Housing Timer Improvement Suggestion

[Jojoya]

Since the Housing Timer doesn't seem to be going anywhere soon I thought I'll add a improvement suggestion that could help, or at least making buying a house a little less painful with the current system.

When a house is relinquished or demolished and the Housing timer starts, it should be easy to see that the house is under the Timer and can not be bought at the moment.

This could be done by changing the Auction Plot Icon to a Timer Icon instead.
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When you click at the Placard during this time it should state that the plot is only available for relocation.
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And when you click on "Purchase Land" the "Private Individual" and "Free Company" should be grayed out and unclickable. This is to prevent people from trying to buy the plot even though the Timer is active. Simply so they won't feel the need to spam click.
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When the timer ends the plot icon and messages should just go back to normal.

Optimally could be that the Placard makes a sound and a flash of some sort when the timer ends to notify patient players waiting there that the plot timer has ended.

Even though this might not solve the problem I think it could make it a little less painful to buy a house since you won't have to spam click the Placard for hours just to see if the timer has ended.


(Please note that I do not endorse the current timer system, I just want to improve it until they find something better.)

I like your ideas for the most part. Improved status information on the placard interface would be nice.

But I don't see it stopping the placard camping and spamming on those worlds where available houses are rare. People who are desperate for a house will still sit there waiting because seconds can make the difference between getting the house and someone else getting it. A house that is marked not available for purchase when the map is opened could be available by the time you walk to it. It would really only benefit players on the worlds where there is little to no competition for available houses so houses remain unpurchased for several hours/days.