How to get 5 real choices when selecting a new Linden Home (Premium)

[Lahaina Jonstone]

I understand the following: Warning: Please use this reasonably: if you abandon and choose a new Linden Home five times in 24 hours, you are temporarily blocked from choosing another. You will need to wait 24 hours before registering again.

However,

when I select  and check it out a new  home alternative to find it is NOT what I am looking for...then abandon and choose another - it brings me back to the same choice over and over.  This means you get ONE  not 5 choices in a 24 hour period...right?  Or am I doing something wrong?

[Alwin Alcott]

when there are not a lot of homes within the same theme available, the chance the get one come back several times is a normal behavior. The system doesn't look if you had it before.
Keep a longer time between the choices gives a better chance on a different location.
( or try another theme)

Edited December 28, 2023 by Alwin Alcott

[Lahaina Jonstone]

Thank you.  I will try your suggestions. 

[LittleMe Jewell]

23 minutes ago, Lahaina Jonstone said:

when I select  and check it out a new  home alternative to find it is NOT what I am looking for...then abandon and choose another - it brings me back to the same choice over and over.  This means you get ONE  not 5 choices in a 24 hour period...right?  

You are correct and we've complained about it multiple times. LL chooses to not do anything to change it though.

Edited December 28, 2023 by LittleMe Jewell

[AzureWaves]

Yep, they chose not to do anything. Your best bet is submit a support ticket and plead for mercy, maybe they'll assign you your choice.

[Nika Talaj]

If you have Firestorm (I'm not sure about LL's viewer), you can easily check your teleport history to see if the name of the property you last teleported from is still "Linden Home".  If there are few available properties in the theme you want, you may wish to wait until someone else claims the property you just abandoned. 

If there are a lot of properties available, for me it usually works to simply wait for 15 minutes or so before claiming a new property, regardless of whether the one you abandoned has been claimed. I usually get a different one then.

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

This is likely the reason that when you get a home there is often someone nearby "suspiciously" watching. That person is often the prior owner waiting for the home to get claimed before they try to grab their next one.

People used to do that all the time when there were less available homes so the chances were high it would get claimed quickly. These days an abandoned home could be the next one on the list or could stay empty for months as the list is often just too big - but I still see the odd person doing this waiting. Probably someone at the 'end of their frustration' over getting it handed back to them repeatedly.

I really don't understand why LL doesn't fix this. It's as simple as attaching a small list / array onto your session storage or web cookie showing all the linden homes your account had held in the last short amount of time - a variable that wouldn't take up much space, and could be read and used to filter the table of potential results.

 

As an exercise in futility and yelling into the wind... some pseudo code to show how simple a fix could do it:

priorRecentHomes = checkCookies(recentLindenHomes); // Put your recent picks out of the browser cookie

getSeletectedHome() {
	newHome = rollChoice(availablehomes.length) // Do a random check of anywhere on the list of availables.

	if (priorRecentHomes  && priorRecentHomes.contains(newHome) && availablehomes.length > 3) getSeletectedHome();
	// recursive run until it doesn't pull the same home again. By contrast if there are 3 or less of that home theme available, you're stuck with what you get.
	// You'd also just get what you got if you had no recent homes or had refused to let it save a cookie.
	else return newHome;

}
updateSessionCookie.add(newHome);

 

Actual code would probably be of not much more complexity than that... and we'd have a fix.

Given that it'd be easy to fix this, and yet hasn't been fixed - it's clearly intentional that you can waste your picks on the same result.

 

It sucks as an answer - but if there is a particular home you want out there, the reliable option is to go premium plus for a month. Spend a day or two grabbing one home from each theme to get all their build kits, then put in a ticket for your desired choice.

Edited December 28, 2023 by UnilWay SpiritWeaver

[Lahaina Jonstone]

6 hours ago, Nika Talaj said:

If you have Firestorm (I'm not sure about LL's viewer), you can easily check your teleport history to see if the name of the property you last teleported from is still "Linden Home".  If there are few available properties in the theme you want, you may wish to wait until someone else claims the property you just abandoned. 

If there are a lot of properties available, for me it usually works to simply wait for 15 minutes or so before claiming a new property, regardless of whether the one you abandoned has been claimed. I usually get a different one then.

 Good hint. Thank you.

[Lahaina Jonstone]

5 hours ago, UnilWay SpiritWeaver said:

This is likely the reason that when you get a home there is often someone nearby "suspiciously" watching. That person is often the prior owner waiting for the home to get claimed before they try to grab their next one.

People used to do that all the time when there were less available homes so the chances were high it would get claimed quickly. These days an abandoned home could be the next one on the list or could stay empty for months as the list is often just too big - but I still see the odd person doing this waiting. Probably someone at the 'end of their frustration' over getting it handed back to them repeatedly.

I really don't understand why LL doesn't fix this. It's as simple as attaching a small list / array onto your session storage or web cookie showing all the linden homes your account had held in the last short amount of time - a variable that wouldn't take up much space, and could be read and used to filter the table of potential results.

 

As an exercise in futility and yelling into the wind... some pseudo code to show how simple a fix could do it:

priorRecentHomes = checkCookies(recentLindenHomes); // Put your recent picks out of the browser cookie

getSeletectedHome() {
	newHome = rollChoice(availablehomes.length) // Do a random check of anywhere on the list of availables.

	if (priorRecentHomes  && priorRecentHomes.contains(newHome) && availablehomes.length > 3) getSeletectedHome();
	// recursive run until it doesn't pull the same home again. By contrast if there are 3 or less of that home theme available, you're stuck with what you get.
	// You'd also just get what you got if you had no recent homes or had refused to let it save a cookie.
	else return newHome;

}
updateSessionCookie.add(newHome);

 

Actual code would probably be of not much more complexity than that... and we'd have a fix.

Given that it'd be easy to fix this, and yet hasn't been fixed - it's clearly intentional that you can waste your picks on the same result.

 

It sucks as an answer - but if there is a particular home you want out there, the reliable option is to go premium plus for a month. Spend a day or two grabbing one home from each theme to get all their build kits, then put in a ticket for your desired choice.

I am looking for a stilt on water.  Still only 4 available.  I had no idea what I was getting into when I let my last home go.  Oh well, live and learn.  Thanks for your input.

 

[Lahaina Jonstone]

6 hours ago, Nika Talaj said:

If you have Firestorm (I'm not sure about LL's viewer), you can easily check your teleport history to see if the name of the property you last teleported from is still "Linden Home".  If there are few available properties in the theme you want, you may wish to wait until someone else claims the property you just abandoned. 

If there are a lot of properties available, for me it usually works to simply wait for 15 minutes or so before claiming a new property, regardless of whether the one you abandoned has been claimed. I usually get a different one then.

i tried to copy the lm and look at it before choosing, but that did not work.  Guess I will have to keep trying until my luck changes.  Thanks for helping.

 

[xViXeNx71]

I know the frustration of this.

I've been trying to get a nice home in the Chalet theme. It's not a very popular theme as you may know, with over 2500 available homes. 

There are lots of empty waterfront homes that I'm trying to get, but I keep getting the same homes over and over and over. Sometimes I get the same one three times a day. Makes me want to pull out my hair lol. It really seems like the homes that are at the top of the list will stay there, and go back to the top of the list when you abandon them, even when there are 2500 others available?

I also noticed another thing: some empty homes are in the "Linden Department of Public Works" group, and others are in the "Maintenance" group. I think the ones in the Maintenance group can't be claimed off the land page, and alot of homes stay in that group for months. Does anyone know more about how that works? 

[AzureWaves]

1 hour ago, xViXeNx71 said:

I also noticed another thing: some empty homes are in the "Linden Department of Public Works" group, and others are in the "Maintenance" group. I think the ones in the Maintenance group can't be claimed off the land page, and alot of homes stay in that group for months. Does anyone know more about how that works? 

Homes in the LDPW group are homes that have never been claimed by anybody. That’s how unpopular Chalets are. Save yourself frustrations and just go premium plus to ticket it.

[elleevelyn]

On 12/29/2023 at 11:13 AM, UnilWay SpiritWeaver said:

Actual code would probably be of not much more complexity than that... and we'd have a fix.

the main issue is when the Random function has a uniform distribution. meaning any of the available Homes have as much chance of coming up on each roll as any other home.  When so then is possible for any kind of Not-The-Same-As-The-Last function to go catatonic. "Catatonic" being a qualitative description

for example there are 10 homes available. We have 5 homes (we have seen and abandoned) Homes [1,2,3,4,5] on our Not-The-Same-As-The-Last list. We try for another home next day. The random method selects a home in the range [6..10]. Say is 6. We abandon the No. 6 Home as well. No. 1 home is added back into the available pool. We try again for homes [7,8,9,10,1] and get No. 1 Home again. Our Not-The-Same-As-The-Last list is now [3,4,5,,6,1] and the available homes are [7,8,9,10,2]. And we get No.2

whats the probability that we only get to see one different home each day that we have not already abandoned ? 5/5 * 1/5 * 1/5 * 1/5 * 1/5 = 5/3125 = 0.16%

and the probability to see all 5 available homes in 5 rolls, abandoning them all:  5/5 * 4/5 * 3/5 * 2/5 * 1/5 = 120/3125 = 3.84%

96% of the time we will see 2, 3 or 4 homes that we didn't see yesterday

we could extend the Not-The-Same-As-The-Last list to more than 5, but at some point we run into sizing issues. Like our Not-The-Same-As-The-Last list could be equal to the size of all available homes minus one

this all said. A way to do this is to not use a random uniform distribution function. To use a biased "random" function. And the most biased "random" function is an Arithmetic Feistel Network algorithm which will produce only one instance of each number in the range in some random-looking order. A LSL example of this is here:

with this algorithm then we get to see all 5 available homes in 5 rolls in some 'random' order

[xViXeNx71]

It already would make a big difference if an abandoned home would go to the bottom of the list, instead of the top.

Maybe not so much if there are only a few homes available, because you will get the same homes at some point anyway, but like in my case, with over 2500 available homes in this theme, it would make a huge difference!

[DemeraraGirl]

5 hours ago, xViXeNx71 said:

There are lots of empty waterfront homes that I'm trying to get, but I keep getting the same homes over and over and over. Sometimes I get the same one three times a day. Makes me want to pull out my hair lol. It really seems like the homes that are at the top of the list will stay there, and go back to the top of the list when you abandon them, even when there are 2500 others available?

I know this feeling. 

I was trying to get a Mediterranean and even there were lots of homes in stock, I was getting the same houses over and over. 

To avoid this, before every try, I had to certificate that the last house I abandoned was already claimed by someone else.

[xViXeNx71]

12 minutes ago, DemeraraGirl said:

To avoid this, before every try, I had to certificate that the last house I abandoned was already claimed by someone else.

At least that works with a theme that's high in demand, but in my case, I seem to be one of the few ones that are trying to get a Chalet, so that makes the chance of someone claiming and keeping my unwanted homes close to zero 😞

[Raspberry Crystal]

@xViXeNx71
I abandoned a really lovely waterfront chalet this morning, I hope you are able to get it!

Edited January 3 by Raspberry Crystal

[Love Zhaoying]

There was a "Game of Homes" thread where people worked on timing "trades". Not sure if that is still active..

[xViXeNx71]

1 hour ago, Raspberry Crystal said:

I abandoned a really lovely waterfront chalet this morning, I hope you are able to get it!

Thanks for the heads up, that would be awesome!

[DemeraraGirl]

1 hour ago, xViXeNx71 said:

At least that works with a theme that's high in demand, but in my case, I seem to be one of the few ones that are trying to get a Chalet, so that makes the chance of someone claiming and keeping my unwanted homes close to zero 😞

I think the best option is upgrade your avatar to PP for just one month to get your dream home, then downgrade to Premium. I claimed a Chalet that way last year.

[Teresa Firelight]

yea I did what DemeraraGirl suggested myself a few times. If you plan to keep the house for a while, the extra $18 for 1 month is worth it. If you dont plan to stay for at least several months, then I would just go with rolling.

[karynmaria]

18 hours ago, xViXeNx71 said:

I know the frustration of this.

I've been trying to get a nice home in the Chalet theme. It's not a very popular theme as you may know, with over 2500 available homes. 

There are lots of empty waterfront homes that I'm trying to get, but I keep getting the same homes over and over and over. Sometimes I get the same one three times a day. Makes me want to pull out my hair lol. It really seems like the homes that are at the top of the list will stay there, and go back to the top of the list when you abandon them, even when there are 2500 others available?

I also noticed another thing: some empty homes are in the "Linden Department of Public Works" group, and others are in the "Maintenance" group. I think the ones in the Maintenance group can't be claimed off the land page, and alot of homes stay in that group for months. Does anyone know more about how that works? 

 

This happens to me when I am trying to find a houseboat.  I even get the same houseboats weeks later.  Or get the same houseboat 2 - 3 times in a row.  Even after waiting between tries.

[Always Incognito]

I Also had this problem some months ago when i tried for some weeks for a camper (had mainland too at that point). I got the same over and over regardless of time of day, waiting x hours between and so on. So I gave up eventually. Its seriously very annoying…. 😕

[Wellan37]

me after 3 try january 3 i got a nice log house  near water

[Logan Elf]

I don't think there's any randomness involved in the selection. It just simply selects the first house owned by governor linden from a database table and sets you as owner. Abandoning just sets the owner field in the table back to governor linden (thus making it available again for selection). Database rows normally get returned in key order, so the earliest released houses will always be the ones that get chosen first, hence the unwanted house always coming up if there is no other activity.