Implement a lottery for house plots

[Vladmiere]

But it's not fair and that is what people are trying to point out. In regard to FCs as it stands right now ALL FCs are on equal footing, and you can bet that any FC that wants a place or to upgrade has been planning this for months. Thus they are guaranteed to have someone with time off. With your system you put smaller FCs at a severe disadvantage to larger FCs that can just throw numbers at the lotto system. While it sucks, the way we have it now quite literally puts all FCs and all individuals on as equal a footing as possible.

The real question is which is more fair? A narrow window of a few minutes logging in to claim a plot initially or a more broad window that gives more people time to log in and place a bid themselves.

Lottery? Fair?

How is it more fair to make getting a plot being 100% based on luck? I worked hard to get my house. I didn't win the patch day lottery of logging in and I didn't randomly stumble upon many millions of gil. I worked for months to be able to afford a house and I faithfully camped the aetheryte waiting for a demolished plot.

The current system sucks but your suggestion would make it even worse. Your post reeks of someone who hasn't got a house and just wants to punish anyone who has a better chance than they do of getting one.

Why not pour your energy into thinking of a way that would benefit all players instead of simply changing who gets a house?

I empathize with your situation because you are not the only one who has gone through that. I also have done the exact same point you made. I have bought many houses since the first days that housing opened up. I think you are making a mistake trying to make things personal. The point is to create a way that benefits more people because the current system only supports a small amount of players. I am not saying it is a fair system but a .001% chance is still a better chance then none at all which covers most of the players forcing them to go through the same scenario you currently went through. I am only speaking about the initial rush for housing plots which most of the playerbase cannot participate in. As said above entire countries and time zones are disadvantaged. This method itleast removes such restrictions. Its more of a casual/real world time line constriction over in game advantages.

[Penthea]

TThe point is to create a way that benefits more people because the current system only supports a small amount of players.

Your suggestion would still only support a small amount of players. Have you forgotten that the main problem is that there aren't enough houses? What we need is more residency options, not more restrictions.

[Vladmiere]

Your suggestion would still only support a small amount of players. Have you forgotten that the main problem is that there aren't enough houses? What we need is more residency options, not more restrictions.

I already said that is a much larger and glaring issue. I agree with you 100% but once more 4 years of constant threads about the current system has yet to produce any changes. What we need are changes that itleast makes the CURRENT system a little more bearable. Any increase that lets a larger swath of players get a shot at something is still heads over better then what we got. Not sure what about that is an issue with you? Once more you are speaking of a situation that for 4 years has resulted in nothing despite small nods like apartments but I am after realistic ideas that SE may consider that makes tweaks to what we already have. What SE is more willing to implement to somewhat fix a broken system.

And several points no one seems to make is this current system supports gil selling and RMT more so then a lottery system would. Who is more likely to log on to beat the rush. Someone whos livlihood based on RMT sales or people who play a game for fun but would still have a week to log in to itleast have a shot at a plot sale at a reasonable price.

[Airget]

I already said that is a much larger and glaring issue. I agree with you 100% but once more 4 years of constant threads about the current system has yet to produce any changes.

This is because of the implementation of FC Workshops, Diadem and content which would cause you to lose all progress if a FC wanted to move.

The reason why no substantial changes have been made yet is because they needed to introduce the ability to move with the new Housing area.

By adding the new housing area and the ability to move they first need to see the results before they decide to add more housing.

Once the results are in I am confident they will push to add in more housing because now they have the means to allow players to move if they wish as well as introduced the 4th Housing Location.

I get the frustration that it's taken this long but you have to understand a things for a logistics point of view. Sure maybe they could blindly double the amount of housing locations they have but then what happens if 50% of them don't get used? Then they've wasted resources that could be better spent elsewhere because they can't just remove these wards because they're not being used.

They have to be smart with how they implement additional wards and that means seeing how Shirogane fills up before considering additional wards.

[Penthea]

And several points no one seems to make is this current system supports gil selling and RMT more so then a lottery system would.

Lets be real here. Players desperate for a house won't really care if a system supports RMT if said system gives them a better chance of getting a house. Sure your system would lessen the support for RMT but it would also reduce the chance for players to get a house. On the latter alone it's a major fail from the player's perspective.

Also there aren't enough houses to be the bulk of support for RMT. There are plenty of other gil sinks. Some gear cost more than a house.

[Crysten]

The real question is which is more fair? A narrow window of a few minutes logging in to claim a plot initially or a more broad window that gives more people time to log in and place a bid themselves.

They're the same thing. RNG based. The only thing your suggestion does is increase the amount of competition (since everyone can bid) and by extension, disappointment. Which isn't an improvement.

The endgame is that someone gets lucky and gets a house, and everyone else will whine about it. Exactly the same thing that'll happen tomorrow.

You can put a ribbon on a turd, but it's still a turd.

Your suggestion would still only support a small amount of players. Have you forgotten that the main problem is that there aren't enough houses? What we need is more residency options, not more restrictions.

/thread

[Penthea]

Lottery? Fair?

How is it more fair to make getting a plot being 100% based on luck? I worked hard to get my house. I didn't win the patch day lottery of logging in and I didn't randomly stumble upon many millions of gil. I worked for months to be able to afford a house and I faithfully camped the aetheryte waiting for a demolished plot.

The current system sucks but your suggestion would make it even worse. Your post reeks of someone who hasn't got a house and just wants to punish anyone who has a better chance than they do of getting one.

Why not pour your energy into thinking of a way that would benefit all players instead of simply changing who gets a house?

[Vanitas]

This thread has been thoroughly entertaining.

[Alien_Gamer]

I don't see how a lottery could benefit the player base as a whole, none of your examples actually work to support your arguments.

-The total pool of eligible people does not change between what we have now and your lottery. Its fine for you to say programming magic to filter out or prioritize people but in reality thats impossible to do fairly; a program can't see whats actually going on to be able to judge all edge cases and make an accurate assessment of who should be prioritized over someone else. So the only result from this is SE is unfairly picking who should have a house and who shouldn't. That is worse than what we currently have.

-The amount of time people have to get a house in your system would be set to 1 week. Currently we have as much time as we want to get a house and on some worlds there were houses left open after a week so you'd only be making it worse for them. Are you going to suggest treating players on one world differently than on others? That would be playing favorites and end up worse than what we have now.

-The current system gives players control over when and how they try to get a house. Your system removes that control and replaces it with RNG. This doesn't make for a better system for the players, removing control is a bad thing. Always. You can claim its still random if you get in or not but thats not true, it just appears so. You log in at X time, if there are Y people ahead of you then you wait your turn. its not a random number thats generated, thats competition for the same resource. A player still has control over when and how fast they try to log in to get a house. Just because the housing resource is limited it does not make it random if you get it.

-The claim that some players are at a disadvantage due to the time is irrelevant. Here's a couple pertinent facts to consider: 1 the maintenance patch must end at some point in time. 2. that time will be inconvenient for someone somewhere no matter what the time is. 3. Access to servers can't be staggered by time zone because multiple time zones can access the same server. 4. Because all times are equally valid in that scenario, you do the patch when your business is open. (this is the same for all patches, not just housing). 5. Players knew when this patch was going to hit weeks ago, they all had plenty of time to make arrangements to make sure they could log in if they chose to do so. 6. If players can't make time for it, thats not the fault of the developers and the developers are under no obligation to make changes for each special case.

-Your world has too much competition to get a house. This is a player created problem and your lottery system doesn't alleviate it in any way. it only changes it from log in to get a house to roll a die to get a house. Your odds of getting a house don't actually improve by having a week long lottery because you're still competing against everyone else that is in the market for a house. If anything it will lower your odds because those people who couldn't make time for the patch, can now buy into the lottery for it.

-Lotteries are not more fair than first come first serve. A lottery itself is a fair system for distribution but in this case you're removing players from being able to control when and how they try to get a house. See previous comments about that.

The ONLY thing your suggestion does is change when you try to get a house. It does not improve the system for anyone and would make it worse for some. You are trading the headache of waking up early to get the house with RNG to possibly get a house.

[Vladmiere]

I am not saying it is the best idea but you assume an awful lot. The current system gives some control yes but only to the top end as it stands. The lottery would shift it out of the hands of people who manipulate the system (against the tos mind you) to flip houses for a profit. I am not going into specifics but there are several third-party pipelines were such houses are advertised and when you have around 50 for sale at all times on Balmung despite how easy it should be to track and punish the people nothing is really done about it.

To say that Balmung created its problem is also twisting words wrong. It is not Balmungs fault that people who were on here for a year before ARR was even released should be forced to move if they choose not too and there is already an unfair discrepancy from one server to the next. Higher prices are proof enough of that. The amount of time it would take for certain people to get a house would still be near the same. This is only changed for the initial rush of plots to give people who have the gil for the property but not the means of time. Having to do a rush against an entire server in a game centered around casual play is going against its own themes.

And finally, server imbalances is also unfair by nature of population competing. This idea is just that an idea. It can be altered to only have a lottery for those worlds that they are constantly restricting new character creation on and still leave the smaller servers alone if need be. And yes the pool of eligible people would change because of the first come first serve setup we have now it would keep prices lower at the cost of an overall lower % for certain people who have the means and the methods to find these houses. And no our current system is quite unfair. It's the same people that get the plots for the most part. Its the norm over the exception because I have bought houses in the past from said people before it even became against the tos.