Suggestion For housing

[Flu]

So this whole random timer after demolition thing is ridiculous. I see why it was put into place ( in order to stop people from selling their houses directly) but there are so many better ways that this could be handled, and this is my suggestion:

- A house that has been recently demolished would be placed in an un-purchasable state for a set amount of time( Something like 48hours or so)
- While the house is un-purchasable, players may head to the plot and place their name in at the placard saying they are interested in the plot. Names will be recorded.
- When you are placed down as interested, money is taken from you and placed into a reserve pool.
- At the end of the un-purchasable period, names are lotteried off and the winner will get the plot.
- Money for those who did not win would be returned to them.

Like this post and comment if you like the idea, or throw some suggestions to improve upon this idea as well

[Penthea]

So you want to introduce lottery. You want to target a symptom, the placard timer, instead of the real problem which is the housing shortage.

If there is no shortage of houses there would be no need for the placard timer. That this simple logic escapes people so often amazes me.

Lottery will not increase the amount of houses or home owners. This is why it will not work. All that lottery will do is make a horrible system less inconvenient. We need a real fix, not some dice roll band-aid slapped on to a bad feature that does absolutely nothing to tackle the heart of the issue.

Instanced housing is the only way to make the system equally fair to every player. We need a housing system in which that what another players does cannot under any circumstances affect someone else. Not something that merely introduces a different way to compete in an already awful system.

[Flu]

So you want to introduce lottery. You want to target a symptom, the placard timer, instead of the real problem which is the housing shortage.

If there is no shortage of houses there would be no need for the placard timer. That this simple logic escapes people so often amazes me.

Lottery will not increase the amount of houses or home owners. This is why it will not work. All that lottery will do is make a horrible system less inconvenient. We need a real fix, not some dice roll band-aid slapped on to a bad feature that does absolutely nothing to tackle the heart of the issue.

Instanced housing is the only way to make the system equally fair to every player. We need a housing system in which that what another players does cannot under any circumstances affect someone else. Not something that merely introduces a different way to compete in an already awful system.

Oh, you are absolutely correct. The big picture is to just make it so everyone can get a house, but I would think that this is far harder to implement and will take quite a bit of time. I'm saying for now this is a better option than the random timer. I thought this was obvious and is why it isn't mentioned.

[MorbolvampireQueen6]

a loto system would make the issue worst...
and honestly 70 percent of ppl would be banned .
you think ppl are angry now loto systems would create true anger

[Flu]

a loto system would make the issue worst...
and honestly 70 percent of ppl would be banned .
you think ppl are angry now loto systems would create true anger

How exactly would it make the issue worse? Right now we have many players standing around at a placard, most of them running a keyboard macro, to try and secure the plot for hours on end. At least this way you can place your name down and go off and actually play the game. I fail to see any scenario where the lotto system would make the situation worse than it already is

[Penthea]

How exactly would it make the issue worse?

Players with multiple accounts could enter the lottery for a plot multiple times. There is a famous pair of players on Mateus who own an entire ward. Imagine how many times those two people alone could enter the draw.

Similar to the above multiple players could pool their resources and tip the odds heavily in their favour. Not so much of an issue for private home purchase, but considering a large wealthy fc trying to collect shell fc houses...this could become a serious problem. There are already some wards full of shell fcs and some of them had to deal with the inconvenience of the placard timer. The lottery would make it easier for them to get more plots.

Lottery makes participation easier, which is obviously your intention with your suggestion. However for that convenience you trade it for the above happening, as well as a general increase in competition. Right now a lot of players don't do the placard spam because they don't want to or are unable to. Lottery would be a near zero effort undertaking which would mean the amount of people who are able to compete could dramatically rise (depending on the server), which of course means your odds of winning a plot could be far lower than before.

By introducing lottery SE would be effectively encouraging players to use several accounts, their own or from multiple players, to increase their odds of getting a house. And this is because this would be the best way to get an edge in the competition. Right now a commonly used edge is bots that spam click the placard, but not everyone does that as it has its own risks due to being against the ToS. There would be nothing in the ToS, for obvious reasons, that would prevent multiple accounts from bidding on the same plot. So players could game the lottery system risk-free.

I agree the placard timer is horrendous. But lottery is not the way to fix it.

[Thamorian]

Players with multiple accounts could enter the lottery for a plot multiple times. There is a famous pair of players on Mateus who own an entire ward. Imagine how many times those two people alone could enter the draw.

If it's multiple accounts, thats not really an issue then. That could still fall within 1 private and 1 FC house per account. And the Mateus pair bought all those houses before Mateus became the 2nd RP server. When Mateus used to be a really low pop server and many many many houses across all wards went vacant for months after housing release. Yeah sucks now since Mateus is now a high pop server but you can't really compare their situation to now.

[Penthea]

If it's multiple accounts, thats not really an issue then. That could still fall within 1 private and 1 FC house per account.

The fc house restriction was quietly removed. A player can have 8 fc houses on a server now. Why SE removed it is beyond my understanding. The restriction made sense.

[Dustytome]

Players with multiple accounts could enter the lottery for a plot multiple times. There is a famous pair of players on Mateus who own an entire ward. Imagine how many times those two people alone could enter the draw.

They amassed that before the personal house restrictions were in place though didn't they? I don't recall the timing on that, but if it was before then they could have snagged up to 32 plots between the two of them if they each had 8 character and each character had a personal and an fc house. That's just using one account each. The maximum any one account can acquire per world starting from scratch today is 9, so a total of 4 accounts needed to own an entire ward.

[Penthea]

They amassed that before the personal house restrictions were in place though didn't they? I don't recall the timing on that, but if it was before then they could have snagged up to 32 plots between the two of them if they each had 8 character and each character had a personal and an fc house. That's just using one account each. The maximum any one account can acquire per world starting from scratch today is 9, so a total of 4 accounts needed to own an entire ward.

And yet this restriction will not help if a huge fc wants to collect shell fc houses. Some have already done it. It would be even easier with a lottery system.

We need a system in which the activity of another person cannot possibly affect your chances of getting a house. Lottery will not give us that.

That's true but if someone is using multiple account to enter a lotto, it's an advantage for them but it wouldn't be against the rules. Kinda hard to prevent some form of P2W in MMO's (not really P2W but you know what I mean. more money = more advantages).

That is precisely the problem with the lottery suggestion. It means players with more rl money could get a very significant advantage. And of course fcs with more gil too. It would be turning the housing system into something super capitalist.