Events that update every eight hours: oddly unfair
DNA3000
Member, Guardian Guardian › Posts: 19,658 Guardian
The featured item thing going on right now apparently updates every eight hours. Previously MODOKs recharged entry every eight hours. Kabam seems to believe that updating something every eight hours is a reasonable thing to do. I think its weirdly unfair. The problem is that for most players in the game, something that updates every eight hours is no big deal. It is not hard to check on it once in an eight hour period. But there are a small subset of players that will consistently get disadvantaged by events like this due to their sleep schedule just happening to align with the eight hour cycle.
For me in the HST time zone, the eight hour schedule Kabam uses falls on twelve midnight, eight AM, and four PM. Its very close to my sleep schedule. People eight hours ahead of me and eight hours behind me will face a similar situation, as will people in other time zones who sleep on a different schedule.
No matter what schedule you pick for an event, there will always be someone somewhere that just coincidentally lands in an unfortunate time window. But cycling every eight hours on the same schedule every time seems to specifically disadvantage far more people than is necessary or reasonable. You could avoid almost everyone's sleep schedules by cycling longer windows than eight hours - cycling twice a day every twelve hours would miss everyone but the narcoleptics.
I *usually* wake up before eight or else stay awake past midnight so I'm unlikely to miss any of the featured items. But in the case of MODOK I missed quite a few because running MODOK itself took time and at one point I was sleeping a little more than eight hours (not important why).
I can understand if maintenance happens at a certain time every time and I can understand when scheduled events that take place over an entire day start at the same time, like AQ or the AW week. But events or sales like this last for less than a day and in my opinion cycle with the worst possible period: eight hours. Cycling every two hours means everyone misses some of them. Cycling every twelve hours means almost everyone sees all of them. Cycling every eight hours means about 80%-90% of all players see all of them without any difficulty and 10%-20% of all players miss one out of every three consistently, or come close to it. That seems like the worst of all possible things to do in the interests of being as fair as reasonably possible.
I'm not specifically worried about the featured item sale, I'm worried about the notion that Kabam thinks eight hour cycles are a good thing when making a game for humans that average something in the general vicinity of eight hours of sleep a day. If the cycle was two hours ahead or two hours behind what it is now I would practically never have a problem with it. But many others then would. You're always going to align with a slice of people. I'm not asking to shift the schedule, because that would just shift the problem to other people. I'm suggesting that it is the eight our interval itself that needs to be rethinked. And next time it might be something more valuable.
For me in the HST time zone, the eight hour schedule Kabam uses falls on twelve midnight, eight AM, and four PM. Its very close to my sleep schedule. People eight hours ahead of me and eight hours behind me will face a similar situation, as will people in other time zones who sleep on a different schedule.
No matter what schedule you pick for an event, there will always be someone somewhere that just coincidentally lands in an unfortunate time window. But cycling every eight hours on the same schedule every time seems to specifically disadvantage far more people than is necessary or reasonable. You could avoid almost everyone's sleep schedules by cycling longer windows than eight hours - cycling twice a day every twelve hours would miss everyone but the narcoleptics.
I *usually* wake up before eight or else stay awake past midnight so I'm unlikely to miss any of the featured items. But in the case of MODOK I missed quite a few because running MODOK itself took time and at one point I was sleeping a little more than eight hours (not important why).
I can understand if maintenance happens at a certain time every time and I can understand when scheduled events that take place over an entire day start at the same time, like AQ or the AW week. But events or sales like this last for less than a day and in my opinion cycle with the worst possible period: eight hours. Cycling every two hours means everyone misses some of them. Cycling every twelve hours means almost everyone sees all of them. Cycling every eight hours means about 80%-90% of all players see all of them without any difficulty and 10%-20% of all players miss one out of every three consistently, or come close to it. That seems like the worst of all possible things to do in the interests of being as fair as reasonably possible.
I'm not specifically worried about the featured item sale, I'm worried about the notion that Kabam thinks eight hour cycles are a good thing when making a game for humans that average something in the general vicinity of eight hours of sleep a day. If the cycle was two hours ahead or two hours behind what it is now I would practically never have a problem with it. But many others then would. You're always going to align with a slice of people. I'm not asking to shift the schedule, because that would just shift the problem to other people. I'm suggesting that it is the eight our interval itself that needs to be rethinked. And next time it might be something more valuable.
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who doesn't
Dr. Zola
I would never make a public suggestion that only benefited myself. Nor would I ever make a public suggestion that violated a game design constraint. And if it literally only affected the GMT-10 time zone I probably wouldn't make the suggestion either, because then it would be something designed to only affect people in Hawaii and certain Alaskan islands: you could make the case that was the smallest number of people you could possibly impact. But this also affects GMT-2 and GMT+6 in the same way, and also affects some small percentage of people in all other time zones with shifted schedules. A rough estimate would be that this affects something in the neighborhood of 10% of all players or more. And the same ones every time.
As Dr. Zola notes, I'm unlikely to significantly impacted by the current sales themselves, and of course since you can buy things in about one minute it is not very difficult to check it quickly in the morning. But while I mentioned it during the Modok event I assumed that was a one-off, so I let it go. One's an anomaly. Two might be a coincidence, but I'm pointing out the issue before it becomes a pattern.
AQ also starts (and ends) at a relatively inconvenient time for me, especially during daylight savings. But I don't ask for that to be changed, because no change that helps me isn't likely to hurt even more players elsewhere. I don't make those kinds of suggestions. I'm suggesting something that would help a group of players that happens to include me, at essentially no one else's expense.
I also had a third option, which I chose to exercise.
What’s a choise? Is it similar to a choice?
I'm not saying that missing an event is the problem. I'm saying that aligning the schedule so everyone who misses an event in one day is likely to miss them on every day is the problem due to schedule alignment. If the schedule is not aligned with a twenty four hour day, like the seven hour event is not, then the events will move around relative to people's schedules and everyone will have the same mix of good alignments and bad alignments, which is intrinsically fair.
The seven hour events repeat constantly, and their schedule lasts indefinitely. So over time things will average out. Event schedules that last for a shorter period of time and align with a twenty four hour day affect players in a fundamentally different way. It is not fundamentally a problem if players cannot take advantage of every possible limited time opportunity, nor am I advocating for a change that makes that possible in and of itself. As I said in the post I assume you read, a system that changed every two hours is equally fair to everyone even though now everyone is likely to miss many events. Everyone would be missing approximately the same amount of time (or at least would be presented with a similar set of opportunities to meet and miss them), which is still entirely fair.
Its when you pick between a set of alternatives, in the eighteenth century.
You can theoretically buy two items 16 hours apart during the day. But the sale that starts at midnight cannot be purchased until after midnight, and must be purchased before 8am. That's not a huge problem on paper, but it leaves very little margin for error. And as I said, its not specifically about the sale where about the only thing you have to do is log in, its how problematic the eight hour window would be for events where you would need more time to complete the activity than just logging in and pushing a button to buy something.
I agree 100% but this is not an event and as you pointed out it involves pushing a button to simply confirm a purchase. I think this time it works. Other times I would gladly agree, but this time I say it is a good setup. That said I purchased nothing as it is overpriced this first round.
I've worked continuously for more than 24 hours without a break at times, or been in secure environments with no external internet access, or had other unusual situations where game access was limited or otherwise impossible but I do not believe that is a sufficiently reasonable parameter for a game developer to honor.
Also, had you read my post you should at least acknowledge that I explicitly make a distinction between suggestions that would help some players at the expense of others verses suggestions that would help some players at no one's expense. Limiting the game to only be available when the worst case scenario player was able to play would be penalizing the overwhelming majority to benefit the extremely few. Accordingly, sarcasm set aside, I find your proposal to be unacceptable and your definition of fairness to be inconsistent with mine.
I would add some happy faces to the original post to indicate that I was not sobbing when I wrote it, but the edit window for the post has expired. However, I can assure you that had I been crying about a game sale I would likely not have taken the time to compose a post about it. I would be seeking psychological counselling, after first setting my iPhone on fire.
i dont think kabam will cater to 1 persons sleep cycle, please remember that some people are awake longer/shorter than others and people live in different time zones, thus its more convenient for one time zone than it is for another, this is not an inconvenience to most people and thats what kabam is worried about, they are more concerened about the majority than the minority,thank you for understanding
I feel a 12 hour window with a few more fights but better rewards would have been better overall. It could have resulted in the same amount of rewards and number of fights but would allow greater flexibility as to when players could have opted to enter the quest. That would seem like a postive change to me! Choice is always nice.
Good Luck
Having larger windows on events would be a good change. It doesn't hurt anyone. However, it gives people more choice. Why not? There's no need for some of the player's reactions in this thread. Ironically, those insinuating the OP is whining are actually make whining comments themselves over someone's comments about a game. Lol. Now of course I see the irony in my own comment but still....what's the harm in someone vocalising their opinion in what they feel would be a positive change at no detriment to others?
I'll now shut up. Bring on the hate and the trolls.....
Thank you for your feedback, however since I specifically stated that I did not want Kabam to change things just to fit one person's schedule, that the schedule would affect different people in different time zones and with different schedules in different ways, and that the current use of eight hour schedules does affect a minority of players but a significant minority that can be avoided entirely without shifting the harm to any other player, I believe I have done everything possible to accommodate every one of your concerns.
dude are you really crying about someone making a post on an internet forum lol. just live your life first then worry about internet posts about a game. im sorry but this post is just sad.
I'm sure for every suggestion posted on the forums there will be people who agree and people who disagree. I respect both of those just fine: if I didn't want people to voice their opinions I would PM the moderators privately instead. But if the best you can do is snipe, at least be interesting or amusing when you do. Also, did your keyboard run out of capital letters when you created your forum handle?
That being said if I’m swamped at work it may be more then 6 hours before I log in