Housing update 3 is up.

[Iscah]

Even if your plot did not get hit with the zero bug it still play a factor in which number which was draw from what I saw on my server the majority was single digit numbers such as 1,2,3 and 5 the highest I seen was a 8.

Even if the zero was being treated as a valid number in the lottery, it would have no impact on the variety of other numbers being drawn.

The prevalence of low numbers is entirely to do with the fact that many of the plots would only have that low number of entries to draw from. Every plot with any number of entries on it could produce 1 as the winning number, but can only produce an 8 if there were at least eight entries to that specific lottery – and needs even more entries to have a reasonable chance of that being the winning number.

[HisShadowX]

Even if the zero was being treated as a valid number in the lottery, it would have no impact on the variety of other numbers being drawn.

The prevalence of low numbers is entirely to do with the fact that many of the plots would only have that low number of entries to draw from. Every plot with any number of entries on it could produce 1 as the winning number, but can only produce an 8 if there were at least eight entries to that specific lottery – and needs even more entries to have a reasonable chance of that being the winning number.

At this point as others stated we are relying on the word of others. We are all guessing at this point. What's true is we have a large amount of people upset and seeing the drawing as illegitimate. Any lottery or drawing or video gaming (gambling machine) that has an error is considered illegitimate. I would not be shocked if someone decides to take this to court or call their Senators about this issue.

As I have proven before Square Enix in the past has caused elected officials to create laws that affect all 50 states due to one state (Illinois) enacting a law because of Square Enix's billing practices for FFXI.

At this point the development team should focus on creating a new housing system. In fact they can keep their current wards as is but creating an instanced housing system would most likely satisfy spurned consumers. The current ward system alone is and has been a disaster for years and like FFXIV 1.0 you cannot fix it. Instead, it must be completely replaced with something else. Forget the story content for now the housing situation requires the teams full focus.

[Livilda]

At this point as others stated we are relying on the word of others. We are all guessing at this point. What's true is we have a large amount of people upset and seeing the drawing as illegitimate. Any lottery or drawing or video gaming (gambling machine) that has an error is considered illegitimate.

Once again, the error is not in the drawing; it is in communicating the (ERROR-FREE) results of the lottery to the housing system.

I would not be shocked if someone decides to take this to court or call their Senators about this issue. As I have proven before Square Enix in the past has caused elected officials to create laws that affect all 50 states due to one state (Illinois) enacting a law because of Square Enix's billing practices for FFXI.

Anyone who does would have zero legal standing, as neither the consideration nor the prize are exchangable for real-world currency or services according to Square-Enix's Terms of Service - as I have proven previously in this very thread, in response to your own post. The services in-game - such as the housing system and the lottery set up around it - are provided at will, as-is, and can be revoked from you at any time, at S-E's discretion. You agree to this when you install the game. Explicitly. In the terms of service. You are not even legally entitled to a fair in-game Lottery System.

At this point the development team should focus on creating a new housing system. In fact they can keep their current wards as is but creating an instanced housing system would most likely satisfy spurned consumers. The current ward system alone is and has been a disaster for years and like FFXIV 1.0 you cannot fix it. Instead, it must be completely replaced with something else. Forget the story content for now the housing situation requires the teams full focus.

Right, because FFXIV's only purpose is housing, am I right? That's the only reason anyone ever plays this game, right? Just to decorate their houses. Surely, nobody else plays it to socialize, make friends, challenge difficult raids with their friends, explore, craft, experience the story, or do any other kind of content, right? NooooOOooo, Mr. HisShadowX is angery about housing, so we need to make housing the biggest priority, right?

Come back when you are the producer and director for a massively popular MMORPG with millions of subscribers worldwide. Then we can talk about what you think is best for FFXIV.

[HisShadowX]

Once again, the error is not in the drawing; it is in communicating the (ERROR-FREE) results of the lottery to the housing system.


Anyone who does would have zero legal standing, as neither the consideration nor the prize are exchangable for real-world currency or services according to Square-Enix's Terms of Service - as I have proven previously in this very thread, in response to your own post. The services in-game - such as the housing system and the lottery set up around it - are provided at will, as-is, and can be revoked from you at any time, at S-E's discretion. You agree to this when you install the game. Explicitly. In the terms of service. You are not even legally entitled to a fair in-game Lottery System.


Right, because FFXIV's only purpose is housing, am I right? That's the only reason anyone ever plays this game, right? Just to decorate their houses. Surely, nobody else plays it to socialize, make friends, challenge difficult raids with their friends, explore, craft, experience the story, or do any other kind of content, right? NooooOOooo, Mr. HisShadowX is angery about housing, so we need to make housing the biggest priority, right?

Come back when you are the producer and director for a massively popular MMORPG with millions of subscribers worldwide. Then we can talk about what you think is best for FFXIV.

And this is where region causes problems like this. If something in the TOS is unlawful or can be unlawful the eye of the government can come down on it.

You cannot, for example sign away all rights for mandatory arbitration and regardless of the TOS that you signed up for if something deals with a lottery thats unfair or fraudulent when dealing with United States citizens and you operate this lottery within the United States this can come under the watchful eyes of uncle sam. Once before Square Enix tried billing methods were not against the law but it was blatantly harming United States consumers by charging them an extra month if they resigned up on the last day of a month. Even though one state made a law this caused the entire way Square Enix bills to change world wide.

Also lotteries that happen within the United States come under a watchful eye when reported as being inaccuracies.

Again you might be a peasant from the EU and its expected you roll over from where you are from but over here it does not work that way.

[Escence]

Even if the zero was being treated as a valid number in the lottery, it would have no impact on the variety of other numbers being drawn.

The prevalence of low numbers is entirely to do with the fact that many of the plots would only have that low number of entries to draw from. Every plot with any number of entries on it could produce 1 as the winning number, but can only produce an 8 if there were at least eight entries to that specific lottery – and needs even more entries to have a reasonable chance of that being the winning number.

Like I said on my server it was higher numbers of people applying to plots and always it was a lower single number that won the plots. That why I said they need to reset the server when they fix the issue entirely but the thing I notice with this community is that once people get what they want then everyone else who cant can piss into the wind and that sad.

[IdowhatIwant]

Once again, the error is not in the drawing; it is in communicating the (ERROR-FREE) results of the lottery to the housing system.

This is likely the reasoning used so they only have to focus on the houses that got 0. Can you imagine what sort of PR nightmare and mess it would be to address the whole lottery being a problem? They in reality can tell us any excuse they want, we don't work there or know how it all works in the grand scheme of things to prove it wrong. It is strange that there would be such a large amount of communication errors over all the place, and there were never any communication errors like this previously? It seems specifically odd, that these errors were more common one 1 person lottos vs muliple people. It sounds weird to me that the lottery system is done on a separate server, when we were told a couple months ago we couldn't get new servers. So I don't know call me a conspiracy theorist but none of that really adds up to me over all. Where is PacketDancer.

[Atelier-Bagur]

This is likely the reasoning used so they only have to focus on the houses that got 0. Can you imagine what sort of PR nightmare and mess it would be to address the whole lottery being a problem? They in reality can tell us any excuse they want, we don't work there or know how it all works in the grand scheme of things to prove it wrong. It is strange that there would be such a large amount of communication errors over all the place, and there were never any communication errors like this previously? It seems specifically odd, that these errors were more common one 1 person lottos vs muliple people. It sounds weird to me that the lottery system is done on a separate server, when we were told a couple months ago we couldn't get new servers. So I don't know call me a conspiracy theorist but none of that really adds up to me over all. Where is PacketDancer.

Take off those tinfoil hats sir, it makes you look ridiculous.

[LittleImp]

It is strange that there would be such a large amount of communication errors over all the place, and there were never any communication errors like this previously? It seems specifically odd, that these errors were more common one 1 person lottos vs muliple people. It sounds weird to me that the lottery system is done on a separate server, when we were told a couple months ago we couldn't get new servers. So I don't know call me a conspiracy theorist but none of that really adds up to me over all. Where is PacketDancer.

It's a brand new system, one which was likely tested in a setting and at a scale that didn't accurately reflect their production environment. When scaled out to production, they ran into previously unforeseen networking issues.

When you're dealing with a fabric of many different networked backend services working in concert, these kinds of things happen. It's fair to question their QA practices, or why they didn't do a staged rollout, but the official explanation of the nature of the problem is sensible. There were even professional software developers in the FFXIV community that accurately predicted the exact nature of the problem before SE made their announcement.

As for the 'new servers' issue, the lottery was likely run from an existing system that is allocated to handling various backend functions.

[IdowhatIwant]

It's a brand new system, one which was likely tested in a setting and at a scale that didn't accurately reflect their production environment. When scaled out to production, they ran into previously unforeseen networking issues.

When you're dealing with a fabric of many different networked backend services working in concert, these kinds of things happen. It's fair to question their QA practices, or why they didn't do a staged rollout, but the official explanation of the nature of the problem is sensible. There were even professional software developers in the FFXIV community that accurately predicted the exact nature of the problem before SE made their announcement.

As for the 'new servers' issue, the lottery was likely run from an existing system that is allocated to handling various backend functions.

SSHHH. Let me wear my tinfoil cap.

[MiaShino]

It sounds weird to me that the lottery system is done on a separate server, when we were told a couple months ago we couldn't get new servers. So I don't know call me a conspiracy theorist but none of that

This is incredibly common for the type of deployment they are hosting.

Example;

For emulated servers I ran we used three separate physical systems for most sub 1000 user worlds.

Server Bank A (Login and queuing) - Bank of two physical servers that handled account data/logging in/queuing into world shards. These route you to world server of choice. Single dual core was sufficient.

Server Bank B (item database) - Learned most quickly that item lookup consumed too much IO and needed own separate server. One box with ten drives in raid scalable should situation require. Multi processor setup here per box, accessing that many drives is noooo joke. Required many pci-e lanes.

Server Bank C (world server) - Handled player position and mob position updates. Was also running many Lua scripts for mob - boss AI. Eight gigabyte setup, needed much much more of the memory then other servers.

Server Bank D (core database) - Multi server SQL database for parsing all non account player data such as character/race/level/name/etc. This is where we would have executed the lottery upon as this had many more cpu cycles to spare then other banks.

No conspiracy here only standard operating procedure.