Endtime of events (yet again)

Heartstone

A bit of background first. When VIP was introduced, I took a subscription because it was kind of interesting and you (d3go, oktagon) also have to live.

Not much time later, we played the very first RAW event. I had a perfect score and was pretty happy, until I realised that I would not be able to play the last round. That round started at midnight (Belgium) and ended at 4AM. As I have to get up early, it was simply impossible. I was so angry that day that my motivation to play dropped to zero. In the end, I just stopped my subscription and promised myself I wouldn't restart it until the problem was solved. The reasoning was simple: I won't pay for a game that I cannot win because of bad organisation.

Two months ago, I started my VIP  subscription again. Same reason as before: you guys have to live and I want the cards. On top of that, a few months ago, Brigby promised that you were working on a solution.

And guess what?
This weekend,  we had the first "seize the day" event. It's a nice, fun event, and hey, I have a perfect score!
And I won't be able to play the last round because, you know, it starts in the middle of the night 

Now, if it was only that,  I would be repeating myself and would not have bothered writing this. 

But today's RAW has its last round at midnight, which means that you expect people to play somewhere until 1AM (the matches do take long this time) and get up again at 6AM to play the last  round(s) of STD...
Who ever thought such a planning was a good idea? If you cannot or will not change the software, you could at least make the timing between different events livable.

I know no-one is forced to play every event,  but when a player has some ambition,  he will play as many events as possible. I'm currently playing in a top-10 team (hey guys! ), so yes, I do have that ambition.

I will play the last round of RAW tonight, out of respect for my teammates, but I won't play STD... Instead of ending first, I'll probably finish 50th or 200th...  just look at the price distribution to understand how tinykittied I am. l don't remember who,  but someone once remarked in this forum that MTGPQ was a game, not a full time job. I couldn't express it better.

So, once again, I will stop my VIP  subscription, and this time, I really won't start it again until the end-time problem is solved.
There have been a lot of suggestions on how to solve it easily, so I won't repeat those here, but if you want an extra possibility,  just look at your slightly older sibling Marvel puzzle quest. 

I do hope I will be able to start VIP again quickly...

Wolfbane

I could not agree more with the OP.

Last night at 23:00 I put my Phone down having finished all my charges for STD, comfortably placed in a top 200 spot since I lost a match and missed two objectives. This morning when I picked-up my phone I found a fresh charge per node as expected with 3 minutes left to play these nodes. My standing had droppen from my top 200 position and at least a booster and some crystals to bottom rung position in 3000-500 Without a way to do something about that. 

I just lost hunderds of places in the ranking and the rewards to go with that. Not through my own fault but due to shoddy planning and the persitent ignoring of the players on these forums who have been asking to extend events for at least 8 hours after the last charges have been released.

@Oktagon_Support could you please explain to us players why we keep getting ignored on this?

I've been around since the days of SOI but days like this makes me question whether the game is still worth my time.

Regards.

TheHunter

I couldn't agree more and I've posted about this before. I cancelled my VIP a while ago because of this geographical discrimination and other reasons.

I've also a mind to ask for my 15 gold back from entering Seize the Day, an event I couldn't do well in unless I was willing to stay up all night. Like the posters above I slipped from an OK position (would've scored some goodies, boosters, etc.) down to 800th because I was clock-blocked from fighting the last nodes.

What's infuriating is that the solution is so simple @Oktagon_Support . If it's, say, a 2 day event with a total of 6 fights per node, just make 3 fights available on day 1, then refresh them at the start of day 2. If a player loses unplayed nodes, tough luck they had 24 hours to play them whatever their time zone.

In the meantime, I'm going back to only entering free to play events to collect the personal rewards, and Rising Tensions which at least offers worthwhile rewards for the time/cost committed. None of the ranked events are worth fighting for if you live in the wrong place.

Volrak

I agree it's a problem which would definitely expand the appeal and reach of the game if solved.

Xucachris said:

If it's, say, a 2 day event with a total of 6 fights per node, just make 3 fights available on day 1, then refresh them at the start of day 2. If a player loses unplayed nodes, tough luck they had 24 hours to play them whatever their time zone.

That's a solution I haven't seen posted before, and I think it's not a bad one.  It effectively makes the recharge time 24 hours, but gives multiple charges per recharge (3 or 4) instead of one.

A different solution would be to create a "maximum charge limit" attribute for each event, and stop nodes from accumulating further charges once the maximum is reached.  On most events, a suitable maximum might be one less charge than is currently accrued.  The differences between that and "make final charges last twice as long" (which has been suggested before) are:

• No need to mess with any timing code on client or server, including timing display and event triggers on timer.  It'd just need a condition added to the recharge code, and would need new display code on client to show progress towards the maximum charge limit.
• Players who missed a charge early in the event could catch up in the final recharge (since if they lost a charge their final recharge would not exceed the charge limit)

Gideon

Devs please consider changing the structure of events. We have offered multiple suggestions on how to do this over the past years. Please please please implement one of them and if it doesn’t work you can just try a new one.

NickBKK

We have been asking Dev to help on this issue again and again and again. 

It’s a serious problem that disrupts people’s lives.

Please treat this matter as a top priority if you want to improve this game.

jtwood

I think the most reasonable suggestion consistently put out there is to simply make the last charges last much longer

bk1234

jtwood said:

I think the most reasonable suggestion consistently put out there is to simply make the last charges last much longer

This is what I have advocated for. The last charge should be longer, not shorter. 12 hours not 6. Easy solution, I think. 

madwren

jtwood said:

I think the most reasonable suggestion consistently put out there is to simply make the last charges last much longer

Indeed, this has been brought up several times (as have other suggestions) and this seems like one of the easiest to implement.  This is one of the most obvious quality-of-life improvements that MTGPQ could make to satisfy its playerbase.  It's astonishing that four years on, it persists. 

Volrak

madwren said:

jtwood said:

I think the most reasonable suggestion consistently put out there is to simply make the last charges last much longer

Indeed, this has been brought up several times (as have other suggestions) and this seems like one of the easiest to implement.  This is one of the most obvious quality-of-life improvements that MTGPQ could make to satisfy its playerbase.  It's astonishing that four years on, it persists. 

I've mentioned in the past that I think this is harder than people assume.  I haven't seen the code, but doing the above seems likely to require rework of timing code on both server and client systems, both of which may well have the notion of charge duration being constant for an event embedded as a design assumption, which would mean in turn that if different charges became different lengths in the same event, any number of things you weren't expecting could break in different areas of the code, which you possibly couldn't even find up front by any kind of search over the code.  That would be a deep rework of hard-to-scope but potentially large sections of legacy Hibernum code which are probably fragile, and are definitely game-critical.

My suggestion in this thread has a similar effect to making the final charge last twice (or X times) as long, but avoids needing to change to any timing code.

madwren

Volrak said:

madwren said:

jtwood said:

I think the most reasonable suggestion consistently put out there is to simply make the last charges last much longer

Indeed, this has been brought up several times (as have other suggestions) and this seems like one of the easiest to implement.  This is one of the most obvious quality-of-life improvements that MTGPQ could make to satisfy its playerbase.  It's astonishing that four years on, it persists. 

I've mentioned in the past that I think this is harder than people assume.  I haven't seen the code, but doing the above seems likely to require rework of timing code on both server and client systems, both of which may well have the notion of charge duration being constant for an event embedded as a design assumption, which would mean in turn that if different charges became different lengths in the same event, any number of things you weren't expecting could break in different areas of the code, which you possibly couldn't even find up front by any kind of search over the code.  That would be a deep rework of hard-to-scope but potentially large sections of legacy Hibernum code which are probably fragile, and are definitely game-critical.

My suggestion in this thread has a similar effect to making the final charge last twice (or X times) as long, but avoids needing to change to any timing code.

Thanks for the coding insight, Volrak. It's appreciated.

I think that to the non-coders (such as myself), there's very little semantic difference between "make the final charge last longer" and "stop accumulating charges so the gap between last charge and event end is longer".   The result on the player end would seem to be the same--an increased length of time between last charge and event end.

We know they can control the number of nodes and duration of events, at least up to a limit that is irrelevant to us (i.e, we've had very long events, and up to 5 nodes, and no one wants more.)

We also know they can alter node timing so that they have up to 8 hours between refreshes. We don't know if they are able to have longer intervals; at least, I don't recall any 10- or 12-hour refreshes.

Thus, at the least, even if they cannot alter the timing, I'd assume they at least extend the event duration to "refresh minus one hour", thus giving the maximum possible time for the final node to be completed (7 hours on an 8-hour refresh interval).  I seem to remember that we've had varying lengths of time between final node and event end, though that could just be my faulty memory because I'm old.

Opperstamper

In Elderspark the last charge is just as long as the time between any other charge in the event. That is the only one that I recall that's different from the rest, at least in currently running events. 

WiLDRAGE

The simplest solution is to give everyone all their charges immediately when the event starts.

Let people play however they want without having the fear of losing nodes to a refresh because they couldn't play or having to wake up at ungodly hours of the night to not miss out on the last charges.

jtwood

WiLDRAGE said:

Let people play however they want without having the fear of losing nodes to a refresh because they couldn't play or having to wake up at ungodly hours of the night to not miss out on the last charges.

What? I enjoyed setting an alarm to wake up at 3am to finish my last charge on CotC this morning

Julie71

@jtwood said:
(Quote)
What? I enjoyed setting an alarm to wake up at 3am to finish my last charge on CotC this morning

I to enjoy setting my alarms at 2:30 am to clear nodes, before I clock in at 5am for work.
Now while some of my friends think I never sleep. (I do) barely lol. I also have a top 10 team that is as dedicated as myself. So who needs sleep. @Oktagon_Support . This girl does. So please for the sake of not only my teammates sanity, my alliance members sanity. And y'all's cause we will not go quietly into the night we will not give up without a fight. Oops Independence day quote. Well you get the point. It's easy to make us happy 😊.

Claimh

This rotgp has been going on since Friday and is now ending Tuesday morning at 3am where I’m at. That’s a whole week taken up for a weekend event. Please fix this.

jtwood

@critman said:
How come when this issue is brought up for the umpteenth time, the thread is left unmoderated, but when the issue of the STD boosters is again raised, the thread is deleted?

Probably because that issue was actually weighed in on by the company, whereas this topic has largely been unaddressed.

(Which I post at 3am local in order to finish my CotC charges)

bk1234

@Claimh said:
This rotgp has been going on since Friday and is now ending Tuesday morning at 3am where I’m at. That’s a whole week taken up for a weekend event. Please fix this.

I actually love RotGP because it’s our only event left that ends with boss health.

I set my alarm to wake up and play it at 6 am Tuesday morning ❤️

I miss the days when we had tons of PvE boss health events. They were fun for coalition friendly competition and inner teamwork!

bk1234

@jtwood said:

@critman said:
How come when this issue is brought up for the umpteenth time, the thread is left unmoderated, but when the issue of the STD boosters is again raised, the thread is deleted?

Probably because that issue was actually weighed in on by the company, whereas this topic has largely been unaddressed.

(Which I post at 3am local in order to finish my CotC charges)

There is a difference between something being “moderated” which means it’s being tended to in accordance with forum rules, moved to the correct place, etc — which is my job, (I am a volunteer player and cannot speak on behalf of D3Go! or Oktagon on game issues) and “addressed” which means your concerns are responded to by an official representative of D3Go! or Oktagon.

The thread in question was a rules violation and was handled by the volunteer moderation team. Your concern here is a game issue and should he handled by an official representative of one of the companies who produces or develops the game.

Aeroplane

I might be in the minority here , but no game should force you to set your alarm for the middle of the night . I believe all charges should be up front for weekend coalition events to make scheduling easier and for a more relaxing session of game time, especially, when the load times for this game are taxing. I can look past all the bugs and monetary changes because the coalition is what make this game fun. If they were to fix this major issue I could see a surge in returning players who have left for this reason alone.

bk1234

@Aeroplane said:
I might be in the minority here , but no game should force you to set your alarm for the middle of the night . I believe all charges should be up front for weekend coalition events to make scheduling easier and for a more relaxing session of game time, especially, when the load times for this game are taxing. I can look past all the bugs and monetary changes because the coalition is what make this game fun. If they were to fix this major issue I could see a surge in returning players who have left for this reason alone.

Boss health is a different kind of gameplay. It’s a race to the finish. No one is forced to do anything. I play in a top 25 coalition where the only people who race the last charge when it comes down to the wire are those of us who compete against ourselves in PvE for perfect scores. It’s always a choice, there’s no individual scoreboard. Also, I would like to note this is the first time I can remember I’ve set an alarm.

I think they should offer this and a variety of other types of coalition events instead of one type fits all. The game caters to many different types of players and they should be offering and rotating a variety of competitive styles to meet everyone’s needs.

There is a large player base who likes the competitiveness of charges. Losing charges is part of the responsibility of logging in and the competition.

But back to boss health, the game also lost a large portion of the playerbase when they took away QB — there are many of us who like races. Coming up with more “race to the finish” type events in different ways might appeal to people. Adjusting Avacyn’s health so we could actually finish it as the boss health event it’s designed to be would be a nice start.