So, what now? Lotteries with 150+ bids until... when?

[Oizen]

There's 1 medium house left on my server & it has over 100 bids
:/

I'd get an apartment if it had the same amenities as a private plot- which is larger item space, bottom as well as top floors, larger item storage and a yard (garden included bc I do gardening)
Housing should not be this frustrating to deal with in any mmo

I hope new wards will be released again very soon with the majority being private plots over FC plots

And that would be completely consumed in exactly one cycle.

[Bukachu]

That's true for characters, but not players.
Last lottery, I (one player) entered 8 times in the lottery for one small plot, using the 8 housing-qualified characters on my account [on that world]. My odds of winning were 8X better than a player that only entered once: 18% instead of 2.3%.

I won, BTW.

yet another issue with whole housing system.

[Reinha]

56 bids on a large, I didn't win.

[EZGIL]

That's true for characters, but not players.
Last lottery, I (one player) entered 8 times in the lottery for one small plot, using the 8 housing-qualified characters on my account [on that world]. My odds of winning were 8X better than a player that only entered once: 18% instead of 2.3%.

I won, BTW.

This is exactly what I'm currently working on, qualifying my non-main characters to 'bid level'. This not-thought-out system they created only encourages this type of cheesing. While I'm at it, I'm going to buy, and deck out, FC chambers for all of them too.

[ShinTaya]

The lottery system is so much worse than the old clicking system. I am trying to get a Plot every round since this system started and I wasn’t lucky. What makes it worse is the separation of private vs fc wards. And the fact that you can only bid on one plot instead of as many as you could afford putting the deposit down. And the time sink one cycle needs is aweful. SE could have just make it one day bidding next day getting for example. Or bidding on all plots you want you can only get one at the time anyways. Also it doesn’t help at all that the housing evictions are on hold since two years with only one short break if I remember. Ye there are world events that some ppl can’t log on … so what. Others are online and play and pay their sub and would love to have a house whilst the people who haven’t logged on for month just don’t get evicted. Just empty the plots of players that haven’t been in their houses for 30 days change the lottery cycle to 24 hrs bid and 24 hrs claim and there is some plots available always.

[hagare]

And the fact that you can only bid on one plot instead of as many as you could afford putting the deposit down.

Hey, beggars can't be choosers. Literally in this case lmao

[Sheriyana]

The lottery system is so much worse than the old clicking system. I am trying to get a Plot every round since this system started and I wasn’t lucky. What makes it worse is the separation of private vs fc wards. And the fact that you can only bid on one plot instead of as many as you could afford putting the deposit down. And the time sink one cycle needs is aweful. SE could have just make it one day bidding next day getting for example. Or bidding on all plots you want you can only get one at the time anyways. Also it doesn’t help at all that the housing evictions are on hold since two years with only one short break if I remember. Ye there are world events that some ppl can’t log on … so what. Others are online and play and pay their sub and would love to have a house whilst the people who haven’t logged on for month just don’t get evicted. Just empty the plots of players that haven’t been in their houses for 30 days change the lottery cycle to 24 hrs bid and 24 hrs claim and there is some plots available always.

Stop, stop, full stop. Just because the current system isn't perfect doesn't mean the old system of abuse and physical torture was good or even any better than what we have now. You can wish for something better without advocating for physical torture and unhealthy gaming habits, like staying up all night because you keep thinking it's going to open soon or can't even go to the bathroom without worrying if it'll be gone by the time you come back. That system was horrible and no matter what the current system is, it doesn't make the clicking abuse good in hindsight.

The house demolition should stay off as far as I'm concerned, all it does is pass blame onto players for the horrible system SE has created. 24 hours is also too short for the bidding, I'm up for shortening it to like 2 or 3 days but 24 hours is too short, for the claiming it can be the day.

[ShinTaya]

Hm dunno i mean the old system definitely was abused a lot but i got plots before without cklickbots just by clicking on plates when i had spare time. And by being fast once the servers were up after maintenance … not great system but somehow I personally was more lucky with the old version than the new one.

But i definitely want the demolition system back activated. If people don't pay sub and log on. The plots needs to be available again. The limitations of plots make the eviction cycle mandatory smh.

Of course ideally we would have instanced housing for every player but thats just nit happening. But the way it is at the moment is worse than ever for me.

[DiaDeem]

Placard clicking didn't suck that much tbh

Don't...

You can make as many arguments as you want as how bad lottery is, and you can also push the Instanced Housing argument as far as you'd like, but Placard Click was that bad and should be in no way remembered any better than the horrible experience than it really was. Have people already forgotten about the horror stories?

Well, I've got mine for you.

First (Personal) House:
My first house was in Behemoth, and I stayed awake camping my plot for more than 24 hours, taking 10 minute naps and only clicking when people tried to come and contest the plot. It hurt both physically and mentally and though I got the house, it was a horrible experience that had me physically ill for the next couple days. I abandoned the plot when I moved over to Leviathan.

Second (Personal) House:
New house in Leviathan. This was the "easy" one, as I had to camp for only seven hours competing against not very many people. I was glad it wasn't as horrible as my Behemoth plot, but...

Third (FC) House:
Last year we set out to get a house for our FC. The process of hunting plots, chasing open spots and mass clicking took a little over three months, with fights over about 30ish plots that we lost to other players, and it was two (up to three sometimes) of us clicking on the f*cking thing. We had eight hour sessions deep into the night, jumping from plot to plot, checking if something had just opened to go click again and again and again. We stayed up until early hours in the morning sometimes, completely ruining our next day and being able to do little more than manually clicking the placard over and over. We got good, and a couple times we even got the "Can't complete purchase" message because someone else bought the plot literally a second before we did. We clicked against as little as 6 people and as many as 20+ and many of them were bots that kept clicking after they completed their purchase. We then learned that we should only click about eight hours into the timer, and engage in the so called "Prime Time" that lasted about four hours. How would you know this? The only way I had was by joining a Discord that kept a close watch on timers, so we could kinda aim to get there on Prime Time. Finally, we did get out plot. A small place in The Goblet. Once again, this was both physically and mentally draining and exhausting. Our whole FC can attest to how horrible the whole process was. We've since moved to a medium in Empy.

It's very nice that you didn't have to struggle as bad as I or my FC (or countless others) did to get your plot, but your argument is as good as someone saying... "Well, I only had three bids in my plot and won first try, so the system isn't as bad as everyone says". Even with the house I got "lucky" I still wasted 7 hours that I could have used doing literally anything other than clicking a placard.

Do I prefer lottery? Yes, simply based on the fact that it's not literal physical torture. Is the system as good as it should be? No, far from it. I believe they need either instanced housing, or just invest in server capacity for at least 100 wards per world, if not more.

I'm sorry, but I get kinda fired up when people say "Oh placard clicking wasn't as bad" because yes it was.

[Sheriyana]

Hm dunno i mean the old system definitely was abused a lot but i got plots before without cklickbots just by clicking on plates when i had spare time. And by being fast once the servers were up after maintenance … not great system but somehow I personally was more lucky with the old version than the new one.

But i definitely want the demolition system back activated. If people don't pay sub and log on. The plots needs to be available again. The limitations of plots make the eviction cycle mandatory smh.

Of course ideally we would have instanced housing for every player but thats just nit happening. But the way it is at the moment is worse than ever for me.

By abuse I was referring to the physical and mental abuse the game was forcing you to go through for a house. It's not good for anyone's health to stand around clicking a placard for 16 hours straight, getting upset by other people who show up to lower your chances while you keep hoping for the plot to open up so more wouldn't have time to show up, and what I mentioned already, encouraging to stay up late, not being able to go to the bathroom, eat or get a drink. Probably why people would prefer to bot it instead, imagine that. I sure wouldn't wish that hell on anyone. And of course, it was a feature that actively prevented you from actually playing the game you pay a subscription for as you were too busy playing the worst cookie clicker imaginable.

I think the demolition system was bad from the start and it actively goes against what Yoshida keeps saying about the game, encouraging people to take breaks not to burn out. How are you supposed to take a break if the game forces you to play to keep the house you went through hell to get? It is, as I said, just passing the blame on the players, "you're not playing enough so you're not entitled to keep what you worked your ass off to get, or was incredibly lucky to get".

We as a community need to keep the pressure on for the devs so they can put the effort in and fix it, properly. Not settling for abusive systems and passing the blame on our fellow players instead of the company that refuses to do anything about it.

I get that it's very difficult to get a house right now and it's frustrating. I'm looking to get one too. They need to fix the system immediately. It's insane what a headache it is to try to enjoy a feature that should be available for everyone, what other games have managed to do way better but SE for some reason can't manage to figure out.