RNG weighted free tickets and Guild Raffles...lol

Atherol

Hi,

Can someone explain to me how RNG works (if ever) with free raffle tickets. A friend of mine was asked by the guild owner to buy from the guilds(2)
'cause he had failed to secure a vendor and if they did they will get 20 free tickets for every 50000 gold they spent buying from the guild. Today,
the raffle happened and my friend expected to have at least 22 tickets, 'cause also in order to participate he at least had to buy a raffle ticket from each guild.
When he checked the numbers of tickets he learned that he had only two ticket numbers for the raffle. He contacted the owner and was told that raffles as the ESO
game use a RNG to weight the tickets so he should not worry if he only saw two tickets 'cause the RNG knows that those two tickets are weighted and in
reality correspond to 22 tickets! Unfortunately, when he complained to the owner he was quickly kicked from both guilds. It seems to me that the whole thing is just a
scheme to get people to buy from the guilds when the owner was not able to secure a vendor.

Best,


Atherol

IcyDeadPeople

no idea about your friend's guild, but there is an add on most use for running raffles and it can handle stuff like what you're describing

http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1301-RaffleUnlimited.html

Runs

Without OP naming and shaming them into it, I would love the guild owner to come in and explain this. By the OP wording it definitely is fishy. But it could be a partial misunderstanding.

I personally don't really like the raffles, but without them I don't think the guilds would get the donations needed to successfully run in major cities. What I personally do is just donate 10% of my gross weekly sales back to the guild where the sales took place. I've actually won quite a few raffles doing just that

SolarCat02

We don't hold raffles often, but when we do I have an app where I type in everyone's name once with a separate field for number of tickets. I have tested it and the RNG seems to work just fine. It's nice because if I am pulling multiple prizes I can also have it automatically exclude prior winners, or include them in subsequent draws, depending on the rules of the raffle.

IcyDeadPeople

What you're describing sounds like it was probably legit, because the number of tickets doesn't cost the GM anything more.

The cost of the raffle is just obtaining all the prizes. As long as the prizes were handed out, it shouldn't matter if there are 100 tickets or 10,000 tickets.

Seems like a good idea to encourage purchases in the guild store.

As far as your tickets, if it were something like the add on above, tickets are automatically awarded based on guild bank deposit and then the GM would probably have to check a different add on to see who spent at least 50k in guild store and then input list of who gets 20 extra tickets into Raffle Unlimited

Atherol

@IcyDeadPeople,


Exactly, but he did not get those tickets . He just got two tickets instead of the 22 tickets he should have got.
The explanation of why he did not get those tickets is fishy at best as I don't know of any "RNG" that would
"weight" those 22 tickets into the raffle. If my friend did not get a number for each of his tickets how those
tickets are entered into the raffle? It sound just like a scheme to me by the owner in order to avoid giving the
tickets he promised to people who bought in the guilds.

Thank you,


Atherol

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

What you're describing sounds like it was probably legit, because the number of tickets doesn't cost the GM anything more.
......

As far as your tickets, if it were something like the add on above, tickets are automatically awarded based on guild bank deposit and then the GM would probably have to check a different add on to see who spent at least 50k in guild store and then input list of who gets 20 extra tickets into Raffle Unlimited

Acrolas

I hate the word "raffle" being used so loosely, because legally it has a narrow definition and only applies to certain non-profit organizations. Social media has taken a steaming *** on legislated protocol. It frustrates me.

And there's no way to weight a ticket without manipulating the odds for everyone, so that's definitely suspect. Everybody's chances should be at 1 per action. A weight would push a lot of people to a fraction of a chance per action. You want somebody to have 22 chances, you give them 22 chances, not 2 loaded dice.

One of the simplest ways to get people to donate is to say we need X gold for Y action, no strings attached. People like metered progress. I donate to my guild when there are specific goals. I don't participate in any other fundraising events or give gold/items I can't somehow track. My sales taxes that the guild receives should already speak for themselves.

I'm all right with door prizes. That's where anyone can win a prize. Nice gesture for being a member of the guild. But basically bribing people to further your operations means there's something fundamentally wrong with the operation itself.

If you don't trust where your gold is going, don't give gold. If your trust is betrayed, eliminate the relationship.

lordhakai

Just to be clear by a friend he means himself. The process of RNG was explained in guild chat when he was asked about how it works. Despite the attempt of myself and other guild members to explain how RNG works he was still unhappy and very disrespectful. I am the GM of that guild and I tried to be reasonable and work with this member however the disrespect was the reason for kicking. Some people just do not understand that buying 2 tickets and then buying from guild store will not ensure that you will win the raffle it was just a means to improve chances and help out the guild during the week without a trader. As part of the event, guildies were asked to support the guild by buying eternally until we reobtained our guild trader which we did tonight. The prizes nor the chances to win were based on the request to buy from guildies. In the future, I would advise those that buy into the raffle to contact guild leadership privately when unsure about logistics on how events work.

I also agree that the bonus tickets cost the guild nothing as the prizes were already set in stone.

@lordhakai

IcyDeadPeople

Atherol wrote: »

@IcyDeadPeople,


Exactly, but he did not get those tickets . He just got two tickets instead of the 22 tickets he should have got.
The explanation of why he did not get those tickets is fishy at best as I don't know of any "RNG" that would
"weight" those 22 tickets into the raffle. If my friend did not get a number for each of his tickets how those
tickets are entered into the raffle? It sound just like a scheme to me by the owner in order to avoid giving the
tickets he promised to people who bought in the guilds.

Thank you,


Atherol

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

What you're describing sounds like it was probably legit, because the number of tickets doesn't cost the GM anything more.
......

As far as your tickets, if it were something like the add on above, tickets are automatically awarded based on guild bank deposit and then the GM would probably have to check a different add on to see who spent at least 50k in guild store and then input list of who gets 20 extra tickets into Raffle Unlimited

The way it works at least with most of these add ons is there aren't any kind of tangible tickets to receive. They are all just random numbers generated at the time the add on performs the drawing.

When he deposited the gold in guild bank, maybe the GM had a separate add on that sends automatic mail for people who deposited X amount, but it is not quite a ticket at that point, just a check of the list of guild bank deposits.

Then at the end of the week, when the drawing was performed, I imagine the GM had to manually input into the raffle add on the list of people who spent 50k in the guild store, and then the raffle add on checks all guild bank deposits again and performs the drawing.

The GM doesn't have to spend any gold to award all those extra free tickets, so there would be no reason to try to trick your friend. The cost of the tickets is zero, just seems like something cool to encourage people to spend more in their own guild store.

lordhakai

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

Atherol wrote: »

@IcyDeadPeople,


Exactly, but he did not get those tickets . He just got two tickets instead of the 22 tickets he should have got.
The explanation of why he did not get those tickets is fishy at best as I don't know of any "RNG" that would
"weight" those 22 tickets into the raffle. If my friend did not get a number for each of his tickets how those
tickets are entered into the raffle? It sound just like a scheme to me by the owner in order to avoid giving the
tickets he promised to people who bought in the guilds.

Thank you,


Atherol

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

What you're describing sounds like it was probably legit, because the number of tickets doesn't cost the GM anything more.
......

As far as your tickets, if it were something like the add on above, tickets are automatically awarded based on guild bank deposit and then the GM would probably have to check a different add on to see who spent at least 50k in guild store and then input list of who gets 20 extra tickets into Raffle Unlimited

The way it works at least with most of these add ons is there aren't any kind of tangible tickets to receive. They are all just random numbers generated at the time the add on performs the drawing.

When he deposited the gold in guild bank, maybe the GM had a separate add on that sends automatic mail for people who deposited X amount, but it is not quite a ticket at that point, just a check of the list of guild bank deposits.

Then at the end of the week, when the drawing was performed, I imagine the GM had to manually input into the raffle add on the list of people who spent 50k in the guild store, and then the raffle add on checks all guild bank deposits again and performs the drawing.

The GM doesn't have to spend any gold to award all those extra free tickets, so there would be no reason to try to trick your friend. The cost of the tickets is zero, just seems like something cool to encourage people to spend more in their own guild store..

You are correct I use an add-on that sends the mail and then I had to manually input the changes based on the event.

Atherol

@lordhakai


Great that you come out to explain yourself. Now explain to us what do you mean by giving free tickets (20 if we spent
50000 gold) to guild members if we bought from your guilds to support you 'cause you could not secure a vendor for your guilds. You also said in your email that in order to get those free tickets we had to buy a raffle ticket in each guild that
we wanted to help, which I did. I also spent those 50000 gold and in the end I only got "two tickets" instead of 22. When I inquired why I got only two tickets you explained to me that that raffles as the ESO game use a RNG to weight the tickets so I should not worry if I only saw two tickets 'cause the RNG knows that those two tickets are weighted and in reality correspond to 22 tickets! My question was If I bought 2 tickets and got 20 free tickets I should have gotten a number for each one of them and had them thrown into the pool of tickets for a random pick of the winner. But, I got only two tickets not 22 so
were are my missing 20 tickets. The whole thing is fishy to me.

Also, It is not true that I was not polite in my dealings with you. But, It is true that some of your acolytes/officers derided me for being critical and telling you that I was feeling cheated. Eso can pull the chats I also have jpg's of those exchanges and your email asking us to help you. I believe you just have abused your power by kicking me out of your two guilds 'cause I complained. Last, but not the least, my complain was/is not about winning or loosing any prize, but it was about the number of free tickets I was supposed to get and which I did not get.

FYI I did submit a ticket to the ZOZ help system to investigate this issue.


Sincerely,


Atherol

lordhakao wrote: »

Just to be clear by a friend he means himself. The procf RNG was explained in guild chat when he was asked about how it works. Despite thspent e attempt of myself and other guild members to explain how RNG works he was still unhappy and very disrespectful. I am the GM of that guild and I tried to be reasonable and work with this member however the disrespect was the reason for kicking. Some people just do not understand that buying 2 tickets and then buying from guild store will not ensure that you will win the raffle. As part of the event, guildies were asked to support the guild by buying eternally until we reobtained out guild trader which we did tonight. The prizes nor the chances to win were based off the request to buy from guildies. In the furture, I would advise those that buy into the raffle to contact guild leadership privateley when unsure about logisics on how events work.

I also agree that the free cost the guild nothing as the prizes were already set in stone.

@lordhakai

lordhakai

I am sorry if you feel you were treated unfairly. I always try to keep the peace in the guild and what is best for the everyone just not for a few. I do agree that there I asked everyone to support the guild so that everyone could still make some profits during the week where we would not have a guild trader. The guild trader system makes traders very competitive and it is unfortunate that there is time when a trader is lost. If you feel that there has been some wrong doing I encourage you to file tickets with ZOS. Above all else, there was brewing conflict the way into which the questions were asked and answered. When there were some attempts to help with understanding how the raffle works. I know you raised some concern about the mail not detailing the process in which raffles are done and I wish there was the chance to include that but I could only write so many characters. I would like to wish you the best in your future gaming in ESO.

If you feel this was handled poorly or need clarification let me know @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_GinaBruno.

Thanks
Lordhakai

Everyone have a great week.

ifDoubtNerfIt

@Atherol if you are interested on how RNG in the game (and addons) works, this wiki article describes it in a really good way:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudorandom_number_generator

Sadly, I don't think that ESO nor addons (in your case) use random.org 's API, which is, imo, the only 'true' RNG.

Atherol

@lordhakai,


You very skillfully did not answer my question of why I had given only 2 tickets for the raffle instead of 22. Yesterday,
when I inquired about the number of tickets I had received after the raffle had ended you asked me to visit a web site,
- http://akaviri.com/raffle/at/ - which I did and in that posted page ( link attached below) it clearly shows that I was
given only two tickets. Well surprise, surprise somehow early this morning someone changed those number to 22! and
as you can see it was not only my numbers that were changed after the fact. I'm not permitted to say anything that offends anyone on this forum but what has happened clearly show behavior that should not be allowed or tolerated in a game like ESO. So much for the nice words to cover wrongdoing and try to be diplomatic and polite and wishing me the best. I believe that in ESO some people are making a living by running guilds and our children (I'm a mature person) are being robbed cold and had nowhere to turn as ESO is not doing enough to stop such behavior.





Sincerely,


Atherol

lordhakao wrote: »

I am sorry if you feel you were treated unfairly. I always try to keep the peace in the guild and what is best for the everyone just not for a few. I do agree that there I asked everyone to support the guild so that everyone could still make some profits during the week where we would not have a guild trader. The guild trader system makes traders very competitive and it is unfortunate that there is time when a trader is lost. If you feel that there has been some wrong doing I encourage you to file tickets with ZOS. Above all else, there was brewing conflict the way into which the questions were asked and answered. When there were some attempts to help with understanding how the raffle works. I know you raised some concern about the mail not detailing the process in which raffles are done and I wish there was the chance to include that but I could only write so many characters. I would like to wish you the best in your future gaming in ESO.

If you feel this was handled poorly or need clarification let me know @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_GinaBruno.

Thanks
Lordhakai

Everyone have a great week.

lordhakai

The only change that was wade was that the bonus ticket were now visible. There were included in the drawing themselves just not the site. This week because of the way the way the addon works i used an app on my phone. The app is called riffle raffle in case you want to check it out. I find that applying bonus tickets through it was much easier.

Sheuib

I don't know how exactly that guild is doing it but the concept of a single weighted ticket is rather simple. Say there is 100 tickets. But, only 3 people. 1 person has 50 tickets. The next person has 30 and the last has 20. You assign the first person 1 through 50 second 51 through 80 and last 81 through 100. Then do a RNG from 1 to 100.

lordhakai

That is exactly how it works. Everyone is assigned a ticket number on the site. This is just one person out of 1400 members across the guilds that has a problem with how it is run. As said before if you dont like how raffles are run dont join them. Raffles are just a tool to fund the trader for which i personally fund 90% of the prizes. It is a reality of life that you cant make everyone happy.

Atherol

Hi,

I truly believe that ESO/Zenimax should not allow for someone to run multiple guilds. The time
required to do so requires full time dedication of many individuals, and 'cause of the betting
process for guild allocation of highly desirable venues for trading in the end is forcing some
people to cheat other players, which is what is happening as ESO/Zenimax do not have the
resources to police/enforce regulations, so out there is the wild west. I have been told by other
players, that some of the same people are selling gold in the outside market for their own benefit.

Sincerely,


Atherol

lordhakai

There are 3 guilds and 3 guild masters. There are also officers in each guild so this is not one person in charge of three. The further this post goes the more ridiculous the responses and there is no gold selling that would violate the terms and conditions of ZOS. I have 3 years of work into this game I would never risk it.

TheStealthDude

Atherol wrote: »

Hi,

I truly believe that ESO/Zenimax should not allow for someone to run multiple guilds. The time
required to do so requires full time dedication of many individuals, and 'cause of the betting
process for guild allocation of highly desirable venues for trading in the end is forcing some
people to cheat other players, which is what is happening as ESO/Zenimax do not have the
resources to police/enforce regulations, so out there is the wild west. I have been told by other
players, that some of the same people are selling gold in the outside market for their own benefit.

Sincerely,


Atherol

I'm not sure why you think ZOS needs to hold someone else responsible for your poor decisions. It doesn't appear that your former guild leader did anything against the rules. Nor do I see any reason for ZOS to take any action. You made a poor decision (in your eyes) with your in game currency. It seems like you made a decision without understanding all the details of said decision. ZOS should not have to be in the business of protecting you from making bad decisions. There is enough already that they need to and should be focusing on.

If you don't trust someone, don't give them your gold. Buyer beware.

Atherol

@lordhakai,

I would believe that will be the case if I was not kicked out of the two guilds I belonged
to, which you run and you invited me to join. I had only discussed the issue of the tickets
in the ancient traders guild not in the ancient export guild. Please, answer to us why I was
expelled from both guilds, who made that decision.I have to tell here, that every time I had
a question in any of the guilds I was referred to you, who is really running the guilds?

As for your assertion that the 1400 guild members do not complain, that it is not true as I have
received messages of solidarity from members of your guild and was told that some guilds
are scammers. In reality, some people have opted for not complaining as when they do they
get kicked out without any possibility of a fair hearing so they buckle and just accept the situation
to keep playing.

Sincerely,


Atherol

lordhakao wrote: »

That is exactly how it works. Everyone is assigned a ticket number on the site. This is just one person out of 1400 members across the guilds that has a problem with how it is run. As said before if you dont like how raffles are run dont join them. Raffles are just a tool to fund the trader for which i personally fund 90% of the prizes. It is a reality of life that you cant make everyone happy.

lordhakao wrote: »

There are 3 guilds and 3 guild masters. There are also officers in each guild so this is not one person in charge of three. The further this post goes the more ridiculous the responses and there is no gold selling that would violate the terms and conditions of ZOS. I have 3 years of work into this game I would never risk it.

IcyDeadPeople

There is no reason for any GM to trick you out of your extra tickets. The tickets themselves don't cost anything. He is still giving away the same prize, regardless of whether there are 10 tickets or thousands of tickets.

Some promotion granting additional tickets based on guild store purchases would need to be manually checked and list of people entered into the raffle add on just before the drawing.
.

lordhakai

To answer your question as to why you were kicked from both is simple because the guild master from that guild requested me to initiate the kick. We are an alliance so we are in constant contact with each other. At the time of the kick all 3 guild master were discussing the issue within discord and despite attempts to resolve the issue in game as well as here on the public forums there still seems to be some issue with the way the things are run. I have taken the time out of my day to try to explain how things work if you still don't get it or don't like it I am not sure what I can say at this point.

Kodrac

So basically "your friend" didn't understand the mechanics, didn't ask for an explanation and assumed incorrectly and now you feel like "your friend" is a victim. Sorry, but no "your friend" is not a victim. Now you, erm I mean "your friend" is butthurt. Have you ever heard of the phrase "when you assume you make an a'ss out of u and me"? If you don't understand something ask first.

alexkdd99

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

There is no reason for any GM to trick you out of your extra tickets. The tickets themselves don't cost anything. He is still giving away the same prize, regardless of whether there are 10 tickets or thousands of tickets.

Some promotion granting additional tickets based on guild store purchases would need to be manually checked and list of people entered into the raffle add on just before the drawing.
.

Not sure what is happening in this situation but there could definitely be a reason for a gm to cheat people out of tickets. The biggest reason would be to simply allow another user (the gm's friend) to have more tickets= bigger chance to win raffle.

I am not saying this happened here, just that there are reasons for a gm to cheat people. And it has most definitely happened before, again not saying this gm did this as I have no way of knowing one way or another.

Atherol

@lordhakai,


Yep, anything goes and everything has an explanation for why it happened, including fiddling the
numbers in a posted sheet after the fact. I did not have issues with the other guild and the raffle
so why I was kicked from both? The guild system as it is is not very transparent and allow for
behavior that won't be tolerated anywhere else in society.


Sincerely,


Atherol

lordhakao wrote: »

To answer your question as to why you were kicked from both is simple because the guild master from that guild requested me to initiate the kick. We are an alliance so we are in constant contact with each other. At the time of the kick all 3 guild master were discussing the issue within discord and despite attempts to resolve the issue in game as well as here on the public forums there still seems to be some issue with the way the things are run. I have taken the time out of my day to try to explain how things work if you still don't get it or don't like it I am not sure what I can say at this point.

lordhakao wrote: »

To answer your question as to why you were kicked from both is simple because the guild master from that guild requested me to initiate the kick. We are an alliance so we are in constant contact with each other. At the time of the kick all 3 guild master were discussing the issue within discord and despite attempts to resolve the issue in game as well as here on the public forums there still seems to be some issue with the way the things are run. I have taken the time out of my day to try to explain how things work if you still don't get it or don't like it I am not sure what I can say at this point.

IcyDeadPeople

alexkdd99 wrote: »

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

There is no reason for any GM to trick you out of your extra tickets. The tickets themselves don't cost anything. He is still giving away the same prize, regardless of whether there are 10 tickets or thousands of tickets.

Some promotion granting additional tickets based on guild store purchases would need to be manually checked and list of people entered into the raffle add on just before the drawing.
.

Not sure what is happening in this situation but there could definitely be a reason for a gm to cheat people out of tickets. The biggest reason would be to simply allow another user (the gm's friend) to have more tickets= bigger chance to win raffle.

I am not saying this happened here, just that there are reasons for a gm to cheat people. And it has most definitely happened before, again not saying this gm did this as I have no way of knowing one way or another.

Still doesn't make sense. No reason to cheat anyone out of tickets because they don't cost anything. If they are really trying to cheat people with a fake raffle, they would not even run any drawing at all.

Atherol

IcyDeadPeople,


Not true, they cost me 50000 gold and I did not get any of those tickets
thrown into the raffle. Not only that, but they fiddled the numbers in the
posted raffle sheet after the fact, which is not very nice to say the least.
If you look at that sheet I posted which was published at the time of the raffle
you'll see clearly that they only assigned 2 tickets to me, and that they changed
those numbers to 22 after I complained in this forum!

Also, why I was fired from both guilds when I did not have any problems with
the other?


Sincerely,


Atherol

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

alexkdd99 wrote: »

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

There is no reason for any GM to trick you out of your extra tickets. The tickets themselves don't cost anything. He is still giving away the same prize, regardless of whether there are 10 tickets or thousands of tickets.

Some promotion granting additional tickets based on guild store purchases would need to be manually checked and list of people entered into the raffle add on just before the drawing.
.

Not sure what is happening in this situation but there could definitely be a reason for a gm to cheat people out of tickets. The biggest reason would be to simply allow another user (the gm's friend) to have more tickets= bigger chance to win raffle.

I am not saying this happened here, just that there are reasons for a gm to cheat people. And it has most definitely happened before, again not saying this gm did this as I have no way of knowing one way or another.

Still doesn't make sense. No reason to cheat anyone out of tickets because they don't cost anything. If they are really trying to cheat people with a fake raffle, they would not even run any drawing at all.

lordhakai

to be clear you did not spend 50k on tickets you spent 50k in the guild store. you did however buy 2 tickets from depositing 1k gold into the guild bank.

artificial_blue

This is entertaining... I like how the GM keeps ignoring the only question Atherol has.

Instead of directly answering his question, he gives him a spew of crap about the cost of traders and blah blah. Sketch to me.

Atherol, I would just bounce and not worry about that guild. There are plenty of other great Trading guilds out there that don't do sketchy crap like this.

lordhakai

I have answered every single question so far. If i missed one please restate the question.