Mog Bonanza Kicking-off May 16! (04/30/2008)

[Tempyst]

How about instead of some dumb lottery, they actually fix/improve the events that these items drop from, or *gasp* add new content with relevant rewards? How about adding moderately decent NEW items to things like seasonal events instead of adding gil/really good old items to a lottery of all things? This is a pretty pathetic way to get people interested in the game again, and forget about wotg. Sadly, from the responses in this thread of those all excited, buying up content IDs, and leveling mules, it seems to be working exactly as intended.

Yes you are the smartest thank you for your insight we know you hate fun

[Weeks]

The real winner here is SE, as each aditional mule will get them an extra Real-life $1;
Multiply by number of mules
Multiply by number of fools


SE wins the grand prize. [/color]

Participating in a lottery designed to give out a good deal more than is put into it does not make you a "fool."

[Dantrag]

Therin hasn't changed much

[Kainsin]

This is probably the first event I'll really participate in since egg-trading '04.

[Xanthe]

One rank 4 prize is guaranteed to be found in the set of 00 - 99. One mule can cover 1/10 of that set with their 10 marbles. Therefore 10 mules can guarantee a rank 4 win. Your math is wrong.

X X X X 00
X X X X 01
X X X X ...

And so on until X X X X 99.

= 100 marbles. At 10 per mule, that's 10 mules. Buying 100 marbles across 10 mules guarantees that your final number will match the ONE number pulled randomly.

That's a Rank 5 prize.

To guarantee a Rank 4 prize you'd need:

X X X 00 00
X X X 00 01
...
X X X 00 99
X X X 01 00
X X X 01 01
...

And so on until X X X 99 99, which requires 1000 marbles at 10 marbles per mule, which is 100 mules.

I SERIOUSLY don't think they're going to do 0-9. Doing that would put the odds of getting a Rank 1 prize at 1/100,000, which is 1/10,000 if you buy 10 marbles and would almost ensure multiple Rank 1 winners across the servers.

The Mog Bonanza is a number-guessing game in which you pick a five-digit number of your choice, kupo.
Playing is simple! Purchase a Mog Bonanza marble (*1) from a Bonanza Moogle at designated areas (*2), then have the vendor inscribe your desired five-digit number on it, kupo. If you can't decide on a number, we moogles will be more than happy to pick one for you. The winning numbers will be announced at a later date, so sit tight and leave the rest to Lady Luck, kupo!

The conditions for winning are as follows:
Rank 1 prize: all five digits.
Rank 2 prize: last four digits.
Rank 3 prize: last three digits.
Rank 4 prize: last two digits.
Rank 5 prize: last digit.

Others have already said it, but whatever. X X X X 99 is five numbers. XXX99 is five digits. The description is clear that the format is the later. Furthermore, one of the "interviews" at the end of the posting states the scenario we're arguing about.

My calculations have shown that consecutive numbers will maximize one's chances, so that's how I'll be picking my ten.
On top of that, I'm forming a syndicate with nine trustworthy friends from the Metalworks, which means we'll have all possible combinations covered for the last two digits. After all, a bigger net catches more fish!

/argument

[ahiyam]

I see this as a great oportunity for any "real" player not a mule or a rmt.... and if soemone actually does win the 100 mil u better hope SE doesnt announce who it is otherwise u can kiss your gil and your character goodbye b/c all rmts and maybe even some jealous freinds/players are gonna try hackin your shit. I also agree that this should be higher than lvl 5 to enter..... stupid ass idea but oh well thats SE for you just another way for them to make money for themselves. needless to say yes im going to enter but i know im not going to win lvl 1 or lvl 2 prises a majority of people will get lvl 4 and 5 prises and either rmt or the already leet rich people on servers will win this shit as the saying goes "the rich just get richer".... always ends up true imo its a interesting event but these prises are going to fuck the economy up royaly...........

"Statistics
Total posts 963252 | Total topics 27760 | Total members 11111 |" interesting you think people working at SE read the BG forums? lol kinda odd that there is the exact number of registered members here than there is in one of thier examples of a drawing number lol

[Toonshady]

How about instead of some dumb lottery, they actually fix/improve the events that these items drop from, or *gasp* add new content with relevant rewards? How about adding moderately decent NEW items to things like seasonal events instead of adding gil/really good old items to a lottery of all things? This is a pretty pathetic way to get people interested in the game again, and forget about wotg. Sadly, from the responses in this thread of those all excited, buying up content IDs, and leveling mules, it seems to be working exactly as intended.

back in fanfest, the devs made it sound like they planned lottery to be a more frequent activity that players can do to attain relic armor and rare items like ridill as a alternative to doing dynamis, camping kings. nothing that would completely throw off the balance of the game... at least that was the impression many people left with.
what they ended up deciding on was a once a year event that couldn't possibly be used as a alternative for any mundane activity in the game. if it did, it would throw the game completely off it's rocker

[Talint]

How about instead of some dumb lottery, they actually fix/improve the events that these items drop from, or *gasp* add new content with relevant rewards? How about adding moderately decent NEW items to things like seasonal events instead of adding gil/really good old items to a lottery of all things? This is a pretty pathetic way to get people interested in the game again, and forget about wotg. Sadly, from the responses in this thread of those all excited, buying up content IDs, and leveling mules, it seems to be working exactly as intended.

Yes you are the smartest thank you for your insight we know you hate fun

Yes, because it's highly unfair to ask Square Enix to stop the fucking bottlenecking instead of buying into their own hype.

[Seyrr]

I'm only interested in playing because revenue from the Mog Bonanza is supposed to go towards Mog House maintenance and improvement.

Is that flavor text, or are they actually planning to improve Mog Houses somehow?

[phrost]

Participating in a lottery designed to give out a good deal more than is put into it does not make you a "fool."

Its okay guy, you don't need to rationalize your gambling habit to me.

Perhaps I should have been more specific in that; by fools I meant the mouthbreathers customers who purchase and create multiple mules to up their chances. Marginally raising your chances of winning a virtual item of questionable worth by spending real life money on a recurring monthly charge (even if they delete and deactivate the following mont), rings out in a choir of nitwits.

[Raizins]

Crazy stuff, but...

SE would have been better off not including the amount of the gil prizes for each rank, until after the purchasing of marbles is done with.

[Synbios]

I may have skipped over it, but was there any mention of if the drawing number would be server specific or would it be world wide? I think this could have the biggest impact on what actually gets put into the economy after all this. Second, like others have said, SE is the real winner here. They get to make extra bucks off people fairly easy.

[The Stig]

We won't actually know how they pull the numbers until it happens, but assuming 0-99 on each number (because 0-9 would be ridiculously easy to win)

And a 1/100 chance on 1 exp scroll sounds ridiculously retarded too.

Not really when probably 2,500,000 marbles will be purchased, assuming 250,000 people (which is half the FFXI playerbase) purchase all 10 marbles on their characters. And that's assuming no mules are used.

That means the average price for 1 exp scroll is 100k. That is retarded >_>

Such is the nature of a lottery =p

[aurik]

Time to level my other 7 characters to 5, lol. The importance of having a crafting mule army!!

I really really hope these marbles are key items and not inventory items. Its gonna suck hauling around -10 inventory for 5 weeks.

Seems to me, I'll get the moogle to pick my first number: "A B C D E"
Then on my main I'll do A B C n E, for all n between 0 and 9. Repeat on each mule with a different value for E.

This way I get:
A 100% chance at getting a T4 prize, which should easily cover the entry cost.
A 10% chance of winning tier 3, 1 million gil.
A 1% chance of winning tier 2, 10 million gil.
A 0.1% chance of winning tier 1, a Valkyrie Fork.
And best of all, a 10% chance of getting 10 Miratete's Memoirs on my main character, for leveling my puppetmaster!

[Toonshady]

Time to level my other 7 characters to 5, lol. The importance of having a crafting mule army!!

I really really hope these marbles are key items and not inventory items. Its gonna suck hauling around -10 inventory for 5 weeks.

when the most recent update was datamined, the marbles were found and they had icons. so they will indeed eat up people's inventory for a whole month

[Eratosthenes]

Oh, man... If you actually had 100,000,000 gil and enough mules, you could buy every combo and come out with over 300,000,000 gil at the end. LINKSHELL TEAMUP GO!

[Therin]

I SERIOUSLY don't think they're going to do 0-9. Doing that would put the odds of getting a Rank 1 prize at 1/100,000, which is 1/10,000 if you buy 10 marbles and would almost ensure multiple Rank 1 winners across the servers.

A concentrated offensive is the most fundamental military strategy! Ten marbles for number 11111 shall be my pick!
Elvaan gentleman, knight. Port San d'Oria (I-9)

With them flat out saying a selection of "11111" is possible, it's five single digit numbers.

Fair enough, lots of people getting relics after June then.

For reference, 0-9 means about 25 Rank 1 winners vs. 00-99 meaning 2-3. Since it's a lottery, I would have expected the latter.

[byte]

How about instead of some dumb lottery, they actually fix/improve the events that these items drop from, or *gasp* add new content with relevant rewards? How about adding moderately decent NEW items to things like seasonal events instead of adding gil/really good old items to a lottery of all things? This is a pretty pathetic way to get people interested in the game again, and forget about wotg. Sadly, from the responses in this thread of those all excited, buying up content IDs, and leveling mules, it seems to be working exactly as intended.

back in fanfest, the devs made it sound like they planned lottery to be a more frequent activity that players can do to attain relic armor and rare items like ridill as a alternative to doing dynamis, camping kings. nothing that would completely throw off the balance of the game... at least that was the impression many people left with.
what they ended up deciding on was a once a year event that couldn't possibly be used as a alternative for any mundane activity in the game. if it did, it would throw the game completely off it's rocker

This was the impression I got too.. Maybe they'll scale it down for a more regular event?

[BerenTebogo]

Selling my dusk, probably some other shit related to this I have hanging around too, gonna have dusk +1 for like 5-10m max after this is over, thank you SE, I appreciate you letting me completely bend you over a table for my own personal gain.

Also, I think I'd take the 1m from Rank 3, I have a Hauteclaire and most of that over crap already, 1m isn't (wasn't) anything to scoff at in this economy.

Edit: Also, I am not mad about this, but I am 100% convinced that despite all the fun had, across all servers, this will be irreparably damaging to the economy, or at the very least have the same impact as Christmas 2006, it will be 1 day max before the rank 4 trick will be posted on KI / Alla / every JP site, if it isn't already, it's basic math.

Staple footholders of our economy, haubergeons, cloaks, dusk, which have managed to stay relatively stable across all servers finally will plummet, and in turn bring everything else down with them, for as far as AHable items go, most of the players base saves up and spends gil on these items.

Crafting for profit will die, crafting for personal HQ only will be born, and god help you if you don't have a lot of money accumulated going into this, because it's going to be hard to make for a while. I'm sorry, I'll have as much fun as the rest of you, but I have my relic, I have my HQ's, and I have my ares / hauteclaire / homam, I give 2 shits what they do to this economy, some of you I thin need to wait for the euphoria of seeing 100,000,000g wear off, FFXI is kinda fucked.

[Phraust]

I can See it now...

Special Task Force Report (07/23/2008)

Today's report will outline our actions conducted from June 26, 2008 to July 23, 2008 in dealing with players violating the user agreement, as well as details on the activities, results, and goals of the Special Task Force.

We will start out today's report talking about account banning and gil confiscation.
A total of 200,800 accounts were banned in June, an increase of 188,000 over the previous month.
Similarly, a total of 32,000,000,000 gil was frozen in June, a record increase of 31,840,000,000 gil over the previous month. As mentioned in last month's report, the Special Task Force has strengthened actions against players violating the user agreement in regards to gil buying and selling. The sudden increase in the amount of gil frozen is mainly due to our heightened activities.

Lawl