[X] My Assistant

Not that I care about this that much, but I wiki'ed 'Lottery' just for kicks— this paragraph caught my eye, notably because of how I felt it to be the exact opposite of the people's attitude toward HV lottery:

It's about behavioral finance which they have to explain why people are buying tickets even though they know they're losing money. As in real life, people in HV are also whining about the loss. The difference here is that people actually know who's winning the lottery, so they can whine about the same guy winning again and again and forming all kinds of conspiracy, usually without considering how much resources they've tried to put in to win.

However, I'm surprised that those who buy a lot aren'y whining, cause they should be the one with the least marginal utility gain. But then this can also be explained by assuming that they're treating the lottery as an investment instead of a gamble. Or the first prize simply gives sufficient utility for them to be okay with the loss.

more winners = less whiners

No, people will then whine about having less reward per winner.
Think about the whole pointless melee/mage argument (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

no winners = no whiners (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

all winners = no whiners (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

However, I'm surprised that those who buy a lot aren't whining.

Why am I not surprise that you were surprised by this... (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)

... the rest of your post ...

That's typical of you... (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

However, I'm surprised that those who buy a lot aren'y whining

This is because on average, the ones putting in tons of GP are recouping their GP when they win the secondary prizes.

lottery just for fun for me (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

spend around 10~20 tickets average on great prize (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

This post has been edited by nobody_xxx: Dec 9 2013, 07:25

The difference here is that people actually know who's winning the lottery, so they can whine about the same guy winning again and again and forming all kinds of conspiracy, usually without considering how much resources they've tried to put in to win.

No the difference here is that the hook with a lottery is that the routine non-addicted participant feels they get something out of it, and that whatever success they have is heavily outweighed by what they spent into it, but not enough so that they quit contributing. Except if they hit a grand prize, whereas most either won't ever need to play again or will not want to.

The problem here is that the HV lottery is too easy for only a few to control the results and they don't stop playing even when they hit. And with percentages in the placings they can continue it repeatedly. I don't see how the complaints end on that until it's changed.

And there is an inadequate prizing structure for a proper hook as others have mentioned - if that was adjusted to where a much larger base got something useable or at least made some of their entry back you would still have a lot of participants and the credit sink would go on with less complaints on that end.

By the way, I must have missed the big OH WOW A LOTTERY IS SUCH A GREAT IDEA WHO CARES ABOUT ALL OF THE OTHER GAME MECHANIC PROBLEMS from the entire rest of the forum populace.

- JC

This post has been edited by jcullinane: Dec 9 2013, 08:14

all this butthurt over what is supposed to be an evil GP sink.

keyword: evil

it doesn't need any new rules or cooldowns or any other BS nerfs people have been suggesting. if anything, it needs to be buffed into something more evil than it is now

Grand Prize: Keep as is.
2nd prize: 10% of the final pot given to 3 2nd prize winners each.
3rd prize: 1% of the final pot given to 20 3nd prize winners each.
4th prize: 1 pony figuring given to 50 4th prize winners.
5th prize: 1 artifact given to 200 5th prize winners.

+1/2, only because it has too many people winning stuff that's a bit too good. it's supposed to be evil, remember?
i'd say to keep it evil, 2nd prize would have to be 5% of the pot, and 3rd, 4th, and 5th prizes are 1 artifact. each prize has only one winner.


(IMG:[iambrony.dget.cc] http://iambrony.dget.cc/mlp/gif/deal_with_it_2_by_mezkalito4p-d4hpl02.gif)

all this butthurt over what is supposed to be an evil GP sink.

keyword: evil

it doesn't need any new rules or cooldowns or any other BS nerfs people have been suggesting. if anything, it needs to be buffed into something more evil than it is now
+1/2, only because it has too many people winning stuff that's a bit too good. it's supposed to be evil, remember?
i'd say to keep it evil, 2nd prize would have to be 5% of the pot, and 3rd, 4th, and 5th prizes are 1 artifact. each prize has only one winner.

Okay, so if I add a "evil" tag in front of my name I can start doing evil things because, you know, I'm evil?

This post has been edited by LOL50015: Dec 9 2013, 09:04

Solution: Prizes need to NOT be currency or convertible to currency. An example would be a collectable that cannot be sold or traded but which is still desired by the rich and poor players alike.

I considered that, but one of the points of the secondary prizes is to scale with the total input. Easy enough to scale the output value-wise when it's a simple fraction of the input, a bit harder when you have to scale Something Else.

This is because on average, the ones putting in tons of GP are recouping their GP when they win the secondary prizes.

If someone bought 10% of the total ticket pool, disregarding the variable amount of tickets removed after each prize draw, the possible outcomes are:

10% chance to win 1st prize
9% chance to win 2nd prize (= 0.09 * 20%)
8.1% chance to win 3rd prize (= 0.081 * 15%)
7.29% chance to win 4th prize (= 0.0729 * 10%)
6.561% chance to win 5th prize (=0.06561 * 5%)

Average GP return: 4.07% of total pot GP, or 40.7% of invested GP

Okay, so if I add a "evil" tag in front of my name I can start doing evil things because, you know, I'm evil?

At least you wouldn't surprise anyone.

Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.

—Ambrose Bierce

If you don't mind wasting money, enter it.

If not, STFU.

It isn't hard.

At least you wouldn't surprise anyone.

(IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif) Oh sorry if I got too carried away, I was here for fun only, didn't mean to take sides (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/duck.gif)

*silently leaves*

So about that thing on how many tickets the winners bought... any thoughts on that? Would really cut down on whiners to see the winner buy like 383947394 tickets.

And chances of someone buying like 1 ticket and winning would be really really low to make them whine. Unless they win most of the time, but you wouldn't have such a rigged lottery r-r-right? Just have more transparency to cut down the whining

I have the impression that most people think that placing in the lottery is the only way to win. I'm pretty sure there are quite a few regular placers out there who would have gained more by selling tickets rather than participate.

But then again, I'm not against adding more prizes as I wouldn't mind GP inflation, as your average player.

one of the points of the secondary prizes is to scale with the total input.

Hmmm...

Idea #1
PXP Boosters. Items that instantly add PXP or a potency to a piece of equipment. Sadly, this one requires that equipment no longer be tradable when used.

Example: 2nd place is a 600 PXP booster, 3rd place is a 400, etc.

Idea #2
Blood/Chaos Tokens. This one is the easiest to implement.

Example: 2nd place is 4 tokens, 3rd place is 3, etc.

Idea #3
Super Foods. Monster Lab items that max out hunger/morale on a single monster for a set amount of time.

Example: 2nd place's item lasts for 5 days, 3rd place for 4 days, etc.

Idea #4
Warp Tickets. Battle items that lets you skip a random number of rounds (from within a range) in any multi-round battle mode. Cannot be used to bypass the last round. Maybe scales with difficulty but that might be a bit too much work on your end.

Example: 2nd place's ticket skips 15-20, 3rd place's ticket can do 12-17, etc.

Idea #5
Life Shields. Battle item that grants invincibility for a number of turns. Make up your own numbers for this one.

Idea #6
Energy Drinks. Just make them non-tradable (seriously, why are they tradable if the point is to hurt bots and multi-accounts?)

I don't think any of those ideas would be attractive enough with the number you've suggested...

Just add some zeroes to the ends then.

If you remove the displayed number of tickets (and correspondingly, the % of tickets that are yours) until the lottery ends, the people who do sink a ton of tickets in won't know their actual chance of winning the lottery until its over. That should prevent people from directly controlling the lottery based on feedback from the system. And I don't think it'd make the lottery any less of a GP sink to the high rollers that really want the item.

It doesn't prevent people from looking at historical data, making assumptions (no crazy bidders, item is about same quality worth, etc), and making a reasonable bid to try and win said item assuming those conditions.

I'd also like to see the number of tickets that the winner has dumped in just to see who's gotten crazy lucky and who's just brute forcing the system for wins. I think this little bit of transparency would shut down most of the conspiracy theorists suggesting that the lottery is rigged.

Joe: Given that you equal or more stamina from grinding while using the EDs you get from arts than you lose, Energy drink being tradeable is rather a bonus to those who only play all arenas per day, for example. Bots, however, don't really benefit due the cost of riddles. Because arenas consumes less than day's worth of stamine, they might slightly benefit multi-accounting though - not as much as lottery benefits it though.

I'm not sure why PXP boosters/equipment boosted by them should be non-tradeable? PXP is already a market commodity.

Otherwise, ideas 1 and 2 are good as prizes, assuming somewhat larger numbers - the only problem being that they do enable the user to recoup that 40% both I and 10b mentioned earlier. They do however help to sink more GP. Also, idea 2 indeed forces a sort of cooldown.

That said, it gives chaos tokens in high quantity to those who can buy crystals by the millions. As we known, userbase can make game harder than their equips improve once they get past a certain point. Other than negative? point, it also implements sort-of-cooldown on recouping.

Idea 3....It could even be all monsters an user has have forever maxed morale/hunger, it'd still be pretty useless with the rate of food/pill generation.

Idea 4 ....Well. It's not useless, but..it'd have to be hundr.-er, a lot of rounds to outweight potion slot in grindfest. In arena, again, anybody likely to win won't need it and anybody not likely will need the extra cash anyway - and somebody who is supremely rich from h@h but doesn't really care about/have time for battling in HV...well, I guess they could use those to skip to the end of DwD to get their superior.

Idea 5 ....Won't be added(blind tanking is not approved, mkay). It is also not very significant, compared to the costs of having a reasonable win chance for any price in a lottery and only significantly benefits the poor.

Idea 6: Sorry, last patch that would have been okay, now I just see them dropping to low again. Also, any meaningful scaling quantity in a lottery mainly benefits bots, while being quite unsellable and unusuable otherwise.

Instead of Warp Tickets I would call the thing 'legal Bot'
By using it it just rolls you XXX Rounds worth of Loot.
This thing can even come with Loot Quality Bonus, higher Token Drop rate and extra Crystals like old GF/Crysfest to make it even better.

inb4 Box-for-sale