Housing Roulette was an absolute trash idea.

[dspguy]

The system is fine the way it is. Lottery wasn't supposed to fix the shortage. It was supposed to remove placard spamming and fighting bots for a plot. Honestly, placard spamming was just lottery where you sat there for 12-24 hours spamming a placard, mostly against bots with an advantage. Essentially, your odds were, at best, 1/number of players there. Which is just like lottery now. Except no reason to stand around and waste a day on a virtual house.

I can't speak for other servers, but on my server - there are still smalls in the new wards that weren't purchased. We are on a decently populated server. If we have plots that weren't purchased in this first round - we are essentially right where we need to be supply-wise. Maybe a touch more in the future as more players come into the fold. However, auto-demolition might free up enough to balance it out.

FCFS wasn't right for people that can't login at 5am EST on patch day and play a different lottery - the queue lottery.
Placard spamming wasn't right for people that can't dedicate days to fighting spamming bots for a house.
Lottery evens the playing field.

The only thing I can say about placard spamming... is it would have worked if the random lockout was much shorter. If you recall, part of the reason for the lockout was the prevent people from relinquishing a plot and having someone relocate into that spot, in exchange for gil. If they made the lockout short - like 15-30 minutes, it would be just enough time to make it too risky to pay someone for the plot that you might not get. And 30 minutes of spamming a placard isn't terrible and it also rewards those that are dedicated to checking ward vacancies often.

Edit: I just checked the 5 housing districts - wards 26-30. 107 open plots. Some mediums. That's not counting plots vacated due to relocation. 107 unbid plots. IMO, if you don't have a house on Leviathan by now, you don't really want one. According to sources online that estimate server population, Leviathan is right in the middle for total population and near the top for active population. I'd say that's a good barometer for the status of housing.

Most servers have no shortage.