Why events do always begin at 12 am or pm est?

franckynight

Its a bit of a rant i must say.. But i dont understand why euro and asian players are always at a disadvantage with the timeline set on eastern time.. For us euro players, if we want to grind a pvp that ends at 12 pm.. We should wake up at 4-5 am to hope enter the top 5 (without shielding for 8 hours of course).. At 12 am.. I must be jobless cause its 6 pm in our timezone.. I know the vast majority of the community is western american people but if dp3 wants to turn global they must take into account the specificity of other countries.. Why not find a middle ground?

GumisK

Some time ago it used to be different - somewhere around the hunt, if my memory isn't failing me, the devs introduced a new tournament schedule, where the start times and end times varied more. I can't understand, why they've abandoned the idea, and I'd be glad to see it back, as it seemed much more fair to me than what's going on now.

franckynight

Agreed.. I enjoy my time playing mpq but i found it more and more difficult to be competitive.. It took its toll on me having to wake up 4 am daily just to rank in top 5 in pve thanks to rubberbanding or pvp to find opponents with enough points..

Unknown

It'd be great if they're able to find a middle ground. Although if they move the schedule forwards/backwards, wouldn't they just make it inconvenient for someone else somewhere in the world? How about regional bracketing? So when you're asleep, others would probably doing the same.

franckynight

Regional bracketing would be the ultimate answer but i wonder if it can be implemented.. Maybe having the choice between 2 timeline bracket.. 1 GMT.. 1 EST..

Unknown

franckynight wrote:

Regional bracketing would be the ultimate answer but i wonder if it can be implemented.. Maybe having the choice between 2 timeline bracket.. 1 GMT.. 1 EST..

I like the sound of that. I'm in asia, so if events start at 1AM GMT that'd be 9AM here. Not bad. I bet that would be a lot of work for the devs. But I think getting the option to choose is pushing it, maybe it's better that you're preassigned to one schedule depending on your location.

kensterr

3 PVE brackets, and you are only able to join one. EST, EST+8, EST+16... though that will make PVP events harder if it require featured character given out as PVE rewards.

MPQ burn out is real viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5560

Unknown

Although if they move the schedule forwards/backwards, wouldn't they just make it inconvenient for someone else somewhere in the world?

Yes, if it was a move from one fixed schedule to another. If the start times rotated from event to event, though, we'd all get a chance at handy start times.

franckynight

I snapped.
by Eddiemon » Mon Mar 31, 2014 9:02 am
Over the weekend I was look at my IPad as it called to me to hit refreshes and I realised I resented the demands on my time and to play to a schedule which includes 4am and 4pm as drop dead times that never rotate and just interfere with my work and sleep. So I'm done.

I feel him all the way...So true..

Unknown

Some games (e.g. Rage Of Bahamut) introuced a choice of start time for their events and it worked well for some things and badly for others. The good part (obviously) was that it allowed people to choose finish times that worked for them, but the bad part was rewards implementation and impact on Orders (see Alliances). The reasons for that were:

1. Because the reward was still based on global points, so you could finish your timeslot and then have an agonising wait to see if you did enough to finish in your reward tier (and no way of changing it if you looked like dropping out). Eventually it became clear that only the bracket finishing last was optimal.

2. Orders (Alliances) were global, so in team events the leader needed to make a choice of timeslot that inevitably lead to someone getting a bad deal unless the Order was all made up from one region. While MPQ is still more a single player-with-teams game, if it wants to go in the direction of Alliance based events with more interaction then timeslotting would be a consideration.

Hey, at least the current PvP event isn't ending in the middle of the night for once!

kensterr

DrUnpleasant wrote:

Some games (e.g. Rage Of Bahamut) introuced a choice of start time for their events and it worked well for some things and badly for others. The good part (obviously) was that it allowed people to choose finish times that worked for them, but the bad part was rewards implementation and impact on Orders (see Alliances). The reasons for that were:

1. Because the reward was still based on global points, so you could finish your timeslot and then have an agonising wait to see if you did enough to finish in your reward tier (and no way of changing it if you looked like dropping out). Eventually it became clear that only the bracket finishing last was optimal.

2. Orders (Alliances) were global, so in team events the leader needed to make a choice of timeslot that inevitably lead to someone getting a bad deal unless the Order was all made up from one region. While MPQ is still more a single player-with-teams game, if it wants to go in the direction of Alliance based events with more interaction then timeslotting would be a consideration.

Hey, at least the current PvP event isn't ending in the middle of the night for once!

It's ending 12 midnight for me

JamieMadrox

franckynight wrote:

Regional bracketing would be the ultimate answer but i wonder if it can be implemented.. Maybe having the choice between 2 timeline bracket.. 1 GMT.. 1 EST..

I really like my solution for this that I posted in another thread http://www.d3pforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5931&p=109627#p109627

charlesjbarry wrote:

A better option would be to use current location data to place people in ladders that open and close at relatively unobtrusive times for that time zone. Right now for me the events open/close at 1am or 1pm. Both are terribly inconvenient as I'm either wanting to be asleep or at work. A better option would be to bundle all players from three time zones in to ladders that end at 11pm in the middle time zone of the three. For example: Central, Mountain, and Pacific time zone players end at 11pm Mountain Time.

Unknown

I think setting up a system where you set a preferred end time somewhere in the default settings - the smaller the increment the better - and then get placed in a bracket with other people who chose the same time might be ideal. You could always change it, keeping people from locking in to something terrible, but even if they chose increments as small as 2 or 3 hours, that's only 1/12th or 1/8th of the playerbase respectively - assuming ~100,000 people play per event, that about 8,000 or 12,000 per range of brackets - 24 or 16 brackets (assuming 500 per) per time increment (again respectively) Even lower participation increments would probably have multiple brackets.

Unknown

For the last big event, on the last day, when i went to bed i was 1st of my event, at 0:30am. The end time was 5am in France. Final result when i woke up : top 200, only one human torch cover and few HP. So frsutrating.

Unknown

We always bring up Magic as a comparison it seems, but I keep thinking of how drafts work at my local store and on MOTO. As soon as a pod fills up, fire it off. I wonder if something similar would work for this game. If a PVP tourney is going to run for 48 hours, then allow brackets to fire off during the first 24 hours, and as soon as they fill up, set the end time to be 48 hours from that moment (thus making the full event window 72 hours, but only 48 playable). I seriously doubt that for PVP events, it would take more than an hour (and likely less) to fill up a pod. You're therefore "guaranteed" an ending time similar to what your starting time is. And for PVP, I seriously doubt that the extra play time for those who sign up at the beginning of a bracket vs. the end would have any significant advantage.

Any brackets that get created after the first 24 hours of availability would have the 12 p.m. or 12 a.m. EST ending time.

Perhaps a little convoluted, but I've come to really like the "fire and forget" start times for Magic draft events (especially when I was a judge - so easy just to set 8 people down at a table and let them at it).

Unknown

Lets face it, there has to be a better solution. PvE events would be pretty much fair if they were just grinds, but the whole rubberbanding dynamic destroys equality of opportunity.

It's ending 12 midnight for me

That's still a metric F-tonne better than 4am/5am.

Unknown

The OP has a reasonable gripe.

IMHO, the real problem is that with any event, it is what you do in the last few hours that matters the most. If they could find a way to minimize that, it would likely make things easier on players outside North American time zones.

kensterr

DrUnpleasant wrote:

Lets face it, there has to be a better solution. PvE events would be pretty much fair if they were just grinds, but the whole rubberbanding dynamic destroys equality of opportunity.

It's ending 12 midnight for me

That's still a metric F-tonne better than 4am/5am.

True, but sometimes after a tiring workday I have to force myself to stay awake, unlike sleeping early and waking up early. I guess this game will always be one man's poison another man's meat. >.<

Having said that, eventho there are 2 million downloads I think the number of active daily players are much much lesser, hence the reluctance to make timezone-based events or different servers. It is something that would be great for us the non-US based players, but most likely very low on Demiurge priority list.

Unknown

Man... this thread calls for a "this is 'Murica! deal with it!" type of posts.

Seriously though, Noon and Midnight EST is NOT very helpful for me either. Between my work, the wife & kids, trying to stay awake until midnight to smash puzzles is pretty damned hard now a days.

When black panther covers were being issued, i fell asleep at 11pm (by accident) and woke up at 12:30am just missing it.

Man I sound old now. Holy cow! Is Matlock on? Or Perry Mason... I need my prune juice

Unknown

I live in North America and 11 a.m. is middle of work day and 11 p.m. is later than I want to be awake. I know 4 a.m would be worse but it isn't always ideal here in the US either.

kensterr

Pretty sure this will complicate things more, but how about:

A bracket of 1000 players
Have it within the game for players to choose maybe 3-4 timezones of choice, but all PVE events run at standard EST time and ends at EST time.
Out of 1000 players, lets say 400 chose EST, 300 chose EST+6 and remaining EST+12
While competing you'll see where you are in general in the bracket, but when rewards come in, you're only competiting with people in your timezone... Hence someone who is #5 can be the #1 in EST+6 and get the #1 reward as well. This means that there'll be more same rewards handed out, but I think players will not burn out too soon and still enjoy the game. This will screw up the Alliance rewards, but maybe that can still be overall total points regardless of timezone brackets.