You're not supposed to stay up all night clicking to buy a fake house in a game..

[Divinemights]

There is no need for the timer to be this long in the first place.
2-3 hours would be more than sufficient to discourage reselling of plots.
Or just have a fixed and visible timer of i.E 5 hours where no one can make a purchase(to discourage reselling during times of low server population), and have a random hidden timer of 1-2 hours afterwards.

Your filed of vision is narrowed
There is time zone and longer CD is to give everyone a fair chance to see this empty plot

[ReiganCross]

Yeah, the randomness of it is made so you don't have a pile of people at the last second clicking fanatically.

[Xelanar]

Your filed of vision is narrowed
There is time zone and longer CD is to give everyone a fair chance to see this empty plot

This is exactly where my second suggestion comes into play, right?
Have a fixed visible timer of i.E 5 hours(or make it... 20 hours or whatever!) where no one can make a purchase. And have a short random hidden timer of 1-2 hours(or 3? Or 4 or whatever) afterwards.

The longer visible timer is there to prevent house flipping, and also to show everyone who is interested, when the actual - hidden - purchase cooldown starts. So they can even plan ahead, if they want to.
The second hidden timer is there to keep the randomness in place that we currently have.

I don't see how this would be any different than our current situation, the only difference being that camping time for people would be reduced from 1-30 hours to whichever timespan the hidden timer would have. People are rightfully complaining that the timespan is too long. This would alleviate the issue, without losing any benefits from longer timers.

Or am I missing something?

[Jojoya]

This is exactly where my second suggestion comes into play, right?
Have a fixed visible timer of i.E 5 hours(or make it... 20 hours or whatever!) where no one can make a purchase. And have a short random hidden timer of 1-2 hours(or 3? Or 4 or whatever) afterwards.

The longer visible timer is there to prevent house flipping, and also to show everyone who is interested, when the actual - hidden - purchase cooldown starts. So they can even plan ahead, if they want to.
The second hidden timer is there to keep the randomness in place that we currently have.

I don't see how this would be any different than our current situation, the only difference being that camping time for people would be reduced from 1-30 hours to whichever timespan the hidden timer would have. People are rightfully complaining that the timespan is too long. This would alleviate the issue, without losing any benefits from longer timers.

Or am I missing something?

Instead of a dozen people camping the plot because most players don't have the ability to sit around 8-16 hours, you'd have a few hundred camping it because waiting 1-2 hours is far more easily done when the player already plans to be online for that length of time or longer.

Ever been part of a hunt train the first week after a major patch is released? That would pale in comparison to the mess that would be created in the housing wards with your idea. Two to three hundred players all crowded a very precise spot for 1-2 hours instead of somewhat spread out for the 15 seconds it takes to kill a hunt mark with a group that size. Latency for everyone skyrocketing, assuming the ward server doesn't outright crash from the strain.

No doubt some trolls will manage to get in and will start spamming combat actions at the placard just to make things even more difficult for those trying to purchase. Disabling combat effects helps a little but not enough. With the way the game starts culling objects when there are too many players present at a location, some may not be able to interact with the placard at all.

Current house and apartment owners in that ward would not be able to enter if the ward hit the capacity limit and that would deny the ability for them to enter their own housing (which had evidently been a real problem when housing was first added until SE changed things).

We need to stop presenting ideas that only serve to sustain a bad system and start pressuring SE to fix the real problem - supply. If there were enough houses for every player and every FC who wants one, we wouldn't need timers or demolition or any of the other crap people keep suggesting.

Other MMOs with housing don't have a problem providing a house for every player that wants one. Some of those games even allow every player to have multiple houses per character.

Why does SE continue to insist on shortchanging their player base when it comes to housing?

[Xelanar]

If their decision to make a horrendously long random timer is the result of technical limitations, then I guess the system we currently have is as optimal as it can get. Up until now I thought their current solution to be something they did not care to put more thoughts into, seing how they needed a quick fix against house flipping.

In that case, hoping for instanced housing is my best option then >.<.

[ReiganCross]

Personally I don't like Instance Housing... I've had it in a lot of other games and I never cared about them. The one I was most attatched was in Monster Hunter World and even then I barely collected half of what I could on it.

I like the idea of owning a piece of land, I want to have an obnoxious Placard with my name on it. I like giving people an adress that people have to sort among some other people. I don't mind that the place gets empty, it's not like I want to be friendly with the neighbors anyways.

That's why I just want a good way for more people to get a house they will care for.