Lottery Screenshot Speaks for Itself...

[Eraden]

Games with less of a budget and significantly less revenue than FFXIV have managed to implement better housing systems. Even games older than FFXIV. I'd like to point out Square Enix hasn't stopped bragging FFXIV is their highest profitable title outside of mobile games. So... let's not make excuses for the multi-billion dollar corporation. The dev team simply likes the neighborhood system and I suspect there's a sunken cost fallacy going on as well.

For the purposes of what this game is it doesn't matter what other game makers have done. It only matters what SE has done and is willing to do. No matter what they decide to do, they simply can not implement any changes overnight. Any changes they make, should they decide to do so, will take time. During that time, it's better to have a system of allocation that is fair to all players. If housing ever becomes available to ALL players, then yes the Lottery might no longer be needed. Until then it is vital to keep it in order to make access to housing fair to all.

[Amenara]

For the purposes of what this game is it doesn't matter what other game makers have done. It only matters what SE has done and is willing to do. No matter what they decide to do, they simply can not implement any changes overnight. Any changes they make, should they decide to do so, will take time. During that time, it's better to have a system of allocation that is fair to all players. If housing ever becomes available to ALL players, then yes the Lottery might no longer be needed. Until then it is vital to keep it in order to make access to housing fair to all.

That sounds like a band-aid when you put it that way. Fixing a small issue to compensate for the larger issue. Arguing about semantics which don't matter at all aside, I agree, we need to focus any housing ire at the people responsible, SE. This is 100% the fault of the people who made the decision to continue down the path of wards instead of accepting that it has turned into a failure and correcting the ship instead of doubling down.

[Jojoya]

For the purposes of what this game is it doesn't matter what other game makers have done. It only matters what SE has done and is willing to do. No matter what they decide to do, they simply can not implement any changes overnight. Any changes they make, should they decide to do so, will take time. During that time, it's better to have a system of allocation that is fair to all players. If housing ever becomes available to ALL players, then yes the Lottery might no longer be needed. Until then it is vital to keep it in order to make access to housing fair to all.

Actually, it does matter. Game developers learn from what other games have done, what was popular with their players and what didn't really work.

FFXIV probably wouldn't exist today if YoshiP hadn't studied WoW for what made it successful and incorporated some of those elements into ARR.

It's true that changes can't be made overnight, but when it comes to housing the problems with the system have never been invisible. SE has addressed some of those problems but others remain. What's making the supply problem especially severe at this point was the explosive growth in player population that couldn't have been predicted in advance.

Who knew that WoW players would get so fed up with the game that they would actually give that weeb game they were frequently mocking a try? Who could have predicted COVID would be a global pandemic forcing workers to stay and looking for something they could do at home with all the lockdowns in place?

But SE had to know by end of Heavensward that the ward system buckles under the weight of even a slowly growing player base. They added wards, they added a completely new housing district and still demand overtook the supply quickly. They easily could have looked to other MMOs with housing and seen their systems had no problems with population growth because they were using instanced systems that could accommodate every player. While true some of those games have since died, they didn't die because of the housing systems.