Suggestion for housing

[Mykhel]

Losing sucks.
Having to wait 8-10 days after losing is even worse.
The best/worst thing about plaque-clicking was that at least when a new house came up, it was on its own timer and you could possibly go try your luck with another. Now, you have suffer in defeat over and over again with massive wait periods. Each house should have a 12 hour - 2 day "unavailable" period (random for fairness and playerbase optics) and then a 1-3 day lottery period. Still keep your 1 bid per player limit so people can't flip it around everywhere, OR if they WANT to withdraw their bid, there's a 5-25% withdrawal fee (also random for fairness) so withdrawing is a serious consideration that can be costly, but worth it if they wish to bid on another plot.

Also, there is a CLEAR bias towards late bidders. I scanned over 100 plots in the "results period" of bidding and 77.65% of winning numbers were above the 50% threshold in the previous results cycle. Meaning if 6 total bidders were on a plot, there was a 77.65% chance the number was 4, 5, or 6. This is an insane result, and I believe shows a problem with the bidding system. I will be scanning the results period this time as well for more data. If anyone has similar data from past results periods, I'd be interested in seeing it. I noticed this trend when I would see a rush to bid in the last 24 hours of the bidding period, with those placing bids early win less than 1/4 of the time. It almost feels akin to bug abuse. Just based on this results period alone, I will not be bidding until the final hours and would heavily recommend players to avoid bidding early.

Anyways, what do you think of the suggestion and data? Personally, I despise it and it is incredibly demoralizing to have to wait so long just to try again for a part of the game I consider among the most enjoyable.

EDIT: I surveyed ALL 30 Mist wards on a new server and took the results of all Large houses. 27 Large houses were being bid on. 16 Houses were above the 50% results threshold. 11 houses were below the 50% threshold. 5 of the 16 houses were the LAST BID. Mathematically, this is more evidence the results are skewed towards late bidders. If you were above the 50% threshold of bids, you had a 59.25% chance of the number falling in that half. If you were in the bottom half, you only had a 40.75% chance. I think this is significant to support my original hypothesis. I will retest in the next phase. Let me know if you want me to go through all the wards of the other locations as well.

[Darkstride]

From my personal experience, I can agree that it does seem to favor late bids, but there's no way to actually confirm that's the case. I had a Small plot so I can't complain, but I bid every single cycle throughout Endwalker on Medium plots. I finally won on the last cycle before DT's launch with a bid placed mid-late cycle (I forget the actual number). I used to joke with my FC that I was just screwing myself over by bidding on the first day, because low numbers never win. The winning number always seemed to be in the last couple days of bidding. I saw one person walk up to the placard with less than a minute left and placed a bid and they won. I don't recall ever seeing a single-digit winner, or even a number below 30, but again I don't distinctly remember the results for every single cycle.

Of course my own experience is only a very small sample of the entire housing lottery, but what I've seen does align with your complaint.

[Kaiproberts]

Losing sucks.
Having to wait 8-10 days after losing is even worse.
The best/worst thing about plaque-clicking was that at least when a new house came up, it was on its own timer and you could possibly go try your luck with another. Now, you have suffer in defeat over and over again with massive wait periods. Each house should have a 12 hour - 2 day "unavailable" period (random for fairness and playerbase optics) and then a 1-3 day lottery period. Still keep your 1 bid per player limit so people can't flip it around everywhere, OR if they WANT to withdraw their bid, there's a 5-25% withdrawal fee (also random for fairness) so withdrawing is a serious consideration that can be costly, but worth it if they wish to bid on another plot.

Also, there is a CLEAR bias towards late bidders. I scanned over 100 plots in the "results period" of bidding and 77.65% of winning numbers were above the 50% threshold in the previous results cycle. Meaning if 6 total bidders were on a plot, there was a 77.65% chance the number was 4, 5, or 6. This is an insane result, and I believe shows a problem with the bidding system. I will be scanning the results period this time as well for more data. If anyone has similar data from past results periods, I'd be interested in seeing it. I noticed this trend when I would see a rush to bid in the last 24 hours of the bidding period, with those placing bids early win less than 1/4 of the time. It almost feels akin to bug abuse. Just based on this results period alone, I will not be bidding until the final hours and would heavily recommend players to avoid bidding early.

Anyways, what do you think of the suggestion and data? Personally, I despise it and it is incredibly demoralizing to have to wait so long just to try again for a part of the game I consider among the most enjoyable.

EDIT: I surveyed ALL 30 Mist wards on a new server and took the results of all Large houses. 27 Large houses were being bid on. 16 Houses were above the 50% results threshold. 11 houses were below the 50% threshold. 5 of the 16 houses were the LAST BID. Mathematically, this is more evidence the results are skewed towards late bidders. If you were above the 50% threshold of bids, you had a 59.25% chance of the number falling in that half. If you were in the bottom half, you only had a 40.75% chance. I think this is significant to support my original hypothesis. I will retest in the next phase. Let me know if you want me to go through all the wards of the other locations as well.

Go do coin flips. Statistically, the result is 50/50. Experimentally, you will have to do hundreds of thousands of coin flips to get anywhere close to 50/50; you are more likely to see extremely skewed data with something like only 100 coin flips. When I won my plot, my number was under 30% of the total bids placed. I don't think there's enough data to come to a conclusion about when to bid.

[Jojoya]

How does one rig a system to favor later bidders instead of earlier bidders when it can't know if 3 people are going to bid or 300?

It's just perception. You're using a very small data sample trying to draw conclusions and it just won't work.

However, you are welcome to bid late instead of early if you feel that's going to improve your chances of winning.

[Xephna]

How does one rig a system to favor later bidders instead of earlier bidders when it can't know if 3 people are going to bid or 300?

It's just perception. You're using a very small data sample trying to draw conclusions and it just won't work.

However, you are welcome to bid late instead of early if you feel that's going to improve your chances of winning.

AKA, OP does not know how probability, odds, and statistics work. I read that part and I'm like OP can't seriously think that it favours late bidders lmao. I agree with the duration of draw/results might be a bit long, and losing obviously sucks. But that part about favouring later bidders? OP, please go and learn how odds and statistics work, lol.