RNG Fairness

[S0lara]

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Date & Time: April 16, 2022
Frequency:
World name: All Worlds
Character name: Zenova Highwind

This is being posted in the in-game bug reports, because if zero was included as a parameter in the list of possible numbers, then ALL housing RNG rolls need to be redone.

The RNG code was 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.

[Vladrick]

I am 100% fine with this. The whole point of the lottery system was to make it fair, and this was in no way, shape or form fair at all. Do I think people should suffer who actually won one? No, I do not. But if there was indeed a bug, then they should do a full reroll on all plots. Because it states in the terms and service that you are not to take advantage of a bug, and you need to report it. Letting people keep their houses is a technical violation of the terms and services.

But on a different note. Everyone and I mean EVERYONE that I had spoken to that put in for a plot, that put in their bid before emergency maintenance are the ones suffering from this, and the 3 or 4 people I know that actually won their plot, did so from bids placed after emergency maintenance. I don't know if there is a connection to this. But another thing that I noticed was before the game went down. I was growing the new flowers - and all of them. All 6 pots turned out their default colors. Despite the fact that I used pomace on them to make them blue and purple. So something happened, and they got reset to the state they were in BEFORE I gave them pomace to change their color. I did report this.

[S0lara]

I am 100% fine with this. The whole point of the lottery system was to make it fair, and this was in no way, shape or form fair at all. Do I think people should suffer who actually won one? No, I do not. But if there was indeed a bug, then they should do a full reroll on all plots. Because it states in the terms and service that you are not to take advantage of a bug, and you need to report it. Letting people keep their houses is a technical violation of the terms and services.

That is strange out those that put in a bid before emergency maintenance. That also really sucks about your flowers as well. I am glad that you see reason in my post.

[Dorgrin]

I think it is an oversimplification to assume that 0 was a viable outcome in addition to the number of entries. It is far more likely to be an off by one error, but (given YoshiP's post) it may be a more nuanced problem with how the calculations are done.

What happens next will depend on the precise cause. If it's simply an off by 1 error, then that's great... and not, because it meant the house went to the wrong person. In any case, those plots with only one entrant have a fairly obvious solution. The question will be how the team decides to implement any sort of redress. But I doubt they'll leave people who actually had to compete with others in the lurch.

[Condygurl]

The issue seems to be on the houses that were bid on prior to emergency maintenance with no additional bids after maintenance.

Our FC had 9 bids on a large plot in Ishgard. We literally all bid the moment servers went live to stop others from bidding. No one else bid and we lost to 0. Only one of us took our refund figuring they lost. The rest of us did not. Now we are waiting and watching as our money sits in Limbo.

All I know is if we all lose that money we will all be furious. But none of us want to take it back for fear of losing out on the house by not being able to claim it should we win.

[Thatsrev]

I think they didn't QA the possible integers for every plot for 0 and negative numbers and that's about it.