<MATERIA> First-Come First-Served AND Lottery Plots

[Taitaibun]

They definitely is not going to release Materia wards until 6.1 and go live with lottery system. This is their only way to prevent/reduce the possibility of RMT obtaining plots.

RMR will not be able to use leaks of current system to their own advantage. They will need to go through lottery system like normal players

I don't really get what you mean with leaks. Currently everyone has to click for a house for hours, days, weeks, if not months to even get one. It's all random, just depends on who clicks buy first after the hidden timer goes off.
Plus if you're in a house/fc sales communities they don't allow RMT, so that eliminates that chance.

[Jojoya]

I did think of a way that SE could initially roll out wards on a FCFS basis while retaining some measure of fairness - stagger the release of the wards (assuming that is possible with their programming).

Example: if servers come up at 3am, ward 1 + subdivision become available immediately. Ward 2 + subdivision would be available at 5am. Ward 3+ subdivsion available at 7am, etc.

It staggers the opening the wards so those not able to be online when the servers come up from maintenance would at least have some small choice of wards at a time they can get online.

Then once everything is sold out or after a preset period (which ever comes first), change wards to lottery. That way there's no massive waiting period for getting a house but there's also no unfair advantage to those who are able to get online at a single specific time.

They definitely is not going to release Materia wards until 6.1 and go live with lottery system. This is their only way to prevent/reduce the possibility of RMT obtaining plots.

RMR will not be able to use leaks of current system to their own advantage. They will need to go through lottery system like normal players

There's no way to prevent RMT from getting into the system unless they ditch the wards and go full instanced, or they remove FC housing. As long as players have some way to transfer control of a housing location, RMT will exist when the supply is smaller than the demand.

I don't really get what you mean with leaks. Currently everyone has to click for a house for hours, days, weeks, if not months to even get one. It's all random, just depends on who clicks buy first after the hidden timer goes off.
Plus if you're in a house/fc sales communities they don't allow RMT, so that eliminates that chance.

Why people use script bots to do the clicking - they can go do other things on a different account or outside of the game.

Those communities have no way to prevent RMT. Additional arrangements can able be made outside of their specific discords with no one the wiser as long as no one says anything. They can't police member behavior outside of the discord.

[Shibi]

I did think of a way that SE could initially roll out wards on a FCFS basis while retaining some measure of fairness - stagger the release of the wards (assuming that is possible with their programming)..

Stagger opening was one of the first things I thought of for Materia old cities, but it's likely not going to work as they seem to need to always need to bring down the servers.

Plus of course, the vast bulk of Materia players who will be after housing don't have the housing quests done yet (they are locked). Those need to be collected and then travel and go in from the overland to enter the wards and buy. Staggered wards through opening, mean it's possible the ward could be full and people can't enter to complete the quest.

My thought after, for people stuck in the queue, and people playing from NA, where a release is likely to be 3am or so, was how it could be nice if they can set all houses placard timers to an exact time, but stagger them, rather than staggering opening up the wards.

All wards open (so the housing quests can be done 4 times over) but Ward 1 opens up as fcfs immediately... Ward 2's placards are open and clickable, but will be purchasable from hour 1... Ward 3's placards are open and clickable, but will be purchasable from hour 2... up to ward x-y are going to be half lotto solo and lotto fc.

Or do it over 12 hours, with 2 wards popping open each time.

[Bubble_Butt]

I personally like lottery : if you work full time, it's impossible with the old system to have the free time to 'camp' and its a system that favours faster connection / PC / etc and it's also unhealthy. As it is now, I am personally against FCFS.

But I think the staggering idea would stop a lot of issues with the FCFS system and this needs more attention / upvotes. I am for lottery, but staggered FCFS would be just as good and in some cases better.

The positives of staggering and reducing the windows and have different wards at different times seems - people generally play with those in their zones, would reduce tedium and bots can click forever so I feel it would improve the chance for a RL player to get it. it would allow people that work etc to time their purchases as well.
Especially with bots. The larger the window, the more a human would tire or have commitments to attend to.

I wish we could fix the issue with supply : Bots don't seem as regulated yet on Materia as on JP servers from my experience - the same gil sellers have been running around and the Uldah aetheryte has a chunk of bots inside, regardless of reports.

I can both understand the delay, and somewhat dislike it : It is nice to give fresh players a chance, however I've personally been sitting on house gil since about HW. So I can appreciate both arguments : Some people have been waiting 'in line' for longer than it takes to raise a child and have them go to school. but content should be available for everyone.

Would be great if they implemented some of the great suggestions people have had, but it's always going to come down to more wards. We are dealing with disruptions while they expand things : Hopefully they've taken extra wards into account....

[LunaFancy]

The point everyone seems to be missing is that when new wards are released there is NO TIMER.

First come, first served means literally that. You log in and run for your plot. If you miss one you dash to an aethershard and try for the subdivision or a different ward. You have multiple options and everyone is on a level playing field, I won a large in a new ward drop back on NA when I missed my first choice and ported to the subdivision immediately.

Fresh world FCFS is fair for all and on top of that you have multiple chances to get a plot on the night, lottery removes all the positive aspects of fresh wards.

The lottery is horrible for fresh wards. You have one shot and if you miss that one shot- you might not get another.

I don't think there is a single soul who would argue that the timer on demolished plots was a good thing, but new plots in fresh wards have never had a timer. So why people are all acting as if we were going to be fighting bots in a click war in the new wards is beyond me. It was never going to happen that way.

[Jojoya]

Stagger opening was one of the first things I thought of for Materia old cities, but it's likely not going to work as they seem to need to always need to bring down the servers.

Plus of course, the vast bulk of Materia players who will be after housing don't have the housing quests done yet (they are locked). Those need to be collected and then travel and go in from the overland to enter the wards and buy. Staggered wards through opening, mean it's possible the ward could be full and people can't enter to complete the quest.

Agree that it's something that SE might not be able to do but it's an idea thrown out in case it is possible.

As for not having the housing quests done - I don't think that's going to end up an additional bottleneck. Someone who's doing one of those quests when the servers come up will likely be doing it because they intend to be buying a plot or purchasing their lottery entry immediately. They would in the wards regardless and that crowd is going to be broken up between the 24 different wards. Most players do not care what ward number they are in, they care about the plot location. If they try to get into ward 3 and it's full, they can always choose ward 19.

The point everyone seems to be missing is that when new wards are released there is NO TIMER.

First come, first served means literally that. You log in and run for your plot. If you miss one you dash to an aethershard and try for the subdivision or a different ward. You have multiple options and everyone is on a level playing field, I won a large in a new ward drop back on NA when I missed my first choice and ported to the subdivision immediately.

Fresh world FCFS is fair for all and on top of that you have multiple chances to get a plot on the night, lottery removes all the positive aspects of fresh wards.

The lottery is horrible for fresh wards. You have one shot and if you miss that one shot- you might not get another.

I don't think there is a single soul who would argue that the timer on demolished plots was a good thing, but new plots in fresh wards have never had a timer. So why people are all acting as if we were going to be fighting bots in a click war in the new wards is beyond me. It was never going to happen that way.

Don't think that many are expecting the timers to be there (unless they're new to the game and haven't experienced a ward release).

What they're concerned about is getting locked out of housing because they couldn't log in the exact second the server came online so by the time they're able to log in, what they want is gone with no chance to get it (and everything else might be gone as well if they can't log in until after work).

Lottery gives them a chance to get a plot if they can't log on right away. FCFS without timer would not unless the supply is so much larger than demand so plots are still sitting open days later.

That leaves the question of how much demand there is. The number of characters currently on a world doesn't mean much when a lot of those characters were created solely for free game time and the patch itself looks like it won't be until mid-April. A census at the end of March will probably give a much better estimate as it could check to see how many players have completed the 2.0 MSQ by that time.

Exactly. The lottery just makes the process of getting a house painfully longer for very few benefits when we could be kickstarting our economy and community instead.

There is no RMT problem for fresh housing districts and we're getting all 5 of them at once. I also fancy a real player's chances in a foot race against a dumb bot in a multiboxing situation that just slows them down, but I don't see a need for cheaters to use bots in the first place given how many plots will stay available for a long time anyway.

Given the current population, houses will likely remain unsold for months potentially, with Ravana probably being the only exception. Unless there's a massive migration of people who held out until housing released.

Sephirot feels near or below early Stormblood Kujata's population, when there were still houses for sale with only 12 wards and no Shirogane yet. I know Zurvan and Bismarck will definitely have no problem getting houses.

Housing is a nice tool but it's not needed to "kickstart" a community (not to mention that wards inevitably end up dead unless there are a couple of free companies present with members coming and going, or running the RP venues.

While it's got an economic role it can play via sale of housing furnishings, what your economy really needs is an infusion of players ready to spend gil on your marketboards. You're not going to get much of an economic boost if the only players who can afford to buy are the ones who are also doing the selling. All those level 30 characters getting a million gil aren't helping much if they were abandoned as soon as they hit 30 because the player was really after the free game time.

The housing process is already painfully long. The lottery isn't going to make it any worse. The real obstacle is players needing to wait for 6.1 when they're ready to purchase now.

[Jojoya]

It plays a role in kickstarting

[snip the middle]

I don't get why other regions are so invested in making our unique situation conform to theirs.

Adding one more thing to do isn't a "kickstart". If your argument is that it's nice for the community to have more options for interacting, I can get behind that. But your communities are by no means dead right now just because you can't get housing and only housing is going to kickstart them to life.

I didn't deny that housing plays an economic role. What I pointed out is that you need to players ready to spend and it sounds like right now you mostly have players ready to sell. The economy isn't going to go anywhere if everyone is trying to sell with few buyers.

Why do the rest of us care? Your situation might well be ours in 5 months when new worlds are added to the EU data centers or in 6 months when the new NA data center with 4 new worlds open. That's why many of us are invested.

We want to see a system that is as fair as possible. Fairness will almost always end up inconvenient for those few lucky enough to have real life advantage so they're able to jump on an opportunity because it doesn't interfere with any real life obligations. That's one thing that's different about SE compared to many game developers - they understand that real life is also important to their players and take that into account when designing systems.

[Shibi]

Why do the rest of us care? Your situation might well be ours in 5 months when new worlds are added to the EU data centers or in 6 months when the new NA data center with 4 new worlds open. That's why many of us are invested.

No, your situation on NA is very different. You will have full 100% cross DC travel including access to legacy servers with a heavily established economy.

OC is completely isolated. Housing now helps our economy settle.

You will have people who will transfer as geared EW endgamers with millions, and without starting from scratch.

Most of us started again, leaving our old selves behind. A smaller number, a few thousand, transferred, but run round Limsa and mostly see sprouts.

If your new server runs out of onions, no biggy, just zoom over to Coerl, or Faerie.

If we run out of onions, that's it.

The situations are completely different. You should have zero investment in how we do it, because how you do it in a years time will be different.

[Jojoya]

You will have full 100% cross DC travel including access to legacy servers with a heavily established economy.

This is a good point I didn't think about.

On the other hand, being able to start growing Thavnairian Onions one week sooner isn't going to make a long term difference in supply for your data center. Those of you who left your old selves behind still have the opportunity to transfer them, along with any needed items in short supply. As long as your worlds have the New status, those transfers will be free.

Don't get me wrong -I'd love for SE to reconsider and open housing for you sooner instead of forcing you to wait until 6.1. The issue is simply one of whether it should be FCFS or lottery, and that comes down to what is fair. FCFS favors those who can log in when the servers come online so they get the most desirable plots and those who can't are left with the trash plots to pick over. That is not a fair system.

Also, re: the data center travel issue - I hope SE considers linking Materia to one of the other regions when data center travel is initiated since it is new and otherwise isolated.

The point is that players will be ready to spend when they have reason to and don't have to hold onto unusable items with limited inventory space, which will create more players ready to spend on other items.

If their inventories are already filled up with the housing items they want to use then they don't need to buy them so it doesn't benefit your economies, does it?

They should have been smart and filled up their inventories with items that are immediately useful instead of filling them up with items easily replaced and useless for at least a couple of months - SE made no secret about when they intended to open housing on Materia. Obviously keeping any seasonal event/mogstation housing items would have made sense but the rest is just deadweight when housing isn't available.

Like I said above, I'd love to see your housing opened sooner instead of later. The issue is whether FCFS should be used or lottery. FCFS is an inherently unfair system in a game that operates 24/7 while the majority of the player base doesn't have the option to play 24/7 due to real life obligation.

Waiting an extra week so distribution of housing ends up fair is not going to harm your communities or economies.

[Shibi]

On the other hand, being able to start growing Thavnairian Onions one week sooner isn't going to make a long term difference in supply for your data center. Those of you who left your old selves behind still have the opportunity to transfer them, along with any needed items in short supply. As long as your worlds have the New status, those transfers will be free.

Onions are just a small part of this that I use as the example, and you should realise it.

On your future new NA worlds, if they stop all housing for 3 months at the start, people who want to RP in a bar can just head off to Balmung with intra-DC-travel. On OC, no RP in bars, housing is locked out.

On your future new NA worlds, if they stop housing for 3 months at the start, people who want to make furniture and decorate can stay on their old worlds without penalty until housing is opened, then transfer over, no problem. We can't do this, we need to pull up roots completely for 3 months, or start anew and grind up our FC rank, and GC rank.

On your future new NA worlds, you have the chance to head over to any server, so don't need to leave all your friends behind. On OC we need to restart a new community, merging JP and NA playstyles, not having housing ties less people here. We need the people, but for that, we need access to all the perks of housing.

On your future new NA worlds, you will mostly have EW players who transfer. While on OC we mosly have sprouts who have left their EW mains on the old datacentres. You can't begin to imagine the disruption in this one.

Many more differences too.

What you will see in NA will be completely different to what we are experiencing now. And really, your investment in our data centre just warps what we need for no good purpose. It won't change what happens in NA in a years time.

We need housing in the old cities opened now, to make a community, to allow roleplay, to stock the marketboard, to let people decorate, to stimulate the economy and more.

Heck even to free up houses on NA. A lot of people, like me, have their old mains with house still idle and unused on NA, because no houses on OC, so no way I am giving that up yet. Have a house on OC and there is less need to keep on on NA. I'd likely give up my NA house as soon as I get an OC house, and that means a NA player can have it.

Old cities now needs to be FCFS as it's prior to 6.1, lottery doesn't exist yet, and that's fine, we just need the housing unlocked NOW. Ishgard for 6.1 can be lottery as in all data centres, we don't seek special rules there.

Worry about your future NA servers please, and stop trying to set your direction on the OC servers please, because what you will see in a years time with DC travel allowed will be completely different to us.

Edit: Transfer stuff over, you say. Meh, I would, Aether is locked to new alts, No mules left. and that doesn't address the bulk of the need, just shortages in garden and FC workshop.