Jumbo Cactpot is losing players interest.

[Nasibihc]

The nature of the Gold Saucer is meant to be "unfair". It's the whole idea of the place that the odds are close to zero on winning anything, it's a casino! That's the main idea what SE has gone towards. Although this very thing makes complaints because the chances of winning 1,000,000 MGP from the Jumbo Cactpot is almost zero and obtaining MGP otherwise to get the most wanted items is an incredibly insane grind. I'm amazed that on my server it has been won 4 times now in total so far (Sargatanas).

Even if I did decide to just give up hoping to win the jackpot on the jumbo lottery, I do buy the ticket every week because I know there's still a chance for it, it's just one out of 10000 and even when I don't win I kinda get almost the same amount back anyways so it's not a loss. Although even if I decided to just farm the mgp for Fenrir cause I know I will never win the lottery to get 1 mil, I still agree that the JC should be changed to be drawn more often, once a day. That might seem excessive, but the chances for that are so low that even if you did pull it once a day, you'd still only have 365 chances a year to it and even that might still take your entire real life to actually get it right once. Other option would be to always choose one winner out of the tickets that have been bought on the current draw. It's still only 52 winners a year when the player population is over 9000 on each server. This isn't real life, it's a game and it should be treated like a game even if the whole idea for the lottery is to be "unfair" it's a bit too much at the moment.

[RobinRethiel]

Gold Saucer has never been a casino and still is none. For a casino two activities, one daily one weekly would not really run this place.

Biggest problem with those sheer-luck-game is, that it seems like they calculated the prizes around them.

"Oh, let's see. What is the biggest amount of MGP you can earn... ah, 1M MGP with one click, wow. Okay, let's say mount and this special TT card are both 1M MGP, okay?"

That these 1M MGP means over 2000 GATES (-> 1000h), over 11.000 TT matches (around ~100h constant non stop TT) or 2500 won Chocobo R-300 races (125h - and you only need ~1800 races to bring a chocobo from pedigree 1 rank 1 to pedigree 9 rank 50, but you will lose MGP, not gain them, so it's more like 4300+ races) - well...

It seems way too much focused on this weekly "abomination".

Much lesser but more wins would help. Those lotteries should help players, make them feel lucky, that they just saved some hours of labor, not dissapointed. This would also help the other activities. Many people see the immense amount of MGP they need and just think "**** this!". But when you are getting closer, you are more attracted to the idea to gain some extra MGP to reach the item you want.

You can spend months waiting for a cactpot jackpot or u spend those months slowly grinding.
Its up to u if u wanna become that disappointed in the lackluster of lottery mechanics.

Most people I know do neither (or only lottery, since it is exactly 0 game time). They are so annoyed by low gain and high prices, I can't even persuade them to do those few TT tournament matches.

[BlaiseArath]

The nature of the Gold Saucer is meant to be "unfair". It's the whole idea of the place that the odds are close to zero on winning anything, it's a casino!

Not... really? The entire area aside from the two Cactpots are incredibly easy to return 5x or 10x your invenstment on every play. Chocobo racing is impossible to lose your investment in, and TT is highly profitable if you play well. the mini-cactpot has a higher chance (75%?) to reward you a high portion more than you invested... The Jumbo is the only one that will regularly return less than you invest, at a very high risk. (though it has very high reward).

I guess in this i'm not really arguing that the Jumbo isn't High risk high reward as I'm sure it was intended to be that... seems like it was. Only that no, the Golden Saucer is not a huge unfair place, not even remotely accurate phrasing. Its actually quite profitable and fair in every field, Aside from the Jumbo Cactpot.

[Nasibihc]

Snip

Well if you take a look at all the NPC TT opponents, most of them have such cards that you aren't allowed to have yourself, ever, no matter how many cards you have. Such NPC's having multiple 4 and 5 star cards when you can only have one. Playing against an unfair advantage just to slow you down. As some people said it would have been a much better challenge to actually have smart AI's that play cards against you with equal standings without having to resort to "cheating".

When you begin chocobo racing, you get to race against npc's that already have speed boosts etc that will just wipe their behind with your lvl 1 chocobo making you lose with a high probability, also the chests always spawn for NPC's but not for you if you go in first. Also all the players who have high pedigree chocobos and have started before you have an unfair advantage in comparison.

Playing the mini games isn't really anything "unfair" because you can win them most of the time, but the payout sucks and you can't really do those to gain MGP and be happy about it. Win them once and you're like blah.. that was boring and you'll most likely never touch the minigames after that again.

Most of the mini cactpot tickets don't have anything on them, with this I mean either 1k, 3,6k or 10k rewards, the others are basically useless. <- this and every other low rng from obtaining cards from the packs or instances (took me 271 tries to get Terra from the ultros fight, now I'm too sick to do that fight ever again) all go to the silly rng list, but not really "unfair" though.

What I was generally referring to, was that the place is meant to be a slow grind and most of the things are hard to get, some even being unfair, but that's how the place was designed to be. It's just something that doesn't really fit to an mmo already full of rng and grinding.

[Cooperal]

You can spend months waiting for a cactpot jackpot or u spend those months slowly grinding.

Or you can do both. If it takes more than 3 minutes to teleport, run to the ticket seller, pick their numbers and then leave once a week... that's a problem with that persons control scheme.
"I couldn't grind to X this week because I had to put down a ticket for Jumbo Cactpot." - Nobody - 2015

[Noxifer]

It's free anyway. The consolation prize has always been higher than 100MGP so far.

Maybe on your world. Certainly not on all worlds. I think this week it was.... 86? for consolation prize on Phoenix. Last week was also below 100, if barely. It all depends on which bonuses you get from the participation ladder. Which are random, and different for each server. Sure, you get back almost the entire 100mgp, but it's certainly not 'always higher than 100'.

When you begin chocobo racing, you get to race against npc's that already have speed boosts etc that will just wipe their behind with your lvl 1 chocobo making you lose with a high probability, also the chests always spawn for NPC's but not for you if you go in first. Also all the players who have high pedigree chocobos and have started before you have an unfair advantage in comparison.

The first few races I ended up in the bottom, yeah, but that was in no small part to me still getting used to the course(s) and the steering. It didn't take me many races to start climbing. Sure, I rarely got 1st place (still only have two wins, but then again I'm only rank 50-ish), but generally I hover between 2nd and 5th place. If I get last place, it's usually because of bad luck, with multiple frenzies or slows or the like. Which is annoying, yeah ^^;
Then again, maybe I've just been lucky with my opponents and the chest items ^^;

And AFAIK, you get synched down if you enter a previous tier of races, if you even can enter previous tiers. Haven't gotten high enough to test it out, but a friend has been into the chocobo racing/breeding like crazy, so her choco is insanely good compared to mine. She's still not horribly far ahead of me when we gather up a bunch of friends and race each other. So at least there you get synched to some degree. And she said that you get synched in the Open class, I think. But I could remember wrong.

Instead of running it like the XI Bonanza where its "Matching your numbers, in order, Last to first", they should just make it "Matching Numbers".

Example:
Winning Roll is : 3849
Your roll is : 3779
You matched two numbers. Congrats.

I would really like this, yes. *hits Like*

[Trespar]

Honestly, until I saw this thread, I had forgotten I bought a ticket last week.

It really is uninteresting and the entire thing is set up to make you fail. I agree that it should just be matching numbers, and not matching numbers in order from last to first.
Even just winning a one number match(which is still a worthless amount) every now and then will make people feel motivated to actually do it, but the problem is that that itself is an incredibly rare occurrence for an individual player.

My making it just matching numbers, actually winning to jackpot will still be very rare, because for the jackpot, nothing changes, but people will win the smaller prizes more often, which will result in increased interest and excitement.
It's just really bad for a weekly in its current state.

And yes, let's not forget, this is a weekly. It would be okay for this thing to be a little more generous.

[Yumi_umi]

Or you can do both. If it takes more than 3 minutes to teleport, run to the ticket seller, pick their numbers and then leave once a week... that's a problem with that persons control scheme.
"I couldn't grind to X this week because I had to put down a ticket for Jumbo Cactpot." - Nobody - 2015

I meant it was for ppl who can't stand TT and has only the jumbo cactpot as their only option to hit 1 mill mgp.
We all know choco racing is an mgp sink and a skill check in later racing brackets compared to TT as u only need to get far enough to farm indolent imperial for a steady quick mgp income. Don't need to buy food for chocos, abilities or even pay attention as much during matches.

[Firepower]

I too can confirm that on Leviathan last week the ticket sales have fallen from a consistent 4000 to less than 2000 this week, I think the initial weeks were 7000 tickets sold.

To this date I have not even gotten 1 number so every one of my tickets has been a loss. Although I believe it Is still operating as intended as it was still reaching above level 7 on the participation bonus (1100 tickets) so perhaps square only ever intended in no more than 1000 or so participants every week anyway.

[Tint]

i think the whole gold saucer is a fail design xD only triple triad seems not dead. but they have only copypaste it, so all what they created new is almost dead now, lol. cactpot, choco-race, gates...