No matter how you slice it, no matter what method you choose someone will not get the events they want and scream the system is unfair and needs to be revamped. 

I have learned to not base my enjoyment of Gen Con on getting into certain events.  If you base your trip on getting a few specific events your chances, no matter how it is done, are small.  I have learned to branch out and to try new things 

I always fill up my wish list with many backups to the events I want.  This year I didn't care to the point that I really didn't work on my wishlist that much prior to Sunday morning.  Looking at the event catalog after the dust settled on Sunday there are still thousands of good events in the system.  I was able to easily find events to fill in the holes in my schedule.  If I had gotten 0 events on my wishlist I could have easily filled in my schedule.

I boils down to this - there is no method at all that is "fair".  There is no method that will guarantee everyone or even a majority of people get their top rated events.  I think the system worked fairly well this year with a few hiccups.  If I could suggest any changes it would be this:

1.  Provide a system where people can be notified via email if a closed event opens up.  This way you don't have to continuously check the system hoping for open tickets.

2.  Provide a system via an app so that on game day a GM that has no-shows can hit a button and it sends a notification to people that the GM has immediate spots available. 

That someone is going to complain while true does not mean more fair methods do not exist which minimize the complaints. 

Or are you saying because someone will complain that no method is better than any other?

I boils down to this - there is no method at all that is "fair".  There is no method that will guarantee everyone or even a majority of people get their top rated events.  

One thing I will definitely be doing next year if it isn't changed is registering myself, wife and 2 kids all separately and submit the same wish list under all 4 of us to improve my odds of being lower in the queue and then just delete the wishlists that are higher in the queue. Registering for a family under one account actually penalizes you when it shouldn't

In my opinion, it isn't caring for the customers since it is taking our time and still delivering uncertain results.  Even in the best case where everything works, it can take 80-90 minutes to buy your tickets.  No real reason that can't be done offline while we do other things.

The system is what it is, but the fact I can't make adjustments while in the queue is most annoying aspect for me. I was something like 5830. I watched as 47 things on my 50 event list grayed out, but was unable to replace them with other items that interested me from the event catalog even though my list hadn't actually been processed yet.

At 1:44 when my list finally processed, almost everything was sold out. I got 2 events, and a bunch of other events I wanted to try and add still had tickets, but now I had to go back into the queue to wait for my list to be processed again. So what happened? the 3 events I added were sold out before my number came up again.

Now if people were able to adjust their lists while in the queue, do I think more people would get their top choices? No. But I do think they would be able to get more things that truly excited them instead of just getting in a game to get in a game.

I had a bad experience again this year too. Spent hours going over event listings, narrowing down options, arranging them into a workable schedule, then prioritizing them on my wish list. Camped to site until the timer his zero, hit the submit button, got nothing for a moment...then a crash and 503 error. Resubmitted and ended up #5117 in line. All nine of the events on my list that were the reason why I was going to bother going to Gen Con again this year were gone, as well as the time I wasted figuring out what to do over the past few days.

I realize there is no "fair" system, but we can do better that "all or nothing". I wholeheartedly believe that a more fair system is to dump everyone's lists into one pool, NOT process the whole lists one at a time, then over the course of an hour or two process everyone's first picks ONLY in order of "submission", then everyone's second picks ONLY in order of submission, and so on. This would make sure that everyone that logged in when event registration starts has a fair shot at getting SOMETHING on their list.

Basically submit your list, get an email back in an hour or two telling you what you actually got into, then adjust your list after the mad rush is over and pay for what events you settle on. That is about as fair as you can get. Every paying customer getting something is better than a lucky few getting nearly everything and everyone else getting boned.

I had 5 total events on my list and since i didn't get home from being out of town till 2pm or so, i got into the 'queue' at around 2.20pm or so..  Other than ONE event already sold out, i had no issues.  And since i DID have an alternate event for the time slot of that sold out event, which i did get a tic for, i found this year rather smooth.

Not being salty at all here with this, and not sure if it'll be useful. Thinking on the fly... 

Back in the day, the process was getting the prereg event book in the mail, and faxing or mailing in your form with your event requests. There were first choice and second choice slots. You waited for a month or so, maybe two, and got your tickets in the mail, finding out then what you got. 

I didn't know as many attendees then, but people I knew just looked at that as how it went. You got events, or you didn't. As far as I could tell from talking to the folks selling event tickets at the con, the prereg forms were processed one form at a time when they came in. So in that way, like the queue today. 

My honest question is why people are upset now when it was just 'how things went' then. 

Is it because we expect something else because we think we can do better do to automation? Or is it something about the events, number of attendees, etc? There was a lot less in the way of variety of games back then, for example. A HUGE percentage of events were AD&D, and from my perspective, if I didn't get into my top choices, I'd play in another AD&D game. But if you're shooting for a Firefly game and there aren't any other Firefly games left, that would be different. 

Anyway, I'm just wondering if anyone else was around for the way back when days and has other insight. It seems to me that there's more complaining about not getting events now, every year (not judging by saying that), and I'm not sure why. Could just be that there was no forum to voice complaints before. 

Thoughts? 

The complaining is more visible because there's forums now, we're all required to be at the computer to try to get events (so the forums are right there to receive those complaints), and because attendance is higher.  (I doubt these suggested reasons are exhaustive, but they're three large parts of the equation.)

There was plenty of complaining before we had an online registration system, but it was talking with real people who were in the same boat while we all waited in the Will Call line (where you perhaps got nothing other than your badge) and the Tickets line (where you searched the physical book and filled out plenty of slips of paper with the numbers and names of events in the hopes that some of those tickets were still available).  I called it Line the LARP: The First Event Everyone Plays At Gen Con.  I played it every year in Milwaukee.

Over the years the online event registration system has had ups and downs on opening day.  Some of the downs were pretty big, like the year where it crashed so badly they had to reset everything and redo event registration the next day, or the year where a discussion of the ongoing yearly failures of the registration system (and a big misunderstanding about how people who weren't able to connect to the servers at all wasn't part of their data) was the catalyst for the VIG program.  Things have improved since then, thankfully.

Personally, the only issue I have with it is where the system does not work as intended and returns errors or just stops responding.  If everyone who was trying to get tickets could click the button, have the server return a proper response, and end up in the queue, then I would be content.  That doesn't happen currently; in the last three years I've had it work fine once, not get a response once, and return an error once.  It doesn't seem to be localized either, based on others posting here and elsewhere.  It's hard for us to know how many people are actually affected by these issues as our posts aren't solid data by any means, but the goal should be to reduce these sorts of seemingly solvable technical issues caused by the things under Gen Con LLC's control to none.

Note also that this issue is not and has never been directly about what events you get; it's about system failures and other technical problems not being the reason you had no chance at being early in the queue.  If 10,000 folks want to have a first wish list processed at the time registration opens, then they should all have a 1 in 10,000 chance of being first.  And, of course, a 1 in 10,000 chance of being last.  Been there!

Even if the current system worked perfectly, there's still improvements I would like to see to how it works.  Some of the things we've suggested (with discussion happening in other threads) would likely alleviate the pressure of "you must be at your computer at this time so you and everyone else can try to connect to the server within the same couple of seconds" that contributes to the errors and no-responses and thus might solve the above issue on their own.  Other suggestions are about how the chances at events are parceled out.  Not surprisingly, not everyone agrees on if or what changes should be made, and that's fair.  In the end, it's Gen Con LLC's decision on how to spend their resources.

The big downer is that I'd probably put more time into discussing improvements if we hadn't been mostly posting the same things for the last 10+ years.  What was that definition of insanity again? :)

Oh I remember various people complaining in pre internet days of not getting into events they wanted. But it was never the system that was to blame. I didn't hear back then people talking about the entire method of event reg as bad. 

I'm with you on the system working, that it should :) 

But one of the reasons I posted that is because through all of this, every year, part of the static that has helped confuse the issue and dilute the discussion is that there are people whose complaint does come down to "this system is bad because I didn't get what I wanted". The page load errors are the system not working. But the way the queue is handled does not seem to be an error, but rather a feature.

The problem is every year that two discussions are taking place at once--fix it, and change it. And they get conflated for many people.

I am not wise on all of these things, but I do know that I do not have a way of knowing whether the problem is on the Gen Con server end or on the users ISP side, or on one of the myriad of connections between the user ISP and Gen Con server. Some of the problems are probably due to server load (especially at the time the registration opens) where others may not be. The fact I do see is that there are is a relatively small number of people overall who have experienced problems and have complained about it on this forum. With that in mind, it is probably not enough complaints to warrant an investigation on Gen Con's part. Now, I personally have never had any issues registering for events other than my wish list disappearing (found out it was because I left it for too long) this year. As brotherbock stated, many complaints come down to "this system is bad because I didn't get what I wanted", which does not do anything to help fix any problem if one exists. If you didn't get the events you wanted because they were sold out when you registered, did they sell out because you ended up being #5000 in queue and you were only picking from the most popular events? Did you end up in the place in queue because you didn't understand how the system works? 

Here are some the complaints that I have observed that may need to be addressed:

1) There could be a better explanation of what will happen to your wishlist once you click on "submit" and what you should do. There should be an intermediate page you go to after you do hit submit to let you know that you did indeed click on submit, and that you should just wait until the list is processed. The intermediate page should tell you to click "refresh" on your browser window until a button to "pay for your events" or the next step is available. 

2) There should be something that tells users that "submitting" your wishlist again will cause you to be re-entered into the queue, and make it harder to double-submit your wishlist.

3) In the case of 503 errors or other connection errors, there needs to be something on the registration site where users can diagnose their connection to the Gen Con registration server to see just where the problem is. The connection test should be a part of the submission process PRIOR to the wishlist being submitted, again, to help Gen Con identify if they have server issues or if the user has the problem (or the problem is somewhere between). 

4) There really should be NO reason to have to keep refreshing your page once you have submitted your wishlist for processing. This could be resolved by simply an email or SMS message to the user to let them know that their wishlist has finished processing and they have XXX amount of time to complete the registration. This would take the responsibility for making sure you complete the process out of Gen Cons hands and place it in the hand of the user. 

Again, I am not an expert by any means. And I am sure there are many more things that should be addressed. I am just trying to identify some of the problems people are experiencing. Keep in mind, what percentage of users are experiencing the same problem? If it's too low, then it may never be fixed as there really may not be a "problem" at all rather, a glitch unique to some users. If the percentage of users experiencing the same problem is above 10%, then there is definitely a problem somewhere and this needs to be identified correctly so a fix can be implemented.

Not trying to diminish or dismiss that some have experienced problems registering/submitting the wishlist, and with the billions of possible computer configurations out there, I can guarantee that some people will experience problems. 

I created a database of 8,000 events with variable seating capacities and 60,000 wishlists of varying length and had it run by looking at all lists trying to get into a given event at the same time rather than processing lists sequentially. Runtime was 30 minutes with code I made no attempt to optimize.

People saying a more fair process couldn't be done are just plain wrong.

Yeah, I think people are more angry about losing events due to system failures than the loss of the events themselves. I think there's a general feeling that GenCon, as the longest-running game convention in the world, should be better than that, especially with attendance constantly increasing.

Am I in the ballpark?

Dbachman, care to show your work? Without opportunity for review, it doesn't mean much. =/

This issue really should be taken somewhere else, a different thread. Again, not dismissing it. But the comparative fairness of different methods of handing out tickets is not the same issue as fixing issues that make the current system crash. 

By posting about these two issues in the same thread, you're creating more static for people, including people at GenCon, to sort through if they want to talk about solutions. 

Peace. 

Dbachman, care to show your work? Without opportunity for review, it doesn't mean much. =/

What exactly is your background such that you can offer code review and yet not see how simple the parameters are for modern computers to deal with? Fact of the matter is I did not even use professional level software (what I have at work) to test out the approach. If I  had the results would have taken less time.

The question here is your basis for questioning the results I put forth. Are you saying they are too good to be believed? That I didn't write and run code against a database of events, attendees, and wishlists?

a "fair" way would be to not process the entire wish list of the people at the front of the line...I think the biggest problem is that the current system produces winners and losers instead of a compromise where no one might get "everything" they want but everyone gets "some" of what they want.

 aaronmlopez wrote:
 The fact I do see is that there are is a relatively small number of people overall who have experienced problems and have complained about it on this forum.

As the number of active posters here constitute a very small percentage of the overall attendees at Gen Con, I'd caution against extrapolating too much from the sample size.

A 503 error code means your request got to the GenCon server, the server evaluated it, and responded by saying roughly : "Sorry, I can't handle this right now, try again later."

https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html

There seems to be fewer people complaining about not getting into certain events this year.  This might be because Gen Con has a LOT more events.  There are still thousands of good events in the catalog.

However, the people in which the system crashed and didn't work for them have a valid complaint.  This should be (and I am sure it is) looked into and worked on by Gen Con.  I think the biggest issue was hitting refresh during the time the server was slow and hod not updated the users browser with their place in line.