House Finder Suggestion

With the release and nearly immediate purchase of every single plot in the new wards (720 plots per server), I think a better system is needed.

So I've come up with an idea that I'd like to suggest to the devs, and since I don't know the best way to get the suggestion to their eyes and ears, I'm posting it here and hoping that amounts to something. (Advice on the best way to submit suggestions is appreciated.)

First off, the general concept itself is really simple. We have a Duty Finder, and a new Raid Finder, we also have Party Finder, there might even be some other Finders I don't know about, but what we need is a House Finder!

That's pretty much the entire idea, I'm sure the devs can figure it out from there, the rest is just the nitty gritty details. Since I have a little background in programming, software design and engineering, algorithm creation, that kind of stuff, I'll go ahead and get into it. At the end I'm going to detail the foreseen pros and cons of the system. Enjoy!

Alright, so first thing's first, how to access. I strongly recommend that it be a system UI, like Duty Finder, from the system menu or possible to assign to a key or button on the bar, like other 'menus.' This is to keep it in line with menus that already exist, as well as make it easy to access, from everywhere.  The other option is less desired; a market-board type object or NPC to interact with in order to access.

Unlocking requirements are essentially the same as for the purchase of a house in the first place. If you can't buy a house, you don't need access to the house finder, that simple.

(Also, I say 'house' and 'house finder' but what I'm really talking about is the plot the house is on. Just easier to say 'house.')

So the default screen when you open the house finder is the 'browse' menu. The settings are going to default to all districts, all wards, all plots, any price, and show what's currently available for purchase.

The results list would show district, ward, plot number, type of plot, and price that the plot is currently available for.

Clicking an item in the results list would show additional details about the plot, pretty much similar to inspecting a plaque now, and if the plot is available would offer the option to buy, assuming the finances were sufficient.

99% of the time though I'm betting there's not going to be any plot available in any ward of any district, so that's where the main feature of the finder comes in.

First, you would input an amount of money you'd be willing to put down for a house. This has a minimum of 1.488 mill, the cheapest amount a plot can be bought for, and a maximum of 50 mill. Note that the money does not have to currently be in your possession (we'll get to that in a moment when your settings are 'saved', but for browsing it's not required.)

Once a money amount is input, all the plots will 'filter' by whether they will ever be available at that amount. White text represents that the amount is enough to buy that plot the instant it is available. Red text represents that the amount is sufficient to buy that plot, but ONLY if it goes on the market and stays on the market and reduces in price to that level. Grey text represents that the current input money amount will never be sufficient to buy that plot ever, and those plots cannot be selected.

Note that the 'red text' for 'not full price' plots is actually an ADVANCED feature that defaults to OFF. Until that feature is turned on (and there's a warning when turning it on that it makes it very unlikely that the plot will ever be purchased because those waiting to purchase it at full value will be given priority, even if they are behind you in the queue) the system just defaults to white and gray.

So now we have our list of plots, and you can swap between the three districts. A button to display the map of the currently selected district would be helpful, for reference.

The user can then select as many plots as they like (or buttons for 'all large' 'all 5th class', 'all this district', etc.) for plots that they are interested in purchasing. The first one that comes on the market, basically. They can also order the plot list; if multiple plots become available at once (for instance a new ward is released), priority will be given to the first plot on the list that is available. The desired plot list can be mixed and matched across districts, as well.

Note that plots that cannot be afforded by the input money value will not be able to be added to the desired plot list.

At this point, the user CANNOT select which ward they want. (This option will be in the 'plot upgrade' feature, which we'll get to in a moment.) To keep the queue a nice short system and not a drain on the servers, essentially if any of the plots selected in ANY ward (or if a new ward is created), the purchase will be made.

So as a recap, so far we have this order of events:
1 - Browse available
2 - If no available, or available is not desired, use search settings
3 - First step of search settings is adjust the money amount that will be put down (but it isn't put down yet)
4 - Browse and create a 'desired plot list'.

So far so good? Now here's the part where we 'lock it in.' If any of the plots on the desired plot list are available, the 'lock in' is disabled, the user has to click on that search result and purchase it directly. If however no plot is currently available that matches the search settings, the user can choose to put that amount of money down towards the 'queue.'

Once in the queue, the money cannot be refunded without leaving the queue or when the plot is purchased (any excess money is refunded at that time.)

At any future point, the desired plot list can be updated or changed. However, the money is locked in. More money can be added (with a confirmation dialogue) in order to increase the amount of available plots to add to the desired plot list, but again money CANNOT be taken out without losing the place in queue. You can then requeue at the back of the line, or keep the money, as desired.

When any house comes on the market, immediately, before it is available for purchase, it goes through the house queue, starting with the first person in queue, and the first person that has this plot on their desired plot list, gets the plot automatically, even if they are not currently online or currently subscribed (just like how it works with current house owners). The plot is now theirs, and they are subject to the same reclamation procedure as we currently have. An e-mail is sent to alert them of their purchase. They are of course taken out of the house finder queue and are unable to purchase any other plot (but can now sign up for the 'upgrade plot' function I'll detail in a moment.)

The final detail is that if on some extremely rare occasion a house goes on the market and is not instantly purchased by someone waiting in the house finder, and somehow lasts on the market long enough for the price to go down, then every time the price is changed it re-checks the house finder queue to see if anyone is willing to purchase the plot at the new value. (This is for those who checked that feature and queued up for plots not at full value.)

That pretty much covers the house finder. Now once you have any house at all, you can 'upgrade' it to get closer to the one you actually want.

The way that this works is very similar to house finder, with some differences. The value of your current house is put towards the 'money' value (although you can add more). If the new plot is compatible with the old plot, all customization of the house and such (furniture, walls, etc) will automatically transfer to the new plot.

And finally, another option available to house owners is a 'desired neighbor' list. Any house owner can petition another house owner to be a 'desired neighbor', and whether they want to 'move to neighbor' or 'let neighbor move to me.'

If you select 'move to neighbor', and the desired neighbor selects 'let neighbor move to me', then the option to select that specific ward becomes available to enable on your desired plots list, and only plots from that district can be selected. Only one neighbor to 'move to' can be registered, so only one ward/district selected, but up to 30 'let neighbor move to me' can be registered.

If a desired ward is selected, then any plots on the plot list that become available that are NOT in the desired ward WILL be skipped and allow the next person in the queue a shot at them. Only plots in the plot list in the desired ward will be queued for.

If they relocate using the plot upgrade function, their old plot is immediately available and of course will queue through the house finder again.

FC vs personal has no priority, it's still first queue first served. Also, upgrade vs new owner has no priority either.

So now for pros and cons:

Pros:

- House trading is eliminated. If anyone is queued for a particular plot, the moment it is released it is purchased by the person waiting to buy it, and cannot be purchased by someone else. So there is no way to 'sell' the house to someone. (I don't know if there's a way to transfer ownership without releasing the plot, currently, if there is, it should be removed.)

- You don't have to be online to purchase a house, which saves login queues after a ward-adding patch, having to constantly log on several times a day to see if houses have been released by owners or reclaimed from inactivity, etc.

- The 'take a number' method still follows by the same basic tenements of 'first come first serve' while making it drastically less of a time investment to purchase a plot.

- The queue will give concrete data to the developers about how much housing desire there is on each server and may lead towards the creation of more wards (or even a system where a ward is auto-created when every single plot in it is already pre-purchased, which would be sweet).

- A form of money sink without actually giving anything back in the short-term. With each character able to dump up to 50 mil into the queue and get nothing back but a promise that they'll get that house 'someday' if it ever becomes available, and can't remove the money without losing their place in line, that's a huge money sink.

Cons:

- If the queue data gets lost, that would be disastrous. Some method of backing up the queue periodically would be required, which isn't necessary for other types of queues so requires additional coding.

- It may exacerbate the wait to users. Although users are already pretty exacerbated with the current system in my opinion, this may give traction to frustration. "I've been in queue for 17 months and still haven't gotten the plot I want yet", etc.

- It's another system to 'teach' to users, adding an additional level of complexity.

- Users may not like having to put money down and then have nothing to show for it for a very long time, and being unable to retrieve that money without losing their place.

- It is theoretically possible for a user to have a super-picky desired plot list (especially if it includes a desired neighbor), and then never get what they want simply because the current owner never gives up the plot. This can cause frustration. However, the reward is that place is saved in line, if they change their settings to be less picky, they'd be ahead of everyone else waiting in queue for any of the other plots they'd be willing to settle for.

- In a very rare situation, someone could potentially set their settings super-picky intentionally, and then when they get to like first place in line, find out what someone else wants, then change their own search settings to 'snipe' that plot out from under someone else the next time it becomes available. I personally think this is unlikely to happen much, and even if it did, it's no different than if they had queued up for that plot to begin with.

As a final note, I'm not entirely sure whether it would be best to have some kind of statistics visible to the users, like "19 people queued to buy this plot when it next becomes available" or "you are position 8,932 in line." I lean more towards them being useful because people will be happy when the number goes down "omg I'm under 100 queue, I'm so excited, I'm going to get it soon!"

I know this has been long but when a system like this is designed you have to be descriptive and specific about how it's supposed to work in order for the entire proposal to be sound. Thanks for reading and feel free to leave feedback!