How do I know if my event sign-up preferences went through?
Chad
When you're done you should still be on the event sign-up page, and your options should be greyed out (like they were before clicking "Begin Sign-up"). If not, click to it again. Then simply check that some of the changes you made are there.
I was just wondering about the Banquet:
Since it doesn't conflict with any other events, and as long as you have a Banquet ticket it will not be 'filled up' before you can be registered for it, wouldn't ranking it as a '1' be THE logical choice, so you can reserve your higher rankings for events that MAY fill up?
I just realized this and switched my rankings to reflect this.
Actually, it seems like the Banquet shouldn't even be on the events ranking at all, since (besides the above points), even ranking it as a '1' makes it 'compete' against other rank 1 choices, which seems pointless...
???
Thanks for the info...
The event "Short Fiction Writer's Workshop" has a deadline for June 1st. I would like to begin work on this, but I have other pressing things that I want to get done too. Hoping to find out today.
While I'm sure many are curious about that event, I'd *guess* that you have a pretty good shot about actually getting in Zuxe - go for it!
Chief Technical Officer
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Kind of stupid that I never asked this question, but when do we find out we got into an event? The event "Short Fiction Writer's Workshop" has a deadline for June 1st. I would like to begin work on this, but I have other pressing things that I want to get done too. Hoping to find out today.
The current goal is to publish results by end of day Friday.
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Senior Software Developer
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Lottery results are now visible. Go to the events page and click the "show my schedule" button (below the instructions) to see what you got.
Contributor
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Actually, both me and my buddy were assigned to events for which we placed a zero. Including events neither of us wanted and for which we both (I believe) placed zeros. For that matter, I was assigned to nothing but events for which I placed a zero, excepting one seminar and the banquet (non-lottery I think).
Is there a bug in the software?
Actually, both me and my buddy were assigned to events for which we placed a zero.
(snip, snip, snippity, snip...)
Is there a bug in the software?
Geez, Lou! You broke it!
There seems to have been a combination of confusion on the part of the folks ranking their events (especially those with buddies) as well as some possible issues with the lottery itself. We're still looking into it and will have more to say on the matter this afternoon. Stay tuned.
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Contributor
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There seems to have been a combination of confusion on the part of the folks ranking their events (especially those with buddies) as well as some possible issues with the lottery itself. We're still looking into it and will have more to say on the matter this afternoon. Stay tuned.
Cool, Josh. Thanks for the update. Hey - however it works it works. We'll all have a blast, no matter what. I'm sure I don't just speak for myself on that. We're gamers for heck's sake! If we don't have the games we'd hoped for, we'll run our own and love Paizo for the opportunity.
Pathfinder hoody hoooo!
*runs off charging and waving flag*
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Chief Technical Officer
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Any word on how open slots will be handled in just over an hour? Will it automatically prevent people from conflicting time slots or is that up to us to take care of?
You'll have checkboxes next to each event. Events you're already in will be pre-checked, and events that conflict with them we be greyed out. If you decide you'd really rather be in the second event, you can uncheck the first event, which will make the second one checkable.
Ok, so there were two issues (one of which forced us to delay open sign-ups until next week).
Issue #1 -- A small number of people, less than 12 total, followed the instructions correctly and may have not received anything as there was a short window at the beginning of rankings where those people possibly visited the site, entered their preferences, and the site just said, "whatever" and ignored them. Those people are being contacted in the next hour or so with several exclusive options just for them to keep their experience at PAIZOCON an awesome one.
Issue #2 -- Buddies. We've learned a lot from the way we set up buddies this year and will implement many changes to that system next year from those lessons. It seems several buddy combinations (and Lou, you may have been one of these) didn't coordinate their sign-ups, resulting in low success rates during the lottery. IE, buddies didn't put 4's on the same events ... and since they didn't, neither got it to those events. Our instructions were pretty clear, but we've got some coding ideas in the background on how to reinforce that you need to match your buddy's schedule to get into events with your buddy. These few folks affected by this misunderstanding of the instructions, should be served through the open sign-ups for events that go live next week.
In total, both of these issues effected no more than 15 or so people, a really small percentage of problems. Everyone else seems to have either inputted their rankings correctly (with the system reading those rankings correctly) or chose to attend without a preference to events.
We thought this morning that we were going to find a huge problem, and found a relatively small one. *whew* We're now working to make the folks effected by issue #1 happy and will be contacting them shortly.
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Wayfinder, PaizoCon Founder
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In total, both of these issues effected no more than 15 or so people, a really small percentage of problems.We thought this morning that we were going to find a huge problem, and found a relatively small one. *whew* We're now working to make the folks effected by issue #1 happy and will be contacting them shortly.
Whew, indeed! I am glad for two things: that the number of persons affected by the glitches was small, AND that Paizo is full of awesome by making it right for those persons.
Proud to be a Paizo Fan!
These few folks affected by this misunderstanding of the instructions, should be served through the open sign-ups for events that go live next week.
PAIZOCON Event Open Signup Delayed
Due to unforeseen circumstances, open signup for remaining slots will now begin Monday, June 1 at 2 PM Pacific Time. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Umm... You probably know this Josh, but the open signup is active to what I can tell. I only dropped an event, perhaps that's still open.
Well, if that's the case, that's an error. Gary is out of the office for a moment, but when he gets back he'll make sure it's closed. Also, any changes you input before Monday won't actually change (including dropping events).
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Well, actually, it was not very clear as to the "buddy" system. It EXPLICITLY states that:
The lottery will not assign you to events that you gave a 0, and it will not assign you to events with conflicting schedules.
The lottery will assign each day's events in separate rounds. We'll randomize the list of attendees and, going down the list, assign people to one of their highest-ranked available events. When we reach the bottom of the list, we'll re-randomize it and start again, continuing this process until no more assignments can be made. We'll repeat this process for each day. This process is designed to allow the greatest number of people to attend one or more events each day (although we cannot guarantee any particular event or number of events to anyone). -- That part's understood --
It then states:
You may request one other PAIZOCON attendee as your "buddy." You and your buddy will always be assigned to events together. When you make a buddy request, your buddy will be sent an email asking them to accept your buddy request. They must accept your request before the lottery begins.
Nowhere does it state that you have to pick the same events as your "buddy" nor that it would be "easier" to co-ordinate with that buddy, so your insinuation that we didn't follow the clear instructions is patently incorrect.
Now I'm more than willing to admit my error if you can show me exactly where this is supposed to have been stated. Obviously, I was one of "those" who (aside from 2 events) was assigned to events that I rated as 0. Not only that, but I was assigned to an event that I wouldn't be permitted to attend as I am not a published Paizo author:
Game Design Self-Editing Workshop for Pros by Sue Cook.
So, now, to be clear, the only way to actually attend the events I rated as "5's" is to hope that they're still open when event registration is re-opened on Monday?
Just wondering...
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Senior Software Developer
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Well, actually, it was not very clear as to the "buddy" system.
You're right. The instructions weren't 100% clear, and I apologize. If we ever use this code again, in addition to rewriting the instructions, we plan on making changes to how the buddy system works to help avoid these kinds of problems.
The buddy system was mainly designed to achieve one specific goal: If you are a parent, your child will not be assigned to an event unaccompanied by you. Naturally, with a name like "buddy" system, we expected others to take advantage of it as well, but the ramifications turned out to be a bit more complicated than we expected.
As stated earlier in the thread, the buddy promise is this: If you are assigned to an event via the lottery, so is your buddy, and vice-versa. As you point out, this could conflict with the "will not assign you to events that you gave a 0" promise, for reasons detailed below.
A very common use case was in fact the "unaccompanied child," but another was the "spouse that doesn't care about specific events." In those cases, we found that one buddy had marked up preferences for the various events, and the other buddy hadn't marked any. In those instances the lottery code did the right thing, I think, by assigning both buddies to events, rather than saying "well one buddy ranked every event a zero, so clearly didn't want to go to anything, so neither buddy gets any events."
The other common use case is of course where you have two buddies who rank stuff individually. The right thing to do in this case is to make sure that both buddies have given a non-zero ranking to an event before assigning them to it. This year's code did properly consider the relative rankings when both buddies assigned one, but failed to eliminate events ranked by one buddy at zero from consideration.
In the future I think we'll change it so that if one buddy has no preferences about any events, then the other buddy's rankings are used, and if both buddies rank events, then events ranked at zero by either buddy will be removed from consideration. I'm thinking also about displaying two rows of radio buttons during the state-your-preferences phase: your preferences stacked above your buddy's preferences. That might help people keep on the same page about what they want to attend together. ("Hey, you ranked this a zero but I really want to go, can't you at least give it a one?")
I was assigned to an event that I wouldn't be permitted to attend as I am not a published Paizo author:
Game Design Self-Editing Workshop for Pros by Sue Cook.
Knowing who's a published Paizo author is (I hope) outside the domain of the lottery code. I think we're kinda counting on the honor system for that, but I'm not 100% sure, maybe someone will be enforcing that at the door or something.
Well, actually, it was not very clear as to the "buddy" system.You're right. The instructions weren't 100% clear, and I apologize. If we ever use this code again, in addition to rewriting the instructions, we plan on making changes to how the buddy system works to help avoid these kinds of problems.
The buddy system was mainly designed to achieve one specific goal: If you are a parent, your child will not be assigned to an event unaccompanied by you. Naturally, with a name like "buddy" system, we expected others to take advantage of it as well, but the ramifications turned out to be a bit more complicated than we expected.
As stated earlier in the thread, the buddy promise is this: If you are assigned to an event via the lottery, so is your buddy, and vice-versa. As you point out, this could conflict with the "will not assign you to events that you gave a 0" promise, for reasons detailed below.
A very common use case was in fact the "unaccompanied child," but another was the "spouse that doesn't care about specific events." In those cases, we found that one buddy had marked up preferences for the various events, and the other buddy hadn't marked any. In those instances the lottery code did the right thing, I think, by assigning both buddies to events, rather than saying "well one buddy ranked every event a zero, so clearly didn't want to go to anything, so neither buddy gets any events."
The other common use case is of course where you have two buddies who rank stuff individually. The right thing to do in this case is to make sure that both buddies have given a non-zero ranking to an event before assigning them to it. This year's code did properly consider the relative rankings when both buddies assigned one, but failed to eliminate events ranked by one buddy at zero from consideration.
In the future I think we'll change it so that if one buddy has no preferences about any events, then the other buddy's rankings are used, and if both buddies rank events, then...
You could have a case where one of the "buddies" wants to go to an event where the other doesn't want to go, meaning they wouldn't be "buddies" for the one time slot only. I don't even know if that's workable in this system, but it is a possible use case.
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You could have a case where one of the "buddies" wants to go to an event where the other doesn't want to go, meaning they wouldn't be "buddies" for the one time slot only. I don't even know if that's workable in this system, but it is a possible use case.
Well, one could feasibly create a list of buddies (each would need to confirm to be viable buddies) and then for each event, one could choose a buddy from your viable buddies. When your selected buddy goes to make a selection, it would show them they were notated as a buddy for the event, by who and at what rank. They could choose to run with this as their setting (ensuring buddies with events at the same rank) or decline the buddy link (and the person who initially set the rank would be notified of the declined link, in case they have another buddy they want to match up with).
There are other aspects that would need to be addressed with a set up along these lines (ie - buddies of buddies, etc.), but it would take care of the selected event issue, first by allowing specific event selection for buddying up and allowing buddies to decline a match if there was no communication between them for a specific event.
This year's code did properly consider the relative rankings when both buddies assigned one, but failed to eliminate events ranked by one buddy at zero from consideration.
I actually thought that's how it should have worked. Otherwise one "buddy" would never get to go to anything the other buddy didn't want. If the buddy decides not to go, they can drop the listing after both are assigned - makes a bit more of a pool for the rest to pick from.
On the other hand, it could simply pick from the "dictator" buddy's choices, and so long as the other buddy didn't rank it 0, give it to both, otherwise toss the buddy back in line (although they could then their pick of a buddy event, and the buddy would get two; or alternately if they were assigned right away, buddies would have an advantage in the lottery, even if they had no events matched to each other).
Tough calls Gary.
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Does the buddy system have any impact on signing up for the open slots tomorrow? I'll be in a meeting at 2:00 and won't be able to get online to start signing up then, but my buddy (my husband) may be able to sign up.
I, too, assumed that only the "primary" actually needed to rate events for the lottery, so my husband didn't rate anything under his own user id. I'm wondering now if this had any impact on the fact that we didn't get into any events at all? Or did we just have poor luck in the lottery?
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Contributor
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Does the buddy system have any impact on signing up for the open slots tomorrow? I'll be in a meeting at 2:00 and won't be able to get online to start signing up then, but my buddy (my husband) may be able to sign up.
I, too, assumed that only the "primary" actually needed to rate events for the lottery, so my husband didn't rate anything under his own user id. I'm wondering now if this had any impact on the fact that we didn't get into any events at all? Or did we just have poor luck in the lottery?
Good question -- how do we de-buddy if we want to do so before the event sign-up, just to keep it simple?
Does the buddy system have any impact on signing up for the open slots tomorrow? I'll be in a meeting at 2:00 and won't be able to get online to start signing up then, but my buddy (my husband) may be able to sign up.
I, too, assumed that only the "primary" actually needed to rate events for the lottery, so my husband didn't rate anything under his own user id. I'm wondering now if this had any impact on the fact that we didn't get into any events at all? Or did we just have poor luck in the lottery?
You might want to temporarily change your password and provide it to your buddy to sign you both up for whatever is available, if you're concerned about both joining something that has rather limited openings available.
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You might want to temporarily change your password and provide it to your buddy to sign you both up for whatever is available, if you're concerned about both joining something that has rather limited openings available.
Yeah, I guess I'll have to see if the hubs can sign up for me if I want any chance of getting into the same events that he's in. Gaming without him is a bit outside my comfort level.
Yeah, I guess I'll have to see if the hubs can sign up for me if I want any chance of getting into the same events that he's in. Gaming without him is a bit outside my comfort level.
You might want to temporarily change your password and provide it to your buddy to sign you both up for whatever is available, if you're concerned about both joining something that has rather limited openings available.
Last I saw there were quite a few events with plenty of space actually, so I wouldn't say "no chance" by any means. "Best chance" and "best choice" though...
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I just did the event sign up and all but one choice stuck. That individual event shows up grayed out and clicked when I look at the listings, but when I view my schedule, it is not mentioned. Just checking if this is a bug or me doing something wrong.
did you save your changes? I switched mine around and it took several tries but I figured out that I needed to save the changes after everyone to make it work
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Senior Software Developer
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Yeah, I saved the changes, because the two other events added showed up in my schedule. As far as looking at the listings, everything looks fine. The schedule is the only thing not matching up.
When I look at your schedule and your events page, they match. What's not matching for you?
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Director of Narrative
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Yeah, I saved the changes, because the two other events added showed up in my schedule. As far as looking at the listings, everything looks fine. The schedule is the only thing not matching up.When I look at your schedule and your events page, they match. What's not matching for you?
Sunday Drawing Maps seminar is not showing up in the schedule, but does appear clicked in the listings.
Huh - that's the same thing I signed up for. More than 2 people trying to get into those 2 slots, perhaps?My discrepancy is with Yetisburg.
I dropped it already! If it's full again it's not my fault :) (though it shows: Current total: 19.)
Now I'm all confused. My husband signed us up for some events, but we didn't pay any attention to the "tiers". We didn't belong to the Pathfinder Society previously. What are "tiers"? Do we have to have an existing Pathfinder Society character of that "tier" range to get into a game? If so it severely limits my choices.
Point me elsewhere if this is the wrong place to ask. I've never attended a gaming con before.
You are correct, you must have a character of that range (which would be the 1-5 level tier).
Details here, and in the Guide on that page (right side, free download)