The Classic Lottery

[ffcmike]

(Credit to Midi for making this oh so wonderful image)

Some of you may or may not know that over the last few weeks we've been working on a Lottery/Raffle (tbh i'm not even entirely sure what the correct term is, feel free to correct me).

What i wouldn't expect people to know is that the main goal of this is an attempt to remove a mass amount of tickets from players aswell as get some valuable items into circulation, these would include currently unreleased items, some new, some old, aswell as items that are not always obtainable (Bat Form, Love etc), although it also supports the option of one time custom prizes.

The way this works is quite simply that you can buy one Lotto Ticket per GC Ticket, there will be a time of game inactivity inwhich to buy tickets (this is expected to be a 2 week period at first, perhaps reduced if/when new prizes are implemented), and at the end of this time a Machine NPC (this is set to be located within a level at the Castle) will automatically begin to spin the balls.
Before too long 3 balls will emerge from the machine and obviously the number combination is the winner.

I've attached some preview images just to give you all the right idea.
(and yes i am aware that there are 10 ball images within the machine and that the same number can be yielded more than once)

The winning number will always be a purchased ticket number, the maximum amount of overall purchasable tickets per game is 999 but there can only be one winner.
If i were to purchase say 500 tickets, this would give me an excellent chance of winning, but even somebody who has entered just one ticket would have an albeit small chance if winning.

The Prize will always be made clear before each game,
the prize order will be a random generated queue,
this means that an individual prize will be selected at random, removed from the queue, and then once the queue has been emptied it would rebuild itself from the full prize list in random order.

This may not be a lone solution to the whole ticket economy issue,
other ideas may yet be explored but this is something that while an exact release date isn't set just yet (i'm not sure why Ben Rain massed it would be released a certain weekend) could be put into practise soon,
there may well be other uses for the Ball Machine.

This being a forum thread and all means opinions are free to be made,
if this is an idea anyone dislikes i'd like to know exactly why you dislike the idea,
but even if any of you like the idea there is always room for it to be improved,
the more constructive an opinion is the more likely it is to be taken seriously.

[xnervNATx]

id like to know if the prize are worth it

[ffcmike]

Originally Posted by xnervNATx

id like to know if the prize are worth it

Obviously i can't speak for everyone when it comes to the worth of the prizes,
some aren't too different from GC Prizes which you might feel are useless, others are weapons which can cause damage which you may prefer, but you have to consider that with each game there can only be one winner, a game will occur every 2 weeks, and there will be a different prize every time, so each prize will have rarity.

[xnervNATx]

Originally Posted by ffcmike

Obviously i can't speak for everyone when it comes to the worth of the prizes,
some aren't too different from GC Prizes which you might feel are useless, others are weapons which can cause damage which you may prefer, but you have to consider that with each game there can only be one winner, a game will occur every 2 weeks, and there will be a different prize every time, so each prize will have rarity.

is this true. your gonna have trident in prize list

[Mark Sir Link]

just recently I won the lottery and got a katana

[Ares]

looks like a lot of time and effort were put into this, nice job. i'm looking forward to it

[ffcmike]

Originally Posted by xnervNATx

is this true. your gonna have trident in prize list

It's certainly a possibility,
although i'd rather keep this type of prize to weapons that already have a planned eventual release.
In the case of the Trident this was remade under Massokre in 2006 and planned for Kulls Castle (the tower east of Brothers House + west of Aria/Gerudo Camp).

There are no concrete plans for Kulls currently,
it's had some thought, but nobody has been asked to make anything towards it as of yet.

If the Trident were to be released via its original method of buying it for a few thousand gelat it's safe to assume that everybody would have it, and so there wouldn't be much point in having it as a prize.

[xnervNATx]

Originally Posted by Mark Sir Link

just recently I won the lottery and got a katana

zomg

[jacob_bald6225]

Originally Posted by ffcmike

If the Trident were to be released via its original method of buying it for a few thousand gelat it's safe to assume that everybody would have it, and so there wouldn't be much point in having it as a prize.

If you're doing this to burn tickets good job but if you're doing it to attract players, maintain interest, or boost morale it is a horrible idea. Winning npcs in a lottery is not an accessible gameplay element that will attract players in fact if I were deciding on what server to play I would want one where random events didn't determine who gets what. Random events are not fun, they're frustrating.

[StrykerTFFD]

RNG gets annoying after awhile. Exciting at first, annoying down the road.

[ffcmike]

Originally Posted by jacob_bald6225

If you're doing this to burn tickets good job but if you're doing it to attract players, maintain interest, or boost morale it is a horrible idea. Winning npcs in a lottery is not an accessible gameplay element that will attract players in fact if I were deciding on what server to play I would want one where random events didn't determine who gets what. Random events are not fun, they're frustrating.

That's a fair opinion but it's not like you'd be being forced to participate, that would be entirely your own choice.
And as you know it is not primarily an attempt to attract new players, but then if it does get some fun items into players inventory, and increase competitiveness within events it can indirectly have that effect, albeit ifs and buts however the same can be argued about any significant update really.

[jorollychu]

2 weeks is too long

[ffcmike]

Originally Posted by jorollychu

2 weeks is too long

It might be too long, it might not be long enough,
ideally the first game or 2 would eliminate in the region of a few hundred tickets and from then on it would become competitive, but this isn't gauranteed, maybe those with a large quantity of tickets available might only sacrifice a fraction of their ticket total each game but still more than what most players can normally earn through events in that amount of time.
We need to try before we know for sure, and as already mentioned this time period is planned to be reduced eventually.

[xnervNATx]

im not gonna waste more than 0 tickets in every!

[BlackSolider]

Sounds like a good way to get rid of some tickets. Good work.