REQUEST: Replace the Current Land Purchase Mechanic With A Weighted Lottery

[forumaccount]

TL;DR in bold.

This suggestion isn't to solve the issue of housing availability in its designed exclusivity. It is an alternative solution to the disrespectful waste of player time that is the current land purchasing process.

As it stands, a player is expected to spend a copious amount of real world time attempting to purchase land. Instead of requiring that players spend the better part of a day standing in one place, clicking over and over monotonously, just for the random chance to have the ability to purchase land; simply allow the player to queue up and then go about their play session.

Please replace the current land purchase mechanic with a random queue (or rng roll) that is weighted based on the overall amount of time a player has spent in queues for land purchases (purchase experience if you will), WHILE ALSO giving priority to those without property (private or fc). Make it so that a player must be online to queue and win purchasing rights. If a player, leaves the game during queue, they are dequeued (after a small grace period).

Again, this isn't a request to change current housing availability or the random timer. It is simply an improvement for a more respectful, and efficient use of player time.

If not this solution, then PLEASE improve the land purchasing process somehow to remedy this egregious misuse of player time. Thank you.

UPDATE: Apparently there's a limit to how much you can post in a day (or something else is up; but browser is telling me "New forum post cannot be made due to either you have reached to your daily limit or your main character's level is not high enough."). So I'll just have to respond daily in batches as I can. I am reading your responses though. - 5/8/21

UPDATE #2 ELECTRIC BOOGALOO - THE FINAL UPDATE, AN END TO AN ERA:

All, I'm done responding to this post. I will concede that the community is just as responsible as the devs for this issue, although the devs initially created this issue and it is their responsibility to fix it.

I say this not because you disagree with me or my solution, but because you choose to defend the current mechanic and discourage innovation. Many of you openly admit that you don't want the system to improve solely because you believe it would lower your chances of participating. Until that changes, and the devs are held accountable, the system will not improve. A cynical mind would say they are well aware of this, which is why nothing will change.

Most of you don't read the initial post or any of my comments before you respond to the word "lottery."

So I'll leave it to you. My idea, that would save countless player hours, is out in the void. Good day. -6/4/21

[ItMe]

I highly encourage the discussion to move over to the housing megathread.
It is the place to discuss these sorts of ideas, as SQEX has asked us to make long threads of feedback instead of always starting new ones.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ing-Megathread

[LianaThorne]

The only real solution is instanced housing which has already been screamed about en masse by the community. I personally don't think there's any way they don't know that people are upset with it, I just think they can't do anything about it unless they completely rip apart the entire housing system we currently have (i.e. something that was done when housing was originally implemented/changed with Shiro is causing the hold up). This could cause issues with those who already own plots if they have to lose them in order to make instanced housing possible, which is a perfectly reasonable excuse to not do it. I don't think anyone who has it now wants to lose all of the gil and time spent into getting to what they have now.

As far as a lottery, you can't really do RNG and have it favor those who have more "experience". That's not a lottery and more of a wait list. The only fair way would be for it to literally just randomly choose someone, regardless of if it's your first time or 100th.

Ultimately, I don't think we'll be getting any form of housing fix unless they surprise all of us with Ishgard or they pull a 1.0 and shut down servers again to remake the game.

Edit: Seconded on the megathread suggestion.

[forumaccount]

I highly encourage the discussion to move over to the housing megathread.
It is the place to discuss these sorts of ideas, as SQEX has asked us to make long threads of feedback instead of always starting new ones.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ing-Megathread

Unironically asking, where should I post a thread requesting Square Enix not recommend all housing posts go into a megathread?

[forumaccount]

The only real solution is instanced housing which has already been screamed about en masse by the community. I personally don't think there's any way they don't know that people are upset with it, I just think they can't do anything about it unless they completely rip apart the entire housing system we currently have (i.e. something that was done when housing was originally implemented/changed with Shiro is causing the hold up). This could cause issues with those who already own plots if they have to lose them in order to make instanced housing possible, which is a perfectly reasonable excuse to not do it. I don't think anyone who has it now wants to lose all of the gil and time spent into getting to what they have now.

As far as a lottery, you can't really do RNG and have it favor those who have more "experience". That's not a lottery and more of a wait list. The only fair way would be for it to literally just randomly choose someone, regardless of if it's your first time or 100th.

Ultimately, I don't think we'll be getting any form of housing fix unless they surprise all of us with Ishgard or they pull a 1.0 and shut down servers again to remake the game.

Edit: Seconded on the megathread suggestion.

- That is not a reasonable excuse not to do it. The dev team is perfectly capable of implementing such features without loss of data.

- You can indeed do RNG and have it favor those with more "experience" just as I've detailed. You can argue the semantics and nomenclature, but it can be accomplished easily.

- It wouldn't be fair to randomly choose someone. As it would wouldn't serve to ease the barrier of entry for players without property. (I will concede that I am attempting to solve housing availability with that clause though).

[StriderShinryu]

I could absolutely see there being a lottery system, and I do agree it would massively help the purchase part of the equation.

I'm not really sure they would have any way to tell who was waiting for how long where to weight the odds though. Honestly, if anything, that system would actually just encourage more sign squatting rather than discourage it.

[Catwho]

As someone who has lost the NewEgg shuffle every day for the last two months, the result is still disappointment in the end.

[ICountFrom0]

Oh yes. A weighted lotto, because bot farmers with thousands of bots should be able to put in enough tickets to own all the houses forever.

[LaylaTsarra]

We are not getting lotteries. Timer length needs to be adjusted seriously. It's way too long. Lotteries will only make getting a house harder.

[SturmChurro]

I'm guessing someone lost a plot after sitting there for hours to some random dude who walked up?