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

[Sheriyana]

You guys comparing clicking your mouse/controller for a few hours as "abuse and torture" are just silly. You could easily just visit the placard during primetime and narrow the window down heavily. They should have kept the old system but just lowered the timeframe to 2-4 hours, and made it so you can only apply once a minute.

You weren't going to get anything with just a few hours, and even a few hours is horrible when you spam the placard nonstop. But do keep going on how the system was so brilliant and user friendly. What they could have done is just have the placard tell you when the plot is going to open and give it enough time so people have time to find the opening. Then people would only have to show up for a minute. Now that would have made it so much more humane but did SE do that? No, they did not adjust the system at all until they changed it to the lottery.

[DeNada]

Man, the people who are advocating for placard clicking sure have rose tinted glasses.

I remember hunting for my first personal house after endwalker release, having shown up at at least 30 separate open plots before winning a small plot due to sheer luck where my click happened to be the winning one out of several other house hunters. Competition is especially rough since instant relocation has been removed meaning everyone has to go through clicking hell.

The whole process probably burned at least 100 hours of my precious time clicking the bloody placard instead of actually playing the game and gave me wrist injuries to boot.

Screw placard clicking and anyone who still advocate for that dumb system is either insane or a botter.

[WillIrishclover]

Reminder the Placard system was primarily removed because it was causing health issues and botting issues. No one is calling it 'abuse and torture' , the system was fundamentally flawed, im not saying lottery is the solution, but going back to the Placard system is never happening

people wanting it back are nuts

[Sheriyana]

Reminder the Placard system was primarily removed because it was causing health issues and botting issues. No one is calling it 'abuse and torture' , the system was fundamentally flawed, im not saying lottery is the solution, but going back to the Placard system is never happening

people wanting it back are nuts

Well to be fair, I did call it both abuse and torture. And I stand by it, it was an absolutely inhumane system, it's going to wreck anyone to stand there spamming a placard nonstop for 16 hours straight, and most likely still not get it. And I know there's people that wanted a house bad enough that they've done it.

I know the devs said that you weren't supposed to stand there spamming the placard for hours but what else was going to happen? People go click on it once or twice, shrug and leave? Everyone's sure getting a house that way. It was just another one of those utterly baffling development decisions that they must have made in some sort of bubble without any feedback from the actual players as I can guarantee not a single person in the dev team went through that.

[Renalt]

So, to like... state the obvious, every lottery from here on out is going to be very long odds of winning.

Like... 150-1 odds or much worse.

Is this really the system you envisioned to 'solve' the housing problems? How exactly is this better than clicking a placard against FAR LESS than 150-1 odds.... or worse.

How about keep adding wards to every housing district until its nowhere close to 150 or more people bidding on a single plot. Whats the excuse... spaghetti database issues? I'm not asking for a plot for everyone but 150, or worse, bidding on a single lot... shouldnt be left as the standard either.

It's better than camping out there for over 24 hours straight and constantly spamming the buy plot button over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over over and over and over....

only for a person who already has a home to just click it once to move the plot.

It was a step forward...but it was the tiniest of steps.

[Reinha]

I remember telling the Novice Network and my fc how there are about 20 plots in Goblet in patch 5.1 when people were taking breaks and complaining about lack of content. Very few were interested, mostly because there was a chance they'd have to click. I finally went to one of the plots that had had it's price devalued by a significant amount, indicating that it had been freed up a while ago. Hit the placard and just bought it because the random timer had finished. No one else around. I later relocated to a better location. Easy and guaranteed, and this is not even a low pop server.

I preferred the old system to a lottery for obvious reasons. Now people don't even have to check plots every day, which increases competition by rewarding passive players. Also can't choose to relocate to a nice spot if you get there first. At the very least auto demolish needs to come back so these players who can get a house by barely logging in will actually have to care about their house if they want to keep it. Thankfully free companies are able to get theirs pretty painlessly without having to engage in this garbage lotto every week for years.

[LianaThorne]

Well to be fair, I did call it both abuse and torture. And I stand by it, it was an absolutely inhumane system, it's going to wreck anyone to stand there spamming a placard nonstop for 16 hours straight, and most likely still not get it. And I know there's people that wanted a house bad enough that they've done it.

I know the devs said that you weren't supposed to stand there spamming the placard for hours but what else was going to happen? People go click on it once or twice, shrug and leave? Everyone's sure getting a house that way. It was just another one of those utterly baffling development decisions that they must have made in some sort of bubble without any feedback from the actual players as I can guarantee not a single person in the dev team went through that.

Your first mistake was spamming a placard for 16 hours.
Second was thinking lottery is any better than placard spamming. Excluding clicking a placard/having more time to play the game, what exactly is better? Cause the odds are definitely not in your favor unless you're going for an FC or taking advantage of a new server/DC.

[Bukachu]

Ill hopefully be bidding on my first lottery in this rotation, if you see me on TV news within the week you know why

[Sheriyana]

Your first mistake was spamming a placard for 16 hours.
Second was thinking lottery is any better than placard spamming. Excluding clicking a placard/having more time to play the game, what exactly is better? Cause the odds are definitely not in your favor unless you're going for an FC or taking advantage of a new server/DC.

I have not done it myself, I gave up on a lot of plots because I didn't want to sacrifice my sanity for it, but I still did it for hours on multiple plots and even that was too much. But that's what the system encouraged people to do, you don't know when the plot is going to open so you just have to sit there spamming the placard. Genius argument, exclude the advocating for terrible gaming habits and wasting your time on the most mundane and painful "gameplay" possible. Of course the placard spamming had better odds if you happened to be there when the plot opened, but you can't exactly exclude what made the system awful to make it look better in comparison to the lottery system. Of course you had better odds with the system that made you sit there for hours to have any consistent odds at the plot, people weren't willing to do it because it was a horrible waste of their time.

Not to mention that you could sit there for hours on end just for some douche to relocate their house there, making everyone feel like idiots for wasting their time and ever bothering. I don't know what you are smoking with these arguments. That system was absolute garbage and I'm glad it's gone and never coming back.

[Arcadious]

The number of people in this thread defending the old system is mind boggling. Any system that would encourage people to neglect their personal health in order to win a house is pretty obviously unethical.

The only point any of them have is that before you could, through great acts of neckbeardery, improve your chances. Which is true, but it makes you look pretty bad.

Any anecdotes (too many in this thread to quote) claiming they just walked up to a placard and casually purchased a plot can be dismissed as either trolling or, much less likely, dumb luck.