New lottery info from Live Letter

[Jojoya]

(think I've caught all the major points now that I watched this part of the Live Letter a second time)

"Each player may only enter the lottery for one plot of land during each lottery period."

Each member of a FC with land purchase permissions will be able to purchase a ticket on behalf of the FC during the same lottery period. This is intentional. With this being a multi-player game, they want the large FCs that have active player communities to have that advantage.

Each entry on behalf of a FC will still require the full purchase price of the plot to be deposited, and the FC will still only be able to purchase a single plot even if more than one member entering for different plots win.

Those who don't win will be refunded in full. Failure to purchase a plot if won will result in loss of the gil (original slide from Nov said it would be half the gil lost so not sure whether they changed their mind or he wasn't being specific about the amount lost).

As of 6.1, there will be 4 ways to purchase: FC lottery, FC first come first serve, individual lottery and individual first come first serve. First come first serve is the same as what we currently have (other than the FC or individual restriction). Each existing ward will be designated as one of these types (subdivisions may be different from the main ward of the same number) but are subject to change each patch based on need. We will be able to confirm what type a ward is in game.

The initial exception: in 6.1, all wards will be using the lottery. If they get feedback indicating strong demand for first come first serve, they will consider designating a few wards as such. They would prefer not to use first come first serve at first because of the potential impact it would create on log in queues. They are looking for players to post their feedback in the forums. Wards would start getting the first come first serve designation when there is more housing available for everyone? I wonder if they're thinking about when new worlds start getting added later this year.

[Shibi]

That will really skew the favour towards the bot players. They aready run 3 or 4 clients, each of those with 8 people is 32 times a better chance at winning than your average bunny-boi in 2B bottoms.

32 times the chance for your average botter.

Then of course, sell leadership in the FC and profit.

(Heck, I have 2 service accounts, so could do 16 times the chance of your average bunny-boi in 2B bottoms)

[Jojoya]

That will really skew the favour towards the bot players. They aready run 3 or 4 clients, each of those with 8 people is 32 times a better chance at winning than your average bunny-boi in 2B bottoms.

32 times the chance for your average botter.

Then of course, sell leadership in the FC and profit.

(Heck, I have 2 service accounts, so could do 16 times the chance of your average bunny-boi in 2B bottoms)

That there will be some advantage is undeniable (bots are always at an advantage) but I'm going to hold off with an opinion about just how much of an advantage this will create for the bot resellers until we see the specifics on the new FC leadership rules and more specific on the housing system (there were some other small changes mentioned back in November that weren't mentioned tonight). I imagine we'll get more detail in one of the 6.1 Live Letters (the first will be March 4th).

I still don't see any useful purpose in first come first serve now they're committed to the lottery system. Just for the sake of fairness it would be better to go lottery so those with lots of time to camp don't have a large advantage over those who don't (bots will be a problem in either situation). First come, first serve doesn't make much sense unless we get back to a point where there are plots sitting vacant for weeks at a time because supply has caught up with demand.

[Nepentha]

Hmm. My question is, and forgive me if I missed it somewhere in there I haven't had coffee yet, is it limited to 1 ticket per *account* or can you basically use all your alts to put in tickets?

[Divinemights]

One ticket per a character.
This is why they are not too concerning with large FC gaining advantage because each FC member would want to get a try on their own personal house too

[Nepentha]

One ticket per a character.
This is why they are not too concerning with large FC gaining advantage because each FC member would want to get a try on their own personal house too

Huh. So I could use all 8 of my characters in an FC on another server to buy tickets. Interesting to see how this gets exploited.

[Divinemights]

I mean lottery is not something you buy more and you get higher chance anyway.

[Jojoya]

One ticket per a character.
This is why they are not too concerning with large FC gaining advantage because each FC member would want to get a try on their own personal house too

Large FCs won't have a problem coming up with members able to donate their entry for the lottery period to the FC. They'll have a lot of members who either already own a personal house (and aren't interested in relocating) or who have no interest in owning a house. If my old FC wanted to relocate their house in a lottery, they'd have no trouble coming up with at least 20 members available to buy an entry.

Coming up with the gil will be a more substantial barrier to multiple entries for the large FCs. They'd still have to come up with the full purchase price for each entry purchased and most FCs just do not have that sort of gil unless they've already got a house with an established workshop. Not every member is going to have gil they're willing to let the FC "borrow" for the lottery period.

The real advantage will be for those running multiple workshops for profit and the flippers. They tend to have multiple service accounts and hundreds of millions (if not billions) of gil. All they need to do is shuffle their characters around so the characters that were the "buyers" for their FCs in the past have either been deleted and replaced, or are in the new FCs trying to buy a house.

There are still plenty of loopholes in the system to take advantage of unless SE is going to tighten the restrictions even further and go to manual review of accounts with multiple FC houses to check for suspicious activity. The only deterrent will be the new waiting period before FC Master can be transferred, and I doubt it will be long enough to be effective.

Huh. So I could use all 8 of my characters in an FC on another server to buy tickets. Interesting to see how this gets exploited.

Players will use it to gain an advantage in obtaining a specific plot for their FC, of course. It still doesn't guarantee the FC will win the plot if there are others who have also entered.

I mean lottery is not something you buy more and you get higher chance anyway.

This is more of a raffle than a lottery because there is a guaranteed winner. More entries by a single player/FC for the same plot can translate to a better chance to win as a result. The amount of advantage is going to be dependent on how many other entries there are for the same plot. If there are 500 entries for a plot, having 8 entries won't mean much. If there are only 10, it becomes a large advantage.

Those trying to purchase an Ishgard plot at release will definitely have an advantage using multiple entries considering there will be over 1400 plots per world for players to pick from. If there are 10,000 characters trying to purchase, that's going to be an average of about 7 entries per plot (some plots may only have 1, 2 or even no entries as players compete for more desirable plots). Once the initial supply dries up and the unlucky players are left fighting over a handful of still available plots, the advantage will mostly disappear until the next housing expansion when hundreds of plots are again available at the same time.

[stulticaeruleum]

That will really skew the favour towards the bot players. They aready run 3 or 4 clients, each of those with 8 people is 32 times a better chance at winning than your average bunny-boi in 2B bottoms.

32 times the chance for your average botter.

Then of course, sell leadership in the FC and profit.

(Heck, I have 2 service accounts, so could do 16 times the chance of your average bunny-boi in 2B bottoms)

Here's the thing, they're also killing fc sales. So no "new" person to the fc may be transferred leadership or be allowed to make sales via placard.

[Arazehl]

Here is land pricing chart, if anyone has yet to see it. Considering the gil that would have to be sunk into this method and who will come out on top as usual.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes.../housing_land/