So, what now? Lotteries with 150+ bids until... when?

[Avoidy]

It decreased YOUR chances. It decreased the chances of people "with the time to spam placards". But as you guys constantly hammer this over and over and over and over, this is a game that is designed to appeal to everyone and people with more time to spare shouldn't have an edge on content accessibility ever.

Most of the people upset are people that were either selling houses or just relocating sniping, if not botting for a placard.

The old system sucked and I never won anything from it, but the new system sucks too and has objectively worse odds.
Saying the odds are better now, because you couldn't even participate in the old system is a myopic way of coming at this discourse. From this standpoint, literally any system they implemented would be an improvement to you since you were never able to engage with the predecessor anyway. You're stuck defending modern-trash because the trash that came before it was less accessible trash. Why do that to yourself? Both systems are toxic garbage for different reasons.

Under the old system, people peed in bottles and abused macros and botting programs to click for them while they weren't there. The GMs didn't even do anything, even when you'd win a plot and still have like 20 people just standing outside your house for 10 hours afterwards. It was shit. But at least if you could participate in it, your odds were like 1:50 at worst and the auto-demolition was on through most of that system's lifespan, so we'd get new homes coming available sometimes. But to participate, you'd have to either break the rules or plant yourself at your pc for several hours. It's trash.

Under the new system, the lottery is basically gridlocked now because there's no demolition and private demand is absurd and we're still dealing with FC ward exclusivity tying up the remaining plots. The entire community fights over 3-4 plots every week. Because there's no real barrier to entry and no reason not to try, hundreds of people bid on a single plot. Dozens bid "just for the hell of it." Solo FC ownership was heavily incentivized due to FC-wards being easy pickings, which led to many people leaving their friends' free companies and sitting in an FC of like 4 alts. Every week when the "results" day happens, it's a saltmine on twitter, reddit, and the main forums. By making the housing system accessible (good), Square made the system's disappointment accessible too (bad). Thousands of people every week get to be bitter, jaded, and disappointed. It's trash.

It's all trash. As someone who didn't bot or rmt or even win anything ever, it's all trash. I don't get why everyone's knee-jerk reaction to this current bad system is to be like "at least it's better than the old system" when this isn't even true. They're both equally terrible. Their pros and cons are effectively the same. The old one was less accessible, but had objectively less competition. The new one is more accessible, but has so much competition that you're forgiven if you give up hope and don't participate at all. The old one created potent toxicity and bitterness in a few people willing to participate in it. The new one spreads misery efficiently throughout the entire community every week. The old one incentivized botting and unhealthy playstyles. The new one incentivizes shell FC ownership and the creation of free companies for selfish ends rather than community oriented ones. FYI, bots and RMTers are still winning under this current system, because they can use their numbers to pad their odds at a plot, and they were likely a huge beneficiary of those FC plots as well. Submarine ownership is free gil independent of the market; there's no reason rmters wouldn't take advantage. They already did before this, but now with square just handing the housing game to any free company with a month on its lifespan, they really handed it to realmoney traders. Both systems are trash. Both systems are trash. "Oh at least it's better than what we had" no it isn't. They're both trash.

The supply problem is at the root. We need more homes. Until this gets addressed, every solution will be a band-aid that fails to yield results long term (and by "long term" I mean literally a month after its implementation.