A preface...
The GMs put in a tremendous amount of time for everyone. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. Thank you for the last push where everyone bands together and grinds hard to spin as many people as possible. Thank you for spending all day working for us. I know it's exhausting. Thank you.
..and now let me start off with an opening statement about merchant services...
I have made peace that someone with multiple accounts will have better odds than me. I have made peace that items will be passed back and forth. I have made peace that groups I am not a part of will work as a collective to make sure everyone in the group gets work. I have made peace that some people will be on fire while I'm stuck in the cold. I have made peace that RNG is going to do what RNG does best. I have made peace with how things are.
Have you?
Has everyone?
I do not fault the person with multiple accounts. Thank you for keeping the lights on.
I do not fault people working in groups. Thank you for being a community.
However, just because I have made peace, and because I do not fault, does not mean I don't get frustrated.
..and if I still get frustrated..
What about those that don't feel the same way I do?
What about the player with limited time?
The returning player?
The new player?
The system can keep track of people who have been worked for prior, and exclude those people from being spun. Why can't it be expanded to keeping track of everyone across all merchants for an event? (BTW, hasn't this been done before?)
Why can't it be expanded to keeping a tally and make decisions based on who has had the least amount of work done?
Perhaps the system is meant to be hot and cold. Perhaps a carrot to keep interest high, that intense feeling of being on top of the world when everything is coming up aces.
Yet, when you're watching people get chosen once.. twice.. six.. times "in a day" and you've yet to be chosen at all during the entire event..
When you watch an alt get picked and the main hands over an item..
When you try, and try, and nothing goes your way..
I have made peace with that. Not everyone has.
Here is my proposal...
The Premium Festival appeared to primarily focus on a "per merchant, per day, per character" schedule. "If you were already spun by me today then you won't get chosen."
I feel the system needs to be stricter at times.
(the focus of the following system is meant to be conceptual and so please let's not debate the mechanics necessarily)
Separate spinner services into categories: GALD, specific strict, specific relaxed.
Create/use account based tracking. This would help prevent just rolling up new characters to keep the services number at 0.
When chosen for something a number can be increased for that account in that category.
Get chosen for GALD? Your account GALD number goes up by 1. Get chosen to have your Dreamfire bracelet unlocked? Your account "specific strict" number goes up by 1.
A merchant could then run a spinner for GALD that targets those with a 0 for their number on the account. Then they could spin again for those with a 2. Then again for anyone.
This would prioritize people that are not getting work. This might make it so that people will be pickier about what merchant services they attend. There'd need to more transparency about what merchant services will be done and in what quantities. "Firewheel flower unlocking will happen several times a day for these days." "Dreamfire bracelet unlocking will happen once a day, at roughly this time, for these days." "Daxela will be unlocking jewelry boxes likely on these days."
As an aside... let there be a flag that players can set on a character to exclude them from certain spins. Make the flag have a timer of 5 minutes so you have to actively turn it on each time (and it turns off if you forget). This would help prevent wasting GM time by characters getting picked only to have them pass.
Have this account number reset after a week of RL time. This helps protect against someone logging in only for events and entering a new event not being reset to 0.
The mechanics of this are difficult to balance.
I get it.
There's a lot of ways this may not work. There's a lot of ways this could introduce other issues (skipping a jewelry box unlock for a Dreamfire bracelet unlock and getting neither).
I get it.
..but should we rely on a system that's "good enough, if you're lucky"?
I don't know.
