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Update Trade Corner Lottery Rules


Akshit

Question

So we had an extremely poor conducted lottery recently, but what makes it the worst lottery ever is not just the fact that OT due to his irl reasons was not able to promote and update his lottery tickets... What makes it the absolute worst is how staff drew the winner for it.

 

Number 9 came, no one even had #9, and winner was selected. The reason for doing so from their side was stated as:

'Already consulted this, he chose the 9th number down, rolling a 100 sided dice since 100 tickets were sold'

'Exactly 100 tickets have been sold. I just went with the ninth down.'

 

Who exactly was consulted ? And why weren't the participants who paid 750k per ticket informed about this change in methodology of selecting winner before ?

 

This random method was further poorly defended stating:

'Mathematically doesn't make a difference, a player's chances of winning isn't affected at all in this case.'

 

It makes a huge difference since this is RNG / luck based. For example, if a random number had been generated between 1 to 250, which were the actual ticket numbers, and 9 was fated to come, no one would've won. There would've been a re-roll and then maybe someone else would have got it. And whoever would have got it, would've actually selected the number which won. The method used by staff here makes the whole point of selecting unique number(s) rather useless and throws away the excitement of a specific unique number winning.

 

Trade Corner Lottery Rule #2:

 

  • The staff member in question will draw the number and mail the prize to the winner.

 

So far for almost all lotteries, when a number is drawn, the player who selected that number wins. If a number drawn isn't taken, should just re-roll then.

Why did staff use this method. Not only is it comparatively complicated, it sucks. Takes away the whole point of unique ticket number from people who actually paid for the sold tickets.

 

And if this is how things are to be conducted in case all tickets are not sold, then please update the trade corner lottery rules first instead of making a new rule out of nowhere, finalizing it, & implementing it without informing anyone beforehand.

 

P.S. I had not participated in this lottery, this is not a 'I'm mad I didn't win' kinda post.

Rules just need to be fixed and clearly stated so that we do not have similar mess in future. Cause the way this lottery has been handled just makes me go OOF.

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as a previous TC Moderator and mediator of quite a few lotteries, I can honestly say I hate the system and always was an advocate of straight up removing lotteries, took way too much effort on my (Staffs) end and way too little on the hosts. Players would often complain or ask specific questions about lotteries that had nothing to do with me at all and often had me referencing them back to the host and sometimes even chasing down the host to get to the bottomof something.

I tried to get the rules updated to be as clear as possible, but quit before I could really iron out any kinks, such as one mentioned. Its hard for a mediating staff member to stay unbiased and properly manage a shitfest such as this one. 

Again ill advocate for a straight up removal of lotteries, if not Trade corner as a whole, its barely used. barely managed, and annoying to even bother with

if not that, SGMs really need to assign a TC moderator that does their job, as far as I know no one has been appointed as one since I left. just so that important decisions can be made by someone truly involved with such situations rather than someone who doesnt even know how to start mediating a lottery. 

 

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53 minutes ago, Akshit said:

So we had an extremely poor conducted lottery 

 

Who exactly was consulted ? And why weren't the participants who paid 750k per ticket informed about this change in methodology of selecting winner before ?

 

There was a miscommunication error from our side. Because of poor sale of tickets, having exact 100 tickets being sold, our moderator rolled number from 1-100 range. It could've been executed better, at least by making a list of tickets assigned.

 

This situation doesn't occur for most of the lotteries, since its very rare for them to not sell even half of the tickets, but it's for sure situation that we will discuss within a team, and address in the future, either by changing rule, or by explaining it before drawing numbers at the end of lottery, if tickets will be not sold.

 

 

 

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Quoting the two improvements I suggested in a post I made on the trade corner:

 

1. Having set rules on how drawing would work and how to tackle different possible scenarios.

 

2. In case of an absent host, a list of all the people with the tickets/numbers they bought, to put anxious minds at ease and for better liability to make sure the draw was fair. I know it's a lot more work for the staff but I guess in crappy situations like what just transpired, it can't be helped.

 

Creative methods of drawing should be fine if approved by the TC SGM (In this case, Bear) and the thread given a heads up. And more communication overall is never a bad thing, from both the host and the staff member, or at the very least, one of them.

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10 hours ago, Bearminator said:

There was a miscommunication error from our side. Because of poor sale of tickets, having exact 100 tickets being sold, our moderator rolled number from 1-100 range. It could've been executed better, at least by making a list of tickets assigned.

 

This situation doesn't occur for most of the lotteries, since its very rare for them to not sell even half of the tickets, but it's for sure situation that we will discuss within a team, and address in the future, either by changing rule, or by explaining it before drawing numbers at the end of lottery, if tickets will be not sold.

 

 

 

Tbh, just prevrnt people from doing lotteries, until you get someone responsable enough to make proper rules about it. Currently, it has many flawed rules, and then there's the fsct thst you guys try to hide under your own ignorance on the subject.

 

Tl;dr; the stuff is clueless of their actions, and to stubborn to admit their mistakes and fix them, as always, giving them a really poor image in the eyes of the players.

Edited by razimove
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59 minutes ago, awkways said:

If he had decided to do 9th from the bottom it would've given everyone who selected a lower number an MASSIVE advantage

This, the fact that staff members think that 'mathematically it doesn't make a difference' frankly concerns me, because it's simply incorrect. You can't just come up with a different illogical and unfair drawing system out of the blue and act as if it's ok, even saying that 'it was consulted', when it clearly wasn't. I also love how the thread got locked ASAP to prevent any form of discussion.

 

@Bearminator Please redraw this lottery properly and then establish one consistent and logical drawing system(not Xth person from the top/bottom) to prevent this from happening again... or just get rid of lotteries altogether as bilburt suggested.

Edited by Dazuzi
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If this were a real life, we would all put our numbers in a hat and someone would draw one of the numbers (we carefully selected) and the number selected would win. That is how lottos are to be properly run.

 

Per @Bearminator's Lotteries Rule Thread:

There is a 1 month time limit on lotteries, and a limit of 250 tickets. If either of these limits are reached, the numbers will be drawn. Hosts can choose lower limits for each, but not higher.

 

Please note this doesn't say a random number will be picked, then a staff member will make up their own rule on how it applies to the lotto.

 

This lotto was unfair and has to be redrawn. If we had known that edniss would make up his own rule and select from the top down, all the top slots would've been filled only, giving everyone starting from the top down a MASSIVE advantage. The same way as if we knew that edniss would make up his own rule and pick from the bottom up, all the bottom numbers would be taken, as there's a MASSIVE advantage to picking those numbers. This is not the way lottos are selected and also not the way @Bearminator's rules state they should be held.

 

Additionally, I found an older lottery where they did it this way, not the way Edniss decided to:

Note that in the Yanmega lotto, bear drew a number, and luckily it was a number which had been selected. If he got a number not selected I have no doubt it would've kept being rolled until a number selected by a participator was chosen randomly. He wouldnt have counted 144 numbers down on the list and chosen them as the winner because that makes no sense.

 

This whole experience has been very off-putting and I agree with Bilburt that after this they should stop allowing lottos.

Edited by awkways
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6 hours ago, Dazuzi said:

This, the fact that staff members think that 'mathematically it doesn't make a difference' frankly concerns me, because it's simply incorrect. You can't just come up with a different illogical and unfair drawing system out of the blue and act as if it's ok, even saying that 'it was consulted', when it clearly wasn't. I also love how the thread got locked ASAP to prevent any form of discussion.

 

@Bearminator Please redraw this lottery properly and then establish one consistent and logical drawing system(not Xth person from the top/bottom) to prevent this from happening again... or just get rid of lotteries altogether as bilburt suggested.

No thanks. The lottery is over dude it is what it is. They probably already mailed the prize to umbra and taking jt back from him would be unethical. The only thing that can be done now is that they maybe change the rules of lotteries in the future and state them before a number is drawn. That's that.

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7 minutes ago, Zymogen said:

Maybe I’m missing something but I’m not sure how you can gain an advantage through the positioning of your tickets in a raffle. The number is randomly drawn and the probability of it being drawn as a low number is exactly the same as it being drawn as a high number or anywhere in between.

I suppose the confusion here is that he assumed that staff rolled once and if the RNG machine rolled a number that someone bought, they would get the prize with that number. If no one bought it, the staff would just go from top down and pick the 9th ticket in order. That's not what happened since they had numbers from 1 to 100 (100 bought tickets) instead of 1 to 250 (all the available numbers). I'm assuming this because the first time I was explained this case I had the similar reaction before I looked into it.

 

This all being said, it baffles me that a lottery that is worth somewhere from 70 million by bought tickets to god-knows-how-much-Umbreon-is-actually-worth, that the rules weren't being clearly established. Furthermore, I think that raffles/lotteries of this magnitude should be done in some kind of more transparent way (livestream of multiple staff members, etc.) instead of just one staff member posting "lol this guy won gg" because cases like this are inevitable. I know this is extra work for staff and I'd totally get if they didn't bother any extra step what comes to these but lotteries/raffles on their current form are just a complete mess and took one of the most valuable shinies for the community to realize that.

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Spoiler

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This above was simply converted into:

 

Spoiler

1    awkways
    
2    DravTheReaper
    
3    awkways
    
4    awkways
5    HackGame

6    PikachuKetchum 

7    Kira

8    HackGame
9    UmbraMol
    
10     MinhHoang
    
11     MinhHoang
    
12    HackGame
13    Kira
    
14     Kira
    
15     awkways

16      Kira
and so on up to 100# ticket

 

 

What it did, was to take blank spots out from lottery. I don't see how this gives unfair advantage for players from first tickets, as Edniss rolled from 1 to 100.

 

It's always random generated number, and every ticket had same chance to being rolled.

 

 

 

 

As I've said, what it lacked was clear communication and better explaining of "why". 

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56 minutes ago, KaynineXL said:

That method could have ended very badly. You got lucky it landed on an unpicked number.

 

Say if I picked 7, and you rolled a 7.... Despite me having number 7, you give it to "Kira" because of how the numbers were squashed.. I would be completely pissed if I'm honest.

Ok now it makes sense

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3 hours ago, Goku said:

They probably already mailed the prize to umbra and taking jt back from him would be unethical. The only thing that can be done now is that they maybe change the rules of lotteries in the future and state them before a number is drawn.

I don't disagree. I am also hoping for updated rules that will be more clear and consistent.

1 hour ago, KaynineXL said:

Say if I picked 7, and you rolled a 7.... Despite me having number 7, you give it to "Kira" because of how the numbers were squashed.. I would be completely pissed if I'm honest.

In this case you would have won, they only resorted to converting the list by squashing it because nobody picked the ticket with the number 9. This information was however poorly communicated at first and should have been properly explained like bear did instead of just locking the thread. I still don't understand why this was chosen over simply re-rolling though, as the amount of tickets sold wasn't so miniscule that squashing the list was necessary in my opinion.

1 hour ago, OrangeManiac said:

This all being said, it baffles me that a lottery that is worth somewhere from 70 million by bought tickets to god-knows-how-much-Umbreon-is-actually-worth, that the rules weren't being clearly established. Furthermore, I think that raffles/lotteries of this magnitude should be done in some kind of more transparent way (livestream of multiple staff members, etc.) instead of just one staff member posting "lol this guy won gg" because cases like this are inevitable.

Full transparency should absolutely be the standard. Still, all this effort just to enable gambling isn't worth it in my opinion.

Edited by Dazuzi
Added a comment.
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2 minutes ago, Dazuzi said:

 

In this case you would have won, they only resorted to converting the list by squashing because nobody picked the ticket with the number 9. This information was however poorly communicated at first and should have been properly explained like bear did instead of just locking the thread.

They did a d100 roll, implying the numbers were squashed before the roll. So they converted the list before rolling, otherwise they would've done a d250 roll.

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12 minutes ago, Tyrone said:

They did a d100 roll, implying the numbers were squashed before the roll. So they converted the list before rolling, otherwise they would've done a d250 roll.

In that case I also wonder what would happen:

1 hour ago, KaynineXL said:

if I picked 7, and you rolled a 7.... Despite me having number 7, you give it to "Kira" because of how the numbers were squashed

@Bearminator ?

Edited by Dazuzi
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8 hours ago, Bearminator said:
  Hide contents

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This above was simply converted into:

 

  Hide contents

1    awkways
    
2    DravTheReaper
    
3    awkways
    
4    awkways
5    HackGame

6    PikachuKetchum 

7    Kira

8    HackGame
9    UmbraMol
    
10     MinhHoang
    
11     MinhHoang
    
12    HackGame
13    Kira
    
14     Kira
    
15     awkways

16      Kira
and so on up to 100# ticket

 

 

What it did, was to take blank spots out from lottery. I don't see how this gives unfair advantage for players from first tickets, as Edniss rolled from 1 to 100.

 

It's always random generated number, and every ticket had same chance to being rolled.

  

 

 

 

As I've said, what it lacked was clear communication and better explaining of "why". 

Why? According to your rules that's not how it's done. The NUMBERS are selected. Not re-arranging everyone's numbers into a giant pile and then picking from it. And as K9 said, if you picked a number and it was actually picked you wouldn't win. This whole thing was just a huge mess. The proper way to run a lotto is to put all the numbers selected into a "hat" and pick numbers from there. Not reassign everyone to different numbers and pick from that for no reason whatsoever.

 

Last night I went through a ton of previous lottos and none were done this way, all were drawn from the numbers selected. We picked numbers based on whatever reason and to re-assign them is just a slap in the face.

Edited by awkways
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@awkways No there's no way this happened. Bear was just confused when he made the example ... He meant the blank were deleted so you still had number 1, 3 and 4 since there were no blanks within the first 4 tickets, but Hackgame who had number 7 got the #5 instead since there wasn't a number 5 & 6. Same goes for PikatchuKetchum who had the number 8 and got the #6 in the reordered list. Well at least that's how it's supposed to be if they are trying to be fair.

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@Bearminator, either this needs a re-roll or you need to change your Lotto Rules. Per your own lotto rules:

 

The player must mail the item/Pokemon being raffled to the Staff member who will keep it safe until the lottery ends. The staff member in question will draw the number and mail the prize to the winner. Lottery threads must not be opened until the staff member has confirmed receipt of the prize.

 

The way the last lotto went down it should read something like this:

 

The player must mail the item/Pokemon being raffled to the Staff member who will keep it safe until the lottery ends. The staff member in question will re-arrange your carefully selected numbers or make up whatever rule they think is most fair, then draw from that and mail the prize to the winner. Lottery threads must not be opened until the staff member has confirmed receipt of the prize.

 

Tbh getting quite sick of how staff parade thinking everything they did is perfect and there's no second discussion about it. Wouldn't have dropped 37m+ on tickets if I thought some CM could make up their own stupid rule and nuke all the numbers I spent about an hour picking out. Great work, A+

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4 hours ago, awkways said:

@Bearminator, either this needs a re-roll or you need to change your Lotto Rules. Per your own lotto rules:

 

The player must mail the item/Pokemon being raffled to the Staff member who will keep it safe until the lottery ends. The staff member in question will draw the number and mail the prize to the winner. Lottery threads must not be opened until the staff member has confirmed receipt of the prize.

 

The way the last lotto went down it should read something like this:

 

The player must mail the item/Pokemon being raffled to the Staff member who will keep it safe until the lottery ends. The staff member in question will re-arrange your carefully selected numbers or make up whatever rule they think is most fair, then draw from that and mail the prize to the winner. Lottery threads must not be opened until the staff member has confirmed receipt of the prize.

 

Tbh getting quite sick of how staff parade thinking everything they did is perfect and there's no second discussion about it. Wouldn't have dropped 37m+ on tickets if I thought some CM could make up their own stupid rule and nuke all the numbers I spent about an hour picking out. Great work, A+

I mean, its common knowledge that they arent great at what they do. But at the same time they dont allow us to publicly discuss their flaws, so how can they improve?

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49 minutes ago, razimove said:

I mean, its common knowledge that they arent great at what they do. But at the same time they dont allow us to publicly discuss their flaws, so how can they improve?

 

31 minutes ago, Squirtle said:

We appreciate the concerns that have been brought up and since I noticed this thread changes are occurring and will be announced here soon. We will be removing the lottery system and replacing it with a raffle system.

Like this. We complain enough till a higher staff member steps up and changes the whole system when it would've been more than enough for them to admit "hey we messed up and are re-drawing as a result".

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4 hours ago, awkways said:

 

Like this. We complain enough till a higher staff member steps up and changes the whole system when it would've been more than enough for them to admit "hey we messed up and are re-drawing as a result".

They won't listen to you because:

 

1) You're not chinese

2) It doesn't affect their wallet

3) They see every criticism as hate even tho it's not the case.

4) They have a huge ego. You are just a player, how dare you think that they, godly beings, can be wrong about something?

5) How dare you criticize when it's a free game.

 

Yes I am exaggerating a bit but it does feel like that sometimes.

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