Housing: Purchase Timer - Alternative Idea

[Penthea]

Yeah, as someone on Mateus I'm aware of the FC that consists of two people that own half a whole deal in Goblet, but reading up on that, they purchased all their plots waaaay long ago when Mateus was considered a super unpopulated server.

I see what you mean on lottery now, and it would be shitty to enforce that on servers that don't have that problem, I see that now and didn't think beforehand, my apologies.

Quite alright. I'm just glad that you see now that lottery isn't a fix, and that it can actually disrupt things on servers.

Multiple accounts is a problem too, though that's gotta cost a heck ton to those with multiple accounts, which kudos to them I guess <u>; As much as it could be easy to add more housing to fit the demand, that would also mean adding housing to servers that don't need it and keeping underpopulated places underpopulated, while overpopulated vice versa.

But at this point, where do we go from here? Should different worlds have different rules based on population? How can SE ease this? Even after the possible additions of the Ishgard housing, what's to stop this issue from repeating when the population inevitably swells again?

I think that if SE were interested in having different housing systems catered to each server we would have seen something like that by now. It would actually cost too much time and money to do it anyway because every server is different and their situations can change. What might be a great solution one year could end up being detrimental as the server's population changes. Such a system would need constant monitoring.

World visiting is obviously intended to more evenly spread out the player population in the data centres and a side effect of this would be less competition for housing on highly populated servers, and long time empty plots finally being bought on quiet servers. Without adding any houses SE will be increasing the amount of players who have access to houses. Servers get bloated because something draws players there, and they become disinclined to leave even if it means never getting a house. With world visiting they can change their home server, get a house and still visit any server on the same data centre. It will be the best of both worlds for a huge amount of players.

World visiting is an example of a change that can positively affect the housing system to any server regardless of population size. I am inclined to think that these are the sort of changes SE are interested in. It does make sense for them to want to introduce features and systems that can positively affect any player and not just some. It makes the benefits far more uniform, which in turn means it's cheaper to develop and easier to maintain.

It will be interesting to see how Ishgard housing is done. Well it's not confirmed but SE strongly hinted at it. I hope they will surprise us with a non-traditional ward system. For example all plot sizes be the same but you choose the size house to build. Not all plots being equal is another of the many issues with the current system.

[Levin_Azure]

It would definitely be nice to have a large house in the future, but I've written that off as a fever dream at the rate I manage to save gil, haha! If we could build our houses up in a manner, that'd be superb, though of course they'd have to do some landscaping changes for the current housing areas.

I don't know terribly much on the raw details of world visiting yet, but I wasn't sure if we would still have our primary worlds, and if it'd cost anything to change primary worlds within the same data center. [If there's a list of said raw details, a point in that direction would be greatly appreciated <3]

[Penthea]

I don't know terribly much on the raw details of world visiting yet, but I wasn't sure if we would still have our primary worlds, and if it'd cost anything to change primary worlds within the same data center. [If there's a list of said raw details, a point in that direction would be greatly appreciated <3]

There is no exact date for world visiting but we do know it will be before 5.0. So it's going to be in a few weeks or months.

From what I recall world visiting will be pretty simple. You go to a main aetheryte in a capital city and from there you can choose a server on your data centre to visit. You can use the market board on other servers but you can buy houses only on your home server. What this means for someone like you is that you can leave Mateus to get a house but you can still visit that server to interact with any friends you have that stayed there.

If you look at your top right of your ui there should be a little house icon and your server name near the mini map (assuming you did not move these elements). That is something added pretty recently to the ui, and it's there to indicate what server you're currently on. When you visit another server the name will change to that server.

SE have said that when world visiting is introduced there will be free server transfers. If you are thinking about leaving your server to get a house I suggest you start planning now.

Even though your chances of getting a house will rise you obviously would be one of a large number of players who will move to find a plot. There's still a chance you'll find no empty plots. Make some alts on other servers, have a look at what's available, how much and where. Make sure you have enough gil to buy any class of plot of your desired size so that you won't miss a chance because you lack a bit of gil. If you go to the Land Pricing tab in this link you can see the prices of each class of plot for each size.

Along with world visiting the data centres will be split differently. Below shows the data centres after the split. World visiting does not allow you to visit worlds on another data centre. So if you're changing server choose carefully so you don't end up separated from friends on other servers. The data centre names in the red boxes indicate new data centres that will be created with the split.

[AriesMouse]

Pantea, I see your issue with the lottery system, but personally still think it could be workable, assuming SE is gong to double down and keep the system we have.
There could be ways to make it work, they just need to be explored.
Put a cap on how many people can try to join a lottery for a house (based on house size).
Keep the random timers as is still, so if a house gets no lottery attention, then it just carries on as it normally would if there wasn't a lottery at all (thus keeping servers like yours functioning as they are).

I get that you dislike the lottery system very strongly, for a reason I honestly don't fully understand, but it would honestly help things rather than make them worse, if implemented properly. Again, this is only if SE insists on keeping the placard spam mentality.
And personally, I think giving more people a chance as a house is a positive, not a negative. We shouldn't regard our fellow players as negatives/threats to what we might want in the game. More people being able to have a chance at a house is a good thing, and people being able to sign up for a house, then return to playing the game itself, is a good thing. Keeping select people with an excess of free time as the only people that can get houses is bad. Making people waste hours upon hours at a placard button spamming and not playing the game is bad.

Ideally, instanced housing would be the best, but if that isn't happening, we do genuinely need to consider the next best option, and while this might not be it entirely, it's a step up from what we have now.

And Levin, I'm sorry you're having troubles on this server getting a house. Part of the problem is the demo timer being off. It was a bit easier while that was still going and houses were turning over on a more regular basis. =\

[Penthea]

Pantea, I see your issue with the lottery system, but personally still think it could be workable, assuming SE is gong to double down and keep the system we have.

I get that you dislike the lottery system very strongly, for a reason I honestly don't fully understand, but it would honestly help things rather than make them worse, if implemented properly. Again, this is only if SE insists on keeping the placard spam mentality.

The problem with placard spam isn't the placard, it's the lack of housing. Taking the placard out of the equation doesn't magically fix anything. All that lottery would do is change the method of acquisition. It will not grant more even distribution of plots. It will not create more houses. It will not remove the rng placards produce because the nature of lottery is rng.

Placard spam is only an issue on servers where the wards are always full. It's little more than an annoyance on servers that always have empty plots. Surely this suggests that the problem with housing acquisition isn't the placard, but is instead the amount of houses and their distribution among active accounts.

The only thing lottery would help with is players who either don't have the time to or don't want to placard spam, who also happen to be on a server where the wards are always full. This means on servers where placard spam isn't a problem lottery would actually cause housing acquisition disruption because it would force a waiting time for purchase regardless of how long the land has been empty, and it would potentially add rng that wasn't there before because multiple players could end up bidding for one plot instead of getting several plots separately through placards.

Then there's the fact that the ease of participation would increase the amount of competition for each plot, so the chances of getting a plot can drop due to that alone.

Never mind how players who hold multiple accounts would be granted a very clear advantage with lottery. They have an advantage with placard spam now but only if they risk their accounts by engaging in botting, and many won't do it in case they get reported. With lottery SE would essentially be approving the clear abuse of odds players with multiple accounts would easily be able to do. It would actually encourage people to buy extra accounts to tip the odds in their favour.

A monthly sub doesn't cost much. Almost anyone with a job can easily afford to pay for a second or even third account. Especially if they only moonlight on paying for the extra accounts while bidding, then hand over fc lead to a character on their main account as soon as they win a plot, and then not pay the sub of their alt accounts until they want to start bidding again.

Sorry but I struggle to see how lottery could be argued as a legitimate improvement when there are so many obvious problems with it that dramatically outweigh any gains.

[Elamys]

The problem with placard spam isn't the placard, it's the lack of housing. Taking the placard out of the equation doesn't magically fix anything. All that lottery would do is change the method of acquisition. It will not grant more even distribution of plots. It will not create more houses. It will not remove the rng placards produce because the nature of lottery is rng.

The placard spam is a huge problem. It encourages - on certain servers, requires - an extremely unhealthy, mentally draining playstyle, for the exact same results as a lottery would provide. Unless you're the only person at that plot, you have to sit there and spam the placard. Taking a break to use the restroom, stretch, eat, do something else for a while, risks losing the plot. And then you may not even be the one at the plot that was lucky enough to click at the exact moment it became available. That is obscenely, objectively terrible. Houses can be locked for as little as an hour or even longer than 14. But unless you already have a house, on several servers, that's your only option to get your foot in the door. On any server where placard spam "isn't a problem" that means there are already open plots ready to be purchased elsewhere, and they can buy said plot then relocate. They don't have to spam a placard unless they don't have the money to do that.

Nobody is expecting the lottery system to fix the whole system. But it will make it so people can do something that isn't awful. Yes, it might (will) increase competition, but I'd rather see that, then see people stuck having to mindlessly click the placard over and over for hours on end for the slim chance at getting one. And I think you're overestimating how many people are going to be so desperate for a house that they are willing to pay real money for a bunch of service accounts, get them all up to the point that they can buy a house, then lock themselves out of ever being in another FC. Increased competition is really the only downside here, and if they want to counteract that, they can raise house prices to the point where you have to actually work to afford one again. They never should have been lowered in the first place.

[MaybeOliverB]

Ah yes, blame the 0.01% again

[Levin_Azure]

I appreciate the info on the world stuff Penthea! I knew about which servers would be connected beforehand, and will be happily connected with most of my friends in Crystal thankfully. I just didn't know about the raw details of if you could buy/sell and such between different worlds. I'm guessing that SE has taken into account a lot of the populace that is in the servers currently, and divied them up accordingly to be as even as possible. Which in that case, "should" make housing a bit better, especially if Ishgard housing comes out to create that nice wiggle room.

Lottery would be a unique solution to a popular server like Mateus, but it definitely gets in the way of others to put it in short.

And thanks Aries, I recently moved to Mateus in December because I was too impatient to wait for free transfers, mainly in the sense that my girlfriend started playing and started over here with some of her friends (Wasn't gonna miss out on her beginning days on FF14). My friends from Behemoth followed me here as well, leaving behind a small plot in Kugane, that was a really nice location (Had a bell and market board right in front of it, I loved that convenience.)

I'm eagerly waiting for news/solutions to these problems, but I can at least enjoy playing the game since there's so much to do. I've got a couple of retainer pages full of furniture I made just itching to be placed, but it looks like they'll need to wait until (hopefully) the new server deal.

[Raenori]

Would really like to see them crackdown on clear abuses and open up a true lottery instead of the click fest it currently is.

It's super frustrating seeing like 10 people spam clicking at unhealthy rates for unhealthy amounts of time to grab houses when there's entire wards of 1 man shell FCs owned by the same handful of people. Even when they added new wards, we saw real estate people with multiple service accounts buy up a ton of plots for shell FCs and name them crap like "Outpost #1" and numbered so on, showing there was a clear abuse.

[Levin_Azure]

I recently tried purchasing a plot in the goblet, and sat there for a few hours on end despite telling myself I wouldn't do it. I had some alone time to watch videos on a second monitor while occasionally checking, but whenever people arrived, it was click fest and nothing else. One of the bigger problems I was faced with was people with their friends/FC members coming over to muscle in, troll, and do whatever to drive others away (Jumping all around, trying to instigate conversation to distract, going out to advertise the plot) Another problem is you and 10 others could be sitting there for 10 hours, and someone else who decided they wanted to relocate could do it right then and there, erasing those 10 hours you spent mindlessly clicking. I'm not trying to advocate for the lottery system again in specific, but I'm begging SE on a fix for this, anything but this. I blame myself for subjecting myself to this, but is it really too much to ask for a house for my FC? <w>;