Rumination on Housing Supply

[dspguy]

With the addition of new data centers, players have moved and open up many plots on many servers.

I took a look around Leviathan (my server) to ascertain the number of bids across all open personal plots. The short version is:

641 bids across 30 small plots.
146 bids on 1 medium plot.

There is about 22 hours to go on bidding, so these numbers can go up.

I interpret this data as such:

This is one of the best times to try and get any plot. If a player owns no house, they are likely bidding on a small, not the medium since the odds are higher (1 in 20 vs 1 in 146). The bids on the medium are likely players that already own a plot. Which means, there are about 641 players on Leviathan actively searching for housing.

Considering how little time investment is needed to put a bid in on a plot, the barrier for entry for the majority of the playerbase is simply logging in and having 3-4M gil to spend. Time is not really a factor.

This leads me to conclude that the demand on a populated server such as Leviathan is not as large as many are led to believe. The addition of 3 wards to all areas would add 900 plots.

The supply-demand gap might be much smaller than many believe on some servers.

[Jojoya]

One problem we're running into now that prevents an accurate estimate is that some interested in buying a house aren't even trying because they feel like they have no chance of winning when odds are this heavily against them. They'd rather not bid at all rather than face disappointment lottery after lottery.

It will also be interesting to see just how many houses are purchased on Dynamis in the next week. A majority of those will probably represent players who had been trying on their old worlds and were willing to transfer (or create and quickly level an alt) on one of the new worlds to get one.

I imagine that SE was probably getting the most accurate numbers back in May-Jun when the lottery first started and is using those numbers to plan the future ward additions.

[Shibi]

It gets to the point where one thinks "If they are not even bothering to place a bid to avoid a low roll, then the house really isn't that important in their daily gameplay" so I think we can discount them for demand drivers *in the current system*

Not to say they wouldn't spend the money on a small instanced, just to say, they don't really count as factors for the system as it stands.

[Hasrat]

This is also only round 1 of 2 for new servers on NA.

I've previously stated claims that there will be pretty much no chance of adding new wards to housing until they've finished adding all worlds/data centers as planned. Probably also add that it may be rather unlikely they would add new wards before resuming auto-demolition and letting things run for a few months (assuming nothing else pops up in that time..).

With a total of 8 new worlds and all associated wards when it's all said and done, it's almost hard to imagine NA will still be struggling on housing supply, congested servers aside. Not to say it's unlikely/impossible. Time will tell. But it'll certainly make a dent.

I'd even hazard a guess that the second round will be even more telling. It'll no longer be the "new" data center, with at least some established population, probably reducing a lot of fears and apprehensions about transferring to newly added worlds.

In the end, it will accomplish what was intended, which is diluting the player population to spread out and easy some of that demand.

[Wasselin]

On Faerie there were over 1,000 bids on 51 personal plots. I don't know how many of those are people trying to move houses, but even adding a complete new housing district wouldn't give enough houses.

[Jojoya]

It gets to the point where one thinks "If they are not even bothering to place a bid to avoid a low roll, then the house really isn't that important in their daily gameplay" so I think we can discount them for demand drivers *in the current system*

Not to say they wouldn't spend the money on a small instanced, just to say, they don't really count as factors for the system as it stands.

I don't think I can really agree. Not being able to emotionally handle repeated disappointment doesn't mean a lack of desire for something. The demand is still there and will reappear once the individual is in a better emotional state to handle the "rejection". The human mind is still mostly a mystery to scientists despite research advances over the years.

If they were bidding when the lottery was first introduced and are still an active player, then their demand is part of the current system since the current system is the lottery.

[Shibi]

I don't think I can really agree. Not being able to emotionally handle repeated disappointment doesn't mean a lack of desire for something. The demand is still there and will reappear once the individual is in a better emotional state to handle the "rejection".

Please reread my post. You grabbed the wrong end of the chocobo.

[dspguy]

On Faerie there were over 1,000 bids on 51 personal plots. I don't know how many of those are people trying to move houses, but even adding a complete new housing district wouldn't give enough houses.

True, 1000 isn't fixable with just a new ward across all cities (that's only 300 plots). However, I think many players were thinking the demand was upwards of 5000 or even 10000.

It gets to the point where one thinks "If they are not even bothering to place a bid to avoid a low roll, then the house really isn't that important in their daily gameplay" so I think we can discount
them for demand drivers *in the current system*

Players that weren't willing to spam placards were a special brand of buyers - they had an extra level of dedication (aside from the placard spamming bots). However, with this new system - how long does it take to check wards for an open plot and run over there and place a bid? Maybe 5 minutes?

If a player isn't willing to spend 5 minutes to put in a bid, they aren't serious buyers. If we have servers with 600 bids or 1000 lottery bids - that's the demand that SE should actually care about. This past lottery was the best chance for players to pick up a house since after some of Empyreum's FC wards opened up to personal buyers. They'll need to either restart auto-demolition or add more wards before we see another lottery like this one.

[Shibi]

If a player isn't willing to spend 5 minutes to put in a bid, they aren't serious buyers. If we have servers with 600 bids or 1000 lottery bids - that's the demand that SE should actually care about. This past lottery was the best chance for players to pick up a house since after some of Empyreum's FC wards opened up to personal buyers. They'll need to either restart auto-demolition or add more wards before we see another lottery like this one.

[ I do agree with your points by the way, just expanding them ]

It was the best chance for larges/mediums. Not for smalls as they were mostly untouched and over the 4 servers there are still many if not most of those untaken. I still don't think we will see exhaustion over the 4 Dynamis servers for many rounds.

Plus don't forget there are new wards and new servers coming in or before 2024.

[dspguy]

I was looking at it from the standpoint of the other 70+ established servers, where the lottery has been in just a small handful of smalls for a few months now. The new servers will have open plots for a couple of rounds as well as FC plots.