Brigby, pls help! B4T last recharge 1am & end 7am here. A Serious Plea for our health and sanity.

NickBKK

Shame shame shame ....

fiirst

@Brigby

if we cant have 24hr spare time to clear the event.
Can we have multiple Ending Time Slice (as per other game by D3)?

3 Time Slice (8hr gap) would be well fit for all global player.

NinjaE

It blows my mind that we are on the third page of comments on this topic, and there hasn't been any official reply.

Mburn7

NinjaE said:

It blows my mind that we are on the third page of comments on this topic, and there hasn't been any official reply.

Third page?  Try third year of comments.

My requests to bring back the old mana symbol loading wheel has gotten more official replies than this
(although that is also a really important request I have not forgotten about @Brigby )

NickBKK

Many people from my time zone who have been playing together for over a year are dropping off from the game.

Event ending early Monday morning with 6 hours recharge is beating them down.
The game is making it difficult for them to have “fun” or positive experience. 
This is one of the biggest issues the game needs to address.
We are giving you valuable inputs. You ignoring us is a big middle finger in our faces.

mayor

I suggested an easy solution but still no replies. At least @Brigby could say something, like I passed the suggestion to the team and I wash my hands.

Tremayne

@mayor - sorry to tell you, but this behaviour is as expected. 

Opperstamper

So are we getting an ETPS now?

NickBKK

Keep staying silent... Keep giving us 6 hours recharge... keep rubbing salt in our wounds... keep your customers unhappy...

Brigby

Hi Everyone. Sorry for the delay in responses. I've been picking up some more Production-related responsibilities lately, in order to help improve the game from a different approach, so it's been a unique balancing act for me.

@fiirst The idea of implementing different end times, like we do in Marvel Puzzle Quest, would definitely be the ideal solution, but unfortunately tech restrictions prevent us from being able to implement something like that right now. Adjusting recharge times to fit different time zones is also a challenge of figuring out what works best, but our team will be investigating that viability.

In the meantime, I'll personally be researching which are the major regions most negatively affected by this issue, particularly the ones where there are high organic installs but low PvE / PvP event engagement, and cross referencing those with scheduled event times. (This signifies high interest in the game, but things like event times may prevent them from being able to play as much as they'd like to)

Once we determine that information, our team will evaluate what options we have available to us. (For example, as a stop gap, potentially scheduling a percentage of events to have their times cater towards those regions, while we investigate a more permanent solution for the future.)

Narcoticsagent

Brigby said:

Hi Everyone. Sorry for the delay in responses. I've been picking up some more Production-related responsibilities lately, in order to help improve the game from a different approach, so it's been a unique balancing act for me.

@fiirst The idea of implementing different end times, like we do in Marvel Puzzle Quest, would definitely be the ideal solution, but unfortunately tech restrictions prevent us from being able to implement something like that right now. Adjusting recharge times to fit different time zones is also a challenge of figuring out what works best, but our team will be investigating that viability.

In the meantime, I'll personally be researching which are the major regions most negatively affected by this issue, particularly the ones where there are high organic installs but low PvE / PvP event engagement, and cross referencing those with scheduled event times. (This signifies high interest in the game, but things like event times may prevent them from being able to play as much as they'd like to)

Once we determine that information, our team will evaluate what options we have available to us. (For example, as a stop gap, potentially scheduling a percentage of events to have their times cater towards those regions, while we investigate a more permanent solution for the future.)

I really appreciate that we finally got some sort of response on this. But... is it really so hard to just have 2 charges applied at the end of the event? Researching and cross referencing seems like a lot of work to find a solution when something simpler and more direct is readily available. For me personally it does not matter when an event ends so long as theres only a 6 hour window I will not be able to reliably play competitively. I have a job where I am on call all the time and where I might have to work extra hours without warning. I have to travel. I have an infant. Any of these things can easily block out a 6 hour window. 

Volrak

Thanks for a response about this problem and for committing to look into it.

I'm concerned about this:

Brigby said:

(For example, as a stop gap, potentially scheduling a percentage of events to have their times cater towards those regions

For competitive players, I believe this would cause mostly pain, and very little gain.

To define the terms I'm using:

• Competitive coalition - A coalition in which all players are expected to play all nodes in all coalition events
• Competitive player - A player who belongs to a competitive coalition

Competitive players represent one extreme on a spectrum; they're likely to be your biggest fans, your biggest critics, and your biggest spenders.  The event timing issue affects not just competitive players, but players at many points on the "competitiveness" spectrum.  However, since the impact is fullest on competitive players, that is how I am framing my point.

The key thing to realise is that if any one coalition event contains a round of nodes which a player cannot play for timing reasons, then generally speaking, that one event is enough to stop him or her from being a competitive player.

The competitive players who were inconvenienced by the timing of any one coalition event prior to the introduction of RaW have already given up playing competitively.  Some might still play casually, while others have left the game.

RaW introduced new event timings which aren't present in other current coalition events.  If no change is made, the players inconvenienced by RaW will also give up.  The competitive players you'll have left are the ones who can manage playing all nodes for both the pre-RaW event timings as well as RaW.

Likewise, if you reschedule an existing event to a new finish time, some proportion of the existing competitive players will find they can't work with that new timing.  Many of those players will also eventually give up.

The above is what I've observed over many years from people joining and leaving competitive play.  I hope you will be able to identify some of the same impacts if you research the effect of time zone on competitive play as you described.

If the above is true, then the worst possible setting for competitive play would be to schedule coalition event end times evenly around the clock.  Then, even though everybody will find some coalition events convenient, very few players will find all coalition event timings convenient, and that's key: competitive players need all coalition event timings to be manageable.  Spreading the pain around via a greater diversity of event timings cannot increase the number of players who find all coalition event timings manageable; it can only cause a further reduction.

So I really hope you can put resources into developing "a more permanent solution for the future", to let you reach the full potential of the game's competitive player-base.

Volrak

starfall said:

Volrak said:

Competitive players represent one extreme on a spectrum; they're likely to be your biggest fans, your biggest critics, and your biggest spenders.

I would tend to agree with this instinctively, but I think it's a matter of opinion, isn't it? I suspect many on the forums would disagree. Do you have data about this from mobile games?

It's not something I can show you hard data for (and so if you find someone who has data, you should listen to them), but amongst the players I know, there seems to be a correlation between willingness to spend money and being in a more competitive coalition.  That certainly doesn't imply that all competitive players are big spenders; some don't spend at all.

Mburn7

Brigby said:

Hi Everyone. Sorry for the delay in responses. I've been picking up some more Production-related responsibilities lately, in order to help improve the game from a different approach, so it's been a unique balancing act for me.

@fiirst The idea of implementing different end times, like we do in Marvel Puzzle Quest, would definitely be the ideal solution, but unfortunately tech restrictions prevent us from being able to implement something like that right now. Adjusting recharge times to fit different time zones is also a challenge of figuring out what works best, but our team will be investigating that viability.

In the meantime, I'll personally be researching which are the major regions most negatively affected by this issue, particularly the ones where there are high organic installs but low PvE / PvP event engagement, and cross referencing those with scheduled event times. (This signifies high interest in the game, but things like event times may prevent them from being able to play as much as they'd like to)

Once we determine that information, our team will evaluate what options we have available to us. (For example, as a stop gap, potentially scheduling a percentage of events to have their times cater towards those regions, while we investigate a more permanent solution for the future.)

Oh wow, congrats on the promotion! (at least I hope its a promotion and not just more work  )

I'd say an easier way to figure out which regions are most effective is to just figure out what the local time is when each event ends and when the last refresh goes live (superimpose it over a time zone map would be easiest).

If both times are between 10pm and 7am local time in a region, there's definitely an issue.
Plus or minus 2 hours from that there may be an issue, but a less severe one.

NickBKK

Thank you for your response and looking into this issue @Brigby

I look forward to seeing a practical solution that will keep players enjoying their experience in this game.

Brigby

Mburn7 said:
Oh wow, congrats on the promotion! (at least I hope its a promotion and not just more work  )

I'd say an easier way to figure out which regions are most effective is to just figure out what the local time is when each event ends and when the last refresh goes live (superimpose it over a time zone map would be easiest).

If both times are between 10pm and 7am local time in a region, there's definitely an issue.
Plus or minus 2 hours from that there may be an issue, but a less severe one.

Thank you! And not to worry. It's just different work, not more.

Yes. Comparing event end times in different time zones will certainly be part of my methods used. Right now I'm working on comparing the results of A World Reborn (ends at 2am UTC) with The Dragon War (ends at 6pm UTC) to see how much that affects engagement in different and/or the same time zones.

Laeuftbeidir

Brigby said:

Mburn7 said:
Oh wow, congrats on the promotion! (at least I hope its a promotion and not just more work  )

I'd say an easier way to figure out which regions are most effective is to just figure out what the local time is when each event ends and when the last refresh goes live (superimpose it over a time zone map would be easiest).

If both times are between 10pm and 7am local time in a region, there's definitely an issue.
Plus or minus 2 hours from that there may be an issue, but a less severe one.

Thank you! And not to worry. It's just different work, not more.

Yes. Comparing event end times in different time zones will certainly be part of my methods used. Right now I'm working on comparing the results of A World Reborn (ends at 2am UTC) with The Dragon War (ends at 6pm UTC) to see how much that affects engagement in different and/or the same time zones.

From a data enthusiast perspective that sounds really interesting. From a more practical point of view that sounds like you're collection data to try to disencourage the smallest number of players possible while forgetting those will likely be the few who were able to remain active - instead of actually investing time to implement a real solution.