Weekend event: please not on monday?

andrewvanmarle

Can we stop having the whole monday in the weekend event? 

it usually means I can't'play all the charges that accrue during the day.  (yes, because I must work, haha)

please?

FindingHeart8

I like the monday addition

Basically gives players (who had weekend obligations) a chance to catch up.

But I agree that there shouldn't be any extra charges accruing monday, so basically if you can complete the event by sunday you shouldn't have to play anymore monday.

andrewvanmarle

FindingHeart8 said:

I like the monday addition

Basically gives players (who had weekend obligations) to catch up.

But I agree that there shouldn't be any extra charges accruing monday, so basically if you can complete the event by sunday you shouldn't have to play anymore monday.

Oh that would be a really nice change!! giving people a little more breathing room....

gogol666

Or they could give us all the charges upfront and let us play at our pace
#allChargesUpfront

Laeuftbeidir

I don't like the Monday either. It's annoying at best, not playable at worst.

Stop it on Sunday. Add Tuesday to Thursday AWR, or add a comparable event - the only coalition event so far I wouldn't mind seeing during the week.

joerginger

I requested they stop running weekend coalition events until Monday several times in the past.

Anyway, when it's until Monday evening here, in Asia or Australia it runs most likely well into Tuesday, doesn't it?

FindingHeart8

joerginger said:

I requested they stop running weekend coalition events until Monday several times in the past.

Anyway, when it's until Monday evening here, in Asia or Australia it runs most likely well into Tuesday, doesn't it?

yeah, they live half a day in the future.

Mburn7

The biggest issues for this is the timezone issue.  For me, the events end at 1 or 2 pm on monday, which means I only have 1 charge to deal with at work (which I can sometimes finish on my morning commute).

For people farther West the event will end even earlier on Monday.
But for people in Europe it must run pretty much all day Monday, maybe even with 2 or 3 charges to clear, which I agree is difficult when you have to work.

If the event ends at, say, midnight GMT Sunday (technically Monday?  I'm never sure how to describe midnight) then it ends late night Sunday for the Western Hemisphere, super late night (or super early morning) for Europe, and early morning Monday for Asia.  Is that better?  Or worse, since a chunk of players will have to wake up at like 3am to finish?  I'm not sure if its possible to find a better solution.

[Deleted User]

Mburn7 said:

The biggest issues for this is the timezone issue.  For me, the events end at 1 or 2 pm on monday, which means I only have 1 charge to deal with at work (which I can sometimes finish on my morning commute).

For people farther West the event will end even earlier on Monday.
But for people in Europe it must run pretty much all day Monday, maybe even with 2 or 3 charges to clear, which I agree is difficult when you have to work.

If the event ends at, say, midnight GMT Sunday (technically Monday?  I'm never sure how to describe midnight) then it ends late night Sunday for the Western Hemisphere, super late night (or super early morning) for Europe, and early morning Monday for Asia.  Is that better?  Or worse, since a chunk of players will have to wake up at like 3am to finish?  I'm not sure if its possible to find a better solution.

With the current setup, I think no matter how it is changed, someone will be affected. For instance, there could be people that work on weekends and less so on weekdays, some may work nights vs days, etc, etc.

Therefore the best solution is (that I can think of):

1. This:

gogol666 said:

Or they could give us all the charges upfront and let us play at our pace
#allChargesUpfront

2. Having a 12-24 hour window with no new refresh before the event ends.

However, I have a feeling main issue is that the current system has to be overhauled (the node recharge function/timers) in order to implement 1 and 2; and therefore, requires too much work to change now, especially considering their workload and time available.

Despite all this, there is one other solution which would be to increase the refresh timers to 12 hours and have the event end on the 11th hour; thus, preventing another refresh from happening while giving a decent amount of time to clear charges. If this is implemented the number of nodes per event would have to be increased to accommodate the lack of recharges. Then the starting charges would have to be increased to accommodate both the number of nodes per event as well as the 12 hour refreshes to ensure its not too much or too little. And finally, the maximum number of charges a node can carry would have to be adjusted based on the starting charge as well as the other things. Fine-tuning and balancing would work.

bk1234

I would love for the 3 day events to start on Thursday and end on Sunday. 

Right now Sunday is the “slow day” — all the other events run Monday - Saturday. I’d like to see them run Sunday - Friday with Saturday as the “slow day”. 

Brakkis

I'd just love for 3 day events to not exist. Nothing needs to last that long. Not the PvE events, not the PvP events.

Though that's just me. The other solutions of having either the final charge last 12 hours so everyone has a chance to get things cleared up or just giving everyone all their charges up front both sound very acceptable and reasonable to me.

DBJones

All charges up front would be great! Otherwise, I personally would like node recharges to be shifted to x every 24 hours. Events are already split into days + 7 hours at the end. This would give players 24 hours after the start to play charges before the first refresh, and allow 23 hours at the end. The only coding change needed would be the ability to add multiple charges to a node at once, the rest would just be timing and max node charges tweaks.

andrewvanmarle

I. Like finding hearts idea of letting the event end 24 hours after the last charge making Monday a grace period for that work weekends and not a burden for those that work modays

[Deleted User]

I think their coding doesn't allow the 24 hours.

Its almost like the refresh timers cannot be stopped once started, which is why events end with 6 hours remaining as opposed to any number that is 8+. Its as if, the refresh at 8 hours will always happen?

DBJones

Seems likely, that's why I suggested adjusting the refresh time. We know they can do that because they've made it shorter for some things. Giving all the charges at the start is also something we know they can do.

James13

I consider refreshes to be a necessary thing to maintain app engagement.

Similar to "stamina" timer mechanics in others apps it's a method for ensuring your playerbase engages with the application periodically over extended periods.

My predictions would be: without recharges you will have a portion of the base stating that "there is nothing to do" after they clear their charges immediately after any given event begins.  You will have another subset that will clear, then develop a habit of not returning until new events, leading gradually to not bothering to log in ever again.  A subset that will be happy with the changes without any real change of overall behavior.  And so on.

I'm not sure dailies are enough to drive consistent app engagement.

To try to head off spinning my statement into something it's not:  No I'm not calling up front charges a bad thing, but one does have to consider the hidden costs of that.  There's a balance of concerns, and not all of these things that have to be balanced apply to every player or involved party (company).

bk1234

While many of these are great ideas, I still think it's best to focus on things that don't require programming. There are so many other things that need to be fixed. Moving the entire event schedule back a day would be the best immediate solution that doesn't require huge game changes. 

joerginger

James13 said:

I consider refreshes to be a necessary thing to maintain app engagement.

Similar to "stamina" timer mechanics in others apps it's a method for ensuring your playerbase engages with the application periodically over extended periods.

I would assume that most players would keep logging in regularly about every six hours for sure to pick up their free booster, so I believe giving all charges up front would solve more problems than it could potentially cause.  I admit that I spent an awful lot of money for crystals, purples, PW bundles and unfortunately even mythics that rotated out of standard ages ago, but even a lot of money doesn't get you anything at all in this game, so those 30 - 45 orbs just can't be skipped.

I doubt that a significant amount of players would skip their dailies since all resources are needed in huge amounts, so I don't think that deliberately skipping TG or AX is a widespread phenomenon.

I understand your position, I just don't agree that having all charges available at the start of an event causes significant hidden costs. In addition, I don't expect everyone to clear all charges immediately. Just think of the 45 charges we had to go through in last weekend's Dragon War. That would take a lot of stamina to play them all in one session!

I think that having all the charges when the event starts would only help us to organize our time within and without the game better. I recently took a 'time out' and left my wonderful coalition because I was completely fed up with being a slave to the machine. When I go to work on Monday morning, I absolutely don't want to be forced to think about a game on my phone. But I have to! Because in case I miss one or even two rounds of charges that appeared during the day, my coalition will suffer badly and while I perhaps could shrug this away rather nonchalantly, most fellow members probably wouldn't...

Kinesia

In Australia I'm at GMT -10. For me it lasts until late Monday but _Friday_ night has absolutely nothing on the schedule at all.

My suggestion is to shift the starting time back 12 hours. (A whole day _might_ work, or maybe even 18 hours but would need to map out how it lines up for specific time zones...)


In terms of people complaining about number of days and nodes and charges (this conversation is going on outside these forums too), 3 days is necessary so that everyone all around the world has it cover the 2 days of the weekend, but it also helps people who WORK the weekend as they get 1 day too.
Making the last charge not happen but keeping the same end time would help relax a lot of folk.

gogol666

So, we have people playing at GMT+10 (Australia) and people playing at GMT-9 (US pacific). It seems very difficult to make the two extremes agree. Instead it is not. Solution:
- a larger max charges number: 4 more than the starting number gives a buffer of 32 hours before starting to lose charges
- a final buffer without no more charges to let complete the event: again 22 hours seems reasonable.

With this rule a 3 day event can start on thursday night/friday mornig and people can start playing on saturday without losing charges. Than they can play up to sunday evening or monday evening depending on the time zone.
Also, a 3 day event with a 22 hours buffer will have 7 full rounds if starting at 1 charge. For the case of TDW this mill make for 35 matches. 
And they lived happily ever after

Rhasget

Maybe try and post these ideas in the Suggestions & Feedback forum and will get attention. Don't know how much they read there but can't harm.