The Housing System In The Eyes Of A Newer Player

[Sunhwapark]

Too many people want a large/medium only.
At least it seems that way on Chaos/Light DC, the nearby small plots that I live near haven't been bought for well over a year now, however I am in the goblet and from what I hear it's the least desired place to have a house for some.

The lotto system isn't 'better' than how it was in the past, but it's more healthy for how players can approach it and not risk their health and comfort for some pixels.
I say this as someone who did spend hours and hours without rest interacting with placards.

[PercibelTheren]

Too many people want a large/medium only.
At least it seems that way on Chaos/Light DC, the nearby small plots that I live near haven't been bought for well over a year now, however I am in the goblet and from what I hear it's the least desired place to have a house for some.

The lotto system isn't 'better' than how it was in the past, but it's more healthy for how players can approach it and not risk their health and comfort for some pixels.
I say this as someone who did spend hours and hours without rest interacting with placards.

Yeah, there is very little demand for Smalls and honestly, no wonder. You just really can't fit all that much into them and their gardens are pretty tiny. In every housing ward I look at, Medium/Large houses are taken and there are plenty of free Smalls because nobody wants them. Which is why it would be best if they just sold plots and we could upgrade them with gil and/or supplying materials. That way everyone would be happy.

[Kaixern]

Yeah, there is very little demand for Smalls and honestly, no wonder. You just really can't fit all that much into them and their gardens are pretty tiny. In every housing ward I look at, Medium/Large houses are taken and there are plenty of free Smalls because nobody wants them. Which is why it would be best if they just sold plots and we could upgrade them with gil and/or supplying materials. That way everyone would be happy.

I also agree with the idea of upgradable plots.
(Of course i have no idea how much strain it could maybe cause on the servers / when it comes to coding and how they could "reworks" the plots so these could potentialy change in the future to Large house, but i find the idea intersting due to the simple idea of an "evolving" house)

[LilimoLimomo]

At the core, the issue is very simple: you've got a resource that is limited in supply and high in demand, such that for every 1000-ish people that want it, only 1 person gets it. It doesn't matter what that resource is; it could be Beanie Babies or Theatre Tickets or houses in an MMO. The question is simple: what is the best way to distribute these limited resources?

First, we have to decide what we mean by "best". Personally, I think we should strive for a system that is fair and compassionate.

And with that in mind, I think a lottery is probably the best that can be done given the current circumstances. You apply to the lottery, then you move on with your life; that's compassionate (you'll see why later). You'll probably lose the lottery, but you have the same chance as everyone else, so it's fair.

It used to be worse. It used to be first-come, first-serve. So people who wanted a house would literally sit clicking for hours upon hours, sometimes days, just to hopefully be the first person to get the house. And this was a huge problem, because it clearly incentivized players to waste their time, sacrifice their health, and burn out. This alone was more than enough reason to change it.

But beyond that, it was a much less fair system, because some people have more free time that they can spend on clicking without stopping, while others have much less or can't do it at all. A trust fund kid without any responsibilities can click all day without a care, but someone who works for a living has much less bandwidth to do that. And that means that people with less real-world responsibility are statistically more likely to get a house, which skews the odds in favor of a certain demographic of players at the detriment of other demographics of players.

Hopefully that demonstrates how much better the current system is. By not adding additional pain to the process and fairly distributing resources, it's a system that's as good as it gets.

The only way to genuinely make things work any better isn't to change the system of distribution, but rather to change the supply and/or demand. Because at the end of the day, not getting what you want and knowing you're unlikely to get what you want will always suck.

[CaptainLagbeard]

The lottery system is definitely better than the old one, as that was basically whoever got logged in and past the queues first got the house whenever new ones were added.

But I think the best way to do it would be to go back to the original system and just add in automatically new wards as housing slots fill up, rather than making them artificially limited.

[Bibine_Bine]

Letting people own multiple houses was a huge mistake considering they didn't have enough houses for everyone to begin with.

Restrict houses to 1 per character and 1 per FC, people who already have multiple houses have to choose which house to keep and the others get refunded and furniture gets put into storage. Only FC leaders can post a bid for their FC house so that they can't game the system by just having more people bidding for it.

[LordMcMutton]

The ward housing system is holding them back in so many ways. There are so many cool places throughout the game and its expansions where they could add some really creative instanced housing. Personally, I'd love my own sky pirate base in the Sea of Clouds like the one from the HW alliance raid quests or my own wing of the Il Mheg castle so I can spend more time near my most wonderful branch. Heck, if they wanted to charge for it, I'd rather spend $2 a month extra for that than for a retainer any day.

I think that's a really cool idea, though I wouldn't want to pay extra for it

[Asari5]

i would limit large houses to free companies (at least 10 members) only.
cant speak for every server but at least in EU there seem to be always small houses available.

and i would remove the demolish timer. instead i would make the players pay rent to be even more of a gilsink. it would be payable several months early for players to be able to take breaks from the game in between.

[Azureskies01]

The system now is fine, at least it is RNG and not bots owning all the houses.