RNG Fairness

[S0lara]

I originally replied with this in a lot of other posts, but I think it needs to seriously be looked at, so that everyone is on equal footing.

A lot of people made great points in the plethora of post about today's current housing RNG debacle, 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.

[Seera1024]

The problem with that is if an FC bid on a house in order to relocate their FC house and transferred and they roll back, do they get their original house back? What if they then lose the re-bid if they aren't able to get the original house back?

Sounds like a huge can of worms to open up for lots that didn't land on 0.

Sometimes the best thing to do is to just fix the bug and make sure it doesn't happen again.

And I'd say that this is one of those situations due to the fact that FC's could have moved house.

[Fawkes]

It's compounding unfairness at this point. Some people won with the broken code, and it's not their fault SE boned everything up.

[S0lara]

The problem with that is if an FC bid on a house in order to relocate their FC house and transferred and they roll back, do they get their original house back? What if they then lose the re-bid if they aren't able to get the original house back?

Sounds like a huge can of worms to open up for lots that didn't land on 0.

Sometimes the best thing to do is to just fix the bug and make sure it doesn't happen again.

And I'd say that this is one of those situations due to the fact that FC's could have moved house.

The thing is, and I gave this example to someone that was trolling my post earlier, is that let's say you go to a giveaway at some store, and you find out that you were the only person who entered the giveaway. When they draw the winner of the giveaway, your name is in there, as well as a ticket for (0) zero, as in you going up against no one. The people holding the giveaway tell you that they are sorry that they accidentally put a ticket with a zero as a placeholder no one showing up, and that unfortunately, you lose. You report this insight, and the company honors the fact that you were the only person that entered the giveaway, and they reroll or choose the winner again, now out of a hat that only has your name on it.

[Ethers]

Well they're not going to do that and I don't think they should given how many complications with relocation and the people who would have gotten their house this time around (unfair or otherwise) could arise. Given how poorly this was implemented, I don't think they have the capability to solve this issue or housing in general.

[Seera1024]

The thing is, and I gave this example to someone that was trolling my post earlier, is that let's say you go to a giveaway at some store, and you find out that you were the only person who entered the giveaway. When they draw the winner of the giveaway, your name is in there, as well as a ticket for (0) zero, as in you going up against no one. The people holding the giveaway tell you that they are sorry that they accidentally put a ticket with a zero as a placeholder no one showing up, and that unfortunately, you lose. You report this insight, and the company honors the fact that you were the only person that entered the giveaway, and they reroll or choose the winner again, now out of a hat that only has your name on it.

That doesn't at all address the issue of what to do with the FC's and personal houses that were relocated. What do you with those who WON their bid - as in the system didn't give their lottery result a 0 - but relocated their house?

I doubt the system is set up for a reversal of a housing system without a complete rollback of the ENTIRE server. And that would anger way more people than those affected by the bug. Anyone who progressed ANYTHING but had not put in a bid for a house would be affected.

[Vryn]

The fairest solution would be to allow the transfers and the people who got the house with the current system with one submission. To those houses that had more than 1 + submission, they should be made to do it again, but I see no reason why FCS or private housing that had one submission should be forced to do it again when they should have won the property. All you would be doing is punishing those who should have rightfully won and compound their chances of failure even further as time progresses because it would be impossible to determine who won the plot on other slots.

[MiaShino]

In any software development when working with strings of numbers you begin at Zero not One.

What am assuming occurred here is placard listing you as participant Zero would look most strange so Square set you to participant One. However the intern forgot to start at one or write function to ignore zero or heck to list you on placard as participant one while being participant zero in code.

This created ghost zero participant because rounding table begins at zero yet every other participant was set to one. The fix should be simple but they will not admit to making so childish a mistake. I think that they should. Just like setting too many audio channel emitters this is babies first coding or something? Begins at zero ends at nine is one of first things you learn.. seriously..

Roll back the bid and give my friends their houses then you sit there and identify who is worth keeping at the company, and who the heck to let go. How are investors okay with this level of incompetence? It is not complex. It is not difficult. None of Square code is that complex no matter how many times they repeat this. It is simply dice rolling function I could code drunk with eyes closed half asleep and still pick up on better zero issue.

[UkcsAlias]

That doesn't at all address the issue of what to do with the FC's and personal houses that were relocated. What do you with those who WON their bid - as in the system didn't give their lottery result a 0 - but relocated their house?

The old houses were still excluded from the lottery, so you can just move them back to the old house. Only the next lottery cycle the plot would be free to bid on. Their action of extending the current result timer is on that the best thing they can do while investigating the issue.

The real issue is that some players who got a house, might have bought furnishing from the market, if that would revert, and the next roll they dont get a house. Those things could become a problem, because you cant just revert a sale without issues. But this is only a problem when the generator doesnt give proper random numbers and favors some above others. I suspect they used a standard pseudo generator that is random enough to not be an issue (even if it was considered secure 20y ago, thats already random enough for these lotteries, because there is no spamming aspect that normaly breaks those algoritms).

Unless someone knew which generator they used, and that generator having some sort of timing issue that favors certain value, i do not see any reason to revert any winner (even though i would like to get another chance)

[Seera1024]

The fairest solution would be to allow the transfers and the people who got the house with the current system with one submission. To those houses that had more than 1 + submission, they should be made to do it again, but I see no reason why FCS or private housing that had one submission should be forced to do it again when they should have won the property. All you would be doing is punishing those who should have rightfully won and compound their chances of failure even further as time progresses because it would be impossible to determine who won the plot on other slots.

The problem with that is what if the one who won it this time was a relocating house that accepted the winning bid and their house transferred.

Is the system set up to know which plot a house transferred from?

If it's not, then you'd have a huge disaster if that FC or individual then lost the new auction. They went from having a house to not having a house. And I think that would be a worse situation to be in.

Fairest way to handle it without having to deal with any possible additional technical glitches is to just run the ones who errored out and gave 0 or "no participants" as the result.