Can we please have maintenance and guild trader switchover times so that they don't overlap?

Epona222 · June 2016

This isn't a complaint about having maintenance at whatever time, any day, I don't care.

What I do care about as GM of an NA trading guild is that this recent change to maintenance times is horrendous - at least before the normal maintenance time was changed I had 1 minute before the servers went down to see whether my guild had got their trader, if we did I could go out and do other stuff. Now the switchover happens in the middle of maintenance, so (to do the best for my guild members) I have to sit here until maintenance is over at an undetermined time every Monday.

I don't mind maintenance being on a Monday or any other time, but can the guild trader switchover please be moved so as to not make the lives of numerous GMs even more stressful? I would be happy with maintenance on Monday and trader switchover on Wednesday, or trader switchover on Monday and maintenance on Wednesday - please just make it so that it doesn't overlap, please please please.

Yours truly,
Very stressed GM.

nooblybear · June 2016

Honestly, this. I don't care when or how long the maintenance is for, but the process of bidding and hoping that you've bid high enough, or finding a suitable back-up trader, is already stressful enough as it is, without the addition of not even knowing if the servers will be up for the bid.

Please, please consider changing bid times to compensate.

ElfFromSpace · June 2016

This situation is having a huge negative impact, particularly on the smaller guilds. It hurts big guilds, but most of the big guilds are (relatively) stable. The small guilds are having the worst of this. I've had no less than 4 people coming to me for advice this week because they have been struggling with trader bids for their smaller guilds, or PVE, PVP guilds that are trying to get into a stall. The problem is that these small guilds tend to have fewer officers that can try to wait out the maintenance to see when it comes up. If their main bidder has to work, they're out of luck. It's already hard enough for small guilds. They have to chose whether to go after an established guild which is likely to start a bid war and the established guild can usually afford to raise their bids the next week. The other choice is to go after a weak spot and this is normally where they fail because often 3-4 small guilds all go after that "weak" spot at once and only one of them can get the spot. I routinely hear of small guilds losing bids at double the normal bid value for the area because of this.

We have long been talking about the stress this adds to GMs lives. I think that ZOS underestimates just how much GMs are sacrificing to run these guilds, or how much these guilds add to the game for their members. This change WILL cause more GMs to quit, more guilds to fold and more players to leave this game.

GorraShatan · June 2016

ElfFromSpace wrote: »

This situation is having a huge negative impact, particularly on the smaller guilds. It hurts big guilds, but most of the big guilds are (relatively) stable. The small guilds are having the worst of this. I've had no less than 4 people coming to me for advice this week because they have been struggling with trader bids for their smaller guilds, or PVE, PVP guilds that are trying to get into a stall. The problem is that these small guilds tend to have fewer officers that can try to wait out the maintenance to see when it comes up. If their main bidder has to work, they're out of luck. It's already hard enough for small guilds. They have to chose whether to go after an established guild which is likely to start a bid war and the established guild can usually afford to raise their bids the next week. The other choice is to go after a weak spot and this is normally where they fail because often 3-4 small guilds all go after that "weak" spot at once and only one of them can get the spot. I routinely hear of small guilds losing bids at double the normal bid value for the area because of this.

Just want to say thanks for staying up for my and fellow guildies' sakes.

Lady_Ems · June 2016

I am hearing a lot of other GM's talking about this very topic in the game. With the time differences people are up all hours of the day or night trying to get that last bid in before the servers go down, just to long in when they finally find out servers are up and not have a trader and then its the mad dash to try and find one. Would it really be so hard for ZOS to adjust the time of the trader reset. I don't care about the updates on when it is just the trader reset would be nice. To be able to have it work like it did before the maintenance time change.

ListerJMC · June 2016

Yes! I just had a huge panic seeing the maintenance thing because of store bidding. It would be nice if the days weren't the same.

Epona222 · June 2016

Lady_Ems wrote: »

I am hearing a lot of other GM's talking about this very topic in the game. With the time differences people are up all hours of the day or night trying to get that last bid in before the servers go down, just to long in when they finally find out servers are up and not have a trader and then its the mad dash to try and find one. Would it really be so hard for ZOS to adjust the time of the trader reset. I don't care about the updates on when it is just the trader reset would be nice. To be able to have it work like it did before the maintenance time change.

Also when it is a patch maintenance, people with faster internet download speeds get the first bite of the cherry wrt unhired guild traders- it's sickening if you lost your bid to finally get logged in to see traders with less than 1 page of goods up for sale that were just able to download the patch and get logged in quicker than you and snap up unhired traders.

nooblybear · June 2016

Epona222 wrote: »

Also when it is a patch maintenance, people with faster internet download speeds get the first bite of the cherry wrt unhired guild traders- it's sickening if you lost your bid to finally get logged in to see traders with less than 1 page of goods up for sale that were just able to download the patch and get logged in quicker than you and snap up unhired traders.

At least when there isn't maintenance we have 5 minutes or so to find a suitable trader and hope to hire it. The past two weeks have basically been "log out somewhere you hope there might be a free trader and hope you get in on time". I personally don't have an issue with trader times -- I will get up and ensure my guild gets a bid -- nor maintenance time -- it has to be done at some point or another.

It is merely that these two are clashing, and dramatically so. A period of 10-20 minutes to deal with bids is now combined with 2-3 (or more) hours of maintenance, and I'm reluctant to leave the PC for too long in case the servers come up while I'm away and, as Epona said, a bid failed and all the suitable backups have been taken.

Blobsky · June 2016

Epona222 wrote: »

This isn't a complaint about having maintenance at whatever time, any day, I don't care.

What I do care about as GM of an NA trading guild is that this recent change to maintenance times is horrendous - at least before the normal maintenance time was changed I had 1 minute before the servers went down to see whether my guild had got their trader, if we did I could go out and do other stuff. Now the switchover happens in the middle of maintenance, so (to do the best for my guild members) I have to sit here until maintenance is over at an undetermined time every Monday.

I don't mind maintenance being on a Monday or any other time, but can the guild trader switchover please be moved so as to not make the lives of numerous GMs even more stressful? I would be happy with maintenance on Monday and trader switchover on Wednesday, or trader switchover on Monday and maintenance on Wednesday - please just make it so that it doesn't overlap, please please please.

Yours truly,
Very stressed GM.

As leader of one of the biggest EU guilds, I can say that it was super annoying, even the time is crap, but it got changed for us.

To be honest, the whole trade guild system is fairly stupid, but I just want my dudes and dudettes happy in the guild, so no sleep!

Epona222 · June 2016

@nooblybear - yeah I am the same way with my guild, I will sit here until the end of days to try to get a trader if need be - but it irks me that my time is spent waiting for maintenance, sometimes for hours! - when if the trader switchover were done on a different day it would be a whole lot quicker - I could sit and wait for switchover, then if my guild didn't win their bid I could immediately run around to try to find an unhired trader, rather than sitting here drumming my fingers not knowing whether we got one already and waiting for the server to come back up!

baratron · June 2016

It's the uncertainty of not knowing when the servers will come back which makes it so very annoying. Not all Guilds have an officer who works from home, or is unemployed, retired, or on long-term sick leave! Most people have to get up and go to work or study, and don't have the "luxury" of sitting in front of their computer until the servers are up.

I don't mind the 6am Eastern Time maintenance - it's certainly not a horrendous time for people in North America. But please make it a different day from Guild Trader switchover!

Amaljia · June 2016

Yeah, not thrilled with the new maintenance times

Epona222 · June 2016

baratron wrote: »

It's the uncertainty of not knowing when the servers will come back which makes it so very annoying. Not all Guilds have an officer who works from home, or is unemployed, retired, or on long-term sick leave! Most people have to get up and go to work or study, and don't have the "luxury" of sitting in front of their computer until the servers are up.

I don't mind the 6am Eastern Time maintenance - it's certainly not a horrendous time for people in North America. But please make it a different day from Guild Trader switchover!

I agree completely - but as a retired person, I can assure you that this waiting for the server to come back up is not how I would prefer to spend my day! And my time is no less valuable than anyone else's (I probably have less of my life left if you want to look at it that way!) It doesn't matter so much that I am able to, I shouldn't have to. If trader switchover was on any other day, I could log in, see whether we got our bid, then if need be join the scramble for unhired traders and it would take less than an hour - because in all reality if you lost a bid and didn't find anything in an hour, you're stuffed. Because there's maintenance in the middle I am stuck here and it's often for several hours, don't even know whether we won our bid yet. There is no good reason that I can think of why it needs to be a situation of me chained to my desk for several hours on a Monday, when it could be the matter of an hour's work or less if it didn't coincide with maintenance.

Rainteal · June 2016

This is a totally rational and reasonable request.

This is a GM quality of life issue that should be rectified.

code65536 · June 2016

What ticks me off is that we've communicated to ZOS before that this was an issue. And then they go ahead and make this a regular thing?!

redmoonga · June 2016

This is making the game far less enjoyable. Get up at 2:45am to make the bid. Get back up at 4:45am to make sure the game is still down at switch over. Sitting and watching the launcher for a patch until maintenence is over for the remainder. Then hoping it doesn't make me late for work. This is HORRIBLE. The bids have a clear end time, let it operate as normal or change the system.

Disgruntled,

Redmoonga, GM of Black Dragon Apothecary

Epona222 · June 2016

It is a very real quality of life (not just in game life, actually impacts on real life) issue for GMs of trading guilds.

EllieBlue · June 2016

I concur to all that has been said by everyone so far.

code65536 · June 2016

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_RichLambert Please do something about this. Either move maintenance or move the bid close time.

nooblybear · June 2016

code65536 wrote: »

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_RichLambert Please do something about this. Either move maintenance or move the bid close time.

I've spent the past two and a half hours reading a book while looking at the launcher. There are so many other things I could've achieved in that time had bids occurred on a different day. Please!

Epona222 · June 2016

Now been 3 hours - I can't go do anything else until I find out whether we got our trader bid, I have a responsibility to my guildmembers. So bored *cries*.

Amaljia · June 2016

I keep relaunching my patcher to make sure it updates.. Still down though

Epona222 · June 2016

I know the issue has been raised before, but I wonder if Zeni actually realise that a lot of trade guild GMs are sitting here right now stressing and fuming and waiting for the servers to come up?

nooblybear · June 2016

Epona222 wrote: »

I know the issue has been raised before, but I wonder if Zeni actually realise that a lot of trade guild GMs are sitting here right now stressing and fuming and waiting for the servers to come up?

It's a fact that I've heard in all the previous feedback meetings that I've attended.

Karraxx · June 2016

Epona222 wrote: »

I know the issue has been raised before, but I wonder if Zeni actually realise that a lot of trade guild GMs are sitting here right now stressing and fuming and waiting for the servers to come up?

They don't care about the people running trade guilds in this game, they made that evident when they changed the downtime to 6am EDT

FlyLeaf30 · June 2016

Yes please do something about this, smaller trade guilds or PVE guilds are really on the losing side of all this. No one know whether they win or lose their trader until maint. is done. Even then it is survival of whoever has the fastest internet to download and get into the game faster, they have the better option to get another trader. Please, I know you cannot satisfy everyone, it's impossible but please either move maint. times (again) OR move closing bids time so at least we have 1-5mins at least to look for another trader and large trade GM's can rest easy and not have to sit in front of their computers reading books and lurking on the forums to make time pass. You know how important traders are to everyone, especially guilds who pretty much only survive because they have a trader. Thanks for reading and I hope you take what we all are saying to heart.

Epona222 · June 2016

nooblybear wrote: »

Epona222 wrote: »

I know the issue has been raised before, but I wonder if Zeni actually realise that a lot of trade guild GMs are sitting here right now stressing and fuming and waiting for the servers to come up?

It's a fact that I've heard in all the previous feedback meetings that I've attended.

That's depressing.

Vindemiatrix · June 2016

It patched but didn't come online yet. I'm afraid to get up and get a cup of coffee.

Epona222 · June 2016

Yeah I got a launcher patch a couple of minutes ago.

FlyLeaf30 · June 2016

Sucky internet problems

still at 2% download.....at least you don't have that problem....

Epona222 · June 2016

Launcher showing NA is online