ANSWERED:Ideas on Limiting Reoccurring Raffle Winners

[olympe]

Well, with the yearly raffles we used to have, there was a natural one-year cooldown included. Since, uh, there was only that one raffle a year. Just saying.

[Fuzzbucket]

42 minutes ago, Draconiusultamius said:

I'm not really too big on breed limits.  I'd rather have an entry cooldown.  Or better yet, narrower requirements that people actually need to work for.  Such as having a certain number of a specific dragon, not having a CB prize on your scroll, certain lineages, etc.  Eg. one month could be 7 red dragons, one gaurdian, no CB gold prizes. next month could be no zombies, three z-coded dragons, fewer than 500 dragons total.  

These could prevent certain people from entering, giving others an advantage, without having any actual limits or cooldown.  It wold also be more fair imo.

 

That I wouldn't like - it would require people to change their play style. That's not OK. If a player likes to have a set of 4 of each breed - or doesn't choose to collect z dragons and gives them all to ME....

[Imzadi]

28 minutes ago, Draconiusultamius said:

I'm not really too big on breed limits.  I'd rather have an entry cooldown.  Or better yet, narrower requirements that people actually need to work for.  Such as having a certain number of a specific dragon, not having a CB prize on your scroll, certain lineages, etc.  Eg. one month could be 7 red dragons, one gaurdian, no CB gold prizes. next month could be no zombies, three z-coded dragons, fewer than 500 dragons total.  

These could prevent certain people from entering, giving others an advantage, without having any actual limits or cooldown.  It wold also be more fair imo.

I have one problem with anything telling me I must raise a certain number of a given  dragon.   I have at least 24 of every possible CB dragon there is in addition to the ones I choose to breed  for lineages.  There are people who collect only a certain number of any dragon.   I'm not opposed to making entry more difficult,  but not in this way. 

[Draconiusultamius]

32 minutes ago, ainisarie said:

I have one problem with anything telling me I must raise a certain number of a given  dragon.   I have at least 24 of every possible CB dragon there is in addition to the ones I choose to breed  for lineages.  There are people who collect only a certain number of any dragon.   I'm not opposed to making entry more difficult,  but not in this way. 

Not everyone needs to participate in the raffle.  It's not telling you what you SHOULD do, it's just telling you what's needed to participate for that particular month.  Even if you don't meet the requirements, there's always next month. 

42 minutes ago, fuzzbucket said:

 

That I wouldn't like - it would require people to change their play style. That's not OK. If a player likes to have a set of 4 of each breed - or doesn't choose to collect z dragons and gives them all to ME....

It's not requiring you to change your playing style.  If you don't want to, you don't need to.  Nobody's telling you what you need to do.  The requirements are just there to limit the number of people eligible to give people a better chance without having to compete with pretty much every active player on dc.  

[Ramica]

Really? Really? It is NOT Fair!

Excuse me for saying this but since when is life fair? Raffles are random things are generated randomly which means that sometimes one person might be extremley lucky and get multiple wins others may be not so lucky and not win for months/years whatever.

 

When the tinsels and Shimmers were given out once a year I never got one. Even though I participated, however I refuse to say that's not fair I should have one and those that win should give others a chance by having a cool down. If I am meant to have one I will get one. Not to mention never having an alt sweetling or my once tri coloured wings of my Xmas 2009 dragons were changed to solid gold forever when there were complaints.

 

I still have not gotten a second gen shimmer/tinsel/holly oh well maybe one day I will. I could say it is NOT fair! I don't have these things, but I won't because I feel if I am meant to get one I will. It will come to me when it is my time I can be patient, and if I never get one maybe it wasn't meant to be. Not everyone can have the same things, even if you want them. I am not a millionaire, I do not make lots of money in my job, such is life be happy with what you have.

 

One of your choices stop the raffle. You know when people complained about people winning more then once in the yearly draw, TJ stopped giving the prizes for competing in the yearly event. We all had to do without because so many complained. So you would essentially, punish everyone so no one can win more then once, not to mention those who haven't won will now never have a chance.

 

You know I prefer one chance once a month. I play the lottery every week too telling myself I never win but I can't win if I don't buy a ticket. By entering the raffle I have at least a chance maybe when the time is right I will get that prize dragon. It's my birthday this month maybe I will be lucky, and maybe I won't still can't win if I don't enter.

 

Stop the sour grape/not fair bit, I'm sorry but if you want to say what's not fair in life save it for something important - not for a game, which is supposed to be fun.

[Fuzzbucket]

13 minutes ago, Draconiusultamius said:

Not everyone needs to participate in the raffle.  It's not telling you what you SHOULD do, it's just telling you what's needed to participate for that particular month.  Even if you don't meet the requirements, there's always next month. 

It's not requiring you to change your playing style.  If you don't want to, you don't need to.  Nobody's telling you what you need to do.  The requirements are just there to limit the number of people eligible to give people a better chance without having to compete with pretty much every active player on dc.  

 

I DO need to if I want to be in with a RANDOM chance of winning a dragon I want. What you suggest could rule me out; give me NO chance at all unless I change my play style; reduce the number of times I am eligible to enter - and I have never won anything.

 

And I also agree with Ramica.

[olympe]

Hatching X dragons I'm fine with - but adding upper limits to a certain kind of dragon on your scroll (no zombies, for example) is a very big no-go. Most of us actually collect every single breed. Some of us every single breed minus a few. (I'm definitely in the latter category, as I only have two kinds of unbreedables - papers and a lone neglected.) Raising/Freezing/Breeding, on the other hand, is problematic due to differing play styles. 

[Draconiusultamius]

If you think everyone should get an equal opportunity, might as well scrap the whole requirements thing and just throw all the names in a hat to draw.  Just saying.

[HeatherMarie]

3 hours ago, Draconiusultamius said:

I'm not really too big on breed limits.  I'd rather have an entry cooldown.  Or better yet, narrower requirements that people actually need to work for.  Such as having a certain number of a specific dragon, not having a CB prize on your scroll, certain lineages, etc.  Eg. one month could be 7 red dragons, one gaurdian, no CB gold prizes. next month could be no zombies, three z-coded dragons, fewer than 500 dragons total.  

These could prevent certain people from entering, giving others an advantage, without having any actual limits or cooldown.  It wold also be more fair imo.

 

I certainly don't see how banning people from entering based on their playstyle would be more "fair" then simply asking that people not be able to win twice in a row. In one scenario, everyone who doesn't care for reds, or has bad luck catching them, or whatever the random criteria is, is completely left out of having a chance, for a completely random arbitrary reason. In the other scenario someone who has already won a prize simply needs to wait a month to try to win another one. I don't see how that's less fair then putting random arbitrary limits that would exclude hundreds of people with specific playstyles.

 

Right now the requirements are not biased. You raise three adults in order to show you are actually active on the site, and you can enter. I could support raising it to five or something, but I certainly wouldn't support biased requirements like what you are suggesting.

[Jazeki]

1 hour ago, Draconiusultamius said:

If you think everyone should get an equal opportunity, might as well scrap the whole requirements thing and just throw all the names in a hat to draw.  Just saying.

Right now everyone has an equal opportunity. You raise your dragons, you click enter raffle, you're done. TJ will adjust the requirements again at some point, but there's no reason to stop people from being able to enter because they have or don't have certain things already on their scroll. 

Edited October 8, 2017 by Jazeki
wording.

[TJ09]

There's definitely a lot of misunderstanding of probability going on here. That's problematic for the purposes of this discussion, but not particularly unexpected; people like to find patterns, which makes us inherently bad at randomness.

 

Having duplicate raffle winners is actually mathematically likely.

 

Let's assume 3,000 entries (with 60 winners). The chance of any single person being one of the 60 winners is 2%.

But then, in a given month, 60 people win. If all 60 enter next month, then the chance that at least one of them is drawn again is actually around 70%:

 

The total number of ways that 60 winners can be drawn from 3,000 entries = (3000
60) ≈ 2.8 × 10¹²⁶

The total number of ways that people can be drawn without any of the 60 people from last month winning = (3000 - 60
60) = (2940
60) ≈ 8.27 × 10¹²⁵

Divide those together to get the chance of that happening and you get (2940
60)
(3000
60) ≈ 29.4% chance of no duplicate winners.

To invert that, in any given raffle of 3,000 entries, there is a 70.6% chance of there being one or more repeat winners each raffle. That chance will go up or down a bit depending on if people re-enter, how many entries there actually are, etc.

 

So suffice it to say, any given raffle will probably have a repeat winner (IIRC on average, 1.3 repeat winners). Are those people harming your chances at all? Technically yes, but not meaningfully.

If I were to prevent duplicate winners from winning for, say, a whole year, then maybe those 3,000 entries go down to 2,988. That improves the average person's chance of winning by less than a thousandth of a percent.

 

Sure, I could bias the raffle against past winners, thus making it objectively less fair, but the only thing it'd really accomplish is providing peace of mind for no real mathematical benefit.

[Fuzzbucket]

7 hours ago, Jazeki said:

Right now everyone has an equal opportunity. You raise your dragons, you click enter raffle, you're done. TJ will adjust the requirements again at some point, but there's no reason to stop people from being able to enter because they have or don't have certain things already on their scroll. 

 

Right on

 

8 hours ago, Draconiusultamius said:

If you think everyone should get an equal opportunity, might as well scrap the whole requirements thing and just throw all the names in a hat to draw.  Just saying.

 

Well, no. Because inactive players would be added to the pot.

 

6 hours ago, TJ09 said:

There's definitely a lot of misunderstanding of probability going on here. That's problematic for the purposes of this discussion, but not particularly unexpected; people like to find patterns, which makes us inherently bad at randomness.

 

Having duplicate raffle winners is actually mathematically likely.

 

<snipped math>

 

So suffice it to say, any given raffle will probably have a repeat winner (IIRC on average, 1.3 repeat winners). Are those people harming your chances at all? Technically yes, but not meaningfully.

If I were to prevent duplicate winners from winning for, say, a whole year, then maybe those 3,000 entries go down to 2,988. That improves the average person's chance of winning by less than a thousandth of a percent.

 

Sure, I could bias the raffle against past winners, thus making it objectively less fair, but the only thing it'd really accomplish is providing peace of mind for no real mathematical benefit.

 

THANK you TJ. In my gut I knew this was true but I hadn't the math to argue the point. I know I will never win, because my life's RNG is set that way but I also feel that as things stand it's fair. Rejigging it would make it less so, is all.

[VixenDra]

Finally, I hope that now this 'past winners in the pot is not fair(coz' it reduces my/sb's chances to win at all)' will end, given the objective counting that shows that the exclusion of past winners won't really influence one's chance to win for the 1st time.

 

Luck never plays fair, there can be 24 pieces of cake with 24 trinkets mixed in the dough before baking and that cake distributed to 24 people. There will always be a few who won't get a trinket in their slice and a few who will get more than 1. That's how this thing plays. (example from Tolkien's "Smith of Wootton Major") They all have fair chances but there will be no fair results. Just with DC raffle we have way less trinkets and way more slices&people and some magic that prevents the same person to get a slice with more than 1 trinket per cake distributed, and with changing number of people participating in the event. Even if all the winners were excluded, the numbers of people who can participate left can even GROW anyway. 

 

It will never be fair results if there's a game of chance... The problem with Prizes is that there is no way you can actually EARN your prize be it with your efforts or skill or persistence, ofc you're reqired to do sth - to enter your name into the pot(after rising a few dragons of your own choice). And if we also get the Store as it was fleshed out by the forum community (the sooner the better) and have CB Prizes purchaseable there, we will be able to earn Prizes with persistence and average activity - the only fair way. As with 2 brothers asked by their parents to clean their own rooms and were promised a reward when they finish, both brothers had similar rooms with similar mess level. One of the brothers cleaned his room, the other didn't or just put a few things into the drawer but the room was still a mess yet. So ofc only the 1st brother got the reward this time because the brother didn't earn it yet. Now compare this to raffles... if this was a raffle, the 2nd would probably meet the requirements (we can easly rise 8 dragons in a month - it's one scrollful for more active players and 2 scrollfuls for new or smal-scroll players, but 3 is enough - at least my limited scroll is not affected normally -, so I guess hiding a few things in a drawer would be enough to qualify:P the parents' requirement would be 'reduce the mess in your rooms') and there would be a 50% chance that the brother who did all the cleaning got nothing and the lazier brother got rewarded... this is why we do need the Store, this way, both could sooner or later get the reward, provided the 2nd brother does a tiny little bit of cleaning from time to time - its not that he does nothing, just does it bit by bit because is lazy or has other more important things to do (such as some exam or a project for school). Raffles could ofc co-exist with it, once a month the brothers wold be raffled sth at the park for generally being there and putting their names into the pot, and have a chance to get sth they didn't have to work for much. I'd like to be able to get a reward for cleaning my room, even if I clean it only bit by bit but get my reward sooner if I decide to do more cleaning at a time to get my reward sooner but so if I don't do ANYTHING except for living in my room don't get the reward for doing absolutely nothing (this is how the Store would work, just the way it was suggested, those who mostly clean the room will get rewarded as soon as the most pedantic 'siblings, and those who only do bit by bit will also get rewarded after a longer while when they finally have their room cleaned too')

 

Adding Store is the only fair sollution.

[Fuzzbucket]

The store isn't the only FAIR solution; a raffle is FAIR. It can just give prizes to players some people here seem to see as undeserving.

 

The difference is that in the store you can work for something and in the raffle it is left to (fair) chance.

[VixenDra]

1 hour ago, fuzzbucket said:

The store isn't the only FAIR solution; a raffle is FAIR. It can just give prizes to players some people here seem to see as undeserving.

 

The difference is that in the store you can work for something and in the raffle it is left to (fair) chance.

 

The RESULTS will never be fair in a raffle (which is what caused this topic to be ever created xD). But with a Store the way it is assumed to work the results will be fairly earned. With games of chance you do some kind of work and get nothing in return even if you enter every single time, while sb tries just once but gets sth for comparatively much less work. And you can end up never gettign rewarded no matter how much you work for it. This is NOT fair. Only the chances in a draw are fair per draw but the RESULTS are never fair.

Edited October 8, 2017 by VixenDra

[Fuzzbucket]

Random is fair. The results are fair. It's just that we'd like to control them.

 

Are you saying that every lottery in the world is unfair ? Are you saying that the only fair thing in the world is for everything to be available only by hard work ?

[olympe]

Honestly? I don't know how lotteries work in other countries, but here in Germany, the biggest ones keep roughly 50% (or more?) for the company and, of course, taxes. Only the rest is put into the pot for the lucky winners. That, in and of itself, is unfair IMHO.

 

Personally, I'm not saying that raffles are unfair. It's just so that most of us will never be able to get a prize, as long as they're distributed via raffles, no matter how hard we try. And that's the point that makes me, personally, wish for a way to work towards a CB prize. Which the suggested store provides.

[Zeditha]

I'd just like to say a few things on my point of view.

First off: I am jealous of people who've won, and I won't pretend I'm not. I wish I was that lucky, and I get a little sad every month when I see that "Sorry, you didn't win this time" message. But that jealousy doesn't mean I want anything bad to happen to any of those winners.

 

My reason for supporting a cooldown (and only of one month) is only to prevent people winning twice directly in a row, which is something that seems to attract hate and harassment. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, and I certainly don't think that just because someone was lucky and I'm not that they deserve such treatment. I saw the cooldown as something that would potentially reduce this problem.

 

I thought that a breed limit would also reduce some hate, but I'll admit that mostly I saw it as a way to, over time, reduce the number of lucky people in the raffle pool, leaving only the less lucky of us with a somewhat better chance. A breed limit would also, as I have previously mentioned, give winners who keep winning, say, bronze Prizes a better (percieved) chance at a gold, since they can't win a bronze after collecting 4 (or whatever number seems most fair).

 

Final thought: It doesn't matter whether the raffles are really 'fair' or not, and what is or is not 'fair' is subjective anyway. Maybe we should all just suck it up because it's just a game and we only come here to be happy, but that's just it - this is a game, and we come here to be happy. We all want to feel like we have a fair chance, and seeing so many people winning multiple Prizes in a row while most of us have none is more than a little saddening sometimes. Maybe it's selfish, I don't know. But we all want to have fun here, and being nasty to each other is NEVER going to be the way to do that.

[Rally Vincent]

A store is just a lazy way out of not wanting to play the game. How often has it been argued when it came to the raffle that "you can get everything else by playing" to justify changes to the raffle because "it is different for Prize dragons". If you can get everything else by playing the game, what is the store for, then?

 

For everyone else: a whole year of raffles is 720 Prizes (60 x 12). With 3.000 entries in the raffle - do the math when it would be your turn even when everyone would be allowed one win ever. Oh, and that is if no new players ever enter the raffle. You just fool yourself if you think excluding other players will result in your win or a result you "feel is "fair".

[Fuzzbucket]

48 minutes ago, olympe said:

Honestly? I don't know how lotteries work in other countries, but here in Germany, the biggest ones keep roughly 50% (or more?) for the company and, of course, taxes. Only the rest is put into the pot for the lucky winners. That, in and of itself, is unfair IMHO.

 

Personally, I'm not saying that raffles are unfair. It's just so that most of us will never be able to get a prize, as long as they're distributed via raffles, no matter how hard we try. And that's the point that makes me, personally, wish for a way to work towards a CB prize. Which the suggested store provides.

 

How much of the stake is kept for charity etc doesn't make the selection of winners unfair.

[HeatherMarie]

47 minutes ago, Rally Vincent said:

A store is just a lazy way out of not wanting to play the game. How often has it been argued when it came to the raffle that "you can get everything else by playing" to justify changes to the raffle because "it is different for Prize dragons". If you can get everything else by playing the game, what is the store for, then?

 

That really makes no sense at all based on what the store suggestion actually suggests. The entire point of the store is to allow people to get otherwise-unobtainable dragons *by playing the game*. By raising dragons and picking up commons and breeding and whatever else. That's the whole point. Unless you mean "playing the game" as in "entering every "random" raffle and hoping that we'll get lucky", which isn't actually *playing* anything, it's throwing your name in and then relying on pure luck. The store is so much better then the raffle in that specific regard, because instead of relying on "random" luck, you *work* towards a goal, by *playing* the game. Which is exactly what most people want, to *play* DC.

[Rally Vincent]

No, you get other dragons by playing the game and "otherwise not obtainable dragons" by paying with ingame or real currency (which is not obtaining by playing the game).

 

Don't get me wrong - I think the introduction of the raffle was the biggest mistake in the history of DC, and I'd be all for getting rid of it and releasing the Prize Dragons in the cave like normal dragons. But buying in a store is not "playing the game". And for what it's worth - I never claimed that the raffle is "playing the game". I said a store is not playing the game, nothing else.

[Bison]

Prizes are easily the worst part about this game. People get so vicious, entitled, and nasty about them... every time I come back to the forums and try to get back into lurking regularly I see another topic like this. If you (general you) don't want people to disappear or stop breeding their CB Prizes or deleting/freezing CB prizes, maybe try not being nasty to winners. The harassment in PMs, attempted (sometimes successful) scamming of winners unfamiliar with trading, the entitled vitriol on the forums... no wonder so many winners leave, stop breeding their Prizes, or will only accept swap trades.

 

Life isn't fair. Randomness isn't fair. Raffles obviously weren't created to give every single person a CB Prize egg; if they were TJ would've just made a "line" you could queue into to eventually be given an egg. There is no possible way to make CB Prize acquisition "fair" and equal except for something like the Store, achievements, or some other way of earning an egg. But even then people would probably still find a way to complain about it, honestly.

TJ has proven that cooldowns would change basically nothing except make a vocal, jealous part of the userbase slightly happier (although with the odds of repeat winners I'm sure there would be plenty of complaining about the Raffle still being "unfair", the cooldown not working/not being long enough, etc). Before I read his post I thought a one month cooldown could possibly be some sort of compromise but now that I've seen the math I don't think so anymore. The difference is so small it would just be a waste. TJ's time would be better spent coding something else for DC.

 

I also don't support limits. I would be okay with a limit of 4 CBs of each color but I wouldn't actively support it. I'm extremely against a limit of 2 per color because of issues like misgendering, refusals, and Prize x Prize couples only giving one color of egg forever (afaik that hasn't been fixed).

[Peachycupcake525]

2 hours ago, Rally Vincent said:

No, you get other dragons by playing the game and "otherwise not obtainable dragons" by paying with ingame or real currency (which is not obtaining by playing the game).

 

Don't get me wrong - I think the introduction of the raffle was the biggest mistake in the history of DC, and I'd be all for getting rid of it and releasing the Prize Dragons in the cave like normal dragons. But buying in a store is not "playing the game". And for what it's worth - I never claimed that the raffle is "playing the game". I said a store is not playing the game, nothing else.

My apologies if this is an incorrect assumption, but I believe that you are thinking of a different type of store. The store that people are mentioning is where you raise dragons to get points, which you use to buy eggs of whatever TJ would put in if he were to implement it, not a store where you pay real life money to get these things.

[Fuzzbucket]

2 hours ago, Rally Vincent said:

No, you get other dragons by playing the game and "otherwise not obtainable dragons" by paying with ingame or real currency (which is not obtaining by playing the game).

 

Don't get me wrong - I think the introduction of the raffle was the biggest mistake in the history of DC, and I'd be all for getting rid of it and releasing the Prize Dragons in the cave like normal dragons. But buying in a store is not "playing the game". And for what it's worth - I never claimed that the raffle is "playing the game". I said a store is not playing the game, nothing else.

 

TJ has said over and over that there will NEVER be real currency involved. Just reminding.

 

A store would be playing the game as you would have to breed, collect, raise things to earn your "purchase". That's what the game is all about - breeding, collecting and raising. Even the current raffle you have to raise three dragons... (which is OK by me; all it needs to prove is that those who enter are actually still playing.)