Ishgard Housing Details are Out

[Packetdancer]

The new system is unfair. But the current system is also not fair and prefers botters and nolifers. So we will see.

I mean, I don't think my opinion really counts here, since I already have a house (and largely through dumb luck), but... it feels like both systems are unfair, but this one is unfair in an equal manner -- i.e., everyone has the same chance to win a house (or more likely, to miss out on a house).

Conversely, as you note, the current system is unfair to anyone trying to use it the normal way, but hugely skewed in favor of people who try to cheat the system in order to get a house. So... the new method kinda sucks, but at least it sucks slightly less than the current one?

Seems to me that anyone with tons of gil and/or multiple characters with tons of gil will just run around and place entries on every plot they can afford to do so on where as sprouts with barely enough gil to make a play for a single plot just get shafted by this system. This is a week-old, soaked bandaid on what is already a very broken system. It says "one lottery entry per lottery period" but it doesn't specify if that's per plot or just one entry period.

I thought they'd clarified that already earlier -- that it was one entry, period, for the whole lottery period -- though I might be misremembering? (I just came off a stretch of doing massive overtime to finish delivery on a prototype at work, so it feels equally likely it was an sleep-deprivation-induced hallucination...) Which is unfortunate if that's the case, since there could be that other plot like three houses over that *no one* entered the lottery for, whereas that house with the nice view had 40-odd people place a payment on it; with the one-bid limit, you take your chances that the one house you bid on didn't have two dozen other people do the same thing.

But on the other hand, it means someone who can only afford to bid on one house isn't at a disadvantage compared to those who could afford to place bids on *10* different houses. So, again, at least it sucks equally for everyone, not just the "small fish" in the housing pond.

(FC bidding is a whole different ball game, but if they do have limits on which plots can be bid on as an FC house, hopefully that at least means FCs are only competing with other FCs...)

Can't remember reading/hearing anything if the bid is account or not.

Given that the existing limit on housing is per-account per-world, I'd assume the lottery restriction is the same. I.e., I have two alts on Leviathan -- my main, and a raid-alt. However, I can only own one house on Leviathan; since I own a house on this character, my alt cannot purchase one.

Which is perfectly reasonable, because I cannot fathom how much worse housing would be if you could just outright own multiple houses on the same world on one account. (Though I really wish, given that restriction, that the system would treat any alts of yours on the same world as a tenant in the house you do own.)

[Shibi]

3 million gil is not nothing, you might have a skewed perspective for how hard it is for new players to get enough gil given that you are a veteran player. For new players, it is still quite an insignificant hurdle to overcome especially when they might still spend their gil on other stuff such as glamours, levelling crafting etc.

As you glossed over the main point completely, do you deny that once the sugar hit fades and we are at the ongoing demo stage of this there will be more entries for a single plot than people can poke a stick at?

[Larirawiel]

Conversely, as you note, the current system is unfair to anyone trying to use it the normal way, but hugely skewed in favor of people who try to cheat the system in order to get a house. So... the new method kinda sucks, but at least it sucks slightly less than the current one?

In the theory, yes. But i don't know how the new system is in reality. So i am curious.


Cheers

[Azuri]

As you glossed over the main point completely, do you deny that once the sugar hit fades and we are at the ongoing demo stage of this there will be more entries for a single plot than people can poke a stick at?

Yeah? And you keep glossing over that the outcome of "100 players want a house, 100 players enter lottery, 1 of them wins" is functionally the same as "100 players want a house, 10 of them click plackards for hours, 90 don't even bother, 1 of them wins". It doesn't change the amount of players who got a house.

[DeNada]

Yeah? And you keep glossing over that the outcome of "100 players want a house, 100 players enter lottery, 1 of them wins" is functionally the same as "100 players want a house, 10 of them click plackards for hours, 90 don't even bother, 1 of them wins". It doesn't change the amount of players who got a house.

The more accurate version would be "100 players want a house, 1 of them click placards for hours, 9 of them utilised some sort of macros or bots to automate the clicking since it's just an inane and tedious process, 90 of them don't even bother. And the house goes to a housing bot who then resells it for massive profit."

That's the current FCFS system which people are defending.

[hagare]

Yeah? And you keep glossing over that the outcome of "100 players want a house, 100 players enter lottery, 1 of them wins" is functionally the same as "100 players want a house, 10 of them click plackards for hours, 90 don't even bother, 1 of them wins". It doesn't change the amount of players who got a house.

Yeah, it only changes the chances of one getting a house

[dspguy]

The more accurate version would be "100 players want a house, 1 of them click placards for hours, 9 of them utilised some sort of macros or bots to automate the clicking since it's just an inane and tedious process, 90 of them don't even bother. And the house goes to a housing bot who then resells it for massive profit."

That's the current FCFS system which people are defending.

The problem we have is that SE is fixing the problem with a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel. The current system where the average vacated plot isn't usually purchasable for 12-24 hours allows plenty of time for everyone interested on the server to show up (including people using scripts) to try for it. Considering we don't know when exactly a plot is going to be purchasable, it requires players to either click that placard for hours non-stop or utilize a third party script. And there's no penalty for those using these scripts (at least none that I've seen).

Another solution they could have gone with is a short lockout period. Instead of what is commonly 12+ hours after a plot is vacated, make it anywhere from 5 minutes to 30 minutes. That is enough time to deter most people from risking a black market purchase since someone else could swoop in and click the placard. And 30 minutes is short enough that only those players that are dedicated to checking which plots are available would be in the running to purchase it (as opposed to hundreds of people showing up at the 12 hour mark since plots rarely seem to be purchasable before that).

However, SE didn't go that path. They went with the lottery option instead. If SE makes 50% of the housing available just for FCs, I think we will see nearly every FC have a house by the time the dust settles. Maybe that's what SE has been trying to do all this time - make housing for FCs and let the scraps go to private buyers. It didn't work out that way though.

[Hanayumi]

Issue with the lower time "solution" is that it promotes resale, which SE hates even more so. There is just no 1 perfect solution, theres always going to be someone with issues, even if the tossed everything out a added personal instance house you'll get those, "Why cant i have neighbors" yata yata...

[Ransu]

3 million gil is not nothing, you might have a skewed perspective for how hard it is for new players to get enough gil given that you are a veteran player. For new players, it is still quite an insignificant hurdle to overcome especially when they might still spend their gil on other stuff such as glamours, levelling crafting etc.

I mean...a new player just going through the paces should easily have over 4 million gil just from doing ARR-EW with a mix of roulettes /msq dungeon runs. Its not like you need to spend any gil outside of teleporting around.

[Saraide]

I mean...a new player just going through the paces should easily have over 4 million gil just from doing ARR-EW with a mix of roulettes /msq dungeon runs. Its not like you need to spend any gil outside of teleporting around.

With how easy free teleport tickets are to get through blue mage stuff even the increased teleport costs mean nothing. I've stopped paying for teleports entirely with just the 3 weekly carnival targets.