Housing Roulette was an absolute trash idea.

[Seraphor]

I believe you get around 80% back of the plot's cost if you let it get demo. What doesn't make sense to me is I believe you get nothing back if you relinquish the house yourself. You would think they would reward you for giving up the house willingly but nope the only way to get your investment back is to let the auto demo take the house. I could be wrong ofc since I haven't relinquished a house since SB but back in SB they didn't give you back anything. If that has changed then that's a good thing at least.

I suppose the logic is that you chose to relinquish your house, and therefore chose to give up that asset. Being a Gil sink and all, housing is meant to take all of your money.
However if your house gets auto-demolished, that could be an event outside of your control. It's literally an automatic process. So to lose all your money for something you didn't decide to do could be considered unfair.

It's not that 'relinquishing a house doesn't fully reimburse you', because it's not meant to. It's that the safety net of auto-demolition serves as a financial loop-hole to those who want a reimbursement.
In SE's fantasy land where everyone is honest and selfless and paragons of discretion, (the very same world where they thought people would willingly hand over gil for houses they mistakenly got for free when The Empyreum came out with it's "ticket 0" bug) then of course if you're looking to get rid of your house you would simply take the loss, and not try to take advantage of said loophole.

[MrJPtheAssassin]

Correct outside of transferring to new servers. If you relinquish your plot you get full plot price back + extra for lost furniture. They reward you for moving to help populate.

Moved my alt off Zurvan today to Marilith and was reimbursed the full price of my mansion + extra.

tbh I didn't even know that. I thought demo was the only way to get most of your money back. Mmm, I have a lot to think about now bc my raid leader wants me to move to cactuar and join their FC. I have been very hesitant bc of my large. Even tho I hate where my large is at and want to move to an med or lrg somewhere else, I didn't want to just give it up and lose all the gil I put into it. Edit: Oh wait does it have to be a new server? If so I guess I'm still stunk on jenova XD nvm

[Raim]

They need to shorten the bidding cycles. If you can't manage to login without needing a 9 day window, you probably don't really need a house anyway. You'd just be taking it from players who use it more actively.

[Avoidy]

The old housing system was a steaming plate of diarrhea.
The new housing system is a smaller, solid turd in a bowl.

People are seriously out here defending the new system, which 90% of the time has 100 people bidding on a single plot, like "well at least we're not eating diarrhea anymore! *chews turds* I mean it could always be worse haha! The turd is smaller now!" Yeah, the new system is objectively better than the old system. But the old system was so bad, so atrocious, so unforgivably shitty, that that isn't saying much. I'm sick of hearing "at least this one's better than what we had before" when what we had before was such a low bar. Under the old system, people were peeing in bottles and pooping in socks so they could stay at their PC for 9 hours straight clicking a placard. Most people were botting. Most of the winners would get their plot and then continue clicking the placard for hours after winning. The old system rewarded cheaters. The new system rewards luck. They're both shit. We need either instanced housing or more wards, don't care which. And before someone on some low population world or something chimes in with "oN mY wOrLd thErE aRe pLenTy oF pLoTs", I'm talking about places that actually need the help, obviously.

They need to shorten the bidding cycles. If you can't manage to login without needing a 9 day window, you probably don't really need a house anyway. You'd just be taking it from players who use it more actively.

This too, if we're stuck with this awful bidding system, then at least shorten the cycles. There's no reason a "Results period" should take this long. Same with the bidding period. Holy hell. And if you win but can't manage to show up for 2 days to click a placard and get your bid, then it should go to the next bidder instead. If #2 wins a plot and the only other bidder is #1, but #2 seriously can't bother to show up, then #1 should get it. Why the hell does it go back out for a second lottery. Such a stupid goddamned system.

[MrJPtheAssassin]

They need to shorten the bidding cycles. If you can't manage to login without needing a 9 day window, you probably don't really need a house anyway. You'd just be taking it from players who use it more actively.

I completely agree. Personally, I rather have a 7-day cycle that way the day a cycle starts is the same each week and you don't have to check the timers menu every day to see if the next cycle has begun or not.

The old housing system was a steaming plate of diarrhea.
The new housing system is a smaller, solid turd in a bowl.

People are seriously out here defending the new system, which 90% of the time has 100 people bidding on a single plot, like "well at least we're not eating diarrhea anymore! *chews turds* I mean it could always be worse haha! The turd is smaller now!" Yeah, the new system is objectively better than the old system. But the old system was so bad, so atrocious, so unforgivably shitty, that that isn't saying much. I'm sick of hearing "at least this one's better than what we had before" when what we had before was such a low bar. Under the old system, people were peeing in bottles and pooping in socks so they could stay at their PC for 9 hours straight clicking a placard. Most people were botting. Most of the winners would get their plot and then continue clicking the placard for hours after winning. The old system rewarded cheaters. The new system rewards luck. They're both shit. We need either instanced housing or more wards, don't care which. And before someone on some low population world or something chimes in with "oN mY wOrLd thErE aRe pLenTy oF pLoTs", I'm talking about places that actually need the help, obviously.



This too, if we're stuck with this awful bidding system, then at least shorten the cycles. There's no reason a "Results period" should take this long. Same with the bidding period. Holy hell. And if you win but can't manage to show up for 2 days to click a placard and get your bid, then it should go to the next bidder instead. If #2 wins a plot and the only other bidder is #1, but #2 seriously can't bother to show up, then #1 should get it. Why the hell does it go back out for a second lottery. Such a stupid goddamned system.

Yeah, the ppl who defend the lottery system get under my skin a lot. Most of us can agree that the old system was bad, really bad, but to act like the lottery system is the one and only way they could had fix the housing system is laughable. Yeah, the lottery system is better than the old system but that's not saying much since I don't think you could have replaced the old system with any worst system. Like anything they could have done would have been better than the old system, that's how bad it was. I just don't want to setter for a system that still is bad just not the worst.

[Stormpeaks]

They need to shorten the bidding cycles. If you can't manage to login without needing a 9 day window, you probably don't really need a house anyway. You'd just be taking it from players who use it more actively.

The fact people say "then people that are working every day will miss on it" is ridiculous, if they cant log in at all in 2 days of result phase, perhaps they shouldnt have a house ? It takes 2 minutes to claim, same for bidding, 1 day to 2 days at most.

9 days is agonizingly slow, and then on top of that, you have to do the walk of shame to the plot you just lost, and see the person decorate it in front of your eyes as you claim your gil, stop this nonsense

[Eraden]

I completely agree. Personally, I rather have a 7-day cycle that way the day a cycle starts is the same each week and you don't have to check the timers menu every day to see if the next cycle has begun or not.



Yeah, the ppl who defend the lottery system get under my skin a lot. Most of us can agree that the old system was bad, really bad, but to act like the lottery system is the one and only way they could had fix the housing system is laughable. Yeah, the lottery system is better than the old system but that's not saying much since I don't think you could have replaced the old system with any worst system. Like anything they could have done would have been better than the old system, that's how bad it was. I just don't want to setter for a system that still is bad just not the worst.

The Lottery was not meant to fix the housing system. There are far too many people who think that the Lottery was meant to fix housing in its entirety. This is a mistaken assumption on their part. It was meant to ensure that everyone gets a fair chance at accessing a limited resource. It works well for that purpose. The only real way to fix the housing system is to supply more houses. A LOT more houses. Either by adding more wards, making instanced houses or upgrading the apartment system, or a combination of all three.

[MrJPtheAssassin]

The Lottery was not meant to fix the housing system. There are far too many people who think that the Lottery was meant to fix housing in its entirety. This is a mistaken assumption on their part. It was meant to ensure that everyone gets a fair chance at accessing a limited resource. It works well for that purpose. The only real way to fix the housing system is to supply more houses. A LOT more houses. Either by adding more wards, making instanced houses or upgrading the apartment system, or a combination of all three.

Yeah, I agree it was never meant to fix the housing as a whole but based on how some of these lottery lovers talk you would think they believe it was. The lottery system does nothing to fix the real problem and that is why I don't like it. I felt the time that went into making the lottery system could had be spent on fitting the real issues with housing and that's the supply. Adding 5 to 10 wards every expac isn't going to keep up with the demand for housing. At this rate, the dev team will always be behind the demand and we never see the issues fixed. Personally, I think the only real fix is instanced houses but even that suggestion has some real pushback. In this thread alone you see nah-sayers trying to shoot down the idea by saying it is not possible and ect. If it's not possible then what should be done? Adding wards at a snail's pace isn't going to help either. Yeah, I don't know anymore. All I know is I hate how the system is and I don't like time and money being spent on band-aid fixes.

[Renathras]

which 90% of the time has 100 people bidding on a single plot,

This isn't true, though. When looking to where I wanted to bid, I checked all the new plots on Lavender Beds. I think I found one Small with 5 bids on it, the rest were 2, 1, or 0 (including the one I bid on), and sometimes, not just that specific plot on that Ward's subdivision, but rather multiple incarnations of that plot across several of the wards. Even the "desired" Smalls tended to have 2 bids on it. That was me checking about 2 days before the deadline. I even found a Medium there right by an Aetherite and MB that had 0 bids on it. I then went over to Goblet and looked around. Same thing. In general, the Mediums had 5-8 bidders and the Smalls had 0-3. I even glanced at a few Larges, and they tended to have 8-12, though some had less than the Mediums.

"90% of the time"? That's not remotely true.

You can say "But but SERVER DEPENDENT"; sure, if you were saying 90% of the time on a handful of servers. But 90% of the time means across all servers and datacenters and wards, and that's not anywhere close to true.

And again: Instanced Housing doesn't work. I and others have addressed this. You people promoting instanced housing need to stop saying "We need instanced housing" and start showing everyone you actually know what it actually is and addressing the problems with it with your suggestions for how to fix those.

...but to act like the lottery system is the one and only way they could had fix the housing system is laughable.

So what's your solution that will fix it and have no downsides and not cost SE far more money than it's worth?

I do agree a 7 day cycle would be nice, though. Or 14 day. Something that works evenly in a week. But I don't think it's necessary, I just don't see it as particularly worse or better. I guess I'm ambivalent on that.

The fact people say "then people that are working every day will miss on it" is ridiculous, if they cant log in at all in 2 days of result phase, perhaps they shouldnt have a house ?

Your family goes on a 4 day vacation. Congratulations, you can't have a house.

Your company has a busy week where you're so tired when you get home you crash instantly. Congratulations, you can't have a house.

You're a student with a lot of homework or tests and don't have time for a few days to login. Congratulations, you can't have a house.

You're in the military as a Reservist (many nations have a few months or a couple years compulsory service) but have your 2 day weekend coming up. Congratulations, you can't have a house.

You're active duty but generally have internet, but for 2 days you go on a march or area way from base. Congratulations, you can't have a house.

You're an EMT/Nurse/Doctor/Fireman and have a long work period then come home and crash after 36 hours of working. Congratulations, you can't have a house.

I could go on...

9 days isn't an eternity. 4 days to claim vs 2 isn't some huge inconvenience for anyone and is a pretty reasonable timeframe. It doesn't catch all situations, but it gives most people a reasonable chance without being onerous. And there's no "walk of shame". In life, you win some and you lose some. No one's shaming you or trying to rub it in your face decorating their house. Most people are just excited they got a house and are playing around with the new systems they hadn't experienced before.

The Lottery was not meant to fix the housing system. There are far too many people who think that the Lottery was meant to fix housing in its entirety. This is a mistaken assumption on their part. It was meant to ensure that everyone gets a fair chance at accessing a limited resource. It works well for that purpose. The only real way to fix the housing system is to supply more houses. A LOT more houses. Either by adding more wards, making instanced houses or upgrading the apartment system, or a combination of all three.

This.

The only ACTUAL solution would be to have infinite servers, because people want specific plots, of which there's only one per Subdivision/two per Ward. And that's impossible.

They can (and should) leverage the Apartment system more, though it won't satisfy everyone in the end. Instanced Housing is a pretty bad idea (as many have said) and people are ignoring that to keep trotting out the buzzword phrase that they don't really understand, but the short version is it would be unstable, require massive spending on what is a niche element of the game a small percent of players actually care about (it'd be like if they devoted half the game's income for a year into JUST PvP for several years), and wouldn't even satisfy since the exterior would be placehold or you'd have IS where you just teleport somewhere and have no customization.

[Avoidy]

This isn't true, though. When looking to where I wanted to bid, I checked all the new plots on Lavender Beds. I think I found one Small with 5 bids on it, the rest were 2, 1, or 0 (including the one I bid on), and sometimes, not just that specific plot on that Ward's subdivision, but rather multiple incarnations of that plot across several of the wards. Even the "desired" Smalls tended to have 2 bids on it. That was me checking about 2 days before the deadline. I even found a Medium there right by an Aetherite and MB that had 0 bids on it. I then went over to Goblet and looked around. Same thing. In general, the Mediums had 5-8 bidders and the Smalls had 0-3. I even glanced at a few Larges, and they tended to have 8-12, though some had less than the Mediums.

"90% of the time"? That's not remotely true.

You're misunderstanding me. When I said 90% of the time, I meant 90% of the lottery cycles that we've had. Obviously in this recent lottery you'd have low amounts of bids, because square released new wards recently. This time was a remarkable exception. But for the next bidding cycle on balmung we'll probably see 30-40 people bidding on a single plot (lots of people relocated which freed up a few plots here and there), and the week after it'll be back to business as usual with a couple of available plots and triple digits. Perhaps it'll get better now that auto demolition is back, but only time will tell on that front.

But yeah, in the lottery before this one, there were like 2 plots available and triple digits on both. And before that it was the same. And before that it was the same. Balmung's just screwed in general though, not gonna lie.