As @Peresagruska points out, the rules don’t say anything about registering with separate alts. It just says that each character only gets 1 ticket. And considering how much of Eve is tailored towards the Altaholics out there (Cyno alts, Scout alts, Market alts, heck even the Launcher facilitates multiple Omega accts firing at once) I don’t see why you’re so bent out of shape over people registering with alts.
It only makes sense to register with several alts to improve the chances of winning. Just like it only makes sense to shoot a target many times with many bullets in the hopes of wrecking them.
Now… if @BIG_Games wants to limit people from using Alts in the future, that’s perfectly understandable. And since there is an API call involved in registering, I can’t imagine it would be “too” difficult to limit one character per Acct. But that hasn’t been a rule thus far. And that still wouldn’t prevent people from using several Accts, unless you’re also logging IPs which would just ruin households or coffee shops from participating.
the problem isnt people using a few alts. the problem is people making 300 alpha accounts and send mails automaticly just to win and there is no way of stopping the latter without stopping the first
I too practice the elegant art of exaggeration. But according to the front page of the Lottery website, there are only 46 participants thus far. So you’re about 254 off of your mark.
And those 300 Alphas would have to log into the API 900 times to verify they are not Robots before their automatic evemails would count.
before there was the not a robot thing I participated too with 80 alts, and I entered them by hand, no scripts used, otherwhise CCP would have banned me already
I play with 13 alts and verify all of them. I know for most this is unfair, but I have to add that it is very easy to make alts to participate. Everyone can do that for free. The only way to be 100% sure is to check IP Adress, which is problematic due to privacy policies in each countries.
But to be honest, my alts are used normally(scout, support etc) so that it could be another person.
I also noticed that most of my alts didn‘t got sdded into the draw, just this character and nothing else.
In a perfect world we would have one ticket per real life person. We would have fair and equal chances for every participant. But we aren’t living in a perfect world.
In the months following the ban of “games of chance”, this give away became more a war zone between alt owners, than an enjoyable event. With a few alt-owners, leading more and more alts into the field to ensure the safetiness of their secondary income, they destroyed the fun for everyone else. Counteracting the spirit of the BIG Lottery. So counter measurements had to be made, like preventing the registration of such alts.
So if you have trouble to register your alts, then everything works perfect.
Which is cool… if that’s mentioned in the rules before you join. As it stands, the only rules are “one ticket per character” and “you must pass a Robot check first”.
One ticket per character, that right there means Alts are allowed, b/c each one is a separate character. If they wanted to limit it to one per account, I’d be fine with that. When someone does the Robot check, take note of their account ID and don’t allow any further Alts from that ID. At most, they can register with 1x Alt for each acct they cook up. But you have no way of proving if those are the same player, or several players in the same household, or what.
But the important thing is to make sure the rules state “one ticket per account”. Then there’s no confusion. Just arbitrarily blocking some Alts but allowing others (or more likely blocking Alts only after a few have snuck through first) causes confusion b/c some worked and others didn’t. If you know from the start “this will only work once” then you won’t bother trying the rest of the Alts.
As Anataine Deva said before, it is impossible to get 100% fair chances. You always can enter houndrets or even thousands of alts just to win.
Solutions:
IP check: simple to introduce, but might violate the european privacy policy and scares a lot of people off. As this gives a lot of personal details.
Account ID: you still can make tons of accounts and I don‘t believe CCP makes this information available to players.
Age limit for alts: Simple to avoid the use of trash alts, but keeps new players away from participating.
Themost important thing is that it is BIG‘s own isk and so he has the right to ban those that just farm the lottery. So your alts might get added or might not… It depends
Also CCP must have banned a lot of them as the amount of alts went up and down. Otherwhise we would have thousands or tenthousands of alts. Simply, automated mails break the EULA and will get you banned.
We had a lot discussions in-channel during the past draws, what to do with all those alts. How to exclude them and so on. We are all well aware that there is no perfect solution to that issue. You can always argue in favour of the one or other side.
In the end it boils down to exact that thing.
No one who participates with one or two in-game characters need to fear to get excluded, but if you plan to use your alt-army to boost your chances, don’t be surprised if they don’t make it into the draw.
Something I agree, what should have been better comunicated.
I think the issue of a throwaway alpha alts could be partially solved by obligation to be logged in and active in a lottery channel in the moment of a draw, when drawing. Those who would not be present would be excluded even when drawed, and the draw would be repeated. But there is a very big issue with it, the hour would not be good for everyone. In fact there would have to be 2 lotteries then, each for different part of day, the amount of ISK in rewards split in two.
BIG wants to keep it open for all time zones, which stands in the way of being present during the draw. But the suggestion about 2 lotteries is new for me, here he needs very likely a second moderator for the second draw. I doubt he will do that, but it’s still interesting!
And good you mentioned it - I just never check contracts on this char
Ideally - The BIG Lottery would run on donations alone (Eventually I’m going to run out of ISK…)
3-5 major alliances/corps would be all it would take (hek wouldn’t even need to be that major either)
~15B/month - Divided by say 5.
3b/month would be small potatoes for most out there
