The lotto winner.... number ZERO? Are you serious???

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Originally Posted by ValkyriaCrystalis

It’s a theory, but honestly, I don’t think they can make a big coding mistake like this one ?
I’m on this game since 6 years and I truly want to believe this is a mistake but they are more capable than this, don’t you think ?
I’m lucky to have a small house but this is really crushing for a lot of people. Square knows the community cares about houses so why didn’t they checked their code better before release ?

Sorry if I sounded rude or something, English is not my primary language but if it is a bug, it is quite a BIG one. :(

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I mean, the lodestone post where devs explicitly call it a bug or error that plots with people bidding on them went un-won has been linked several times in the thread now, so your "theorizing" was just you actively avoiding reading dev communication because it would make your theory wrong.

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Originally Posted by HollowedDoll

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...9ca96a154cef76

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It doesnt address the refund issue... if we took the refund, are we screwed?

I got my gil back. Will I be put back on the lottery? There was NO Other one that bid with me. It should of went to me automatically. What is going on here and if this is being rolled out to the 20th, am I back on the lottery automatically even though I got my gil back? This is so messed up.

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Originally Posted by HollowedDoll

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...9ca96a154cef76

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Ty :)
I hope they will find a way to correct this mess.

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Originally Posted by Ignessia

In fact, if all the 0 become 1, all the 2 would become 3 and so on. So in fact it may be fair to take away the homes from the some winners, since they would not win without the bug.

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That would just piss the people off who already won decorated and relocated to said plot. This is 14's error. They need an emergency maintenance ASAP. Fix the coding and reward housing to those with 1 bid and lost to the zero bid error. They should also hold off on the next round of housing lottery until the systems goes through quality assurance. Between the pvp speed hacking and this this company has a lot of work on its hands.

Starting to think Yoshi-p split focus between 14 and 16 is what is causing a lot of issues currently

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Originally Posted by ValkyriaCrystalis

It’s a theory, but honestly, I don’t think they can make a big coding mistake like this one ?
I’m on this game since 6 years and I truly want to believe this is a mistake but they are more capable than this, don’t you think ?
I’m lucky to have a small house but this is really crushing for a lot of people. Square knows the community cares about houses so why didn’t they checked their code better before release ?

Sorry if I sounded rude or something, English is not my primary language but if it is a bug, it is quite a BIG one. :(

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it's actually a tiny one, like a single <= instead of a < in a line of code. Apparently not tested very well though

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Originally Posted by Mikachu

I got my gil back. Will I be put back on the lottery? There was NO Other one that bid with me. It should of went to me automatically. What is going on here and if this is being rolled out to the 20th, am I back on the lottery automatically even though I got my gil back? This is so messed up.

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This is my concern too... all the people that reclaimed the gil are just S.O.O.L. or can we just pay if we win?

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Originally Posted by SnowVix

I mean, the lodestone post where devs explicitly call it a bug or error that plots with people bidding on them went un-won has been linked several times in the thread now, so your "theorizing" was just you actively avoiding reading dev communication because it would make your theory wrong.

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I saw those.
But since we had caught them lying on a few things recently, my trust in them is quite recoloured.
And this make me quite sad. But it’s a me problem I guess.

Have a good day nevertheless.

Good to know they are looking into the issue and have basically frozen the system until they know what happened. They really do need to address those that already took their refund though. Okay, you've extended the result period but what is happening to those who already accepted their "loss" and took their money back?

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Originally Posted by StriderShinryu

Good to know they are looking into the issue and have basically frozen the system until they know what happened. They really do need to address those that already took their refund though. Okay, you've extended the result period but what is happening to those who already accepted their "loss" and took their money back?

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I'd hope we can still win and just pay upon claiming.... but if they couldnt handle "roll *1-7*" I dont know what to expect v.v

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Originally Posted by HollowedDoll

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...9ca96a154cef76

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See the issue with this response from them is it tells us nothing, it doesn't stop people worrying or clarify anything other than what we already know which is they messed up. How can they not understand that right now what we need is for them to tell us what they intend to do about the issue. How they fix the bug/error and what they look into regarding the cause is not our concern. Something as simple as saying 'All returned 0 results will be rerolled with the original bidders' or 'If you were the only bidder and it returned 0 you have won, we just need time to implement it, thanks for your patience'

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Originally Posted by Aoi_Futaba

See the issue with this response from them is it tells us nothing, it doesn't stop people worrying or clarify anything other than what we already know which is they messed up. How can they not understand that right now what we need is for them to tell us what they intend to do about the issue. How they fix the bug/error and what they look into regarding the cause is not our concern. Something as simple as saying 'All returned 0 results will be rerolled with the original bidders' or 'If you were the only bidder and it returned 0 you have won, we just need time to implement it, thanks for your patience'

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Also doesnt address the fact that most people reclaimed their gil after they saw that they "lost"

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Originally Posted by Aeika

Also doesnt address the fact that most people reclaimed their gil after they saw that they "lost"

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For real. Am I going to have to participate again? FFS.

I doubt they're taking all of that time just to look into the issue. They're probably taking that time to figure out what to do about it without making things even worse from a PR standpoint.

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Originally Posted by SapphireWeapon

I doubt they're taking all of that time just to look into the issue. They're probably taking that time to figure out what to do about it without making things even worse from a PR standpoint.

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Of this I have no doubt.

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Originally Posted by Aoi_Futaba

See the issue with this response from them is it tells us nothing, it doesn't stop people worrying or clarify anything other than what we already know which is they messed up. How can they not understand that right now what we need is for them to tell us what they intend to do about the issue. How they fix the bug/error and what they look into regarding the cause is not our concern. Something as simple as saying 'All returned 0 results will be rerolled with the original bidders' or 'If you were the only bidder and it returned 0 you have won, we just need time to implement it, thanks for your patience'

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'Don't over-promise.'

I don't think this would be as big an issue -- except it's only a guess that people who took refunds will still have their name associated with the house in question.

We assume proper, accessible, and usable auditing logs for all of this. But they're just assumptions. I lean in the direction that Square is being cautious when approaching this topic, taking the time to look into what data they have, what systems are in place to handle the problem and the resolution, and only telling us what they're 100% certain of. Right now, what they're 100% certain of is that they're going to investigate the issue and address it in some way. All things being equal, while this issue shouldn't have happened in the first place, it did. And I can't blame Square for taking a cautious approach to replying to any issue involving housing, the third rail topic of the entire game.

looks like someone forgot to clamp the randomizer outputs for the lottery, which is an understandable oversight (that's a teeny tiny coding mistake, seriously--that can be a single key slightly out of order). thankfully nobody's lost their money, but it doesn mean they'll have to try again in a few days and get their results a few more days after.

shold hopefully be a very small and rapid fix for that.

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Originally Posted by SpiralMask

looks like someone forgot to clamp the randomizer outputs for the lottery, which is an understandable oversight (that's a teeny tiny coding mistake, seriously--that can be a single key slightly out of order). thankfully nobody's lost their money, but it doesn mean they'll have to try again in a few days and get their results a few more days after.

shold hopefully be a very small and rapid fix for that.

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It's possible that 0 was meant to be a placeholder that shouldn't have been allowed to participate when actual players bid so that if nobody bids, "0" would win.

Just a reminder anything less than rerolling the lottery for the unclaimed plots is unacceptable regardless of whether people got their bid back or not.

Just curious… did anyone win a plot with the number 7? I’ve seen this asked a couple of times on Twitter and each time someone mentions they lost to 7, the house is still there. The medium I went four had 10 of us going for it and I know there’s a chance somebody was 7 but with so many private houses still sitting there on Behemonth… it’s just making me wonder.. if the lottery just chooses random numbers even if no one has that number(outside of zero).

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Originally Posted by Valric

Me and another FC member bid on the same lot and we were the only ones bidding. We both lost cause the winning number is 0.
Even though we both already claimed our gil back, the placard still mentions that there were 2 participants. So the data should be there. Basically the devs have 4 days now to sort it out and assign a winner to those "winning number 0 - plots" before people would start to bid on these plots again.

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How come MANY players are saying they bought multiple tickets for the same FC?!
That's so unfair, it should be one member only.

This housing system is more broken than I thought. 0 won, AND oh this FC has 500m let's all get a ticket? Wow.

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Originally Posted by PharisHanasaki

How come MANY players are saying they bought multiple tickets for the same FC?!
That's so unfair, it should be one member only.

This housing system is more broken than I thought. 0 won, AND oh this FC has 500m let's all get a ticket? Wow.

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I mean... you need 49mill per person for a large, and 19mill each for med? You cant easily distribute that much gil to people you trust. I was hesitant to even let the officers have 20 mill because they can just not bet the lotto and leave with the gil. Its not a bannable offense.

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Originally Posted by HereInPlainSight

'
I don't think this would be as big an issue -- except it's only a guess that people who took refunds will still have their name associated with the house in question.

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This is my hope because even though the pop up window says zero people are participating after the results were determined, the main placard still says two people are. Unless that's another bug, the discrepancy gives me small hope that the participant's data are still stored in association with that plot for that lottery round until such a time as the winner claims the plot.

Both participants are me so I know I haven't been removed from that particular record:
https://i.imgur.com/C43hVnW.png

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Originally Posted by Aeika

I mean... you need 49mill per person for a large, and 19mill each for med? You cant easily distribute that much gil to people you trust. I was hesitant to even let the officers have 20 mill because they can just not bet the lotto and leave with the gil. Its not a bannable offense.

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It's not fair. Personal Housing can only allow for one ticket per person, why must an FC be allowed to buy multiple? Specially for M and L houses, which are super limited. So an FC that earns or buys gil can have a higher chance than this other FC full of newbies that worked hard to earn 45-50m?

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Originally Posted by PharisHanasaki

So an FC that earns or buys gil can have a higher chance than this other FC full of newbies that worked hard to earn 45-50m?

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yes. thats how currency works.

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Originally Posted by PharisHanasaki

It's not fair. Personal Housing can only allow for one ticket per person, why must an FC be allowed to buy multiple? Specially for M and L houses, which are super limited. So an FC that earns or buys gil can have a higher chance than this other FC full of newbies that worked hard to earn 45-50m?

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I understand the frustration.
1: IMO, a large plot is just bragging rights. Its the same as Medium, with barely more decorations. Its really a waste.
2. Tho many FC members can place bids all over, they can only have one plot. Once they win one, the other bids dont matter. An FC can only own one house plot.
My FC is only 6 people, and I too am frustrated with the lotto glitch. We had a 100% chance of finally getting a home after working for 7 months to save, and lost to number zero.

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Originally Posted by Lihtleita

yes. thats how currency works.

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Ha, that's not the point. But hey what did I expect from the forums.

Ye gods that's a heck of a bug. Looks like someone didn't put a range limit into the random number generator so 0 wasn't an option. I imagine they'll get that fixed asap.

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Originally Posted by Aeika

I understand the frustration.
1: IMO, a large plot is just bragging rights. Its the same as Medium, with barely more decorations. Its really a waste.
2. Tho many FC members can place bids all over, they can only have one plot. Once they win one, the other bids dont matter. An FC can only own one house plot.
My FC is only 6 people, and I too am frustrated with the lotto glitch. We had a 100% chance of finally getting a home after working for 7 months to save, and lost to number zero.

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Which again, it's not the point. Should be one ticket per plot at the very least. Not multiple on the same plot. That's just silly.

But I guess if you here in the forums think that's fair, good luck getting your house if you didn't already.

My FC managed to get a mansion, but were on a very quiet server so it was a lot easier to get one.

I did get the 0 error, and my gil was sent back to me for a medium. I am not sure if its just a RNG thing because I did see the same house I tried for on a different ward that was claimed.

I know everyone is upset, but all we can do is be patient and wait for a actual answer on what is going forward.

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Originally Posted by Khalithar

Just a reminder anything less than rerolling the lottery for the unclaimed plots is unacceptable regardless of whether people got their bid back or not.

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Yes but it should ONLY be the original bidders, not an open reroll that new people can join, just the people that were in the plot's lottery originally

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Originally Posted by PharisHanasaki

Ha, that's not the point. But hey what did I expect from the forums.

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what was your point then? from where I'm standing it makes more sense for a large house to go to an fc with 100 members instead of 4 members.
this system also favours legitimate fcs instead of people who make dummys with only one member for the purpose of getting a house.

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Originally Posted by Aoi_Futaba

See the issue with this response from them is it tells us nothing, it doesn't stop people worrying or clarify anything other than what we already know which is they messed up. How can they not understand that right now what we need is for them to tell us what they intend to do about the issue. How they fix the bug/error and what they look into regarding the cause is not our concern. Something as simple as saying 'All returned 0 results will be rerolled with the original bidders' or 'If you were the only bidder and it returned 0 you have won, we just need time to implement it, thanks for your patience'

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I think the answer there is they don't know. They don't know what caused it yet. I don't imagine they know what measures they can implement yet then either.

I get it. I had to wait a month after 6.0 for them to fix an audio issue that made all the music in the game stutter. They weren't great at communicating about things. So by all means call them out on that. But just understand that knowing you have a bug in software doesn't mean you always know instantly what to do about it.

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Originally Posted by Aeika

I mean... you need 49mill per person for a large, and 19mill each for med? You cant easily distribute that much gil to people you trust. I was hesitant to even let the officers have 20 mill because they can just not bet the lotto and leave with the gil. Its not a bannable offense.

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You know there's this thing called alts, right? It's literally pay to win.

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Originally Posted by Lihtleita

what was your point then? from where I'm standing it makes more sense for a large house to go to an fc with 100 members instead of 4 members.

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You really can't see the broad picture, right?
It can be an FC of 8 alts, each buying a single ticket for one plot, thus increasing their chances of hoarding that one plot. If they bought one ticket, and won, fine. But being able to buy multiple for a single plot it's stupid if the idea is to give people a fair chance.

Plus, I've seen FCs with over 50 members, but 2 active. So, meh.

Either way, if you're happy with how it is right now, then it's fine by me. Go fight for your plots.

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Originally Posted by Norwynn

You know there's this thing called alts, right? It's literally pay to win.

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Having alts doesnt make it easy to make 19-49 million gil, unless youre literally paying.... and they ban RMT accounts near weekly

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Originally Posted by HereInPlainSight

'Don't over-promise.'

I don't think this would be as big an issue -- except it's only a guess that people who took refunds will still have their name associated with the house in question.

We assume proper, accessible, and usable auditing logs for all of this. But they're just assumptions. I lean in the direction that Square is being cautious when approaching this topic, taking the time to look into what data they have, what systems are in place to handle the problem and the resolution, and only telling us what they're 100% certain of. Right now, what they're 100% certain of is that they're going to investigate the issue and address it in some way. All things being equal, while this issue shouldn't have happened in the first place, it did. And I can't blame Square for taking a cautious approach to replying to any issue involving housing, the third rail topic of the entire game.

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Yeah. A *good* team is going to be honest about the situation and what they know. A *bad* team is going to flat out lie. I've worked with other management who were the bad team type before. They would outright lie to users and then users were even more angry later on when those promises never came to pass because that team could never make good on it. I take a lot of heat from users just saying "We don't know yet" so people are always going to be demanding, but they trust what I say a lot more.

So with my (admittedly limited) programming knowledge, I think this is what likely happened:

1. At the predetermined time, RNG picks exactly one of the character IDs from the "entered the lottery" array. The array is not a fixed size and can even be empty.
2. In order to prevent a possible server crash, the game adds a fixed "0" to the array so that it would never be empty.
3. The game was supposed to remove the "0" as soon as a character with a non-"0" ID entered the lottery.

And judging from the end result, I'd wager step 3 was left wanting.

For next time, a word of advice from 10th grade programming: check if the "participants" array is empty right before RNGing, and add a "0" only if it is. This is not 10th grade programming, it's a subscription-based MMORPG with 30+ million active subscribers.

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Originally Posted by Aeika

Having alts doesnt make it easy to make 19-49 million gil, unless youre literally paying.... and they ban RMT accounts near weekly

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I think you probably spend more time in the forums than actually playing if you think like this. Fine. Go fight for your plot, as I said.

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Originally Posted by Aeika

Really? Your entire FC can bid on a housing plot.... and NO ONE can win still? You can be the ONLY person to bid, and STILL lose??? This is ridiculous, it was hard enough to get a house plot already when it was guaranteed!

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Ouch, that's painful. I took my money back ASAP!