Good going GenCon.

This year was great. Letting people know their times in advance was wonderful. Pretty much the best implementation of a random lottery system style of fairness possible. Sure there is some tweaking to be done, maybe a little more guidance and advance notice to those seeking ADA rooms, but otherwise, a good improvement.

Keep it up. As systems go, this is my number two option out of many, and it looks to me you are implementing it well.

Just wanted to send a positive note in the midst of the many temper tantrums out there. they'll get over it. Or not; looks like you'll easily replace those that don't. You can't make everyone happy, especially the unreasonable. The current progress you are making, and use of Indy are the right choices, as shown by the convention growth. Good luck managing success, as that can be rough.

/A pleasantly surprised customer

 I didn't get a room and was shut out completely but I also realize there are just so many rooms and at least 10 times as many people so Gencon does the best it can making it fair for everyone. Would I love to get a downtown room, yes, am I staying at southport,yes, will I let it ruin my experience,NO.

I think some people are forgetting that this is actually the third year that badges were assigned lottery times that determined when they could try to get a room. The biggest difference this year was that you didn't have to log in at noon eastern to find out what that time was. You got 36 hours notice. Definite improvement.

Imagine if you play the lottery every day, and then for some reason, the lottery starts handing out tickets on the street to people who aren't interested. and one of those people win.  

THat's what happened

New system is great.  Getting a time frees up your day and next year people will know that if there past 3 just to go ahead and reserve a out of block.  Great improvement.

I thought it was good too. The only changes I would like to see is for them to ask about hotel rooms when you buy a badge or badges and only put those people in the lottery. Then I had to register each family member individual to maximize my odds. It would be nice if you registered a group of people they put you in the randomizer that many times and just sent you the best time. 

As far as the lottery itself, sounds like it went a lot better than in years when everyone tried to get in at once.  I know some have spoken out that it's the preferred method, but quite honestly not all those who are really looking forward to attending Gen Con have the time to sit in front of their computers all day mashing buttons or writing hack scripts or whatever else was apparently required to try and land a 'good' hotel.  I didn't get downtown which was kind of a bummer, but the lottery system still seemed like the best option in a situation that is going to leave a lot of people in the cold as far as that goes.  And I was actually very pleased with the discount on the hotel airport I wound up booking.

Everyone who goes out to get a ticket has an equal chance at winning.  In this case they just handed tickets out to everyone, regardless of whether they asked for it.

The guy who one didn't buy a ticket as a joke. He got it even if he didn't ask for it.

Giving everyone a ticket DOES decrease your chances at winning as you just went from competing against only other people who bothered to go out and buy a ticket to competing with everyone, even people that didn't want a ticket to begin with.

Big difference.

Gharris, I'm not sure that makes much sense. Only those who bought a badge were entered into the housing lottery. They all bought tickets!

If people weren't interested in their housing access, they wouldn't have logged in at their assigned time, and they wouldn't have booked a room.

Here is all people hear from this argument: I think that my ability to click a button at 12 noon should be rewarded, and makes me more entitled to a scare resource, a bloo bloo bloo!

Agreed with the OP. I haven't been attending GenCon for long, but from my position this seemed like a fair way to give everyone an equal chance at housing who wanted it.

There will always be complaints, but I think they did a good job. Still some minor hiccups they should work on correcting (namely the ADA rooms process which has been mentioned, as well as making sure their website is accurate. I've seen the other thread where someone complained that the new system's rules weren't on GenCon's own housing page, and that does seem a legitimate oversight that should be corrected.)

Still, a good system overall.

If you really look at it... How many people are actually complaining? ... It seems to be a VERY SMALL percentage of people who were trying to book housing/attendees. If 50% of people complained, then that would indicate a problem. But I imagine the legitimate complaints (not the "I didn't get what I want, so I'm mad" type) are less than 1% which is pretty darned good. So, WELL DONE GEN CON! It's not perfect, but you did a great job handling overwhelming demand for a small amount of product. 

If some who had a badge didn't log in to reserve their room at their allotted time,the opportunity they had passed to the next guy, which could have been you. You could have been 100 back in line, but in reality, be the 20th person served if 80 people didn't log in when they were supposed to and took a room out of circulation.

They didn't decrease your chance of 'winning' because -playing- required then to complete a reservation. And if they did..they were interested.

Everyone who bought a badge bought a ticket.  If they didn't care about the housing lottery, why buy a badge before the housing lottery?  It's not like they can't buy a badge in February or March or April or May or June or July - though the latter would be slightly more expensive.  They bought their badges at a time when buying them got them an entry into the lottery.  If they didn't WANT their 'winnings', all they had to do was NOT enter the portal, and their "winnings" would be available to the next person in line.

So your analogy falls flat for me, there.

I think the system worked great.  I LOVED knowing when I woke up on Saturday morning that I had my Sunday all to myself, and could make plans to do something, since I had a 7:15pm portal time and there wasn't going to be anything available downtown by then.  Beautiful. 

The only glitch I do see, that I think needs to be fixed for next year, is not requiring a 3-night minimum stay for /all/ hotels.  People with 4-day badges were locked out of outer rim hotels when rooms were still available because Fridays were gone.

Yep. One badge gave you one chance. But not everyone tried. People who tried won more.

This year people were rewarded regardless of whether they tried last year. They literally just handed a lottery ticket to everyone and didn't require them to do anything but claim their prize.

Last year if you went through the trouble of buying their lottery ticket by braving the housing portal when it first opened won more because they wanted it more than people who waited to see if they would get a winning ticket later.

Just handing out winning tickets regardless of willingness to go out and buy them (in this case, braving that housing portal) absolutely decreased my chance of winning because people won who otherwise wouldn't have been competing against me in the housing rush of previous years. Last year required effort, this year they just asked people at random if they wanted a prize. See the difference?

There is no difference. Your odds were not lessened. This ihas been explained. You only competed against those trying to register. Times given to those who didnt register didn't take rooms from you.