Large quantity of gil disappeared.

[Jojoya]

It's about increasing your chances though. You can rely on luck entirely and hope that the placard is "open" right at the time you choose to check and hope there are no housing bots active and hope that a house opens up when you're active and available.. sure. OR you can maximize your chances and camp. Both options though are circumvented by click spam bots which wouldn't be able to have an advantage in a lottery system.

So to a degree it's not MANDATORY by strict letter, but to maximize chances of getting a house, let alone a house you WANT, camping is the best chance.

So again, while the lottery solution does not, by far, solve all the housing problems, it most definitely solves a few.

It's not solving anything. It's exchanging one form of RNG for a new form of RNG that reduces a player's chances of "winning" substantially because it will increase the number of participants a hundredfold if not more.

All the lottery does is force players to stop engaging in one specific form of game activity, something they could have voluntarily chosen to do on their own (but didn't).

It's very bizarre to me that so many players think the lottery will be an improvement.

Not sure how do you define recently. But currently on Coeurl, every single small plot is camped especially during prime time(10-14hrs after a plot has opened, the most likely time for a plot to sell). The data is from Sadu's House Alerts discord which has tracked open plots nearly hourly for years, especially on servers like Balmung/Mateus.

I'm part of the Sadu's House Alerts Discord which helps players camp for houses on NA servers:
https://discord.gg/saChECt

We sweepers(players who do hourly sweeps to check all the wards for open plots.)

Coeurl is swept nearly every hour on some days with very few sweep gaps.

All small plots on Crystal are camped.

The massive influx of new players for all the different reasons has made camping for houses much worse across all the NA servers.

The players I'm think of did it back in May and June of this year. One of them was not on Coeurl, I was helping them check for plots on an Aether world with an alt. Another one managed to get their house despite 3 other players camping the plot when they showed up.

I will admit that with the recent massive influx of new players, the current situation has probably gotten worse. Camping might lower the chances for other players who are randomly checking to get a plot but it still does not remove it. It's the player's choice on which path they want to take. They've always got the option to say "no, this is not worth the time".

[Krotoan]

It's not solving anything. It's exchanging one form of RNG for a new form of RNG that reduces a player's chances of "winning" substantially because it will increase the number of participants a hundredfold if not more.

It solves problems and it does create others, never said it didn't. Yes. now housing will (possibly) be complete RNG for a plot. Eliminating clickbots and removing most inequality from the process, we shall see what other relocation changes they make.

All the lottery does is force players to stop engaging in one specific form of game activity, something they could have voluntarily chosen to do on their own (but didn't).

A game activity that was incredibly frustrating and wasted hours of player time for possibly no gain. Yes .. people COULD have given up and just hoped (like your solution) but like most gamers they picked the activity that would most likely result in achieving their goals. It's very easy to tell people "well dont do that then" .. it's quite another to KNOW that there is a way to increase your chances of getting what you want and NOT do it. Eliminating even the possibility of people choosing this frustrating avenue and possibly souring their experience is , in my opinion, a good choice. Many many players have expressed their displeasure that people with "no lives" and bots were far more likely to get houses then they were. Add to that the fact that housing locks a few substantial blocks of content away behind it and you have people who are now frustrated they can't do content as well.

It's very bizarre to me that so many players think the lottery will be an improvement.

If you haven't participated in camping for a house and have the perception or experience that it's something that is easy to do.. I can imagine you wouldn't see the benefit. As someone whos server has always had housing only open on ward release days and very rarely through demo-timers... I can say I would gladly take a lottery over what we have now.... Though I have hopes that someday they will make the rest of the content locked behind housing available to everyone.