Housing Pre Maintenance Hot-Fix Bids Weren't Counted [Working Theory]

Hi all, this is my current working theory after talking with many other FC leaders and friends on the server who have pretty much agreed from what we're seeing so far. Sorry if it's possibly wrong or upsetting, but I just wanted to share and see what others think:

My current working theory around FF14 housing is that Pre Maintenance Hot-Fix bids were not counted, and post Hot-Fix bids were actually counted. This means that if you put in a bid in the first few days - even if you're the only bidders - then you'll still lose that plot because your bids weren't counted and it defaulted to 0.

Everyone I've spoken to who bid post Hot-Fix, has actually won their plot (assuming they had no competition of course). While many personals and FCs who bid before the Hot-Fix (and had no competition unless they also bid before the Hot-Fix), have all lost their bids to 0.

So the error may in fact have to do with something not translating well from the maintenance fix and thus making all early bids not count whatsoever.

This is also a bit more problematic because that means if a house had 10 bids total and 6 bids were placed before that period - then 1 bid that won was from bids #7-10 - then that's definitely not fair to those initial pre period bids that lost, but they would never really know that their bids weren't even contenders in the first place.

*Also most people that seems to be affected are FCs who bid on empty properties and they're the only bidders. Every FC I've spoken to who bid pre hot fix got a 0, and every FC that bid after the hot fix on an empty plot without contenders got it.

If this is true then the most 'fair' thing to do would be to remove the houses of those who even won, and then redo the drawing of the lottery numbers of the total of those who submitted. But that's a big L for those who got a house and feel great right now. So it seems like a lose-lose situation.

not the case, i put in my bid on tuesday morning, right after i noticed the servers were up earlier than expected, i happened to win as bidder 1 of 3

I put my bid 7 seconds after the server went live and won.

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Originally Posted by Valsharia

not the case, i put in my bid on tuesday morning, right after I noticed the servers were up earlier than expected, I happened to win as bidder 1 of 3

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Great to know thanks for the info! I wouldn't say it's not the case completely as it could still be a possibility that you won the coinflip against the 0 number, and since it's personal then post hotfix bids would have counted too so someone would have won it nomatter what. This sample size is more based on houses that don't have competition rather than houses that do having the 0 being a factor then haha

Also most people that seems to be affected are FCs who bid on empty properties and they're the only bidders. Every FC I've spoken to who bid pre hot fix got a 0, and every FC that bid after the hot fix on an empty plot without contenders got it.

Sadly, I don't think this is it. I have friends who bid early before the hotfix, who got their plot, and friends who bid after the hotfix who got hit with the 0 bug.

let them fix it individually, SE will for ONCE actually log into their own game and fix it one by one. no matter how liong it takes, they can afford the human resources

Only bids on the housing plot my FC won were all made post-maintenance. We were going to wait until last minute, but got nervous with all the numbers rising everywhere so we placed the first two bids on a large with the remaining three made just hours before lottery ended.

No, theory doesn't work. Many of my FC mates bid last minute, still got the 0 ticket won bug.

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Originally Posted by Aethen

No, theory doesn't work. Many of my FC mates bid last minute, still got the 0 ticket won bug.

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Did they have submissions that were both pre and post? Or were all the combined entries post? (just data gathering - thanks for your info!)

I think you some of you are getting way too technical and some of the posts are convoluted when they need not be. A lot of people make great points, but regardless of what they did, the RNG code is created by a person, and they inputted 0 as one of the possible choices for output. I have coded in Python and Mathematica before, and if you import random, and then you list the parameters, e.g. list=1,2,3,4,5... It is pretty easy to see, that when they listed their parameters for the housing lottery system, they included 0 (zero) in the list of possible choices that could be rolled. If they did in fact did put zero into their list, as in: listhousing or list1 (whatever you want to call it) = 0,1,2,3,4,5..., when as stated earlier, it should have been list1=1,2,3,4,5...

If what I stated is correct, then in all fairness, they should roll back EVERYONE's bids, because if 0 (zero) was counted as a possible RNG choice, then EVERY roll is invalidated and needs to be done again. I know it sucks for some people, but in all fairness, if zero (0) was included, then redoing it is the most fair solution.

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Originally Posted by PrimusPalus

Did they have submissions that were both pre and post? Or were all the combined entries post? (just data gathering - thanks for your info!)

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Honestly isn't worth your time trying to figure it out since you (along with the rest of us) don't have access to the code and can't implement a fix regardless.

SE is aware of the problem and working on it. Once they have it isolated, it sounds like they're going to make certain actual winners are found among the original entries and given a chance to claim the plot before another lottery period begins.

If that's the case, the only players that will be out will be those that claimed their refunds this morning out of frustration. It could be that SE will even work with those players individually if they were the only bid on the plot.

I know of at least 3 houses on 3 separate servers were bid on right after 6.1 maintenance. They were the solo bid on the plot and all lost to 0. This could just be a coincidence, but it is very possible someone forgot to re port over database tables after the hotfix. It could also just be because it was a 50/50 chance you would win over the server admin. 0 was probably set as a number so that if there were no bids they could reset the house or demolish it and/or reset the house for the next lottery. I could believe that the rng would favor one outcome this lotto and than favor another for the next due to the nature of the rng in this game.

The thing that makes me upset too is some who have won a house, were waiting a long time and their fc was the only people to bid on the houses anyway. At least in the neighborhoods I was looking in when going around looking at the depressingly empty housing wards with 1 participant on the placard, probably due to them also not getting a refund in fear of never getting the house they should have won. There were also people I also do not want any FC's to lose their houses because this is Square's fault and no one should be punished for this blunder.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Honestly isn't worth your time trying to figure it out since you (along with the rest of us) don't have access to the code and can't implement a fix regardless.

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Speculating and attempting to figure out how borked everything is, is kind of fun. It gets the brain juices flowing and takes my mind off of how angry this honestly made me initially. Though ironically there have been some issue that have helped in solved the problem through these discussions in the past. Also when discovering some things within the game I have headpalmed at some of the implimentation of some of the systems that I know for a fact are horrible. Like the fact that all of our characters when glamours are wearing the glamour sets as well as our regular armor. So our characters are constantly wearing multiple sets of armor and every time we go into a dungeon our character along with those items are copy and pasted to the instanced server that holds the dungeons. Which is why they have been taking some time to allow us to change glamour plates in resting zones and keeping it to only a few areas because it would cause too much lag.

One of my alts' FCs put in all their bids pre maintenance (and saw the ward/plot switch bug) and won their house with ticket 1. So you definitely could win with pre-maintenance tickets for FCs.