Housing Roulette was an absolute trash idea.

[Renathras]

As the US economy has proven, a true Free Market is not sustainable and will always be abused by the few at the detriment to the many.

What are you talking about? The US doesn't have a Free Market. The US has pretty heavily regulated markets. It's not a Command & Control economy, but it's not a Free Market. There are tons of regulations on economic activity in the US, licensing, quality and consumer protection, minimum wages, and so on. Those are all regulatory constraints on an economy and not a Free Market. (NOTE: You may think they're good, and that's fine, but it's not a Free Market, it's a Regulated Market system. If anything, it shows how cronyism thrives in systems of market regulation, not the evils of unfettered markets...)

That said: The placard clicking is terrible. I don't know why anyone would want that. It gives the illusion of agency when you really have none.

Imo, the simple solution is when they introduce new Wards to do so with some lottery and some placard (what I initially thought they were going to do) and let people do one or the other (you would be prohibited from the placard game while having an open bid so you couldn't put in a bid as "insurance" and then go placard clicking - you'd have to pick one or the other). Then we'd find out really quick which worked better and which people liked more.

People like OP aren't complaining because they can't get a house. I'm on a high pop server and there were tons of houses with 2, 1, or even 0 bids. The house I just got had 0 bids on it.

What they're complaining about is they didn't get the Large (or possibly Medium) house they wanted in the prime location where everyone else also wanted it and there was a lot of competition, and for some reason, they imagine if it was placard clicking, those same people (and more) wouldn't have just been spamming the placard and them lose it anyway. It's a person pissed that they didn't get the thing they wanted - that tons of other people also wanted - and blaming the system instead of themselves, and who want special advantages like "If I own a Small I should have a leg up over some new Sprout in the game buying that Large that I want."

Some special kind of entitlement, that.

If you have a house, be content with what you have.

If you don't, go for a Small, there are plenty up for grabs since everyone went for the Mediums and Larges.

If you aren't happy with either of those options...I'm sorry? Life sadly doesn't always give you what you want, I guess? /shrug

EDIT:

but is it worse to give it to a random person or someone who grinded the most money

It's worse to give it to the person who grinded the most money.

Seriously, you leveled Crafting. Good for you. That doesn't mean you should have whatever you want at the expense of everyone else. People have to have 3-5M for a Small, 18-21M for a Medium, and god knows how much for a Large already. That's the price. You don't get to further tip the scale to you just because you grind gil so you can have imaginary advantages over other people. This isn't Davos.

So legit question, no snark as I am not a game developer and don't know how things work. People have argued that instanced housing for everyone isn't possible due to things like server space, but then they give everyone an island sanctuary.

People don't actually want instanced server housing. Apartments were already that. People want to make houses in communal areas where they can see and be seen by others and have people over and have a larger canvas to make stuff on. Many (not all, but many) people with houses don't want them to be instanced like the Apartments. If we had Apartments where you could do all the house things (larger size, plants), people would still be upset because that isn't what people collectively want.