Lottery is a joke.

[Oizen]

Wouldn't it make more sense to prioritize players who do not have houses rather than trying to suit your fancy on location?

[Jojoya]

Instancing indoors was likely one of the only ways to get indoor housing to function on the engine of the game as a whole. Anything that SE implements costs server space, and SE has mentioned before that having individual instances for every single player would eat up large amounts of data on their current architecture. This game was built on the remnants of a game engine designed to run 'smoothly' on a PS3. They wanted housing to be designed this way for a reason, and I'm sure they will do more when it becomes a viable option that doesn't cannibalize the future prospects of the game. Not everyone can have everything they want, players or devs. The devs may not always be right and as players it is our job to tell them we are not pleased, but I also feel we should give possible "band-aid" solutions that may help the game in the short term until they come to agree with us.

Actually, A Realm Reborn was built on a new engine. This is something YoshiP has clarified many times. The "spaghetti code" that players always talk about has more to do with compromises SE had to make so the game would be PS3 compatible as they had promised it would be. PS3 support might have ended back in Stormblood but SE is still going through updating parts of the system that had been limited by it.

As for every player not being able to have a personal instance, this is demonstrably not true. Otherwise they would have never implemented solo duties, squadrons and Trust/Duty Support. Apartments would not be available for every player let alone every character like we have (unless you're on Balmung and that's a different issue) on top of every character being able to have a FC private chamber if they belong to a FC with a FC house. And we most definitely would not be getting Island Sanctuary in 2 weeks.

You're repeating misinformation that players personally invested in the ward system due to prestige, workshop farms or other reasons use to try to convince others that an improved instanced housing system is not possible.

None of the band-aids suggested by players have ended up improving the supply situation when SE has chosen to implement them. They all have come with their own set of problems. It makes no sense to continue slapping bandages on a wound that keeps bleeding instead of treating the wound so the bleeding will stop and healing can occur.

As for being a gil sink, I don't think you understand just how much gil is floating around out there. It's not just how much gil is currently being generated. It's all the gil generated in the past including the massive amounts of 1.0 gil that SE was never able to completely remove from the player economies along with gil earned by others who no longer play but had in various ways passed their gil to players that still do.

I've got enough more than enough gil on my account to purchase all 60 houses in a ward. I already have my one personal house on my dream plot (I would not relocate it to any other plot currently in the game) and one FC house that I'm not likely to be relocating even though it's just a small. Because I want other players to have the chance to enjoy house ownership, I make no attempt to purchase additional houses even though I easily could. So where's the gil sink for me with the current system?

There are other players that make me look like a penniless street beggar. They have multiple characters and retainers at gil cap. Where's the gil sink for them in the current system?

On the other hand, improve the instanced system so all my characters could have an instanced house or at least much larger apartment and I would be happy to spend a significant chunk of the gil I have getting them those houses. Improve the instanced system even farther so it's possible to have multiple houses per character like many of the other MMOs with instanced housing allow, and I would buy even more.

Now there's a gil sink.

[Solarra]

I agree the lottery is a joke. My only hope is that Square will stop trying to slap bandaids onto the ward system, now they can see just how much demand there is for player houses.

I'm sorry OP, I don't support changing the lottery in the ways you suggest because that won't solve the underlying problem and it won't be any fairer than what we have now.
We need more houses and until we get them, then the majority of players are going to have to do without.
Tinkering around with the buying and retaining rules does nothing to increase supply and I'd rather we didn't encourage the devs to keep doing this..

[Rayne6665]

imagine clicking on a placard nonstop competing with other players for hours and days losing sleep and not be able to get a house after all that clicking lol.

[Battler-Ushiromiya]

This new lottery system is a joke

Thanks to the lottery I won the small plot I wanted in ishgard the minute it opened, it's so much fun being able to sit on my yard with all the cool decorum. Love this change, it worked on my machine

[Avoidy]

The system is terrible, and ideally we'd just have instanced housing for people who don't care about the neighborhood.

Giving preference to relocators is not a good idea because it's just handing an advantage to someone who already won and has a home, in an environment where there's a "shortage" on housing with thousands of players per server wanting literally any home they can get. I think if Square came out and said like "ok we hear you, we're gonna make it easy for people who already won to win even bigger" then they'd be hit with loads of justifiable backlash. And before you repeat the whole "if I relocate, I'm not actually eliminating a house from the pool" thing, consider that your relocation means all the people who were bidding on that property now have to wait until the next bidding cycle to try again, and with each bidding cycle the number of available plots falls off more and more since demolition isn't even a thing at the moment. Their odds just got way worse, and it's possible that your plot might actually be the only one left to bid on. I know on balmung at least, with this bidding cycle there are like 6 plots or something. No, if priority should go to anyone during a shortage, it should be to the people who don't actually have anything at all yet. Unhappy homeowners should just try their best to enjoy the home that they went out of their way to purchase even though it was in a neighborhood they disliked.

Ah, and wards 1-9 should be opened for private purchase, this is ridiculous. FCs have had months to figure their shit out.

[Zaruku]

Well, if you live in a server that's booming with people, then your odds of actually getting a house for yourself is gonna be really slim. Will you bite the bullet and go for a less populated server but with a higher chance for a house? Or will you stay where you are and at least be able to enjoy whatever content there is from raiding to even bloody Mahjong.

[Jojoya]

Well, if you live in a server that's booming with people, then your odds of actually getting a house for yourself is gonna be really slim. Will you bite the bullet and go for a less populated server but with a higher chance for a house? Or will you stay where you are and at least be able to enjoy whatever content there is from raiding to even bloody Mahjong.

What less populated server in the NA region? Every single NA world has a higher population than any world in any other region.

Players from NA and EU don't want to play on OCE partially for the same reason OCE players wanted an OCE data center in the first place - latency problems. Another reason is they don't want to give up their friends.

And no, they're not going to be able to convince their friends to transfer either. Friends networks are like spiderwebs - the strands may spread far but are still connected.

[Sotaris]

imagine clicking on a placard nonstop competing with other players for hours and days losing sleep and not be able to get a house after all that clicking lol.

I won each house clicking on the placard. Don’t need to lose sleep over it though when we knew when the window was open for purchase.

[ijuakos_xqwzts]

Something I don't get from the comments I'm reading on the board.

On one hand, you got a thread with people saying "45 days is too much time for the demolition timer; houses should be for people who play every day". On the other hand, you have 5 days to place a bid into the lottery for a house. That in mind, I'd be okay with them either lessening the number of days or capping the number of bids. If people wanted a house, they'd be on enough to bid earlier.