Housing lottery system takes entirely too long and is poorly designed.

[Alycen]

It's still so wild to me that some of you are taking this tone with people who chose a server for whatever reason and want to partake into a feature of the game that we should all have equal access to. Just wild.

Not a single person who decides to play this game (or any game for that matter) should have to do research about where to play in advance. I can imagine some new people choose servers because they like the name. Being locked out of a major feature for that random choice is an unreasonable disgrace on the behalf of those who designed it and none of you should be supporting it.

[Jojoya]

It's still so wild to me that some of you are taking this tone with people who chose a server for whatever reason and want to partake into a feature of the game that we should all have equal access to. Just wild.

Not a single person who decides to play this game (or any game for that matter) should have to do research about where to play in advance. I can imagine some new people choose servers because they like the name. Being locked out of a major feature for that random choice is an unreasonable disgrace on the behalf of those who designed it and none of you should be supporting it.

I agree that no one should have to do the research, should have to make such a choice.

But the system is what it is. Knowing that it could be otherwise and should be otherwise doesn't make it so.

The feedback has been getting left for years. It was getting left back when only Balmung was having serious issues with plot availability.

SE, for whatever reason only they know, has not done what is needed to correct the underlying problem of supply to an ever-growing population creating ever increasing demand for more plots. They keep slapping band-aids on it. Tweak the system here, add a ward there but that's it.

We can't fix things as players. The most we can do is take advantage of what opportunity exists if we want a house that badly and continue to constructively ask SE to implement a real solution instead of band-aids. If they're not certain how to do it, they can study the housing systems in other MMORPGs.

I get that the ward system was an attempt to offer something more unique than players get with the housing in most games but it is not working when the player base is this large. And yet the wards could be part of a system that does work by having the ward a common area that players pass through to enter their personal (or FC) houses. It doesn't have to start over from scratch. It just needs to be reimagined.

So do some of us come off a bit callous? Probably, but we've been fighting this fight for a lot longer than a large part of the player base has been playing the game. We know things aren't going to suddenly change assuming that they're going to change at all.

All we can do is encourage players to take advantage of what does exist while the battle to get SE to reconsider housing design goes on.

Welcome to the trenches. Maybe someone will come up with an idea that hasn't been suggested in the past that gets SE's attention.

[Ayan_Calvesse]

It's still so wild to me that some of you are taking this tone with people who chose a server for whatever reason and want to partake into a feature of the game that we should all have equal access to. Just wild.

Not a single person who decides to play this game (or any game for that matter) should have to do research about where to play in advance. I can imagine some new people choose servers because they like the name. Being locked out of a major feature for that random choice is an unreasonable disgrace on the behalf of those who designed it and none of you should be supporting it.

I feel you - however.

If you want to optimize your chances of success; in all things then you would want to be informed. This goes from raids; rotations; crafting and even housing. You don't have to study up on it but then your choosing the sub-par route to get to your goal and that's fine. Also consider that Dynamis transfers are "free" so the only cost is the annoyance of being on a different DC. The issue of Housing supply on a well established server where billions of gil in commerce moves daily and folks just open PFs to beg for money to get what used to be something of an achievement to pay for a bid in the first place is the unfortunate side-effect of a forever inflating economy because SE has not made a effective mechanism to remove gil from the market; merely shift it to other players.

Its not even a matter of study - by level 20 you could see that Balmungs wards are full; people then have to prioritize whats more important to them - having a house or being a Balmung native; but you are not locked out of the feature - the difficulty of accomplishing the task is only different for you because of your choices. Its like how someone playing a Healer might find getting into trial is harder because there are only 2 slots vs the 4 that DPS have; so you will have a differing experience because of a choice you made. Or how getting a fully crafted suit of level 100 armor will cost you significantly more because your not a crafter. As the boundries of worlds in FF diminish the world you reside on will be less and less important and thats probably why folks are taking the bet to get a good Dynamis house now rather then when SE does more cross world stuff - something to consider.