Housing Lottery Idea

[Ittapupu_Berry]

After standing in front of three different Placards and spamming them for hours, all day for a few days straight, I've had time to think of a better way for players to get a plot.

I'm only suggesting that instead of players spamming the sign, they could simply apply to a lottery. Keep the RNG timer, that's fine but why not have an RNG to decide who gets the plot? Every other thing can stay the same, (relocation rules, timer, whatever).

We pay a lot of money to be able to spend time on this game. I want to spend mine playing it instead of frying my brain in front of a sign.

This was just a thought so feel free to add your thoughts of why it could or couldn't work or suggest improvements to make it viable.

[Losara]

Think a similar thread was brought up in the past. Ended up with a heated debate from both sides about the idea.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...or-house-plots

Some people dislike the idea of 100% RNG being a factor in getting a house. It would be even harsher if you were aiming for a specific plot and 300-400 people also hypothetically signed up to be the in the lottery for that location. Can agree that it can be hard to get your foot in the door but currently the best way to do so is to buy any random house then relocate at a later stage to the house that you like that has a plot opened up.

I prefer the idea of instanced housing myself where you are able to see the plot location with a generic housing skin over each of the other locations to reduce server load however you are able to see your own house/garden. This could open up housing to everyone and also create common social areas if implemented correctly.

[Penthea]

The lottery would probably render plots having more competition than usual. A lot of people are unable to or cannot be bothered to placard spam but they would take part in a zero effort lottery system. I imagine that on highly populated servers the amount of lottery entries could be massive.

It would grant an advantage to people who own multiple accounts because they could enter the lottery more than once. House flippers (yes they're still around, it's just harder to sell now) and gil sellers are sometimes the same people, and they could enter the lottery on several accounts too. Groups of people who want to share a house would also have an advantage. If you could enter lotteries on multiple servers, then that's another way to get an advantage.

While I dislike placard spam, I'm not fond of this idea. I don't like the idea of fixing bad rng with potentially even worse rng. Increasing the amount of available plots would be a better solution for everyone. Well actually scrapping wards and replacing it with instanced housing would be a better solution but that's not going to happen.

[MsQi]

Personally I don't care about having a plot but I want a bigger place. I think housing should be instanced by default and anyone who can pay the set price can have a permanent house. Plots should be an extra for those that care about being in a neighborhood. People who want them can compete for them. If you get one your house appears on the plot (assuming you got the size of plot that fits your house). If you lose the plot it goes back to being instanced.

[Beckett]

Honestly the way this thread is presented makes it sound much more appealing than the other thread. It's basically down to RNG who gets the plot anyway, so why not go full RNG with it and make it so players don't have to waste their time?

The downside is that, at the moment the only people camping the placards are a small group of dedicate players(/bots). When you open it up to a click-and-forget system, you're going to get a lot more competition. So while you may be envisioning a 1/3 chance of getting that plot, because there were only two other players hanging out next to the placard, it might actually wind up being something more like a 1/50 chance.

We also don't know how difficult it would be to program. While we might think it's a simple fix, it might actually be something that would be far too time consuming for them to bother with.

[Seraphor]

The lottery could work as a last resort deal.
As the cost of the plot decreases over time, you can choose to purchase that plot at any time you like providing you're willing to fork out the gil for it, but if after it gets to its lowest point and theres still no buyer, then it goes to the lottery winner.

[Geigerette]

What is placard spam?

[Bourne_Endeavor]

What is placard spam?

Houses now have a randomized timer on when a previously demolished plot can be purchased again. You have to continuously click on the placard to see if it's available since they don't put any indication on when it'll release. This was done to mitigate house flipping as before you literally just demo'd your house and someone could immediately buy it—usually for several times the original price.

[Jandor]

Radical idea. Scrap personal housing, radically overhaul apartments, move apartment blocks to the cities and other places.

[Shougun]

Radical idea. Scrap personal housing, radically overhaul apartments, move apartment blocks to the cities and other places.

I've wanted to see uldah from up high for a while now, would be very cool to be able to own a place in the upper areas. Not important to me that they scrap personal housing per say but I'd love for the radical overhaul to apartments . Imo the name too, dunno about others but the name is in the way of feeling ownership because you can't own what you rent, minor gripe for a system with larger issues I know but yeah lol.