Update to Territory Battle Timers - 8/25/17

Carrie

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We’d like to thank all our players for their feedback regarding our Territory Battle Overview post. We read and take all your feedback seriously, and appreciate everyone taking the time to help improve the game. As you know, we’re always working to make the game as good as we possibly can. As such, we and would like to provide an update to the schedule along with some additional information.
Updated / Initial Schedule: 6AM PDT/1PM UTC / 24 hour timer
Due to the excitement and engagement around the new feature and based on your feedback – we are going to launch the feature with 24 hour phases. They will start at 1PM UTC (for all players) on Wednesdays and end at 1PM UTC on Tuesdays. This will be to give you all time to learn the feature, get to understand its nuances better, and begin to figure out how to work together as a guild. We do plan to return to smaller windows based on feedback and data points, once familiarity is achieved. We will keep you up to date on these changes so you don’t get caught off guard.
We also wanted to share some thinking around the original schedule, along with additional information about the feature.
Playtime per Phase
Some players raised concerns about the amount of time required to complete all Missions in a phase. While every unit provides value via Deployment, not every unit is used in combat. Four squads and one fleet are the maximum required in any one phase. We have done a lot of playtesting and on manual battle, each phase typically takes 10-25 minutes, based on the phase and the player’s available roster.
Original Schedule: 6AM start time / 12 hour timer
Another similar topic raises concerns around the commitment required during work hours. Information that we didn’t previously state is that the event will normally run from Friday – Sunday (technically 6AM on Friday to 6AM on Monday based on the Guild Leader’s time). For players that have a typical Monday-Friday work schedule, Phase 1 will be the only phase during work hours. Furthermore, Phase 1 requires the least amount of time commitment (~10 minutes), vastly minimizing player dependency in that phase.
The choice to pick 6AM/6PM as the start/end of phases was based on looking at when the vast majority of our players play the game, which includes heavy play throughout the 6AM to 6PM window (player local time) and the evening window. We wanted to make sure that it aligned with other timers in the game, such as the Squad Arena prize payout, to minimize the number of necessary check-in points outside of typical game behavior. Making the time later, as requested by some players for work hour concerns, would not work for the vast majority of players.
For international Guilds, we sympathize that your hours will be offset from the intended 6AM to 6PM if your guild leader is in another timezone. Our hope is that the combination of the majority of the event being on the weekend and the 12 hour session being longer than a typical sleep cycle will accommodate your Guilds as well.
Thank you and keep the feedback coming!
Finally, thank you for all your feedback and participation in this community. We are very excited about this feature and look forward to sharing it with all of you, and appreciate what an incredible community this is.
See you on the Holotables!
-Carrie

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