Lottery, new players, and sub time. Square?

[Solowing]

I prefer the first come first serve system. But giving everyone a fair equal chance at a house isn't bad. If some of you guys remember when Shirogane released. If you DCd after getting in, you weren't going to find a house once you managed to log back in. This version is healthier for the game.

[Themarvin]

The system is made so it is fair for all, new as old... we already have enough grandfathering scandals in FFXIV that SE should simply just had dealt with.

[dspguy]

I am a relatively new player, and I’m struggling with this brilliant RNG-based housing assignment system. This is now the third time I’ve tried to get a house, and thanks to this system, I’ve spent an entire month waiting and failing.

All of this is absolutely absurd.

You don't know what it was like before the current system. Some history:

First system was first-come, first-serve. And players found ways to buy up multiple plots. At the time, the cost of housing was actually steep for much of the population. In order to compete in this system, there was a land rush when a new ward/zone was released. You had to log in right when the servers came up, and deal with a somewhat random chance of actually getting through the queue and hoping you got to one of your preferred plots before it was purchased by another player.

Later on, they added auto-demolition to remove housing from players that no longer subscribed (after 45 days). Once those houses were demolished, they were immediately available. During this time, it was also possible to sell your house on the black market for large sums of gil (or RL cash?) by arranging to relinquish your land while the buyer stood there to snap it up. In order to compete in this system, you either had to purchase it on the black market (2x-5x more than the value, plus the actual cost) or camp the Ferry Skipper to watch for when a plot came available. And you'd be doing this 24/7 to succeed. And then race to the plot.

Afterwards, they put a lockout timer on all relinquished/demolished plots. The black market dried up (other than FC sales), but purchasing was FCFS after the invisible timer came up. Which was anything from 6(?) to 24 hours after the plot was demolished. Which meant that hundreds of players were spamming the placard at the property for hours on end, competing with bots that could do this for days if necessary.

That brings us to today's system. You walk up to the placard for an available plot (which isn't all that common), you bid, you walk away. Come back in 5 days.

Every system before this had some form of RNG or time sink:
- being lucky enough to login early, not disconnected by the server (RNG)
- no one else buying that plot before you (RNG)
- watching for open plots for hours on end (time sink)
- spamming a placard with hundreds of other players/bots (time sink and RNG)

Now it is just RNG. And it is "fair" RNG. A bot could click that placard without breaks for days. You can't. A bot could do that for days while the "player" does other things. You'd have to dedicate a day just for one plot - and bring a bottle to relieve yourself in. Chances are, if there were 100 people present, your chances were LESS than 1/100 because you couldn't spam as often as others were.

While the system isn't great, it isn't a time-sink. Bid on a plot. Go level, go AFK, go watch a movie, go play with your dog. Go to work. Etc etc. Sure, the system could be better. They could add more wards/plots - that'd be nice. But the system we have today is far better than what we had previously. If this was ARR, you'd just never have a house. There was no auto-demolish. So once all plots were purchased, you were out of luck.

[AnjouMaaka]

Far as I know, there's still plenty of available housing on Dynamis. If you don't want to transfer there, then you're best bet will be the next time they add more wards or a new housing district.

[kiotsukete]

Far as I know, there's still plenty of available housing on Dynamis. If you don't want to transfer there, then you're best bet will be the next time they add more wards or a new housing district.

But then the downside is that you’ll have to DC travel every time you want to do something in DF (or so I’ve heard). Now if they implemented cross DC DF, I’d world transfer in a heart beat.

The root of the problem is that they designed housing to have a finite # of plots, rather than making them all instanced. Any other solution is just a bandaid. Reducing lottery timers doesn’t increase housing supply, it just increases # of chances but not % chance of winning a house. Adding more wards/districts is great until they’re all snapped up then we’re back to this again.

I was on hiatus during EW, so I’m not sure why the resources they put into Island Sanctuary couldn’t have been directed towards implementing instanced housing so everyone could finally have one.

[Solowing]

I am a relatively new player, and I’m struggling with this brilliant RNG-based housing assignment system. This is now the third time I’ve tried to get a house, and thanks to this system, I’ve spent an entire month waiting and failing.

How did you think it was a good idea to force people into a nearly week-long cooldown after losing the lottery? How did you think it was a good idea to FORCE people to wait before they can try to buy a house again, when every day in the game comes at a real monetary cost, given that it’s a subscription-based game? How is it a good idea to rely on an RNG system where someone trying for months can be overtaken by someone who simply has more luck? How does this system make even the slightest bit of sense?

What sense does it make to lock EMPTY PLOTS WITH NO BIDDERS for DAYS, preventing people from settling for those instead of throwing them into this pointless and honestly infuriating cooldown?

Not to mention the players who own multiple houses despite the system prohibiting it, making the game even less welcoming to new players. All of this is absolutely absurd.

The players asked for people who didn't have a lot of time to play or traveled a lot to be considered for. And this is that consideration in practice.

3rd time?

Bruh I gave up my ward 7 plot 44 medium on Brynildr in 2016 because the population was really low, it took until shirogane released until I got my first plot in the Mist. That was because I cut my losses in shirogane being 700 in queue and realizing I'd likely DC if I stuck around with the ward crashing around me and I certainly wasn't going find a plot if I did. So I left for the mist and found an uncontested small (that I still reside at)

But don't expect to win, just hope. Expectation leads to disappointment. I got cozy in my apartment when I transferred to Excalibur, and just bid my time till I come home across a empty plot. (which was about a year later)

[Solowing]

But then the downside is that you’ll have to DC travel every time you want to do something in DF (or so I’ve heard). Now if they implemented cross DC DF, I’d world transfer in a heart beat.

The root of the problem is that they designed housing to have a finite # of plots, rather than making them all instanced. Any other solution is just a bandaid. Reducing lottery timers doesn’t increase housing supply, it just increases # of chances but not % chance of winning a house. Adding more wards/districts is great until they’re all snapped up then we’re back to this again.

I was on hiatus during EW, so I’m not sure why the resources they put into Island Sanctuary couldn’t have been directed towards implementing instanced housing so everyone could finally have one.

Moving to a instance system would pretty much kill off venues in 1 fell swoop.

[Khryseis_Astra]

Moving to a instance system would pretty much kill off venues in 1 fell swoop.

I doubt it… there’s still the ward plots to fight over for those that care about having more visitors at a time than, for example, Island Sanctuary could support. At least with instanced, everyone could be guaranteed at least one personal plot.

If they did it so you could change your background scenery to any of the existing neighborhoods (seeing as you can finally change your interiors now!), I’d give up my ward plot so someone who wants one could have it. And if they ever made it so you could choose background scenery from other places in the world, the option wouldn’t be available for more than a second before I’d move. Not that I don’t love my current plot, but having the option to choose its setting would be a real game changer for me.

And I’m one of those rare birds who actually does look at people’s apartments through the directories when I don’t have anything better to do, or when I’m just looking for decorating inspiration! lol I’d definitely be checking through the directory of instanced houses, just because I know so many great designers who have been limited by only being able to have an apartment, and I’d be excited to see what they could do if they finally got a house of their own.

[AnjouMaaka]

I was just throwing out the available options to improve your chances of getting a house. Instanced housing has such a low chance of ever becoming a thing in FFXIV that mentioning it would solve anything is a null argument at this point. I agree that instanced housing would fix a lot of housing problems, but realistically speaking, we should not expect it to ever happen.

[NegativeS]

I will once again state that all current problems with housing stem from the fact that they are artificially limited.

Add Instanced housing. Make wards automatically generate at certain population thresholds. Take the silver spoon out of the mouths of the ward-hogs who were grandfathered in to the current system. Add more restrictions/rules to prevent a single person with 60 characters and shell FCs from vacuuming up houses. Do literally anything except adding more empty servers for people to go 'duhh, just transfer to Bajookie on Skibidi if you want a house, forget about your FC and every other reason you'd want to stay on your current server' at.

I was lucky enough to get my house because I was one of the first on Seraph, and I specifically picked a small in the Goblet to minimize the amount of competition I'd have (and I still had 2 other people bidding on the plot). And now Seraph is full, just like all the other Aether servers full of people telling others to transfer. The problem continues and the housing mains continue to cry on the forums and on Reddit about people trying to take away their exclusive special virtual land.

At this point, SE needs to sell FFXIV to a different company. Dragging your feet on improvements to explicitly broken systems has overstayed its welcome.