Housing lottery system takes entirely too long and is poorly designed.

[DetHlyAura]

This one week between each lottery means 4 attempts a month. The system needs to be reworked, terribly. In 2024 this is absolutely unacceptable. They make it pathetically difficult to get a house at all and I find that to be on purpose but I won't lie, its the reason I am already considering quitting after only a month and a half. Ultima Online was a game from 1999 with a far better housing a decorating system and its freaking ancient compared to this. Just sad that a company this big would come out and say this is their best idea. With the amount of server space these use its minimal as all hell, absolutely no excuse. Just beyond aggravating and annoying.

[Jojoya]

You're not going to find too many people happy with the housing system.

But with respect to the length of the lottery period, did you consider what would happen if it was shorter? It's not like SE is slowly doling out new plots being added. The plots that are available in the lottery on the congested worlds are the ones that were relinquished or demolished during the last lottery period.

Shorter the lottery period, and you lower the potential number of plots that will be available in the next lottery period. A lower number of plots means greater competition for those plots. Greater competition increases the chance you'll lose.

While in the long run it won't make an actual difference (the same number of plots are awarded via the lottery), players start feeling discouraged about having an even smaller chance of getting one.

Longer lottery periods means more available plots to bid on and less competition for a specific plot (outside of those prime plots that are in very high demand). When there's less direct competition for a specific plot, players feel better about their chances of winning.

Shortening the lottery period won't improve things. Fixing the entire system would.

[DetHlyAura]

I have, and with a 4 day lottery period or even 5 would give more chances a month, the same number of houses will be available with no change, but more chances is 100% worth it. This current system is just dog water. It needs to be faster to be more fair for everyone. Also opening more plots would be as simple as adding a new zone, I am currently in game design and development myself and know that it wouldn't truly be as hard as they are trying to make it out to be. They just don't want to do the work!

[JimCasey_RF6]

They make it pathetically difficult to get a house at all and I find that to be on purpose but I won't lie, its the reason I am already considering quitting after only a month and a half.

It is not difficult to get a house in FFXIV. There is an overabundance of housing on the four new Dynamis DC servers. If player housing is that important to you, then you need to transfer to one of those servers. You shouldn't have joined a well established server expecting to have easy access to the housing system.

[Alycen]

It's still so wild to me that some of you are taking this tone with people who chose a server for whatever reason and want to partake into a feature of the game that we should all have equal access to. Just wild.

Not a single person who decides to play this game (or any game for that matter) should have to do research about where to play in advance. I can imagine some new people choose servers because they like the name. Being locked out of a major feature for that random choice is an unreasonable disgrace on the behalf of those who designed it and none of you should be supporting it.

[Jojoya]

It's still so wild to me that some of you are taking this tone with people who chose a server for whatever reason and want to partake into a feature of the game that we should all have equal access to. Just wild.

Not a single person who decides to play this game (or any game for that matter) should have to do research about where to play in advance. I can imagine some new people choose servers because they like the name. Being locked out of a major feature for that random choice is an unreasonable disgrace on the behalf of those who designed it and none of you should be supporting it.

I agree that no one should have to do the research, should have to make such a choice.

But the system is what it is. Knowing that it could be otherwise and should be otherwise doesn't make it so.

The feedback has been getting left for years. It was getting left back when only Balmung was having serious issues with plot availability.

SE, for whatever reason only they know, has not done what is needed to correct the underlying problem of supply to an ever-growing population creating ever increasing demand for more plots. They keep slapping band-aids on it. Tweak the system here, add a ward there but that's it.

We can't fix things as players. The most we can do is take advantage of what opportunity exists if we want a house that badly and continue to constructively ask SE to implement a real solution instead of band-aids. If they're not certain how to do it, they can study the housing systems in other MMORPGs.

I get that the ward system was an attempt to offer something more unique than players get with the housing in most games but it is not working when the player base is this large. And yet the wards could be part of a system that does work by having the ward a common area that players pass through to enter their personal (or FC) houses. It doesn't have to start over from scratch. It just needs to be reimagined.

So do some of us come off a bit callous? Probably, but we've been fighting this fight for a lot longer than a large part of the player base has been playing the game. We know things aren't going to suddenly change assuming that they're going to change at all.

All we can do is encourage players to take advantage of what does exist while the battle to get SE to reconsider housing design goes on.

Welcome to the trenches. Maybe someone will come up with an idea that hasn't been suggested in the past that gets SE's attention.

[Ayan_Calvesse]

It's still so wild to me that some of you are taking this tone with people who chose a server for whatever reason and want to partake into a feature of the game that we should all have equal access to. Just wild.

Not a single person who decides to play this game (or any game for that matter) should have to do research about where to play in advance. I can imagine some new people choose servers because they like the name. Being locked out of a major feature for that random choice is an unreasonable disgrace on the behalf of those who designed it and none of you should be supporting it.

I feel you - however.

If you want to optimize your chances of success; in all things then you would want to be informed. This goes from raids; rotations; crafting and even housing. You don't have to study up on it but then your choosing the sub-par route to get to your goal and that's fine. Also consider that Dynamis transfers are "free" so the only cost is the annoyance of being on a different DC. The issue of Housing supply on a well established server where billions of gil in commerce moves daily and folks just open PFs to beg for money to get what used to be something of an achievement to pay for a bid in the first place is the unfortunate side-effect of a forever inflating economy because SE has not made a effective mechanism to remove gil from the market; merely shift it to other players.

Its not even a matter of study - by level 20 you could see that Balmungs wards are full; people then have to prioritize whats more important to them - having a house or being a Balmung native; but you are not locked out of the feature - the difficulty of accomplishing the task is only different for you because of your choices. Its like how someone playing a Healer might find getting into trial is harder because there are only 2 slots vs the 4 that DPS have; so you will have a differing experience because of a choice you made. Or how getting a fully crafted suit of level 100 armor will cost you significantly more because your not a crafter. As the boundries of worlds in FF diminish the world you reside on will be less and less important and thats probably why folks are taking the bet to get a good Dynamis house now rather then when SE does more cross world stuff - something to consider.

[Crafoutis]

If player housing is that important to you, then you need to transfer to one of those servers. You shouldn't have joined a well established server expecting to have easy access to the housing system.

Bingo. OP joined an old, established, high-pop realm. And so OP has to deal with it.

When I data-center travel to visit my friends, I will sometimes check on the status of residential districts and I am blown away by the availability of plots.

If you want a house, if you -really- want a house, then there are methods of acquiring one.

But beggars can't be choosers.

[alfarini]

This one week between each lottery means 4 attempts a month. The system needs to be reworked, terribly. In 2024 this is absolutely unacceptable. They make it pathetically difficult to get a house at all and I find that to be on purpose but I won't lie, its the reason I am already considering quitting after only a month and a half. Ultima Online was a game from 1999 with a far better housing a decorating system and its freaking ancient compared to this. Just sad that a company this big would come out and say this is their best idea. With the amount of server space these use its minimal as all hell, absolutely no excuse. Just beyond aggravating and annoying.

It's current year so it should be easy. Lmao no, it's one week server reset schedule. This is just fine, you'd be having more of a time on the old system. If it's only been a month for you I'd say your entitled to think your somehow owed a house. Some people have been waiting literal years before getting a small let alone a large home. If you really want a home that badly server transfer over to a low pop one and pick one. I tried to get a home on the old bid system, and that was literal hell. At least this system gives everyone a fair shot, some day your luck will roll just right and them boom your subbed for life like the rest of us home owners.

[Rueby]

I firmly believe the housing system is made with the intention to shackle players who actually care about that system, forcing you to remain subbed and 'tend' to your house or you'll lose it. There's no instanced alternative that comes close to being 'decent' in my opinion this is by design. The housing is scarce by design, after all, if plots were readily available and plenty, you could just unsub and come back to claim a house (imo the healthy way).

The lottery and changes to wards made it even harder now. You can also blame people who buy plots and resell em, it's harder now but I'm sure it happens. The system is still very much exploitable, just not as easy as before.

I think anyone who is paying a sub to this game should be entitled to some kind of permanent instanced housing that's not as pitiful as apartments with such low furniture limit. At least spice it up by adding some upgrades or unique traits.

I doubt they'd listen to us, but I think people should keep asking.

I'd say the lottery is more forgiving in a sense 'set it and forget it'. I once spent 14 hours straight spamming the placcard on the old system and in the last 30mins 5-6 people showed up out of the blue...I was lucky to have been on controller spamming that placcard.