RNG Fairness

[S0lara]

You can’t assume that if only there was no zero in the mix, the roll would have hit exactly one number higher. It’s much simpler, there were 4 win states and one lose state. All 4 win states had equal chances. If the lose state would have hit, the we just re-roll. There is no taint here… or let me put it this way - the taint was the possibility that the results may hit the fail state.

Okay. Thank you for the clarification. What you said makes sense.

[Nihility]

You can’t assume that if only there was no zero in the mix, the roll would have hit exactly one number higher. It’s much simpler, there were 4 win states and one lose state. All 4 win states had equal chances. If the lose state would have hit, the we just re-roll. There is no taint here… or let me put it this way - the taint was the possibility that the results may hit the fail state.

I know that but the human perception will be... I was 6 and 5 was picked... that effing zero screwed me and now I hate S-E forever. No amount of reasoning will make those people see otherwise and therefor the flaw in the system kind of taints the whole thing.

Then if just to reroll all the ones that landed zero which seems like an unreasonably high amount if you go around and read boards. What happens to the people that had no idea and got their money back and lost there lottery ticket? Are they just out of the competition?

and if they just do another round of lottery. The people that won, won and yay for them... now the field of rewards is cut down drastically and nearly the same amount of people are competing again. Many of whom should already be done with it but instead have a ton of extra competition for less resources just because

what is the fair thing to do? Literally every option is bad for a ton of people and the FC house ward restrictions and people only wanting large are making things far worse even in the old zones.
can't relocate to mist or lavender beds because all the opened up ones are in the FC wards.

I didn't even try, I like my house in the goblet and now I'm worried that my area will die off and go ghost town because it's an FC ward. Just seems like everything is bad now XD

[VarHyid]

I know that but the human perception will be... I was 6 and 5 was picked... that effing zero screwed me and now I hate S-E forever. No amount of reasoning will make those people see otherwise and therefor the flaw in the system kind of taints the whole thing.

That's correct. You'll never fix the perception of odds.

Then if just to reroll all the ones that landed zero which seems like an unreasonably high amount if you go around and read boards. What happens to the people that had no idea and got their money back and lost there lottery ticket? Are they just out of the competition?

(...)

what is the fair thing to do? Literally every option is bad for a ton of people

They should just re-roll based on the old data set. I'm sure they have a snapshot of all the tickets along with the names of the participants from the moment the entry period closed. They should simply use this data set to roll on all the plots where the result was 0. I think that would be the fairest solution - those plots didn't get a winner so we'll just roll again, there will be no new participants, everyone who had a ticket in that time will get the same chance they had if there was no bug.

That said, realistically, there are of course tons of other issues like the ones Breezelyn mentioned earlier and I could add even more to the list, for example - if those who participated and took their refund have already spend the gil on buying things from the market end up winning the new roll, what should happen to the gil? Should they trace every single penny and return it to the owner, then also return the items purchased on the market? That's just unrealistic and at that point we're basically talking about a full complete server rollback which will make tons of other people upset. Why should everyone who didn't even participate in the housing lottery have their progress rolled back.

It really is a mess and as you've said, it's unavoidable that some people will remain upset even if you make the mathematically and logically correct decision. I just hope whatever decision they make, it will be one that causes the least amount of additional damage.

[S0lara]

If the zero was only added and the count was not shifted by 1 because of it, then there’s absolutely no need to re-roll and the result is fair because the odds were equally lowered for everyone.

For example, if 4 people entered the lottery, each would have had a 25% chance to win, but if they dropped a 5th “zero bidder” into the mix, all it means that now all 4 real people simply had a 20% chance of winning… and there was a 20% chance that the drawing fails and hits the zero. If it didn’t, though then how exactly is it unfair?

Only those cases where zero actually won need to be re-rolled (and the single bidders should just get the house, of course).

Ugh, VarHyid, lol. After reading this...I hope you are not right. If they did that, then that is shady, lol. I think that since they officially came out and said the zero's were unintended, then the "zero bidder" was not supposed to be factored into the percent chance of each person bidding.

[VarHyid]

Ugh, VarHyid, lol. After reading this...I hope you are not right. If they did that, then that is shady, lol. I think that since they officially came out and said the zero's were unintended, then the "zero bidder" was not supposed to be factored into the percent chance of each person bidding.

I’m not sure how else to clarify this. Everyone’s odds went down equally. One real person did not get lower odds of winning, but all real people had the same equal possibility that the roll fails.

In other words, the fact that instead of a 25% chance you now had a 20% chance is irrelevant for your personal fortune. You still had a real 25% chance of winning against any other of the 4 real people, only all 4 people had an equal chance of being collectively screwed by a zero. If they didn’t, though, and zero didn’t won, then they all had a 1 in 4 shot of being a winner.

—-edit—-

Let me put it like this - the percent chance for each person winning did not change at all. What changed is that the possibility of everyone losing was introduced.

[PharisHanasaki]

for example - if those who participated and took their refund have already spend the gil on buying things from the market end up winning the new roll, what should happen to the gil? Should they trace every single penny and return it to the owner, then also return the items purchased on the market? That's just unrealistic and at that point we're basically talking about a full complete server rollback which will make tons of other people upset. Why should everyone who didn't even participate in the housing lottery have their progress rolled back.

Agreed.

For the people that already collected their money, I guess the only thing that could be done is asking to deposit again when you claim your plot. Have people spent their gil already? The plot is then lost, and goes back on sale. Unfortunate, but a rollback would cause more damage.

[Skivvy]

It's interesting to me that people actually trust SE to pull off a clean roll-back when they couldn't even pull off a successful housing lottery.

[Escence]

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.

So everyone that wrongfully lost should just piss into the wind? Hope that they get lucky next time thought this community was about supporting one another just seem it you got yours everyone else can get the finger.

[Seera1024]

So everyone that wrongfully lost should just piss into the wind? Hope that they get lucky next time thought this community was about supporting one another just seem it you got yours everyone else can get the finger.

So you'd be fine with someone or an FC losing their house if things bug out just so someone else or another FC can relocate or get a house?

Sometimes in life when problems happen, there's no perfect solution. The only solution is a lesser of a set of evils.

The best that can be done is:

1. Fix the problem so it doesn't happen again.
2. Anything done for the players affected that has a low chance of causing additional problems.

The ways to address the issue for those who did the lottery:

1. Complete rollback of the servers to before the lottery winners were drawn - assuming that the fix doesn't require wiping the slate clean of the bids
2. Somehow revert any relocations and new houses and redraw all lotteries - not sure there is existing framework for this in place
3. Figure out who were sole bidders on plots affected by the 0/no participants bug and give them the plot they bid on. - not sure how this would work for those who already accepted the refund of the deposit for the plot
4. Nothing special and just open up the bidding without doing anything special - sometimes there's no way to make things right and you just have to move on

Solution 1, we've gone too long for this to even be a possibility. Unless they want to open a can of worms for all of the people who made progress with the game since the glitch happened.

Solution 2, has a number of problems. One is that there isn't a system in place for the reversal of a relocation meaning that things would need to be made and thoroughly tested. Because if that fails for a relocation and then that relocating player or FC loses the redraw, then they've lost their house. They'd also have to deal with players who won a new house or upgraded to a larger plot and won initially, bought stuff, and then lost the lottery redraw being upset at how they've now made purchases that they have no use for currently and they wouldn't have bought it without having won the lottery first because of storage space. Compound that even more with the FC that glitched out and lost their house in the shuffle and you've just made things worse.

Solution 3, only has an issue if they aren't able to figure out a way to give a house to someone who should have won no matter how many times the draw is done the bid but refunded the money. Still wouldn't make things worse.

Solution 4, leaves players at the same spot they were before the lottery happened. The solution wouldn't make things worse.

In all likelihood it's going to be Solution 3 or Solution 4 that will happen once they get the lottery system working again. Because anything else would have too high of a chance of making things worse.

[Escence]

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.

Can you call it rightfully winning when system its self was broken to begin with.