Lottery Entry period not quite 5 days

This is a heads up, not a complaint. I don't want anyone who's trying to get a house this lottery period to miss out because they were thinking they could wait until late Saturday to enter.

This first lottery period will be ending on Saturday April 16th 7:59am PDT (or at least I'm assuming it's displaying my local time zone). That's 4 days, 6.5 hours after the servers came up from maintenance as opposed to 5 full days.

They did warn us that maintenance will shorten some lottery periods and that appears to be what we're seeing with this. It looks like lottery cut offs are tied to the daily reset used for roulettes/tribal quests.

That's what I was wondering about. The placards here say "Accepting Entries until 9:59 a.m. 4/16", but I have no clue if that is local time or what. I have a feeling most are going to wait and rush enter last minute, but maybe it's vague for that reason? Idk.

It is 11.00pm 4/16 for me.
So it should be local time.

But I would likely throw in my ballot a bit earlier in case something comes up (like disconnects :( )

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Originally Posted by MommaJenn3

That's what I was wondering about. The placards here say "Accepting Entries until 9:59 a.m. 4/16", but I have no clue if that is local time or what. I have a feeling most are going to wait and rush enter last minute, but maybe it's vague for that reason? Idk.

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Are you in the Central US/Canada time zone? I'm Eastern and need to check a placard to see what time/date it displays. Will return with an update once I've done that.

I assume it is showing everyone their local time, just as it does for Cactpot.

The easy way to remember is that it coincides with daily reset for roulettes/tribal quests.

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Originally Posted by Illmaeran

Are you in the Central US/Canada time zone? I'm Eastern and need to check a placard to see what time/date it displays. Will return with an update once I've done that.

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Yes, I am in Central Time Zone

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

I assume it is showing everyone their local time, just as it does for Cactpot.

The easy way to remember is that it coincides with daily reset for roulettes/tribal quests.

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That actually helps a lot! Yea, reset time for me is 10am.

this is just my opinion, but the 5 day timer is too long. It should have been 12 hours with 24 hours to collect your winnings (either cash or house)

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Originally Posted by MoonmoonMoonmoon

this is just my opinion, but the 5 day timer is too long. It should have been 12 hours with 24 hours to collect your winnings (either cash or house)

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12 hours seems a bit too short to me. I always assumed it would be anywhere from 5 (3 days to bid, 2 days to collect) or 7 days (4 days to bid, 3 days to collect). 9 seems a bit... odd?

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Originally Posted by MoonmoonMoonmoon

this is just my opinion, but the 5 day timer is too long. It should have been 12 hours with 24 hours to collect your winnings (either cash or house)

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Seems like a number of people wanted a fair system. The common complaint was I have a wife/kids/job and can't afford the one hour a week I get to play to no-life a placard. They need to make it 5 days to allow those people to bid in their weekly one hour of playtime.

As we are stuck with it, I'd love it shorter too - 3 days+2, but I can see that in a month's time, when the single plot that is relinquished that month, in wards 19-24 comes up for raffle, the one-hour-a-week'ers will need their chance too.

Surely 18-24 hours would be enough time... I just think houses should sell the day they go up for sale. If you don't have the gil or the time, then that's one thing, but waiting 5 days to see if I've won a spot or not... I take breaks from this game, yo.

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Originally Posted by MoonmoonMoonmoon

Surely 18-24 hours would be enough time... I just think houses should sell the day they go up for sale. If you don't have the gil or the time, then that's one thing, but waiting 5 days to see if I've won a spot or not... I take breaks from this game, yo.

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Not everyone has the luxury of being able to play every day due to real life obligation. Someone who has a 3 day on, 1 day off work schedule (which isn't that uncommon in some fields) would never have a chance with that short a lottery period.

There needs to be a reasonable length so they'll be able to log in both to enter and a second time to claim during the same lottery period.

If you don't want to wait 5 days to find out if you've won, wait until as close to the end of the lottery period as you can before entering.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

This is a heads up, not a complaint. I don't want anyone who's trying to get a house this lottery period to miss out because they were thinking they could wait until late Saturday to enter.

This first lottery period will be ending on Saturday April 16th 7:59am PDT (or at least I'm assuming it's displaying my local time zone). That's 4 days, 6.5 hours after the servers came up from maintenance as opposed to 5 full days.

They did warn us that maintenance will shorten some lottery periods and that appears to be what we're seeing with this. It looks like lottery cut offs are tied to the daily reset used for roulettes/tribal quests.

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Honestly 5 days was too long of a wait, they could have done this for 3 or 4 days and on the other side of the coin, 4 days to see if you won or not could have been cut down to 2-3 days. You can't tell me most people won't be on early Saturday to see if they got a house or not. The odds are NOT in your favor.

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Originally Posted by Fenril7

Honestly 5 days was too long of a wait, they could have done this for 3 or 4 days and on the other side of the coin, 4 days to see if you won or not could have been cut down to 2-3 days. You can't tell me most people won't be on early Saturday to see if they got a house or not. The odds are NOT in your favor.

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Depends on what world you're on and whether you're trying to get a personal house or one for your FC.

If you're trying to get a FC house on Coeurl, you're fine. I was looking around this afternoon and we had a lot of mediums with 0 entries. Very few smalls had even one entry, most were still at 0. The larges weren't that bad either, most I saw on a single large was 16 entries (didn't check all the wards though). I went ahead and entered for my FC since I'm not overly picky. Taking a chance on a small in what I think is a fun location and if I don't win, there will be lots of leftovers to try for in the next lottery.

If you're trying to get a personal, odds are definitely against you. I'd say average entry count per plot (regardless of size, it was surprisingly even across small/medium/large) is about 6. That means we've already got 5000 players that have entered and are going to end up disappointed and the number is only going to grow as we get closer to the cut off. The demand is there but the supply that would half that demand is set aside for FCs that don't exist.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Depends on what world you're on and whether you're trying to get a personal house or one for your FC.

If you're trying to get a FC house on Coeurl, you're fine. I was looking around this afternoon and we had a lot of mediums with 0 entries. Very few smalls had even one entry, most were still at 0. The larges weren't that bad either, most I saw on a single large was 16 entries (didn't check all the wards though). I went ahead and entered for my FC since I'm not overly picky. Taking a chance on a small in what I think is a fun location and if I don't win, there will be lots of leftovers to try for in the next lottery.

If you're trying to get a personal, odds are definitely against you. I'd say average entry count per plot (regardless of size, it was surprisingly even across small/medium/large) is about 6. That means we've already got 5000 players that have entered and are going to end up disappointed and the number is only going to grow as we get closer to the cut off. The demand is there but the supply that would half that demand is set aside for FCs that don't exist.

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Hell, I'm told there are mediums on Balmung that have 0 bids as of right now. That may change tomorrow eveing/early Saturday. Still just bizarre to see.

Leviathan personal houses all have bids from 1-8 people when I checked this afternoon. There wasn’t anything personal that had zero bids. Couldn’t check FCs, but I highly doubt there was over 1,000 FCs looking for a house, so I am pretty sure there will be plenty left over on Leviathan after Saturday.

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Originally Posted by Nepentha

Hell, I'm told there are mediums on Balmung that have 0 bids as of right now. That may change tomorrow eveing/early Saturday. Still just bizarre to see.

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I checked 3 random FC wards (main and subdivision) on Balmung late last night and found 8 mediums without any bids. Most of the rest just had a single bid. The majority of smalls had no bids yet. The one personal ward I checked didn't have numbers quite as bad as I anticipated. One small had 34 entries, a second had 22 entries, everything else (including mediums and larges) was 16 or less with most smalls in the 5-8 entry range.

Plan to go back tonight to the same wards if I don't get distracted and see if the number have jumped up a lot. I suspect the change in the FC numbers won't be very large but the personal ward will probably be crazy.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

I checked 3 random FC wards (main and subdivision) on Balmung late last night and found 8 mediums without any bids. Most of the rest just had a single bid. The majority of smalls had no bids yet. The one personal ward I checked didn't have numbers quite as bad as I anticipated. One small had 34 entries, a second had 22 entries, everything else (including mediums and larges) was 16 or less with most smalls in the 5-8 entry range.

Plan to go back tonight to the same wards if I don't get distracted and see if the number have jumped up a lot. I suspect the change in the FC numbers won't be very large but the personal ward will probably be crazy.

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Hopefully after 1 or two lotto cycles they'll open things up for personals.

I wouldn't wait until the last hour to put in your bid. Think about when EW (and any expansion comes out). There's S-ranks, rare FATEs, etc that are mentioned in various linkshells and chat channels. Then there's the rush to that instance and the instance is full.

I would not be surprised if there is going to be a rush to put in tickets in the hours right before the lottery ends. People might get locked out simply because each zone has hundreds of people in there checking placards looking for the lowest bid totals.