Would a raffle system be that hard?

[tdb]

Big problem with your idea in that post. You trying to crash the instance servers? Asking people to reamain near the plot for 10 minutes...think about how many players will be showing up all at once!!!

Yeah, I acknowledged that issue in my post, in case you didn't notice. I'm hoping that if multiple raffles go off at the same time across multiple wards, the prospective buyers will spread out enough that any one zone won't become overloaded.

Or it could be formulated so that you can take a raffle ticket from the placard at any time. You can only carry one ticket at a time, so if you decide to change which plot you're going for you'll have to discard the previous one. Inn rooms get some kind of gadget with which you can validate your ticket when the raffle time comes. This way there won't be any congestion, although the social aspect of being at the placard is lost.

FC will also have a bigger advantage then they do now over personal house seekers. You think fc's are just going to have one member enter the raffle? Pfft nope their going to ask every eligible member to enter. FC's have members waiting at placards but its rare the entire FC is waiting. Lets not even get into the restritctions you will need to help curve abuse.

If anything, it would be way easier to filter FCs with a raffle system. The server could internally go through all registered players and remove all but one from the same FC.

This assumes that the same number of people would be clicking a placard for untold hours as would enter a 10 minute raffle.
This would not be the case.
Like you said, the current system is so appalling people don't wanna participate.

Yeah, so the people who don't click the placard won't get a house. With a raffle system they'd get a chance, even if only a small one. How is this worse for them?

I want everyone to have an equal chance, but a raffle is not the solution. It doesn't fix the underlying problem with housing, which is little supply and insane demand. What don't you understand here? I honestly don't know how else I can put it so that you can begin to fathom this "mystery". You seemingly can't see past your own vision to see that others have differing opinions, and that there might be a flaw or 2 in your desired system. I'm not saying mine is perfect, but my point of view is something that I have thought through thoroughly, and what really matters to me is having an actual solution to the garbage housing system we have. I don't want housing to be shackled by luck and RNG. I want it to be set free. I want solutions, not band aid fixes that don't really do much anyway. EVERYONE should want this. If you can't understand that...it is best that we both stop engaging one another any further on this topic, because we will never see eye to eye. I sure as heck won't budge, and apparently neither will you. Have a nice day.

Didn't I just say that instanced housing would be a far better solution? Or did you have something else in mind?

However, it seems instanced housing is pretty hard to implement, be it due to server capacity, spaghetti code, or SE's vision of housing neighborhoods. So I think while we wait for that we should at least get something better than the horrible timer system. If you want to chase your own perfect solution I can't force you to do otherwise. But it would be nice if you didn't bash my proposition without at least understanding the conditions it's based on (i.e. no instanced housing in the foreseeable future).

[ItMe]

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Yeah, so the people who don't click the placard won't get a house. With a raffle system they'd get a chance, even if only a small one. How is this worse for them?

"They'd get a chance?"
They didn't have one before?
For people like this:

And what about all the people who want a house but don't want to camp the placard for hours?

They made their choice not to participate.
They have a chance and don't take it... so what about them?
But the conversation isn't about that. It isn't about the people who are sitting out and not trying to get a house.
Its wether a raffle system would give you a better shot at a house, and it would not because the people that do participate would all face a steep rise in competition.

If you are trying to get a house it will be harder to get a house with a raffle system.

[tdb]

Its wether a raffle system would give you a better shot at a house, and it would not because the people that do participate would all face a steep rise in competition.

If you are trying to get a house it will be harder to get a house with a raffle system.

This is true, for those currently willing to participate. Is it your opinion then that it's fine to have a system so horrible that most people choose to not participate (on the assumption that instanced housing can't or won't be implemented)?

Edit: May I suggest augmenting the raffle system with one of the following restrictions:
You must be among the richest 5% of players on the server to participate. If you fall below the 10% mark for more than a month you're evicted (the limits can by dynamically adjusted based on supply and demand).
You must place high enough in your server's GC rankings in order to qualify. Again the limit of what is high enough could be adjusted dynamically. An additional restriction could be that you have to make your contributions to the GC of the area you're seeking to buy the plot from (with skybuilders substituted for Ishgard; I'm unsure what to do with Kugane though).
You must complete the current savage raid tier to participate. If you don't complete the tier before the next one is released you're evicted. I don't see a lot of opportunity for dynamic adjustment here, but it would provide an additional incentive for world first clears in order to pick the best houses.

All of these would limit participation with similar or greater strength as placard clicking, but they're tied to in-game activities players actually enjoy doing rather than an inane timesink. If none of these options strikes your fancy I can invent more.

[ItMe]

Is it your opinion then that it's fine to have a system so horrible that most people choose to not participate (on the assumption that instanced housing can't or won't be implemented)?

No, the placard system is bad.
A raffle system would be worse.

[tdb]

No, the placard system is bad.
A raffle system would be worse.

So what would you put in as the requirement for getting a house? Would one of my suggestions above work (I guess you replied while I was editing the message) or do you have other ideas?

[NanaWiloh]

Alright placard sucks and raffle is not any better. So put a wait list for each ward in, each ward gets its own wait list.
There you go no placard clicking and you are garaunteed a house once the list reaches you and has one open. It still follows first come first serve as those who get there first get higher positions on the list. This is the second best solution to Instance housing, with the current solution being third best. I have banged my head on this problem for a long time just like so many others, Outside of instance housing its the only other way to ensure players get a house at some point. Still relies on the demo timer taking houses but its better then the current state with so many being unhappy.


Rules:
-New wards will not have a wait list until they are full. If you buy a house in a new ward you are removed from any wait list you are on.
-When you go to add yourself to a wait list, you will choose Free company or personal setting the house to your choice then and there. When your turn comes up you have 24hrs to make the purchase or it moves down the list.
-You can only be on one wait list for Personal and one wait list for FC at any given time.(per World)
-Free companies will function as normal. If someone has the money and the permission to purchase. And their FC comes up next on the list that person can make the purchase for the FC.
-Free companies being on a wait list will have no effect on its members being able to add themselves to a wait list for a personal.
- Wait list positions cannot be transferred to another wait list. You can only add or remove yourself from wait lists.

Failed to address relocations in this. But to put it simply for a wait list to not be a waste of time Relocations would have to be restricted to new wards. Lastly I was one of the many people who suggested the timer idea, this current idea never occured to me at the time. But I feel its a far better one then the timer, SE may never give us instance housing so I am fully onboard with anything that works better then what we got now.

[NanaWiloh]

Multiple raffles across wards wont work. Demo timers vary you got no to ensure that other wards have homes up.

[ItMe]

So what would you put in as the requirement for getting a house? Would one of my suggestions above work (I guess you replied while I was editing the message) or do you have other ideas?

Lol sorry, hit my daily post cap and had to wait to reply.

You must be among the richest 5% of players on the server to participate. If you fall below the 10% mark for more than a month you're evicted (the limits can by dynamically adjusted based on supply and demand).

I mean... this would result in me losing my house I'm automatically not for this one lol.

But otherwise I have a few objections.

-- There are players with max gil. Outside of the fact that that’s such an incredible pile of wealth anyone who picked up the game even last expac is probably forever locked out of getting a house. The game has too many wealthy players with nothing to spend their money on that have too big of a head start. And if you put your nose to the grindstone and try and get to max gil too… it wouldn’t change anything because you can’t become richer than max gil.


-- If anything this will encourage RMT.


-- Losing your house due to inactivity, because you’re not using it is a far better method than losing your house because you have 9 trillion gil but someone else just got 9 trillion and 1.

You must place high enough in your server's GC rankings in order to qualify. Again the limit of what is high enough could be adjusted dynamically. An additional restriction could be that you have to make your contributions to the GC of the area you're seeking to buy the plot from (with skybuilders substituted for Ishgard; I'm unsure what to do with Kugane though).

Do the servers track our GCs rankings against each other?

You must complete the current savage raid tier to participate. If you don't complete the tier before the next one is released you're evicted. I don't see a lot of opportunity for dynamic adjustment here, but it would provide an additional incentive for world first clears in order to pick the best houses.

All of these would limit participation with similar or greater strength as placard clicking, but they're tied to in-game activities players actually enjoy doing rather than an inane timesink. If none of these options strikes your fancy I can invent more.

Tied to in game activities?
Maybe there's something there.
Locking housing behind savage would be going way too far.



I’m also not sure that I’m jiving with the core philosophy here. I don't think you need a requirement to get a house. Housing should be available to everyone, so instead of restricting players from getting a house I think they should just focus on making housing more available. The majority of the problems with HOW to get a house will absolutely wither in the face of adequate supply.
I really jive with this take:

It will always remain a problem as long as houses are in limited supply. We can keep coming up with ways to change the purchase system but none of them, outside of solving the supply problem, will fix it. Everything thing has its pros, cons and loopholes to exploit.

[Themarvin]

Raffle system is bad for various reasons... RMT bots would massive hog it, and then the plots would be sold as 1 person FC's for real life credits.... and a new problem has popped up.

Add massive upkeeps on houses, that way you gotta actually do something to keep your house, and also for those that DID horde houses for resale, will end being pressed on their own wallet as well, likewise would be a bombshell for those grandfathered players who bought +5 houses.

[Jojoya]

However, it seems instanced housing is pretty hard to implement, be it due to server capacity, spaghetti code, or SE's vision of housing neighborhoods.

We know it's not hard to implement. House interiors and apartments are already instanced. The only hard thing would be getting weather to work if they intended to add gardening to instanced housing areas (why we can't intercross inside a house or apartment - weather doesn't exist in them).

Their vision of active neighborhoods was probably the obstacle but I don't think they've even mentioned that since the disaster that was Shirogane's opening. Hopefully they've given up on the idea and moved onto creating a system that serves all the players instead of a lucky few.

We'll know when Ishgard housing gets released, I guess.

So I think while we wait for that we should at least get something better than the horrible timer system.

It would still take time to design, program, test then implement a new purchase system, especially one that would end up as complicated as a raffle. It's not simple as real life where you walk up to a seller, buy as many tickets as you want, wait for a winning number to be drawn then turn in a ticket if it was the winner. The game would have to have ways of tracking what tickets have been purchased by what character, culling out multiple purchases by the same account, etc.

If Ishgard is not going to be an enhanced version of instanced housing removing the need for a new purchase system, that would likely be the time they would implement one (if they're going to). I don't see it happening "while we wait".