How To Fix The Raffle(CE note too)

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AcryliCat UwU
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How To Fix The Raffle(CE note too)

Post by AcryliCat UwU »

Warning: This post is hella long, you have some reading to do, whoops
Additionally, I mention 'veteran users' pretty often in this post. I have nothing against people who've been playing this game for a long time, I'm only about 2 years from being considered a 'veteran' myself. They absolutely deserve to be ahead on some aspects. They come up so often because it's incredibly easy to understand the differences between a veteran and a newbie, and why even if a newbie is consistently more active than the veteran, the latter will always perpetually be ahead.
I also mention 'New' and 'newer' users a lot- this ranges from absolute first day newbie to rookies who are still just a couple years in.


═.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.═

Dear God I've been meaning to make this post for so long, and I do believe I've mentioned it in the server move thread but I would like to go more in depth here.
Note: I couldn't make the edits that I wanted to because I couldn't find any screenshots of the raffle page, and since it's unavailable for users, obviously I couldn't get any for myself, so I'm going to explain this in as much detail as I can possibly manage.

Feel free to comment your own suggestions or ideas on improvement.

.·:·.✧✦✧.·:·.The General Problem.·:·.✧✦✧.·:·.
Read more on the general problem here. While I personally don't agree with everything 0R0ry said, and I have things to add, they pinpoint a couple very key points that I think are incredibly easy fix.
First of all, its incredibly slow going, especially at the start. This, I believe, is what discourages new users from sticking around, because they realize they need to click 50-60 Pokemon in the CE to hatch one egg, with little to no reward. On top of that that, without a whole lot of love for the game and dicipline(which, lets face it, no new user has), they realize that the only people winning anything are veteran users who already have everything.
They could use the money they earn in the lottery, but after a couple drawings, or simply reading up on the forums, they'll soon learn that, yet again, the only people truly winning anything are the veteran users who already have everything.
The best shot new users have is luck in the Congratz, and hope they get either a shiny mewtwo(because everyone has regular by now), or a Tapu(which still goes for pretty good for collectors). Sometimes though, it takes several thousand clicks to get a Congratz, which sometimes is a measly 1.000$.
Personally, the only way I actually completed my national dex was because a very old user was leaving the site and gave away her Pokemon through the GTS, and I somehow managed to snag almost a complete dex from her. This was about a year ago, so I had been here for about 3 years. Most of those years were spent pretty inactive, in all honesty. Even with my pokedex complete and my trade /shiny boxes piling up with extra pokemon, I still don't have anything a veteran user wants in exchange for older promos. Which brings me to my next point.

There is a huge problem with availability. Whether it's the oldest special events or the simple dex promos, we can all agree that there's a serious availability issue with either kind of event/promo. Even if a newer user completes their dex, now they're stuck for another few years just trying to save up enough extras/shinies to trade older users for those events that are presumably forever unavailable for the sake of completion. On top of that, most people are only looking for rare/incredibly sought after shiny Pokemon in exchange.
Or even further, some people that have managed to collect 10% of an old promo on site(I'm looking at you, Harvest Furret), and no one is going to give up any of their collection, which is perfectly fair on their part, I have no issue with hoarding rare, pretty things- that's the whole point of this game. However, it becomes an issue when veteran users were the only users who were on site during the distribution of events like Harvest Furret, and the event has never made a comeback. It's then next to impossible for even seasoned users like myself to snag a rare promo unless it's being given away from someone who isn't going to be online any more.

═.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.═
With all of that out of the way, let's talk about problems in the individual areas of this threads topic and ways they can be greatly improved to benefit everyone- not just people who've played for 4+ years.
For obvious reasons, I'm not going to be talking in depth about the lottery- there's already topics about that and, well, it's a mess, lol.


.·:·.✧✦✧.·:·.The Click Exchange.·:·.✧✦✧.·:·.
This is going to be very brief, because there's not too much to be improved on in the click exchange. It's a straightforward concept and it's essential in gameplay- even more essential for newer users who have nothing to their name.
So in this spoiler I've compiled a couple of suggestions that I think would make the Click Exchange more worthwhile for both newer users and older users collecting pokemon.
Spoiler:
CONGRATZ!
The Congratz prizes desperately need a revamp, otherwise the CE hardely seems worth any new users' time. The time that it takes to get a good amount of clicks is nowhere near worth what you might get back, and that doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be easier to click- there just needs to be more reward.

More Prizes
This is an incredibly obvious addition to the CE- adding more variety to what could be won is a very easy way to distribute items or Pokemon alike, and everyone has a perfectly fair chance of winning if they click enough. Other prizes could include a chance to win one of any item currently available in the mart, 1.000 credits, and a bigger money prize(maybe 5-10.000$?).
But sometimes the CE can be discouraging, I've gone 6.000 clicks before without a single congratz, so I've got another remedy for that.

More frequent wins, split odds prizes
Alright, so this one is going to take a little bit more explanation than the last suggestion. Before you angrily reply that the congratz odds are fine as they are, just hear me out.
If the actual odds of receiving a Congratz in the first place were raised, not only would it compensate for an enlarged prize pool, but each prize could be separated off into groups where as each group of items has a different percentage of being the prize you recieve, some percentages being higher than the others.
Suggestions
Assorted Mart items(including scents)- 25%
Fossils, Form Changing items(plates, disks, appliances)- 20%
Credits(5.000)- 20%
Money(10.000$)- 15%
Promo( equivelent of mewtwo and tapus at this point)- 15% (5% chance to be shiny)
Rare Promo(a random past event promo or rare dex promo out of a set list)- 5% (5% chance to be shiny)
.·:·.✧✦✧.·:·.The Raffle.·:·.✧✦✧.·:·.
Alrighty, so this is really the main reason why I made this post, so I'll be doing a lot of talking in this section, sorry, I know you're sick of all the reading! But to be honest, I was really upset when I saw that the raffle had been removed, since it had been my main money dump. It was just about one of the only reasons I clicked in the first place, so when it was removed altogether, I was really confused as to why it wasn't just fixed instead, and the fixes for it are really, really easy!
So below once again, I've made a list of problems/solutions for the raffle, and why I think it needs to be brought back immediately. Ive also provided examples of the solutions I suggest.

Spoiler:
Problem #1
Oversaturation of OS pkmn
This was a lasting problem with the raffle, and the issue everyone seemed to have with it, myself included. The same 1 or 2 Pokemon would be the raffle prize for months on end, to the point that everyone was bored of it. (Yeah, Im talking about you, Xerneas and Yveltal).
The promo was no longer a special Pokemon, but instead just another adopt that took up row upon row upon row of box space. Maybe 20 tickets would be bought per round, and even then, they were hardely worth the trouble unless you were collecting them. And if you were, you're in luck, because over 4.000 or each of those particular promos were spawned.

Solution
The very simple solution to on-site oversaturation is a rotating raffle, much like the way it was before, but with about 10-15 other Pokemon in rotation. These prize pokemon can range from events based around the holiday/season it currently is, along with an assortment of older dex promo adopts that newer people neex for completion, or older users want for collection.
These Pokemon should also have a small chance to appear shiny, maybe 5% like the other promos in my suggestions.



Problem #2
A money dump
A money dump is meant to be something that you put funds into, knowing you may make nothing back. You shouldn't be expecting to win it all plus some back, and when theres odds involved, you shouldn't be able to out-buy anyone who hasn't been clicking Pokemon for 6 years straight. cough coughLOTTERYcough.
To be a proper money dump, you need to put funds into something and still have fair odds of not getting anything in return.
While, yes, richer users should absolutely have the opportunity to spend more to win, their odds have to max out at some point, otherwise they very well have the ability to out-buy their odds from anyone else trying to play.

Solution
Again, this is a very simple solution, though it looks lomg and complex, it really boils down to one main subject. Ticket limitation. While this won't work for something like the lottery, because the odds of winning at all are so low, ticket limitation would absolutely work for the raffle, especially if more rare/old promos were dumped in there.
Limiting the amount of tickets that can be bought would make it so newer users would have something to work for- that max amount of raffle tickets in their pocket. It also makes it so when rich users buy all the tickets they can, and other people do the same, a user who just joined a week ago could have the sake odds of winning that rare promo as the 6-year veteran that has no issue spending 20.000$ on the raffle.
This would also encourage newer users to click more, which means along they way they collect more Congratz, adopts, credits, money, and a healthy, active site. Not only newer users- that would encourage seasoned users to click more and save up so they aren't spending all their savings on each raffle, and can participate more.

Furthermore, this doesn't impede too much on how rare a promo is, or make your odds of winning worse by limiting what you can buy- this means you can choose your own odds, and you can max them. At maxed odds, whether you win or not is truly up to chance, especially if 6-10 other people have also maxed their odds.
This would make the raffle a much more effective and fun money dump. Not only that, it fixes a very serious availability issue that we have with raffle Pokemon.

Example
This is where I wish I had the screenshot to fix as an illustration, cri

It's very simple, really.
>Each lottery lasts 6 hours now rather than 3, this would assure that the promos offered are still rare, but still give everyone a chance to get one.

>400 ticket limit, This number, I think, still makes people work towards being able to pay enough to get max odds, but is still low enough that more than one person can reach that goal. This would make the raffle a true money dump over time.
but as long as the damn lottery is broken, the rich users can just use the 30% from their 130% payout from 'winning but not really'

>The Pokemon rotate either in a random-organized or organized fashion. (I know these aren't real terms don't yell at me)
Random-organized: The Pokemon that will be rotated through the raffle are scrambled, but the same Pokemon will not appear twice until every other Pokemon has been through the raffle. This way you can't predict what will be next, but Pokemon are not distributed more than they have to be.
Organized: (This is likely the more reasonable method of rotation.) Pokemon are in a set order in a list, and the raffle will follow that list in order from 1 to __ until it reaches the end of that list, where it will repeat.

How many Pokemon that are rotated- I'm not sure. We could go with a full 30 for a month of Pokemon. That means 120 pokemon would be generated in a month, 4 of each. This does give everyone a chance to grab one eventually, whether it be for your dex or collection.
Definitely work, but it's more of a chance.
Alright! This took me all morning to type up on my phone, so please execute any spelling or grammatical errors you may find. Feel free to share your own thoughts or ideas, and my PMs are always open!
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Karasume
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Re: How To Fix The Raffle(CE note too)

Post by Karasume »

AcryliCat UwU wrote: February 12th, 2019, 11:06 pm
The very simple solution to on-site oversaturation is a rotating raffle, much like the way it was before, but with about 10-15 other Pokemon in rotation. These prize pokemon can range from events based around the holiday/season it currently is, along with an assortment of older dex promo adopts that newer people need for completion, or older users want for collection.
These Pokemon should also have a small chance to appear shiny, maybe 5% like the other promos in my suggestions.
I'm all for this suggestion, but only if the Raffle doesn't draw nearly as often as it did before.

3 hrs is so short for a raffle here. Flight Rising has a fairly large player base, and their raffles are only once per week, with with multiple prizes that only a limited number of entries that can win. VA had 3-hour raffles, which essentially was just a loot rotation for whoever wanted to bother winning a horrendously common adopt.

The raffle needs to be drawn less often, is what I'm saying. That is, unless we want it to be saturated with random basic pokemon to make up for it. Your suggestion below, to have a set number of adopts generated, is actually a very good idea.

Small shiny chance is a great idea.

AcryliCat UwU wrote: February 12th, 2019, 11:06 pm
A money dump is meant to be something that you put funds into, knowing you may make nothing back. You shouldn't be expecting to win it all plus some back, and when theres odds involved, you shouldn't be able to out-buy anyone who hasn't been clicking Pokemon for 6 years straight. cough coughLOTTERYcough.
To be a proper money dump, you need to put funds into something and still have fair odds of not getting anything in return.
While, yes, richer users should absolutely have the opportunity to spend more to win, their odds have to max out at some point, otherwise they very well have the ability to out-buy their odds from anyone else trying to play.

Solution
Again, this is a very simple solution, though it looks lomg and complex, it really boils down to one main subject. Ticket limitation. While this won't work for something like the lottery, because the odds of winning at all are so low, ticket limitation would absolutely work for the raffle, especially if more rare/old promos were dumped in there.
Limiting the amount of tickets that can be bought would make it so newer users would have something to work for- that max amount of raffle tickets in their pocket. It also makes it so when rich users buy all the tickets they can, and other people do the same, a user who just joined a week ago could have the sake odds of winning that rare promo as the 6-year veteran that has no issue spending 20.000$ on the raffle.
This would also encourage newer users to click more, which means along they way they collect more Congratz, adopts, credits, money, and a healthy, active site. Not only newer users- that would encourage seasoned users to click more and save up so they aren't spending all their savings on each raffle, and can participate more.

Furthermore, this doesn't impede too much on how rare a promo is, or make your odds of winning worse by limiting what you can buy- this means you can choose your own odds, and you can max them. At maxed odds, whether you win or not is truly up to chance, especially if 6-10 other people have also maxed their odds.
This would make the raffle a much more effective and fun money dump. Not only that, it fixes a very serious availability issue that we have with raffle Pokemon.
Spoiler for Small rant:
My gosh. The lottery was such a tragedy. It was.. So badly-implemented. A lottery is supposed to be a thing that you're very rarely supposed to win. Even the richest of people find they might never get the jackpot, but all the rewards are supposed to be enticing. Instead, we tried too hard to bend over backwards to appease less active users, so we got something rich users could easily break, and none of the prizes are particularly appealing except as a money printer.

Such a tragedy.
I agree with your definition of a money dump. It's supposed to dump money, plain and simple.

I like the idea for a new Raffle, as long as drawings are a lot less common. Even with a ticket limitation, 3 hours is just too short.

I don't think it really classifies as a money dump, unless it actually puts a dent into peoples' savings. My memory isn't the best. Below, you said 400 could be the limit. Tickets were $50 each, right? I don't remember, but if they were, that's a mere $20k. Rich users use that as toilet paper.

Regardless, it's a fantastic idea for the sake of redistributing old promos and adopts.


AcryliCat UwU wrote: February 12th, 2019, 11:06 pm Example
This is where I wish I had the screenshot to fix as an illustration, cri

It's very simple, really.
>Each raffle lasts 6 hours now rather than 3, this would assure that the promos offered are still rare, but still give everyone a chance to get one.

>400 ticket limit, This number, I think, still makes people work towards being able to pay enough to get max odds, but is still low enough that more than one person can reach that goal. This would make the raffle a true money dump over time.
but as long as the damn lottery is broken, the rich users can just use the 30% from their 130% payout from 'winning but not really'

>The Pokemon rotate either in a random-organized or organized fashion. (I know these aren't real terms don't yell at me)
Random-organized: The Pokemon that will be rotated through the raffle are scrambled, but the same Pokemon will not appear twice until every other Pokemon has been through the raffle. This way you can't predict what will be next, but Pokemon are not distributed more than they have to be.
Organized: (This is likely the more reasonable method of rotation.) Pokemon are in a set order in a list, and the raffle will follow that list in order from 1 to __ until it reaches the end of that list, where it will repeat.

How many Pokemon that are rotated- I'm not sure. We could go with a full 30 for a month of Pokemon. That means 120 pokemon would be generated in a month, 4 of each. This does give everyone a chance to grab one eventually, whether it be for your dex or collection.
Definitely work, but it's more of a chance.
[/spoiler]

Alright! This took me all morning to type up on my phone, so please execute any spelling or grammatical errors you may find. Feel free to share your own thoughts or ideas, and my PMs are always open!
<3
[/center]
I bolded the part I liked here most. Aiming for adopts generated on a monthly basis is actually a great idea. I also think Organized would be better for a rotation. True random doesn't feel random at all.

Good ideas. I hope they get implemented the way you envision. Lord knows mine didn't.
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Re: How To Fix The Raffle(CE note too)

Post by AcryliCat UwU »

I don't have the energy to write an essay in return, sorry =w=


I'm glad you agree, I really do think changes like these could vastly improve the halt this place has fallen into.
As for the 20k and 400 tickets, yeah, that is a little low, and we definitely don't want to 'bend over backward', like you said, for newer users, that's certainly not how it works.
However I do think that it should at least be low enough so that it is still feasible, with work, for not-rich users to be able to reach full odds without once again being completely out bought.

But, at the same time, a higher limit would also have the richer user spending more with a chance at losing, so there's that. I just think it can't be so high that no one else can catch up, otherwise they're practically guaranteed to get their money's worth out of what's meant to be draining.

Perhaps a better number would be 700 tickets, totaling 35k? Still not much of a dent in any rich users' savings, sure, but if they maxed their odds at 700 tickets for a week, they'd spend almost 1mil. Not saying anyone will spend that much for each round, but hey- I would if something like a Harvest PainInMyArse or a Vuldoom were in there.

If you spend 20k each round for a week, you're spending closer to 600k. Still a drain, and a smoother one too, I think.
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Re: How To Fix The Raffle(CE note too)

Post by Karasume »

I'm not really all for money sinks anymore, to be completely honest. The only thing that'll fix our current issues would be a money wipe.

The thing is, I've realized money is actually not all that important. You buy evo items, maybe scents if you're feeling wasteful, and you need it for the Daycare, but it's not really a central currency. You don't do much with it. You can't even trade it. Imagine if we had an Auction House, and a few other features/games that utilize money. That's what we need for money to actually matter.

I think it's fine if your Raffle suggestion isn't a money sink, really.
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Re: How To Fix The Raffle(CE note too)

Post by AcryliCat UwU »

Honestly, I'd really just like it to be a better way to get those older and more rare promos back in circulation.
I'm not even interested in the lottery now that I have my one volcanion for my dex, and yeah, once you get all the evo items and form changes you need, the money doesn't have much of a use any more. I agree that we could definitely have better ways of using currency.
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Re: How To Fix The Raffle(CE note too)

Post by Tango »

I've only got a quick minute this morning but wanted to mention, older users were previously waiting until the last minute to buy 200-300 tickets and completely out buy everyone currently in the raffle. That was, very annoying. If there's to be a ticket limit, for it to have any effect on actual odds it'd have to be lower than that. Or somehow balanced around the previous ticket amounts where 300 - 400 was the maximum that used to be bought between all participating users.

From what I saw during my active periods anyway ^^

With this idea, would there still be a 'cool down' period where you couldn't participate? Used to be 10 rounds you couldn't play after winning I think.
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Re: How To Fix The Raffle(CE note too)

Post by AcryliCat UwU »

Oh I actually forgot about that! Yeah, that would be wise, I think. I'll edit my post in a bit
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Re: How To Fix The Raffle(CE note too)

Post by Karasume »

I feel like if tickets are limited, then it wouldn't really matter all that much, but I guess there's no reason not to have a cooldown.
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Re: How To Fix The Raffle(CE note too)

Post by FairyPrincessCynthia »

I wholly hated the raffle. It generally fell into two categories:
A: Promos never rotated and lost their value, making the raffle feature pointless.
B: Promos were limited time only and the poorer users were wholly overwhelmed in the odds department by the richest users.

Scenario B made me ragequit the site for half a year. Imagine not having any money and you go into a Sheriff Keldeo raffle that has 10,000 tickets on average purchased by the richest elite. Ellie won like 5-9 of the wretched little things because she sunk Arceus knows how much money into the system. Some of you might say "but she earned that money so she has that privilege." Maybe so, but you'd change your perspective a bit if you were on the receiving end of having your promo collecting efforts directly sabotaged by other users.

> In other words, the raffle needs prizes to rotate more frequently, but it also needs a purchase limitation to prevent the richest users from "buying the raffle"

---

I've also concluded that money dumps are impossible to balance in a community where some people have so much money, they're the outlier that breaks things. The only way I've calculated for a proper balanced money sink is to wipe literally everyone's money to $0 before implementing it.
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Re: How To Fix The Raffle(CE note too)

Post by AcryliCat UwU »

I agree! Which is exactly what I've proposed here, I'm glad you all are seeing the same issues I am ^^
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Re: How To Fix The Raffle(CE note too)

Post by Karasume »

At the same time more features are added to the site that would use money (As I said before, AH other features, and an actual economy) would be the same time money needs to be reset, much to the chagrin of the rich users. But, that's neither here nor there.

I'm not sure how I feel about more frequently rotating prizes, but I am in favor of the monthlies generated per month idea. Whatever that leads to is fine, as long as that monthly adopt ceiling is there.

There needs to be a purchase limit, as strange as I think it is.
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Re: How To Fix The Raffle(CE note too)

Post by AcryliCat UwU »

Well, if 30 different pokemon are put in there for, say 3 months, and a new raffle starts every 6 hours- that's only about 12 of each pokemon that gets spawned in that amount of time, and that's actually pretty good considering how many promos got spawned from the raffle before.
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