Event End Times

Linkster79

Before I get too carried away in what may seem like a "Woe is me, its not fair I am from Europe" type rant I agree there are no "ideal" event end times that will suit everybody.

First Avenger, Hollow Point Kiss, Hot Shot, and Good Is Bad all had very early am end times for us in Europe. In order to place highly we have some options. 1. Stay awake until 5am for the finish. 2. Stay awake until 2am and purchase a 3 hour shield. 3. Go to bed at a respectable time and purchase an 8 hour shield. 4. Work our **** off to get to the top of the leaderboards, dont shield and get ripped apart by the horde and lose in excess of 300 points in the final few hours. Personally I always go with option 2 but it is slowing down growth of HP stores (yes I am a tight **** free player, circumstances beyond my control force me to be).

Captain 'Murica had a slightly more acceptable end time of mid/late afternoon, which isnt that great if you are in education or regular employment. Now we are back to silly o'clock am with Smash Hit.

My suggestion is that instead of events running for 48 or 60 hours how about fixed 62hour events? This way every timezone eventually is catered for in an even manner, every PvP event is a fixed duration so those who wish to can adjust their daily lives to suit and those who dont at least can plan a strategy.

Linkster79

Really no love for EU players on end times.

Apart from 1 PvP and a few Hunt sub events everthing since I made my OP has finished early am.

The Hunt, a Hunt sub event and Doctors Orders all finish 5am BST. On a Monday morning!

I will admit that I gave up caring about The Hunt the moment community scaling ruined it for me (day 2) but give us some chance to save our hard won HP and not have to use the 8 hour shielding only to find that 700-800 points may have been good for top 10 but turns out was only good for top 25.

Unknown

Early morning end times:

1. I won't be late for work
2. I don't have to change my day schedule, to be home earlier from work
3. I don't need to take my laptop with me and after work look for a place with free Wi-Fi and grind sitting in a car
4. I can spend evening with my GF
5. Hell, I can even spend a night with her, just sneaking away to other room (PC player) near dawn.

Win/win situation for me

Unknown

What if at the start of an event there were 3 nodes to choose from.

Each one places you in a bracket with a different start/end times, spaced 4-8 hours apart.

Everyone plays the same length of time, in a bracket of people who more closely match your play times.

JamieMadrox

Here's my suggestion on how to fix event start/end times from the discussion at http://www.d3pforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5931:

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.

Linkster79

Wow D3 really want to stick it to the rest of the world. Top Gun, Simulator Round 1 (normal amd hard) and Simulator all early AM finish.

Are they having a bubble? The 2 biggest issues on the forums at the minute is scaling and event end times. 1 issues is so much easier to fix than the other yet it seems as though they have no desire to.

Linkster79

Back to this old horse to flog it a bit more.

NHB Elite x2, Simulator sub events x2, Simulator itself and the latest PvP all finishing at 5am UK time. I know IceIX said it was being discussed but does it really take this much discussion by the development team?

I have worked my proverbials off to get good placements in Simulator but really shouldnt have bothered as I do not match their geographical ideals. If they want to focus on the North America continent then please just remove the game from the EU Play/App stores. As it is the rest of the world gets the royal screw job on pricings.

Frailezim

I was just about to type out a thread about this.

It's beyond a joke now. A regular strategy for PVP is to join the last 3 hours or so and grind like hell. This is not an option at 2am on a Sunday morning. How difficult is it to provide at least one **** option to your European base?

There have been countless threads about this...

mohio

Honestly, it's not all sunny over here in Southern California (okay fine, it is). It's really draining on me/my family to take an hour between dinner and bed time to play a game. Sure I could just not do that, but then I lose out on my best chance to place well. My wife also works long hours so often that is our only family time, so losing out on that every couple days is not something I would like to continue. I would love to see some kind of rolling schedule that was suggested above (i.e. everything 62 hours, or 58 hours or whatever) or even allow me to choose my event's end time within a 12 or 24 hour window (either by joining time or different options while joining the event). I can certainly understand the issues behind implementing these changes sooner, but I feel like the player base is large enough now to support it.

quadiak

The one and only thing that matters and will ever likely matter, is that all the important people living in the eastern time zone in north america can have end times during their lunch break.

quadiak

Btw I am mountian time.

Unknown

I think that they do try to cater for the different time zones by ending the events with a 12 hour difference. I.e. some events finish at 2pm Australian eastern time, and some at 2am Australian eastern time. 2am is as bad as what some EU users are facing.

I believe they do this because of staffing issues as end of events is always crunch time.

Ideally instead of the 12 hour end time difference, 6 hours would be good. That way all time zones have a decent end time. yes some events won't suit you but it will suit others and so rotating the end times by 6 hours makes it fair for everyone.

Bowgentle

prash wrote:

I think that they do try to cater for the different time zones by ending the events with a 12 hour difference. I.e. some events finish at 2pm Australian eastern time, and some at 2am Australian eastern time. 2am is as bad as what some EU users are facing.

I would _love_ 2am instead of 6 am.
I could grind like a madman until the last 3 hours and then use 75HP instead of the minimum 8hr shield I have to use now unless I feel like playing until 3am to shield up.

Unknown

I'm in the same boat with the 2am and 2pm finishes and while the 2pm is ok for me on weekends it doesn't help during the week when I am at work at that time. First part of the simulator I missed the end and it will be the same with the last part. 6 hour changes would give me events ending at 8am and 8pm which would be fantastic!

Unknown

Bowgentle wrote:

prash wrote:

I think that they do try to cater for the different time zones by ending the events with a 12 hour difference. I.e. some events finish at 2pm Australian eastern time, and some at 2am Australian eastern time. 2am is as bad as what some EU users are facing.

I would _love_ 2am instead of 6 am.
I could grind like a madman until the last 3 hours and then use 75HP instead of the minimum 8hr shield I have to use now unless I feel like playing until 3am to shield up.

The only grinding one should be doing at that time of the day is with their lover. Doesn't D3 understand this?