Guild Trader During Maintenence

Stump

Hows this work with maintenance being performed when the guild trader bid closes at 8am EST?
I usually hop on about 30 minutes before it closes, place the bid and wait it out to see if we got it. Is it still going to close while I don't have access to bid? Is the closing time being pushed back so people still have an opportunity to bid?
I've never seen maintenance happen DURING a bid closing.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_GinaBruno Whats the official word for all the guilds that are going to be out a trader this week?

Vindemiatrix

Another Monday morning utterly spoiled by trader bidding. What a way to start the workweek.

Molec

I hope my guilds don't loose their trader locations again

AmmonErebos

It is very common for maintenance to be on same time as guild trader bids? At least for NA, if you are in EU then only your own fault for not checking this weeks patch times and bidding earlier to compensate.

Paulington

Unfortunately we have never been given an answer for this. On the EU server the maintenance usually starts literally the second guild traders begin flipping so if you lose your trader then bad luck.

It forces a guild member to stay up, often until 6-7am on Tuesday, staring at the launcher waiting for the patch to start downloading and hoping it downloads fast enough for you to get in first. If you don't then again bad luck, no trader for you.

I've always thought "Hey, why not just put the trader one hour ahead?" as that would work perfectly fine but now with NA and EU coming down simultaneously it wouldn't work.

I think the entire system needs a revamp. Make maintenance regular, why can maintenance not be at exactly the same time every week? There must be a reason, what is it? Whatever time that maintenance is, make traders flip an hour beforehand so people have a chance and aren't forced to stay up and hope for a trader.

Oh, and whilst ZOS are at it, could traders please flip in a sensible manner? As it currently stands you get 5-10 minutes of "cannot hire whilst traders are changing ownership" and then bang, your chosen trader is gone because they flip at different times in different factions so you get reds stealing traders when blues aren't even allowed to hire them yet.

I could go on at length about the ridiculousness of this system. Implemented right it would be fantastic but as it stands right now it's just not enjoyable.

Stump

No, I'm in US. The bid closes at 7:55am Eastern time each Monday. Then maintenance happens at 8 so you can at least get your bid and watch it close and confirm you got the trader before the server go down. Never had it happen where you cant get in the game for 2 hours before the bidding closes. it Really locks out a lot of guilds that wait due to the competitiveness of guild traders.

AmmonErebos

you can bid on them all week... so what do you mean by "not even allowed to hire them yet" simply bid earlier... main reason guilds bid later is to limit "spies" checking guild bank balance and reporting to rivals what was deducted to out-bid...

Stump

AmmonErebos wrote: »

you can bid on them all week... so what do you mean by "not even allowed to hire them yet" simply bid earlier... main reason guilds bid later is to limit "spies" checking guild bank balance and reporting to rivals what was deducted to out-bid...

The Not allowed to hire them yet happens after the bidding closes. If you lose your trader usually you have to run around Tamriel to find one that hasn't been bid on yet. What he is saying here is that part of the system is also broken as some faction have access to the unclaimed trader before others.

Paulington

AmmonErebos wrote: »

you can bid on them all week... so what do you mean by "not even allowed to hire them yet" simply bid earlier... main reason guilds bid later is to limit "spies" checking guild bank balance and reporting to rivals what was deducted to out-bid...

As @Stump has said, if you lose your bid you have to run around like a headless chicken and pray there is a free trader for you hire. The problem is, even though bids shut at 1:55am GMT and the traders flip at 2:00am GMT, you get "cannot hire trader" for a random amount of time sometimes up to 2:10am GMT if you are trying to hire a free one.

This is an issue, because you have to stand there spamming hire whilst praying, but also because the servers go down at 2:00am GMT which means it is absolutely pure luck as to whether the traders stay up long enough to hire and as I said in my previous post sometimes the Daggerfall instance of the traders will become hireable a minute or so before the Ebonheart instance of the traders (or any other combination) and this leads to traders being taken before you are even allowed to hire.

This is broken beyond belief and it's not been properly addressed.

code65536

Monday mornings are already stressful for trade guild GMs. Having early maintenance makes this so much worse.

Stop doing this!

AlnilamE

Yeah, usually the maintenance starts at 8am EDT, which is the time where the traders switch. When we don't have Daylight Savings, then the traders actually switch one hour before maintenance starts, which is much better.

I forgot to check maintenance times last night, otherwise I would have known, but we did at least place a bid. Now to wait and see if we got him.

code65536

Seriously, this 6AM nonsense two weeks in a row?!?!