Trial of the Planes Schedule

Steeme

Hi, I'm posting a separate topic to isolate only the scheduling part of the Trial of the Planes event.

It is currently a "weekday" only event and each cycle runs for 24 hours. To put things into perspective, it is Monday morning right now and it started around 3:00am EST.

I typically work long hours Mon-Fri, and then take the weekend off. So this would apply to anyone that doesn't have much time to really sit down and dedicate a chunk of time during the week.

These are the issues with the current schedule:

1. We already have regularly schedule events during the week.

I manage to find time to participate in the regular events at a minimum through basic progression. I don't have the time to participate in those events and add another potential 12 matches of Trials on top of that.


2. The event runs on a timezone based schedule.

Based on my work-life schedule, I basically have a portion of my day before the Trials event cycle begins. That means if I wanted to actually pay the 60 crystals and participate, I would pretty much have to start after the cycle begins (3:00am EST). By that time, I'm already at work and going full steam ahead, while I can play a few matches here and there I cannot play through a potential 12 matches before my day ends.

To put it into perspective, if your event started at say 12:00am midnight, I would be in a better position since I typically wake up before 10:30pm. That means there is a wider timeframe for me to spread the matches across my day. However this may put someone else in a worse position. Hence it is a timezone based schedule.


3. The event is only 24 hours.

If I pay the 60 crystals and choose to participate, the event will expire based on a ticking timeclock instead of when I am able to finish the charges. This is not real life friendly at all.

Some scenarios:
a) I don't think I have enough time to play all my charges. Due to the entry fee and poor up-front rewards, I choose not to participate in the first place.
b) I think I have enough time to play all my charges, and pay the entry fee. I start playing but end up not having enough time to finish before it expires. I've then paid the full entry fee but only managed partial participation. Again due to the poor up-front rewards, it is not worth even starting the event unless you are guaranteed to be able to finish on time.

While I agree you should be able to start a new event every 24 hours, I disagree that your event should expire that quickly.


4. The event runs only on weekdays.

I'm sure you have a reason for this. But I think you should reconsider. Trials of the Planes should be something that is available on the weekend as well. I was playing quite a bit of QB this weekend in order to complete platinum mastery of Green and Black just so that I would be ready to participate in the Trials when the opportunity arose. What I'd like to say is QB is quite boring unless you have a real purpose, but if you had Trials available on the weekend then you might get more participation as there is more time available.

In addition, Trials could be something that players could participate in while waiting for their nodes to recharge in the large weekend events. Typically I play my charges then go off and do something else, either play DDO or Hex TCG all weekend. But sometimes I like to pull the plug on those games and just play MTG PQ casually, this would be your opportunity to break into that "weekend gaming" territory.


Thanks


I had time to post this because our DBA took the database down and is struggling with the upgrade :-p

Ohboy

I want to jump on and suggest again that these events be available for play at the player's discretion.

I'm not sure I understand why the event isn't considered good value, and yet being able to grind it would simultaneously by considered abuse.

Regarding weekends though, we got another 2 day event, which I see as a free entry jewel earning event. Do we really need more events over the weekend when we already now have a pvp and pve one running simultaneously?