Jumbo Cactpot is losing players interest.

[JayCommon]

snip

I agree with most of this post, except for the high risk part. I'm not exactly understanding what is high risk about spending 100MGP and literally 30-60 seconds of your time, and in the worst case scenario you only make back 68. That's the lowest I've seen and was just this past Saturday, because like OP said, we too are experiencing a drop in ticket sales. I don't even think Goblin has gotten all the bonuses for the past few weeks.

I don't think Jumbo Cactpot should just be won "because no one is winning". It's a lottery. You are lucky or you aren't. But I do agree with Robin that it seems like the prices for many of the top tier rewards were aimed specifically at a majority of the player base actually needing to win the Jumbo to ever get, and that the pricing on the prizes is a bit flawed.

Some of that stuff was obviously meant to be rare (Cloud, Fenrir etc.) but they may have gone just a bit over the top with how rare they will be. All I know is I hit 700k MGP banked over the weekend and my lifetime total is a bit over 850k, and I've never won more than 20k via TT tourney (because I won't cheat) and I've never matched a single number on Jumbo. I've probably hit 10k on the mini about 10 times, though. So the remainder of what I have was farmed from the Indolent and the paltry amounts I gained from getting to 73 unique cards.

By the time I actually have Fenrir I don't know if I'll ever want to play TT again, which saddens me because it is my favorite mini-game across any FF game. I still love it, but it's getting harder and harder to go out to Mor Dhona even though my goal is so close.

[TetsuyaHikari]

I said it once and I'll say it again. The best thing they could do to keep interest for Jumbo Cactpot is have the winnings roll over each week you don't have a winner (first week = 1,000,000 MGP, second week = 2,000,000 MGP, etc.). Some have told me that this would completely ruin the system though since the person that wins could buy everything if they won after 3-4 weeks, but I don't see how it could ruin GS completely since only one person could buy everything.

It's not like everybody would be a winner. Who cares if one person gets all of the items and never comes back? Look at how many players are still going to keep coming back for more MGP. Still, I do wish the consolation prize was a bit better though (like 1,000 MGP instead) since you have to wait a whole week just for the announcement and if you don't even have any numbers match up, you only get less than 100 MGP, which is a slap in the face, honestly.

I suppose I should be glad we even get any MGP back at all when we lose, but if they're going to give a consolation prize, at least make it worth something.

[thendcomes]

Jumbo Cactpot isn't fun right now, and that's bad. You buy a ticket, once per week, and 99% of the time (literally!) you'll walk away unsatisfied. Currently, on average, every 2.5 months you will win the practically irrelevant amount of 1,100 mgp. Every 2 years (!) you will win a slightly less meager 11,000 mgp -- that's a little more than you get with the Mini Cactpot Jackpot, which you win on average every ~10 days! Forget about 2nd or 1st prize, those will take 20 and 190 years to win on average.

So, being un-fun is a bad thing, right? It's incredible to me that some people in this thread would argue that it's not. Argue it up, down, and sideways about why it "should" be this way for "xxx" reasons, but it all fails the "fun test". If you really want to argue that it shouldn't be fun, then I just hope you don't ever join a video game design team.

I think a good way to add some fun to Jumbo is something like what Blaise Destin said. Just give more chances to win. I'm not suggesting they should set up the prize structure so that players win on average, but even if they did, who cares? It's not a real lottery, and giving people more incentive to buy and play every week is a good thing. Adding other vanity items to the prize pool would be cool too. Match 2 numbers and get MGP plus a gambler piece? I'd like that a lot.

[BlaiseArath]

.

Yah, high risk I guess I meant to imply the incredibly, dismally low chance of winning, not exactly the value of the loss. But true enough.

When it comes to the Jumbo, I understand its intent. A lottery, Low chance but high reward. I'm not suggesting a change that will make winning the Jackpot (4 matches) easier, simply the 1-3 easier. Not but much, but easier. Which I think would make people want to join it. To be frank if you make content for a game people don't want to play even if it is just like 30 seconds of your life, something has failed there. This isn't real life its a game, people should want to participate in the Jumbo, but people don't, because the odds of winning are so dismally low that most players won't even bother wasting the time to pick up a ticket. Its failed, regardless of if its performing its intended task. Its a failed attraction as the shrinking numbers will show.

My original suggestion I think would push it down the right path. It won't improve your odds of nailing all 4 at all, but it will improves your odds of seeing 1-3 instead of just 0/consolation. They could adjust the payout as well if it would satisfy their intended influx of MGP. Its not really about the quantity when people win, its about the fact they win. If someone matched 3 and got 50k instead of 100k, they'd still be way more happy than if they matched 0. Adjust the MGP values and make 1-3 matches easier to get (as I suggested) and it'll probably draw more attention.

[Talia_Hailwind]

The only thing the jumbo catpot needs is a roll over when there are no winners.
That is all.
Even the real lottery does it.

[Niwashi]

There are a lot more wins than just the jackpot. Depending on what bonuses get added in, some weeks even the "consolation" prize for matching nothing awards more than the cost of the ticket.

That said, I wouldn't mind if it was modified so that the intermediate (1 to 3 matches) prizes were a bit more common. I like Blaise's suggestion. Looking at how many of the four digits you got right (the right digit in the right place) rather than just last digit, last 2 digits, and last 3 digits would help with those intermediate prizes while still leaving the 1st prize at 1 in 10,000 odds.

[Haru]

in FFXI they made it so you could buy 10, but it was only held once or twice per year

EDIT:

I also think Rollover is a bad idea, lets say no winner for 5/6 weeks, you win 6mil.. instantly the next 2-3 years of gold saucer content is trivial for you, you would have no fun or incentive to do anything again.

I think there could be a jackpot amount 1.1% or maybe increase the pools so that its divided by the winners a little more fairly based on the number of entrants
If nobody has won (claimed or not) the first prize, 10% of that flows into the 2nd pool, and so on.
By the end you could end up with 4th place being 1000MGP higher and roughly 100MGP extra for the consolation

[TetsuyaHikari]

in FFXI they made it so you could buy 10, but it was only held once or twice per year

EDIT:

I also think Rollover is a bad idea, lets say no winner for 5/6 weeks, you win 6mil.. instantly the next 2-3 years of gold saucer content is trivial for you, you would have no fun or incentive to do anything again.

I think there could be a jackpot amount 1.1% or maybe increase the pools so that its divided by the winners a little more fairly based on the number of entrants
If nobody has won (claimed or not) the first prize, 10% of that flows into the 2nd pool, and so on.
By the end you could end up with 4th place being 1000MGP higher and roughly 100MGP extra for the consolation

Actually, the content wouldn't be trivial for the next 2-3 years. They have plans to add more content in the future, so just buy everything now, then come back to buy and/or try the new stuff later. Also, I know a handful of people that stick around the Gold Saucer just to race chocobos and don't even really care much about MGP. They just think racing is fun.

Even if one player did see the Gold Saucer as trivial and had no incentive to come back after winning, who cares? That would be one person every 1-2 months on one world and less than 10 every year. You know how many players this game has? 4+ million (not all of these are active, but you get the point).

I'm sure the Gold Saucer would survive without 1% of the playerbase visiting it ever again, lol.

[elemental10]

It's a lottery.

In real life, how many people you know buy lotteries, and how many of them or lack thereof, have actually won them?

So far, I see 2 winners on my server. But only one fenrir mount........................... hmmm...............................

[RobinRethiel]

Lottery is like drugs. It's bad and makes your life worse or even ruin it. Still people do it in false hope.