Event Start and End Times

JamuThatsWho

This is something that's been bugging me for a while now, but why do events always end on a Monday at 15:00 GMT for EU?

I'm pretty sure most of us are at school or work at that time, meaning we always miss out on the last day of an event. I don't get home from work until 17:00, for example. And even then, I play with my kids until their bedtime at 19:00.

Would it be possible to start events a day earlier so they end on a Sunday, or else let them run till, say, 22:00 GMT something?

VaranisArano

If I had to guess, events start at 10 AM eastern, or mid-morning for the ZOS staff on the US east coast. Its probably a matter of what's convenient for the devs.

Gythral

End of ZOS' first coffee break of the week

Makes total sense

barney2525

They end at 3:00 AM CST for me.

Not exactly prime time for anything.

Michae

barney2525 wrote: »

They end at 3:00 AM CST for me.

Not exactly prime time for anything.

Yeah, but you can still do them after the daily reset that happens at 2 am EST, so at 7 PM CST. In CET it's at 8 am, when most people are at work or going to work. But yeah, I find it strange that the first and last day of the event is really 2/3 and 1/3 of a day. I'd prefer if the events matched the daily reset.

Ye_Olde_Crowe

Michae wrote: »

I'd prefer if the events matched the daily reset.

Oh yes. If all reset times were the same (where applicable of course), now that would simplify planning a good bit.

idk

Zos seems to manage all servers based on their time zone. That includes even start and end times for evens. As long as the start and end times are about the same time of day it still give every one the same access. Granted, I do not really pay attention to start and end times.

notvenousdrake

I agree

(Btw rip juice wrld)

Bhaji

Why does the patch always remove at least 6 hours from the last day of an event thereby preventing the collection of the last 2 event tickets? Unless, of course when the servers reactivate at 1300 utc the tickets can still be collected until 1500 hours utc? I know it's not world ending but it just compounds the intense irritation of losing the possiblility of morning play whenever patches or updates are applied to the EU server. No one has ever offered an acceptable excuse for not patching the EU servers during the EU 4am to 8 am time slot.

rumple9

Well op, Monday is usually maintenance day so the last day of an event is usually lost anyway

Bhaji

Not beyond the wit of man to delay until the day after an event closes

Cundu_Ertur

You have to remember that ZOS is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bethesda, which started in beautiful downtown Bethesda, Maryland which is a sleepy suburb of beautiful downtown Washington, DC -- itself long known as the home of Southern efficiency married to Northern charm.

morrowjen

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

You have to remember that ZOS is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bethesda, which started in beautiful downtown Bethesda, Maryland which is a sleepy suburb of beautiful downtown Washington, DC -- itself long known as the home of Southern efficiency married to Northern charm.

"Southern efficiency." I'm from the South and I love this phrase so much I'm stealing it along with "Northern Charm."

TheFM

Because ZoS isnt as concerned with the EU playerbase, even tho we have more potential players.

Ye_Olde_Crowe

Anyway, servers are back up as it seems. Maintenance is complete.

Danikat

I agree it would be better if they could pick 1 reset time for everything instead of having different times for different things, and if the people who schedule events could talk to the people who schedule maintenance and work something out so they don't conflict with each other. No it wouldn't enable everyone to play on a Monday, but it would make it easier to work out what your options are.

Ye_Olde_Crowe wrote: »

Anyway, servers are back up as it seems. Maintenance is complete.

I don't get the message that the servers are offline, but when I start the launcher it doesn't update and when I try to log in it tells me I'm using an out-dated client and should update. So I'm not quite sure what's happening right now.

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

You have to remember that ZOS is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bethesda, which started in beautiful downtown Bethesda, Maryland which is a sleepy suburb of beautiful downtown Washington, DC -- itself long known as the home of Southern efficiency married to Northern charm.

That's a joke right? From what I know of Americans and their stereotypes about themselves it seems like it should be the other way around.

JamuThatsWho

Would it be so difficult to adjust the times for the EU server so they're a little more sane? Why do they HAVE to sync up with US time?

January1171

To be fair, events always end at 10 AM EST and the reset is at 2 AM EST, so the time zone ZOS works at doesn't have super convenient times either to complete the event.

Although I do agree it is ridiculous there is always maintenance right before the event ends.

Merlin13KAGL

Why not go by calendar day based on where you selected when you first set up your account?

There is zero purpose behind the partial days and everyone could participate equally, so long as you achieved on a given day.

20 hours timers are asinine. 24 hour timers based on anything other than calendar day are equally asinine.

Asardes

Event starts, end times for the server ...

AlnilamE

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

Why not go by calendar day based on where you selected when you first set up your account?

There is zero purpose behind the partial days and everyone could participate equally, so long as you achieved on a given day.

20 hours timers are asinine. 24 hour timers based on anything other than calendar day are equally asinine.

That would require about 10 different reset times per server, so bad idea.

barney2525 wrote: »

They end at 3:00 AM CST for me.

Not exactly prime time for anything.

How can that be if they end at 10am EST? They should be ending at 9AM for you.

Danikat wrote: »

I agree it would be better if they could pick 1 reset time for everything instead of having different times for different things, and if the people who schedule events could talk to the people who schedule maintenance and work something out so they don't conflict with each other. No it wouldn't enable everyone to play on a Monday, but it would make it easier to work out what your options are.

Well, everything resets at 1 (or 2)AM EST, except the daily login, which resets at midnight UTC. The thing with events is that they probably require some manual intervention to turn on and off (and then some monitoring to make sure things went as planned), so doing that during the work day makes more sense.

Merlin13KAGL

AlnilamE wrote: »

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

Why not go by calendar day based on where you selected when you first set up your account?

There is zero purpose behind the partial days and everyone could participate equally, so long as you achieved on a given day.

20 hours timers are asinine. 24 hour timers based on anything other than calendar day are equally asinine.

That would require about 10 different reset times per server, so bad idea.

Not at all.

Reset time could remain the same. Simply add a server side check, comparing your previously specified time zone to see if it's "your tomorrow." If it is, you get the drop. If it's not, you get to wait.

There are no day specific events. If you need a pledge, for instance, it doesn't matter if it's today's or tomorrow's. Just needs to be a pledge/world boss/orphan delivered loaf of bread/whatever.

It's not rocket science. It would just require them to extend events a day longer to cover the GMT +1's to the +23's, still giving everyone equal chance without inconvenience.

tmbrinks

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

Why not go by calendar day based on where you selected when you first set up your account?

There is zero purpose behind the partial days and everyone could participate equally, so long as you achieved on a given day.

20 hours timers are asinine. 24 hour timers based on anything other than calendar day are equally asinine.

That would require about 10 different reset times per server, so bad idea.

Not at all.

Reset time could remain the same. Simply add a server side check, comparing your previously specified time zone to see if it's "your tomorrow." If it is, you get the drop. If it's not, you get to wait.

There are no day specific events. If you need a pledge, for instance, it doesn't matter if it's today's or tomorrow's. Just needs to be a pledge/world boss/orphan delivered loaf of bread/whatever.

It's not rocket science. It would just require them to extend events a day longer to cover the GMT +1's to the +23's, still giving everyone equal chance without inconvenience.

Pledges aren't sharable... so you'd be splitting the already small queues among people who are on different "days"

Araneae6537

tmbrinks wrote: »

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

Why not go by calendar day based on where you selected when you first set up your account?

There is zero purpose behind the partial days and everyone could participate equally, so long as you achieved on a given day.

20 hours timers are asinine. 24 hour timers based on anything other than calendar day are equally asinine.

That would require about 10 different reset times per server, so bad idea.

Not at all.

Reset time could remain the same. Simply add a server side check, comparing your previously specified time zone to see if it's "your tomorrow." If it is, you get the drop. If it's not, you get to wait.

There are no day specific events. If you need a pledge, for instance, it doesn't matter if it's today's or tomorrow's. Just needs to be a pledge/world boss/orphan delivered loaf of bread/whatever.

It's not rocket science. It would just require them to extend events a day longer to cover the GMT +1's to the +23's, still giving everyone equal chance without inconvenience.

Pledges aren't sharable... so you'd be splitting the already small queues among people who are on different "days"

Agreed, that would be terrible! I regularly play with people from different time zones, including running pledges, and this would be just ridiculous. We’re all in Tamriel — who cares what our local time is? We should all be on the same day with access to the same pledges and other dailies as it is now.

I do agree that it would be better for the event days to align with the daily reset. It seems far more logical and would give everyone an equal chance for tickets.

Hallothiel

To be honest I don’t have a problem with this.

In UK - events usually start about 3pm so have evening of first day to join in. Then have morning/early afternoon of last day to grab tickets if necessary before ends at 3pm.

If did start/stop at daily reset, which time would this be? And would it change as it does in summertime? And what if it bugged out like the lux vendor is currently?

And the idea that there should be multiple start & stop times depending on your time zone just feels like a recipe for disaster.

Finedaible

(NA East Coast here) Never made sense to me either. I usually have to wake up super early or stay up super late to grab the last tickets of an event before/after work because of the weird times for that last day. They always do 'maintenance' for several hours on that Monday morning as well, which can prevent me from grabbing event tickets... Actually it makes perfect sense now that they are selling event tickets... hmm.

zaria

Gythral wrote: »

End of ZOS' first coffee break of the week

Makes total sense

Yes, update 07:00 CET is perfect, kill two dragons and go to work, knowing you killed two dragons before going to work

MasterSpatula

I really wish they wouldn't keep ending them on maintenance days. They don't need a maintenance to turn them off or on, so doing this just costs people who can't get on until later their last day of the event. (And, because they can't get on until later, they're probably missing out on the first day of the event as well, since they probably aren't getting to play between 10AM EST and dailies reset.)

Seems a smidge inconsiderate and unfair to people outside the normal time zones or those inside the normal time zones who keep unusual hours.

tmbrinks

By the way.. when ZoS "computes" the number of tickets that you can get. They do not include the tickets that you can get on the "turn-over" day, which is when the maintenance is done. Those are bonus tickets you can get, if you want them.

Cundu_Ertur

Danikat wrote: »

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

You have to remember that ZOS is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bethesda, which started in beautiful downtown Bethesda, Maryland which is a sleepy suburb of beautiful downtown Washington, DC -- itself long known as the home of Southern efficiency married to Northern charm.

That's a joke right? From what I know of Americans and their stereotypes about themselves it seems like it should be the other way around.

Northerners are stereotyped as being always in a rush and too busy to engage in pleasantries. Southerners are known for the opposite. So, yes, it is a reversal of the usual stereotype.

Toanis

Gythral wrote: »

Yes, update 07:00 CET is perfect, kill two dragons and go to work, knowing you killed two dragons before going to work

Well, there would be no need for that when events starts and ends with daily reset. You'd have a whole day to do the final event-day's dailies, no point doing it in the morning unless you really had no time the day before.

Right now, those who find time to play in the 15 hours between event start and daily reset and in the 9 hours between daily reset and event end get an extra daily out of the event. Why take that away? It would make sense to reset events at 6pm UTC to make it 12h:12h (although, personally, the way it currently is fits my 6 to 2 CET work schedule pretty well.)