Please fix unfair Event Tickets before U37 goes live

Kelinmiriel

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin - There is a problem with the new timers, regarding event tickets. Gina said that ticket reset timers wouldn't change to match the new reset timer - but my testing on the PTS revealed that daily reset for tickets has also changed.

That means the final partial-day tickets will be virtually impossible to get for NA players, as the system currently stands. We'll have four to five hours in the middle of the night/early morning to get our final tickets now, instead of 8-9 hours that we've had previously. If there's a system shutdown the night before an event ends, that would start before reset, so we'd have no chance at all.

On the EU, reset is moving back three hours, so it'll be a bit easier to get the final tickets. That's nice. But not fair to NA players.

Last year, there were 28 tickets available during those last partial days, across all events. Event tickets cost 250 crowns each in the crown store, so that's 7000 crowns worth of tickets in a year we would've been unable to earn.

Could we please address this issue before Update 37 goes live, while there are still a couple weeks left? Thank you!

Kelinmiriel

Here's a thought: If you can't have ticket reset continue at the old times, then change events to start and end at the new times.

That would be fair, because event start/end times would also be different on each server, matching the ticket reset times. It would be less confusing, too - I imagine it's very confusing to people all over the world that the starting/ending time of 10am US Eastern time changes according to whether the US is in standard or Daylight Saving time.

The new standardized reset times are UCT, so they won't change, just like the old reset time didn't.

(For those who don't do US time changes - that means the NA will only have four hours after the new reset time, until event ending time, as soon as Daylight Saving time goes into effect next weekend. From November to March, it's 5 hours, because event start/end time is later.)

MafiaCat115

Did pay too much attention to that in PTS, but I really hope that the issue gets handled before it goes live. Those final day event tickets can make or break whether or not you get the collectible.

tomofhyrule

This was brought up several times on the official thread, but was never addressed.

Honestly, the best solution is to have events start and end with the reset.

We've been dealing with the issue of partial days for a while, and so often we end up in a circumstance where EU gets screwed because the reset happened around 8 am CET and the events started and ended at 4pm CET. That is an 8 hour window, but it's at standard work hours and also we tend to get maintenances to shut down the servers from 10 am CET, leaving them with only two hours in the middle of the workday to get the last day tickets.

The solution is not to fix EU's problem by making it worse for NA. (The new NA reset will be 5 am EST and events start/stop at 10 am EST, leaving only 5 hours. And if there's a maintenance, it starts at 4 am, so it's literally impossible to get that last day).

There have been complaints about partial-day tickets since we had them, so the best option is to start the event at the reset. I do wish that ZOS would address this, especially since tickets are going to be at a premium in the next event since we missed an event worth of tickets in Q1 and it's been confirmed that the Q1 Indriks are not going to have extended availability.

Rogue_WolfESO

Oh no, you may miss a couple tickets. Thats unfortunate.

Kelinmiriel

Rogue_WolfESO wrote: »

Oh no, you may miss a couple tickets. Thats unfortunate.

It's not "a couple", and it's not just me. It's half of the people who play on ESO - all three of the NA servers. And it will be two or three tickets every single event. Do the math - they add up.

I appreciate that there are a lot of things available in ESO that we don't have to pay rl money to get; that we can earn just by playing the game.

I don't think it's too much to ask that the tickets we can earn should be equal for all servers. There have been times when servers have been down for a few days and people threw a horrible fit over it. Those times were isolated incidents. This is going to be happening for every single event going forward, until this new system is altered to correct it.

I thought it was worth asking that it be prevented ahead of time, rather than corrected later. So I'm asking. Please fix it, before it's a problem.

peacenote

MafiaCat115 wrote: »

Did pay too much attention to that in PTS, but I really hope that the issue gets handled before it goes live. Those final day event tickets can make or break whether or not you get the collectible.

I find this to be very true. I can't play every day. I try to squeeze in 15 min logins to snag tickets but it isn't always possible. I have never been one of those players with tickets coming out of my ears.

I am saddened to hear of this change and I hope it gets fixed.

Of course, another option theoretically would be to make all the events one more day than they used to be. Right? While keeping the amount of earnable items, standard ticket amounts, etc. the same? Then we'd all get 24 hours more than before and the shorter cutoffs wouldn't matter. Could that work or am I missing something?

Kelinmiriel

peacenote wrote: »

MafiaCat115 wrote: »

Did pay too much attention to that in PTS, but I really hope that the issue gets handled before it goes live. Those final day event tickets can make or break whether or not you get the collectible.

I find this to be very true. I can't play every day. I try to squeeze in 15 min logins to snag tickets but it isn't always possible. I have never been one of those players with tickets coming out of my ears.

I am saddened to hear of this change and I hope it gets fixed.

Of course, another option theoretically would be to make all the events one more day than they used to be. Right? While keeping the amount of earnable items, standard ticket amounts, etc. the same? Then we'd all get 24 hours more than before and the shorter cutoffs wouldn't matter. Could that work or am I missing something?

You're missing something, unfortunately. The problem is that the starting/ending time for events is not changing, but the reset time for event tickets is going to be moving back three hours for the EU, and moving forward four hours for the NA.

So for the final partial day of every event, EU players will have 11-12 hours to get their final tickets. NA players will have 4-5 hours. Which isn't fair.

The way things have always been until now, has given everyone 8-9 hours.

The difference is because event start/end times vary seasonally, depending on whether the US is currently observing Daylight Saving Time or not.

There is more discussion about this here, including a reply from Gina confirming that this will not be changed before it goes live.

Meiox

never mind^^

SeaGtGruff

I don't like the idea of having tickets reset at the same time as the daily/weekly quest resets, because that would give us all one less (partial) "day" of tickets. [Edit: I think maybe I meant event start/end times?]

As it's always been, the very first and very last days of an event are not full days, and that effectively gives everyone an extra day of tickets. This has always been skewed in favor of NA/SA over Europe due to time zones and waking/working/sleeping schedules, making it very difficult if not impossible for most European players to get tickets on the last day.

Moving the ticket reset times to match the daily/weekly quest reset times is the most logical way to have things work, but it would essentially reverse the previous situation-- European players would find it easier to get tickets for all event days, but most NA/SA players would find it very difficult if not impossible to do so.

The most ideal solution would appear to be having events start and end exactly 12 hours before and after quest reset times, and having tickets reset at the same times as daily/weekly quests, such that the first and last days of an event would both be half-days rather than the first being about 2/3 of a day and the last being only about 1/3 of a day.

On the other hand, even if events and tickets both started and ended in sync with daily/weekly resets, we'd appear to have one less (partial) day for each event, but each day of the event would be a full 24 hours, giving everyone plenty of time to get their tickets on the first and last days since those would be full days rather than partial days. The durations of the events could be adjusted if needed so we'd still have the same number of days per event as before, such as running from a Thursday to a Wednesday rather than from a Thursday to a Tuesday, or something like that.

Unfortunately, I should think that having events start and end at different times on each server would just be a logistical nightmare for ZOS, complicating and confusing things far more than necessary.

It seems like there's no simple solution that would be equitable for all time zones, as well as being manageable by ZOS.

Kelinmiriel

The point is - everyone had 8-9 hours to get tickets. And when there was a system shutdown the night before (which I always thought was very bad timing), usually 2-3 of those hours were before shutdown, so there was an option to get tickets before.

The unfairness of the new system is that EU gets 11-12 hours, but NA only gets 4-5. And if a shutdown happens - it would start before the NA reset.

This is not based on personal schedules. It's a total number of hours available.

Change start/end times of events to also use the new reset time, and that would be fair for everyone, because the start/end times would match each server. That shouldn't be any more complicated to code than everything else that they've already set on the new timers.

To compensate for the loss of partial-day tickets, it would be nice to just end events on Thursdays instead of Tuesdays. That would also highly reduce the odds of having a shutdown the night before.

Yes, there is a simple solution that's fair for everyone.