Stupid lottery... (FFXI)

[thistlechaser]

There's one thing I'm very happy about in this whole lottery event: I'm smarter RL than I am in-game. RL I never play the lottery, I know as good as no one ever wins, I know it's stupid to get your hopes up or to waste your money playing. I have no idea why I cannot apply that knowledge in-game...

60 lottery numbers, all I got was one XP scroll on Thistle, eight of them on mules (but only one can use one). On Thistle I was one number away from winning the second highest prize! ARG! 1017 and I had 1317 (and that was on my main too, so wouldn't have been a wasted rare/ex).

Stupid lottery. Stupid me. More stupid me than anything else. At least now I get a ton of space back, but I still feel amazingly stupid for having been involved with this. Lotteries are a tax on the stupid. I guess I'm paid up for this year.

Comments

[veri-of-remora.livejournal.com]

Haha, don't beat yourself too hard for it. I'd probably play the lottery in RL if I could just stomp a few bugs, rip off their wings and sell them to a nearby 7-eleven or something.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

if I could just stomp a few bugs, rip off their wings and sell them to a nearby 7-eleven or something.

*rolls* That would so beat my desk job.

[sethimothy.livejournal.com]

Clever S-E. They didn't want anyone to win.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't surprise me...

[draymor.livejournal.com]

Conspiracy theorists maintain that SE finds the least picked numbers and use those as winning numbers.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Which makes a whole lot of sense. I'd buy that theory.

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

Maybe someone from SE will come forward and tell us it was all a conspiracy! white(water)gate here we come!

[mertondew.livejournal.com]

There were 56 100,000,000 winners. That's a lot more than I expected.

[draymor.livejournal.com]

56 is about right if you look at the odds and the number of users playing.
500,000 users (according to census) x 10 marbles x 0.00001 chance of winning rank 1.

However, even assuming one mule per user - people with more than one far outweighs people with none - the number of winners become much lower than expected.

</devil's advocate>

It's a non-issue with me (though if they really rigged it I'd probably be more peeved off), but it does look rather neat and tidy ;). Though probability is probability, and the world will never know unless the drawing was done physically (unlikely) via live international broadcast (FFXI Channel go?). ;D

[mertondew.livejournal.com]

That's assuming all 500,000 users played, which I'm sure they didn't. 56 is pretty good.

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

I won XP, I wasn't even close to anything else but I only got the basic 10 marbles so oh well. At least my THF might finally get 37 for sub XD

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

XP's better than nothing, I guess. :}

[barahir-ffxi.livejournal.com]

I'm going back to read... but when did they say there would be a different drawing for each tier of prizes? That's dumb... bah.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

It is dumb. I assume they did it so someone who won the best prize didn't try to claim all five levels or something...

[kamalloy.livejournal.com]

Do Japanese lotteries not work like American ones? I mean, if you do a Powerball or something and you get all the numbers, you don't also get the prizes for matching five, four, etc. I'd think it's an easy enough concept to understand, but maybe it's a cultural thing.

Regardless, if they were going to pick five separate numbers, they really should have said so. I think most people were under the impression that it was going to be a single number. I certainly was. (It turned out not to matter for me, since I didn't match *any* of the last two digit combinations, but I would have been really annoyed if I had the last two digits of, say, the five-digit number.)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

but I would have been really annoyed if I had the last two digits of, say, the five-digit number.)

On Thistle, I had the last four numbers of the five-digit one. ><

I'm really rather disgruntled.

It's not a tax on the stupid

[lordwafik.livejournal.com]

The odds on winning Vana lotto are much higher than real lotto, and the payout is far more than the money invested if you put in 100k (100 pearls) you would at least break even on a garunteed t4 item or 100k payout.

I take offense to your comment, you'd have said something else if you won on your marbles. Not everyone walks away a winner from any lotto.

Re: It's not a tax on the stupid

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I take offense to your comment, you'd have said something else if you won on your marbles. Not everyone walks away a winner from any lotto.

If you took offense, sorry. However, no matter if I had won or lost, I would have said the same thing. I would have been happier, but my opinion would not have been different.

However, what veri_of_remora said applies, too. "I'd probably play the lottery in RL if I could just stomp a few bugs, rip off their wings and sell them to a nearby 7-eleven or something." Gil =/= money, it's much easier to make.