Keep lottery only for all housing!

[caspergrey]

My full support

Let say a server have 10000 enter lottery, 1/10000 chance may seem low. However, with FCFS or placard, if the player could not enter the race within first few minute when server come up, the chance of getting a house become 0 for those can win the race in FCFS, and almost 0 for those who don’t have the time to camp for placard.

Let's be honest, if the odds are 1/10000, you're not winning that plot... it's the same false hope that RNG heavy games give players to think that they "might" have a chance of winning. If you're talking about a large plot that only comes available every 3 months or so... you're not getting that plot if the odds are 1/10000.... ever... might as well play the lotto... and if you do win, there are 9999 people that lose... what kind of game is cool with 1 winner and 9999 losers purely based on RNG and zero merit?

[Shibi]

Then disband the FC?

Honestly, it's seems you've never run a FC or guild. If you had you would realise that doing such an act would cause irreparable drama and the death of the social group. People won't want to rebuild it all. people won't want to see their base dissapear and then have to earn it all again.

SE want to foster and grow FC's, their choices in the upcoming lotto are meant to reward large FCs.

What you are suggesting could see a group of 250 people lose their shared large base, lose their workshop that gives their sprout members all their gear for free, lose their FC points, lose their rights to company actions like XP boost and so on --- with this sort of loss, people will leave the game in disgust. Disgust that the game tears their social group completely asunder.

It's a very mean punishment you've come up with, to lock in a FC so they can never escape, and to break up groups of friends, just so you can get a house.

if your a good FC lead you'd talk to your people, bring up the problems, let them know your moving on. You'd give them some time to form a new FC for those who wanna stay together, give them access to their items and rooms so they can collect them an move them so they don't vanish into the limited time storage of death

Where is the bus factor in this?

Where is the reality of real life in this, in terms of finances, in terms of disasters, in terms of mental health, in terms of a million things?

As I said, it looks like you've never faced the reality of leadership, and just want to destroy people in valid FCs.

[LunaFancy]

Let's be honest, if the odds are 1/10000, you're not winning that plot... it's the same false hope that RNG heavy games give players to think that they "might" have a chance of winning. If you're talking about a large plot that only comes available every 3 months or so... you're not getting that plot if the odds are 1/10000.... ever... might as well play the lotto... and if you do win, there are 9999 people that lose... what kind of game is cool with 1 winner and 9999 losers purely based on RNG and zero merit?

100% this. The ONLY 'fair' thing about a lottery is that everyone has the equal chance to be burned by RNGSUS. It's horrible.

Before the introduction of the timer (and the compounding issue or the relo circumvention of said timer) the housing game was as fair as it could ever be. It's a limited resource so if you wanted a house you watched the wards like a hawk at the top of the hour (when the demoliton timer hit) and you bolted for it when you saw one.

OR you waited til fresh wards dropped and you hit the ground running and your efforts paid off- or you went back to checking for auto demo houses.

If the devs really want to throw a spanner in the works of the RMT trade, then instead of punishing genuine buyers at the purchase placard, they should take the appeal from the private sale market altogether by offering a full refund of purchase price (inclusive of the building permit upon relinquishment or demolition.

At the moment if a player loses their house they are comped 1/3 of the purchase price - if they give it up willingly they receive NOTHING.

And you wonder why people house log every six weeks (thus tying up housing that others would actually be using daily) and the private sales market is thriving. The bloated prices and RMT are only possible because of scarcity and the scarcity is compounded because people aren't willing to lose millions of gil by relinquishing a plot.

Give people all their gil back and watch how frequently the wards pop vacant plots. Stop punishing people at the placard and find ways to make the black and grey markets less profitable at the relinquishment end.

[TwistedTea]

Fully support a lottery only system for housing not because it's a good solution. But among the terrible solutions SE has implemented over the years, it's the 'fairest'.

The best solution(s) for me would be:
1.) If SE could let us upgrade apartments for gil to penthouses
2.) Island Sanctuary being a viable alternative to ward housing

Ward housing being limited is horribly outdated design compared to how other MMOs handle housing. Ultimately, it's a supply problem of not having enough ward houses for every player who wants one.

Regarding why lottery seems 'fairer':

1. FCFS currently incentivizes players to resort to botting/third-party tools.

For a player who's not using any third party tools, clicking on the placard for hours even during prime time, is mentally, emotionally and physically taxing. The current system does not respect a player's time.

Lottery lets players throw in their bid and carry on with the rest of the game.

2. FCFS during new ward releases leave the majority of players subject to the whims of login/lobby errors and queues.

Having full lottery would also reduce the login congestion caused by new FCFS wards.

Can the lottery system be gamed?

Sure:
Based on the info from the latest Live Letter, any FC member can enter a lottery bid for their FC. This means that even alts can do so. SE please restrict FC lottery bids by service account.

Furthermore, SE in an attempt to reduce FC house re-selling wants to implement a time restriction, so that FC Master cannot be easily transferred to new FC members.

However this restriction can be easily circumvented by the fact that if the character which is the FC Master gets deleted, the next appropriate character in the FC gets automatically promoted to FC Master.