wife.

Well, the only other way would be instanced wards, so each group of 30 houses (since if they're going instanced, let's remove the subdivisions, I'm sorry but the inconsistencies there compared to main division drive me up the wall, and it's to do with non-aetheryte travel to them), is stored as an instance, loaded and made accessible when someone wants to visit a ward. When there's nobody in the ward... shut the instance down (meaning if you disconnect/logoff, you get kicked to the main city associated with the housing ward, or let's say you can't access Kugane for example, thrown to your starting city). Keeps the ward vibes, and makes the housing instanced and more easily scalable.

[LittleSparrow]

If people didn't game the system then two people would NEVER have purchased an entire ward for themselves the way they did on Mateus.

I'm personally a big fan of those people. They worked hard for it and truthfully, I would do the same if I had the Gil.

Then again, they could've just RMT'd the Gil.

[Vladmiere]

Problems with this idea. 1) There is a potential for the system to award all houses to individual players and none to FCs. This would of course result in a massive backlash, just like it would if it did the exact reverse. Yet if we make it a weighted system it is no longer 'fair' to everyone or random. Instead it is a system based on what SE determines a reasonable factor to be awarded a house, which may differ from ours. 2) Alts. Once again if you make it weighted to exclude those who already own plots on other characters then it is no longer a lottery system but a weighted system with predetermined qualifications needed to be awarded a plot. And again, this would be qualifications determined by SE not us. 3) If you don't think people wouldn't game the system by using alts then clearly you haven't been paying attention. If people didn't game the system then two people would NEVER have purchased an entire ward for themselves the way they did on Mateus.

That is a plausible argument. Sadly yes SE would have to place restrictions to try to prevent people from gaming the system. The example on Mateus is not valid because those plots were open for practically years. They bought them up after a year and half of the spots being untouched and spent hundreds of hours decorating them which has nothing to do with places without housing for people. Anything involving mankind will never truly be fair but a well thought out lottery system is still heads and bounds more fair then our current system on crowded servers.

The only reason those from Mateus are seeing a bit of unwanted attention now is because the server is quickly becoming a boon server because of the other servers being closed off.