So, a lottery system and a divide between FC and solo wards, eh?

[ForteNightshade]

No actually I wouldn't mind it if you could drop a deposit on multiple plots.
Just make the deposit non-refundable if you don't get picked.

Why? That's basically punishing players twice. Not only do they not get the house but could be out 100M gil.

If all you gotta do is walk up to a sign and drop a deposit, the ultra rich get to drop cash at everything to increase their chances.

Nope, should be one entry, pick your plot wisely.

This defeats the entire purpose of making houses easier to get, assuming Ishgard releases with this lotto system. Instead of being to run to another plot if someone beats you there. You now cross your fingers on a single plot and if you don't get it, well, hope you enjoy waiting a good year or two for another shot. Why shouldn't people who have worked to build up a lot of gil have a chance to lotto on multiple houses?

[Kogekigami]

I'm only happy with a lottery system for demo'd plots.... I have been working years for my ishgard mansion saving and almost killing myself during the ishgard restoration. I know which plot I want...so if its lottery I can go there, get there first, put my gil down and not get it? which means I have lost out the possibility of going to another ward and getting the plot I want... Me and my in game partner have be prepping and planning and I worry I won't get my house with this.

You can deem me selfish i guess but i agree this won't fix the issue supply is the issue.

[Nepentha]

I'm reserving judgement for now. That reveal raised more questions than it answered. No mention of how relocation would be handled, if at all. And I'm certain the resellers and botters are already figuring out how to profit off this change, too. Tbh SE is putting the cart before the horse again. As others have said, it's not the system of procurement (though let's face it, placard clicking was the worst idea ever to combat the previous issues we had with resellers), it's the scarcity of housing.

They're still clinging to this idea of neighborhoods. And seem more to be throwing things at the wall to see what sticks rather than presenting any real thought into a solution. So we'll see on down the line what they're thinking of actually implementing and how it will work.

[Jojoya]

And seem more to be throwing things at the wall to see what sticks rather than presenting any real thought into a solution.

This is pretty much what I thought when I read the translated comments. They're just throwing a lot of different ideas into the system and then waiting to see what happens. They're complicating things without fixing them.

They will not change anything unless the core problem is fixed - supply. A player who wants a house but cannot get one because there are not enough is still an unhappy player.

As long as a world has fewer houses than that world has active accounts with characters on that world, supply will be a problem. As long as players are allowed to own multiple houses when the number of houses game-wide is less than the total number of active players game-wide, supply will be a problem. As long as there's no deterrent to owning a house the player is not using, supply will be problem.

There are so many questions about how these changes will work and I hope SE has already thought of them all plus more we haven't mentioned yet.

What about the existing wards? Do they get their FCFS/Lottery and FC/Private designations or will the designations be limited to Ishgard and any future wards added?

If all wards get the FC or private designation, what happens to existing owners in those wards? Will those who have a private house in what gets designated as a FC ward be forced to relocate (and most likely have to settle for a less desirable plot than what they currently have) or will they be grandfathered into that specific plot until relinquished/demo'd at which time it can only be purchased by a FC? And of course the same must be asked about FC houses that are in wards that end up designated for private ownership.

What about the tight knit FCs where members try to get their private houses in the same ward as their FCs because it's fun to be able to freely run between the houses of different members? Is their housing going to get broken up?

What about apartment buildings in the FC wards - will those be removed since FCs can't own apartments? That reduces the number of apartments available for characters who can't have a house because either there aren't enough available or another character on the same account already owns one but they're not allowed to share tenancy in that house.

(Which brings up - whatever happened to making alts on the same account automatic tenants of houses owned by the same account on the same world?)

What about relocation? Will relocation be limited to the FCFS wards or will it also be allowed in the lottery wards either through a special timer reserved for relocation or by participating in the lottery? In either case it would make it harder for first time buyers to get a house as they would be forced to rely more on the FCFS wards.

Does a switch to FCFS and lottery mean the purchase timer is being removed altogether, or will it still be used in the FCFS wards? No timer means the house flippers are back in business with a vengeance, especially if they can freely locate into the lottery wards. Buy in FCFS, immediately relocate to lottery and buy the plot they just left with a character on a separate account. Then they can relocate again to another lottery ward as they switch to a different character on the first account to purchase the original plot a third time, and so on until all FCFS plots have been purchased (along with most if not all the lottery plots if you can bypass the lottery to relocate). Lottery ward houses would be used to sell to other relocators, FCFS ward houses would be used to sell to first time buyers and relocators.

Will players be able to buy multiple tickets for a specific plot's lottery (i.e. work like Jumbo Cactpot) or be limited to one per plot drawing?

What happens when there are multiple winners of the lottery because multiple players picked the winning number, or when no one wins the lottery because no one picked the winning number?

Will the deposit for the lottery be the plot purchase price or some other amount? What happens to the "deposit" players paid for their lottery tickets? I assume the winner's deposit would be applied to the purchase price but what happens to it for those who lose and how do they recover it if it's to be refunded? I would assume that various regional laws around the world would push this firmly into the category of gambling if the deposit fee was not 100% refundable.

Is it a smart thing to be implementing a system into a MMORPG where one player get to be the winner while everyone loses? We're not talking Jumbo Cactpot where everyone "wins" since they get back more than they spend on their tickets. To keep entering drawing after drawing trying to get something you want very much only to keep losing is a very depressing experiencing. It casts a pall over the enjoyment the player otherwise would be getting from the game.

To be honest, it's idiocy to be considering a lottery at all. If they feel they have no option but to go the random draw route, they should be at least be using a raffle so there will always be one winner and only one winner per draw. Maybe that's a translation error? I don't know if Japanese has the distinct words for different types of random draw systems like English does.

Hopefully they chose to share this information now so they can get player feedback as a way to identify potential problems with whatever new system is implemented and make adjustments to account for some of them.

I still wish they would accept that the ward system does not work when you've got a growing player base and start putting their efforts into building a better housing system instead. At the rate the game is growing as word of mouth spreads and popular WoW content creators are going "gee, FFXIV isn't what I thought after all, I'm having fun", player population for Endwalker likely will be double what it was this expansion. That means SE is going to need to more than double the number of plots currently available to play catch up on demand. Just adding Ishgard is not going to be sufficient.

[StriderShinryu]

This is pretty much what I thought when I read the translated comments. They're just throwing a lot of different ideas into the system and then waiting to see what happens. They're complicating things without fixing them.

They will not change anything unless the core problem is fixed - supply. A player who wants a house but cannot get one because there are not enough is still an unhappy player.

Yes, we all get that, but how? It's really easy to say "Just change things so they are better!" But within the actual coding and architecture of how the game works, how do they do this? And, perhaps more importantly, how do they do this without screwing over all of the people who do have houses already and prefer the current system?

[Almagnus1]

They will not change anything unless the core problem is fixed - supply. A player who wants a house but cannot get one because there are not enough is still an unhappy player.

Splitting the personal and FC houses from each other is going to have an impact on supply, as that will (hopefully) introduce more houses back into the system.

Again, we do not have much information so we should be patient instead of going all Chicken Little and farming the upvotes... then again....

[Jojoya]

Yes, we all get that, but how? It's really easy to say "Just change things so they are better!" But within the actual coding and architecture of how the game works, how do they do this? And, perhaps more importantly, how do they do this without screwing over all of the people who do have houses already and prefer the current system?

Splitting the personal and FC houses from each other is going to have an impact on supply, as that will (hopefully) introduce more houses back into the system.

Again, we do not have much information so we should be patient instead of going all Chicken Little and farming the upvotes... then again....

If we just wait, we could end up with the timer situation all over again. Something that sounds good when first proposed but ends up abused because no one thought about how players would react to it.

So let's start thinking and throwing out ideas based on what little we know so far. How could these system changes possibly end up abused? By giving feedback now several months before Ishgard housing and presumably these changes will be implemented, SE might be able to tweak their intentions to at least reduce the potential problems.

I'm not here to farm upvotes so you might as well get that thought out of your head. I want to see the best possible system implemented so the greatest possible number of players will have access to a house in the future.

[Almagnus1]

If we just wait, we could end up with the timer situation all over again. Something that sounds good when first proposed but ends up abused because no one thought about how players would react to it.

So let's start thinking and throwing out ideas based on what little we know so far. How could these system changes possibly end up abused? By giving feedback now several months before Ishgard housing and presumably these changes will be implemented, SE might be able to tweak their intentions to at least reduce the potential problems.

I'm not here to farm upvotes so you might as well get that thought out of your head. I want to see the best possible system implemented so the greatest possible number of players will have access to a house in the future.

And yet, we know absolutely nothing of what SE is actually going to do beyond a slide (if even that much information) from a live letter.

We quite literally have no information to work with... the board is loosing their minds over the possibility that something may not be good. It's actually quite an immature reaction tbh.

[Nepentha]

If we just wait, we could end up with the timer situation all over again. Something that sounds good when first proposed but ends up abused because no one thought about how players would react to it.

So let's start thinking and throwing out ideas based on what little we know so far. How could these system changes possibly end up abused? By giving feedback now several months before Ishgard housing and presumably these changes will be implemented, SE might be able to tweak their intentions to at least reduce the potential problems.

I'm not here to farm upvotes so you might as well get that thought out of your head. I want to see the best possible system implemented so the greatest possible number of players will have access to a house in the future.

I'm going to agree with Jojoya on this one. On the surface, the placard click looked promising, especially considering the time it was implemented and the issues going on then. Unfortunately, all it did was turn players into rats in a variable ratio scheduled experiment and the resellers quickly figured out how to get around this (and it also allowed placard clicking bots to flourish as an unforeseen consequence).

There are just too many ideas being flung around. FC only wards? Player housing only wards? Lottery? First come first serve? Which IS it? All of them? How in the world can you implement all of those ideas at the same time. Are we going to try one and then another? How about relocation? How will this be affected?

Honestly if SE wants to address the housing resellers, they need to address relocation and the changing of FC master. Those are the two biggest ways resellers have managed to circumvent the measures put in place to curtail their activities. (They've been laughing all the way to the gil bank this whole time.) But I saw none of that mentioned in any translation so far.

[Mattwo]

They really should just change to instanced housing with optional customizable world-facing exteriors like what Free Realms and Maplestory 2 had. Mostly Free Realms so you can still have that instanced outdoor space though (Toontown Online also had instanced housing with outdoor space).