The unfairness of mog bonanza towards PS2 playersFollow

I'm still finding it hard to believe SE would abandon the path of simply having a single algorithm for determining the random number that users on any and all platforms would access when it comes time for the Moogle to randomly generate it. Less is more when it comes to programming, and SE's already notorious for "less" when it comes to content.

Moreover, even if you're trying to pin something on the PS2, I also find it hard to believe an advanced computational device (compared to, say, a calculator) couldn't pick a random number beyond 6000. In fact, I wouldn't put it past hardware developers to have a RNG built into the system itself for testing purposes.

****, a lot of people lost. I'm on the PC, and all I have to show for my moogle picking is a few EXP scrolls on my mules. Am I disappointed? Yes. Do I feel screwed? Honestly, I anticipated it the moment I heard the drawing was going to be so far away.

Just a couple thoughts about this whole nasty drama. First of all, I do agree that as long as the drawing was actually conducted fairly, that any number, even the OEOEO Jungle Love numbers had the same chance of being drawn. That said, while it can be argued that individual players were not screwed over here, it can also be argued that the entire PS2 player base as a whole was shafted.

There have been a lot of examples of how any number was as likely as another to come up, but what I think should be mentioned is that, with some variance of course, you should expect to see a similar distribution of prize winners on the different tiers across all platforms for people that used the moogle to generate numbers. This, unfortunately, is not the case. The fact of the matter is, not a single number that was randomly generated on the PS2 won any prize above a rank 5.

Was I disappointed that I didn’t win? You betcha. Did I really expect that I’d get one of the big prizes? Not so much, but it does leave a sour taste that NO ONE who used that feature on PS2 got anything other than a consolation prize.

As far as the moogle numbers on PS2 themselves go, a lot of people keep pointing out that nowhere did it expressly say that the numbers generated by the moogles would be random. Now true as that may be, I don’t think anyone can be faulted for expecting that they would be. Anyone who’s ever had any exposure to a lottery of any sort can see that this looked like the EZ Pick options that most of them offer, and of course, players of this game are intimately familiar with the /random function and lotting. Of course people are gonna think that the moogle pick was just a /random with more digits, and unless you were actually looking for patterns, cursory inspection showed numbers that appeared to be random. The “they never said it was random” argument seems to imply that people who used the moogle to pick numbers were idiots for expecting it to function the way logic implied and the way it worked on other platforms, which seems kinda asinine. And yes, I know I could have hand picked my numbers to assure an xp scroll, but honestly a thousand xp just doesn’t make me hard… especially on my mules.

***Conspiracy Theory Alert***

First of all, I claim to have no evidence that the drawing was rigged, nor am I saying it was, but a lot of people have been saying that there is no reason that makes sense as to why SE would manipulate the results. Now, I will say that if this was their intention from the start, that I think they would have done it in a less half-assed way. The easiest way would have been to just sort their database of numbers chosen by players by frequency (I cant believe that they wouldn’t have that ability), and pick the numbers that best fit the amount of prizes they wanted to give out.

On the other hand I can’t say that there aren’t any plausible reasons they wouldn’t manipulate the results, so, I’m throwing this out there as my plausible reason to rig the results. Personally I wouldn’t call it SE the Malevolent, more like SE the Inept.

Basically, you start with an f’d up random number generator on the PS2. Now I’m not intimately familiar with statistics, but I’ve seen a fair amount of people mention that not only did their numbers all follow the odd/even pattern, but also that they had duplicates/triplicates of the same numbers. Someone who’s better than me at math can work out the odds that many people would have duplicate random numbers out of the several thousand possible odd/even five digit combinations, but I’m guessing that it probably shouldn’t be that common. This leads me to believe that the code behind the moogle numbers was possibly giving an even more limited set of numbers than just odd/even. How limited? Who knows?

If that was the case though, and someone at SE noticed after the numbers had all been picked, I can easily see SE making sure that those numbers were not drawn as the winners, just to prevent the possibility of, who knows? A thousand, two thousand tier one prizes being awarded. In other words, they may have manipulated the drawing to prevent hundreds of billions of gil dumping back into the economy and ******** things up, as opposed to the 5.6 billion in tier ones they gave out. Now, I am not saying that this is what happened, but I do think it shows limited imagination to say that there is no plausible reason why the results would be manipulated.

Anyway… manipulated or not, I stand by my belief that the PS2 community as a whole was disserviced by what was supposed to be a fun, celebratory event , and are justified in feeling screwed over.

/end rant

*** Edit: My bad, I missed Lokithor's post that does indeed point out that one would expect some similarity between prize distribution on different platforms for randomly chosen numbers.

Edited, Jul 4th 2008 4:24am by Skooj

I'll take the blame, but you gotta admit, his raja's ring comment sounded oddly familiar....


And let's not forget his earlier comment about suppa only being good when dual wielding. After all + sword skill does NOTHING!

Edited, Jul 4th 2008 5:18pm by DancerRonin

You need to re-read my post. I am suggesting that SE would not pick numbers at random because doing so would risk introducing too much currency into the economy--especially since numbers that match the patterns EOEOE and OEOEO were assigned to all PS2 moogle-picked balls. If the top or 2nd-best prize level was one of these numbers, there would have been A LOT more winners. I am theorizing that they realized this and intentionally made sure that that pattern was not a top or 2nd-best level prize.

Basically, I think they told us it was random to placate the masses.

Good God.

The only quirk I see is the winning numbers were SELECTED in a STRICTLY SUPERVISED process.

If this means they looked at all the numbers picked and Selected the ones that were picked least to minimize the economic impact, we have a problem.

SE did not say they would be randomly picked, just Selected under Supervision.

Well they are both mods of spirit taker...

I would say the ps2 player base is more than 40% given majority of Japanese players are ps2, and the game is much more popluar there then here, I would say the numbers are opposite prev stated, like 60% ps2 40% between pc and 360 with the 360 being the lesser of those given it was last system to get access.

When they add Double Cast in 2013, Tamas will look a lot more attractive..

It's not so much a fight over one being better, it's more us pointing and laughing at the idiot that said someone wasn't a real rdm cause they got Raja's over tamas.

As someone pointed out in another thread, the reason there is an ungodly number of Rank 2 winners is because the winning number was probably hand picked by all the major nerds that chose Star Trek spaceship numbers. USS NC-1017 Enterprise, baby.

There's probably some lucky ******* nerds that did 01017,11017,etc on a mule and won Rank 2 10 times over.

NCC-1017 is the USS Constellation.