Allowing player to change their payout time - getting it right
From the road ahead, one of the things coming down the pipe is allowing players to change their payout times for arenas.
CG, please, when you make this change disconnect the free energy boosts that occur at noon/6/9 from these payout times and put them on their own separate player selectable payout times.
For me, 6PM arena payout is in the middle of dinner/family time, so pushing that back 2-3 hours will be great. If my energy refreshes are tied to that though, pushing the normally 9PM energy boost to 11PM/midnight would not be so great.
I imagine those working swing/graveyard shifts would love separate control of these as well.
CG, please, when you make this change disconnect the free energy boosts that occur at noon/6/9 from these payout times and put them on their own separate player selectable payout times.
For me, 6PM arena payout is in the middle of dinner/family time, so pushing that back 2-3 hours will be great. If my energy refreshes are tied to that though, pushing the normally 9PM energy boost to 11PM/midnight would not be so great.
I imagine those working swing/graveyard shifts would love separate control of these as well.
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Right, I'm suggesting they rethink that.
I didn't see it, but was wondering. So it's not just an arena payout adjustment, but a full game time adjustment?
Its probably more complicated than "rethinking" it.
It's all tied together and for it to not be is huge, and not likely to happen.
I'm not making any statements regarding the ease or difficulty of it. I'm just pointing out that if they want to get the most out of making a QoL around it, it should split the timers.
As a much requested feature, the ease of suggestions like this has a lot to do with it. if its difficult it could delay the QoL longer not allowing the player base to have it at all for some time.
Yes and no, while splitting the timers up would be beneficial to a degree. Keeping everything the same while allowing folks the ability to alter their arena payout, is also the better path. It makes it a double edged sword, you can tweak arena around but there is an associated cost involved, you may get your dream sweet spot for both arenas, but your energy tomes and daily reset might not be a good fit anymore. This in a way makes a person think very hard about what is the most beneficial change to make for your personal preferences, And it keeps the playing field relatively equal for all players. Which is likely the other large driving force behind keeping everything sync time wise.
The limitation of being able to change only twice a year I think already sufficiently limits that.
For someone who works a typical schedule being able to change PO times and have that be all or nothing is only a minor benefit.
So I can push my PO to later in the day so it doesn't conflict with my drive home/family time, and then have a late energy boost at midnight or 1 AM (not particularly ideal). Or I could move my PO earlier in the day so again avoid the drive home/family time frame, and instead spend an hour at work doing my arena battles - I'm sure my boss won't mind... Or I could bring my PO ~10 hours forward, oh wait, I'm getting my kids to school, and driving to work in that time frame, and of course then my noon energy boost would be at 1 AM.
As is I will still gain a minor benefit as I can push my PO an hour back. But that doesn't leave very much in the way of realistic flexibility.
The energy refreshes are fine as they are: log in, grab the energy, sim a few quick battles, and I’m out. But pushing in two separate arenas over 2 hours is a huge hassle if it falls at an inconvenient time.
Not to get too radical, but I’d actually like the option to have my fleet and squad arena payouts in the same hour. Now that both arenas have 5 minute timers, there’s really no reason not to be able to do this. I’ve done both arenas’ battles in the same hour before, when I was going to miss my fleet payout, and it was frankly a lot of fun, and saved time.
So yeah, I agree with the OP, let’s see about getting this done.
The existing system isn’t “relatively equal for all players,” because different players have very different schedules. It would be “relatively equal” if each player could adjust their payout to the hour most convenient for them.
That’s kinda the point of changing your payout times isn’t it? To make it convenient for the player?
However, having the times stay synced for energy bonuses, and day refresh , likely is to keep things equal , relatively speaking for all players. Hence the if you want arena moved to here, outside of say working graveyard shifts , then you also have everything adjusted accordingly,
The payout changes being player controlled basically are only allowing you to pretend you installed in a different time zone , but the free energy, and day refresh is still the same as every other player for timing, That’s keeps it fair across the board in the simplest ways.
No. this doesn't change anything about your shard, just the time of your individual reset, free energy, and POs.
1) I don't take an hour lunch break. I could, but I am not interested in doing so.
2) I don't have a fixed lunch break time. Most days it is the same time, but when things are going crazy at work its not.
Understand, the PO change they are making as stated is better than the current state of affairs. I'm just pointing out a means for them to go a step beyond that. Are you (or anyone else in this thread) opposed to those extra options? If so, I'd be interested in the argument why.
The proposed QoL lets you essentially change your timezone, which then redefines when those key points are relative to your actual time zone. You see it as changing your payout - but if you move your payout from 6 local up to 2 local, then the system basically just adjusts your in game timezone 4 hours forward. This shifts everything with it and is a relatively easy change.
Uncoupling all those key points (store refreshes, free energy, event timers, daily resets, payouts) is WAY more involved and something they're a lot less inclined to do.
Talk about driving the server nuts.. pay 90% at normal reset, 1% at... 2% at... lol
What?
Shards are set up by when you join your payout. Reset time doesn't matter at all towards your shard.
Given that CG is making the ability to change PO times because it doesn't fit everyones schedule, I'm not quite sure why you feel the need to be snarky about this. This change is being made precisely because CG wants to be more accommodating to peoples schedules.
My original post was not a complaint. If you read it that way then: take a step back, take a deep breath, and read it again with the idea in mind that a sincere player wants to make a suggestion to improve further on what is already a decent addition being added to the game. I'm not "angry" they are implementing the ability to change PO times. I'd just like greater flexibility with it - that's not a complaint. Two hours to collect is plenty of time, except when I'm asleep, which would be the case if my energy boosts came in at 1 AM. If they were to separate the energy boost times from the arena PO times I could keep energy boost times as is, since as you mention, 2 hours is plenty of time. But shift my arena to work around my, as CG puts it, "complicated [life]". If they don't make this additional change I'm suggesting, that's fine, I'll deal with it. I've already dealt with it for the past 3 years of playing.
To those talking about the difficulty of implementing the change... I find it a rather silly argument. If CG comes and tells us "We looked at this, and decided the change is too difficult to make", fine, whatever. But honestly, as a software engineer who has worked on mobile games, if the change took a client engineer more than a couple of days to implement, and a server engineer more than a week, I'd really have to wonder about the state of that particular piece of code. If it's that difficult to change, that part of the code probably needs to be rewritten anyway. Whether ~8 days of engineering time is worth it to CG or not is a question for them to answer, not a reason for "us" to use to shut down ideas. If you really want round it up to 10 days for 2 days of QA as well (though a lot on these boards think CG doesn't even employ a QA team, so not sure why we would do that...)
Someone shouldn't be able to schedule their payouts back to back. 5hey are spread like that to encourage players to play the game multiple times a day.
While its a nice idea, its not really beneficial to the company and can easily be taken advantage of.
Hooray for crontabs lol (server admin humor)
Then let's just shut it down by arguing that it wouldn't be fair to be overly accomodating to people who change their timezones for arena specific purposes then.
Put it this way (assuming ur suggestion is implemented), if a couple of guys in ur shard wanted to single u out and contest ur payout because u aren't in the shard chat and theirs is too crowded, well now they can at no cost. If u're in an APAC timezone with relatively few contenders, suddenly u are faced with a bunch of strangers because changing timezone has absolutely no cost to them. Keep in mind that they clearly want this to be tied to your actual timezone +/- 1 or 2 hours.
Further, the code is likely written in a way which basically has everything tied to an internal clock that is fixed to a timezone. U are asking them to rewrite that part and have multiple clocks. No revenue generated, only additional man hours, and possibly higher opportunity cost since now u have free energy and crystals at the time u want.