RNG Fairness

[redheadturk]

While I'm not saying I agree with the OP's idea, but the question you have isn't so much of a problem. If an FC relocated, the other house can't go up for sale since lottery is frozen. This would allow SE to revert some of this stuff if they wanted to.

However, I think the bigger deal is the gil spent on buying construction permits, exterior walls, etc etc etc. If they were going to talk about reverting this, they should have said it at 11:10am EST today. Not, 6 hours later or 1 day later. It would be hard to make everyone whole without possibly messing something else up in the meantime.

I think the most likely scenario that is going to happen is:
- anyone that won a plot keeps their plot
- all other plots are back up in the next lottery draw

Why not reroll for just those that lost to the "0 winner?" Lots of people took their gil out in the form of the refund. I think it won't be easy for SE to track all of these transactions (who took out gil, who didn't take the refund, etc etc). In my opinion, that ship has already sailed. The "0 winner" plots, even with just 1 bid will go up in the next lottery.

I think those who left their money in [like I did] should be given their plots.

[Livilda]

I think those who left their money in [like I did] should be given their plots.

According to the update, you will.

[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]

Did you read the latest update they posted about this?
0 was never actually an entry.
Plots which had one entrant were won by that entrant. Plots which had 5 entrants were rolled between 5 entrants.
"0" is just a placeholder to indicate the error in transmitting those results to the housing server.

I read it and the issue still stands the ghost had a roll but the ghost does not exist so the server can name a winner win the winner does not exist. This is what happened to certain plots that ghost roll just like everyone else and ended up wining and or other plots when the ghost did roll it was not the winning number thar would decide it would win. Thus why I say a roll is nesscary to where the ghost rolls does not count. But like see with this community very much so along as you get your everyone that does not get the finger.

[PharisHanasaki]

I read it and the issue still stands the ghost had a roll but the ghost does not exist so the server can name a winner win the winner does not exist. This is what happened to certain plots that ghost roll just like everyone else and ended up wining and or other plots when the ghost did roll it was not the winning number thar would decide it would win. Thus why I say a roll is nesscary to where the ghost rolls does not count. But like see with this community very much so along as you get your everyone that does not get the finger.

Which part of "There was no ghost roll, just an error communicating the winner back", and "0 was not a ghost roll, but an error message" do you not understand?

This is why people shouldn't jump to conclusions as soon as the issue occurs. You misinform the playersbase that has no clue how coding even works.

[DezereDawn]

I read it and the issue still stands the ghost had a roll but the ghost does not exist so the server can name a winner win the winner does not exist. This is what happened to certain plots that ghost roll just like everyone else and ended up wining and or other plots when the ghost did roll it was not the winning number thar would decide it would win. Thus why I say a roll is nesscary to where the ghost rolls does not count. But like see with this community very much so along as you get your everyone that does not get the finger.

the issue doesn't stand, that's the entire point, there was NO ghost roll, the rolls all went through fine, and the data was just not pushed to the server properly, once they push it to the server, everyone who won, will win, that's that, they won fair and square, odds were not skewed at all.

[Escence]

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.

Yes I am fine with it I have no issues saying it they got their win off a faulty system at the end of day. We all sign up for a rng lottery to excepting it to be fair and at the end of day it was not.

[Livilda]

I read it and the issue still stands the ghost had a roll but the ghost does not exist so the server can name a winner win the winner does not exist. This is what happened to certain plots that ghost roll just like everyone else and ended up wining and or other plots when the ghost did roll it was not the winning number thar would decide it would win. Thus why I say a roll is nesscary to where the ghost rolls does not count. But like see with this community very much so along as you get your everyone that does not get the finger.

No, there was no ghost roll.
The fact that it says "0" is meaningless.
It could say the winning number is "J" or "Apple" or "Four-score and seven years ago, our forefathers brought forth upon this land a Nation" and it would still have the same effect.
No results were skewed.

[Darthgummibear]

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.

Lol, no. This would be a colossal dumpster fire that would make a lot of people quit the game.

[SamsonBlacke]

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.

hey guess what you're wrong