Update: We did lose our bids but got an open Trader in Orsinium EIGHTEEN MINUTES LATER.



Not sure what went wrong with the flip.

So, here's an update on how things have been going over at PC-NA:

Sunday 20th April - Guild Trader flip was delayed until 9.18 pm EDT.
Sunday 27th April - Guild Trader flip was delayed until 9.16 pm EDT.
Sunday 4th May - Guild Trader flip happened on time, all done by 9.00 pm EDT.
Sunday 11th May - Guild Trader flip was delayed until 9.18 pm EDT.
Sunday 18th May - Guild Trader flip was delayed until 9.18 pm EDT.
Sunday 24th May - Guild Trader flip happened on time, all done by 9.00 pm EDT.
Sunday 31st May - Guild Trader flip was delayed, not sure until when, but definitely past 9.12pm EDT.

This is very stressful for Guildmasters and/or Trade Officers, especially on the weeks when the mail to tell you that you have won one of your bids is also delayed. It's even more stressful when you receive the mail to tell you that you've lost all your bids promptly at 9.00 pm EDT, then nowhere seems to change until almost 20 minutes later.

We're starting to figure out how the bidding code works since it's so slow that we can actually tell which of the guilds in our group have their Traders allocated first, based on who sees their bids disappear the quickest.

Meanwhile, I have been informed by a friend over at PC-EU that the Guild Trader flip has been delayed every single week, some weeks not finishing until 9.25pm BST.

Why has nothing been said about this? It's only when the extreme failure occurs, as it has now on EU 3 times now, that ZOS acts. Yet the extreme failure is probably related to the slowness that we've been experiencing most weeks on PC-NA / every week on PC-EU!

Obviously, I have no intention of shooting the messenger: Gina, Jessica, Sarah and the European Community Managers are clearly not to blame for these problems, but those of us who run Guilds are genuinely disappointed. We really hoped this would be fixed by Greymoor, and instead nothing has changed. Some Guildmasters would prefer for the number of bids to be limited to 5, in the hope that the code would work faster with fewer bids to process. (I myself don't support that because there have been weeks when we've won our 7th or 9th bid, but there clearly is a problem somewhere.)

Gina's comment over at the PC-EU thread is interesting. She wrote:

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

For visibility, the issue that occurred yesterday where the incorrect guilds appeared to win guild traders happened because there was a gap in time between when winners of a guild trader were selected, and when the winners were actually applied.

We have seen a gap in time between winners being selected and being applied on PC-NA too. See my first post in this thread! GMs and Trade Officers have generally received their in-game mail to tell them if they've won or lost within a minute or two of 9.00pm EDT, but then the Guild Traders have not actually flipped until 9.16 - 9.18pm.

This makes me feel that both servers are suffering from the same bug, and that PC-NA has simply been "lucky" so far.

SammiSakura wrote: »

What we have noticed over on EU, is that if you keep checking in your Weekly Bids window, they will slowly disappear one by one, from the top down, leaving your won bid until last.

Yep, we've noticed this on NA too. It doesn't lessen anxiety when you see that you have two bids left, your 1st and your 10th, and you don't know whether you've won a great Trader for the week, or one in the middle of nowhere...

SammiSakura wrote: »

It does make the entire "fast hire" system somewhat defunct though. Its almost impossible to find a free trader now unless you happen to be stood by one when they finally flip.

One thing that I forgot to mention before is that the ability to Hire a Trader appears to be hard-coded at 9.05 pm server time. It always has been, from before multibidding. So if the Trader switch is slow, I assume this explains how Traders are appearing as Hireable when they shouldn't be.

Sunday 7th June 2020 - Guild Trader flip was delayed until 9.17 pm EDT.

Sunday 12th July - Guild Trader flip was delayed until 9.15pm EDT.

This is getting silly.

Cani wrote: »

I don't think we've had a Traderflip on time since the anniversary event...

I just dont understand why its taking up to 20 Minutes for the server to do some math, when it worked fine before....

I think last evening was the longest time we had to wait, it was around 22 Minutes after 9PM CEST until it actually happened.

I feel bad for Guilds that loose their bids more than others, because with this seeminly random timeframe, it almost eliminated the ability to hire traders.... Since those 5 minutes are hardcoded to happen 5 Min after 9 (not 5 Min after the swap) many guilds are at a severe disadvantage...

Even stranger, it’s processing something critical on time, because I get the email notifying me that the guild has won a trader by 1 or 2 after the hour. But all our bids still show as “active” for the next 15 minutes while the game sorts through them and finally implements any changes.

Why does it take so long to “process” the bids when the game already knows who won and has notified us?

Cani wrote: »

I feel bad for Guilds that loose their bids more than others, because with this seeminly random timeframe, it almost eliminated the ability to hire traders.... Since those 5 minutes are hardcoded to happen 5 Min after 9 (not 5 Min after the swap) many guilds are at a severe disadvantage...

This.

This is the exact reason why I'm here every week updating you about the status of PC-NA's Trader flip. It isn't a minor issue.

It would be acceptable (though frustrating) if a guild which lost its spot still had the usual 5 minutes to bounce around all over the map looking for an open trader. But to lose that time as well as losing your bids is just insulting. What's the point of getting all your Officers online at trader flip time, or joining a consortium of guilds which help each other, if you are completely powerless?

WolfStar07 wrote: »

Exactly. I can't tell when a trader is open (especially if a guild is in 2 locations) because of the absurdly long flip times now. And we can't even blame this on multi-bidding since that has been with us for a year now and this current issue is only a few month old. Get it together ZOS. What's the point of allowing us to hire open traders for a small fee if we can't see which traders are even open?

And that's on top of when I do actually win, the mail doesn't say where. That was fine when we only had 1 bid. But now that I'm bidding on multiple spots, I don't know where I won without running around looking, and that's useless since the guild page UI and the traders aren't updating in a timely manner anymore.

You can track your active bids from the guild page. As the system processes the various traders, you will see some of your bids disappear. (You need to close the window and re-open it to refresh it, in my experience.) On days where the process is delayed, you will likely see all your bids there for a good 10+ minutes before they start getting eliminated. If you received a “you won” mail and there’s only one bid left in your active bids list, that’s your trader. And once there are no more active bids, the traders should be flipped (about 9:17/9:18 Eastern now on delayed days). It’s not great and definitely doesn’t make up for the delay or the problems with securing a trader if you lose, but at least you can track it from one location rather than running around looking at the traders.

AlnilamE wrote: »

Yeah, the part I don't understand is that the system seems to know if you won/lost a trader right at 8pm, because you get the mail telling you so if you zone right after the flip time.

But it still takes 15+ minutes to work through the various bids to figure out *which* trader you actually won.

And as noted, that completely messes up with a guild's ability to find a free trader if they lost all their bids.

Having watched the process again last night, I am starting to suspect it has to do with issuing the refunds for lost bids. The system knows which trader you won at 9:00, just like it knows who bought your items from a guild store, but the mail notifying you of the win/sale doesn’t tell you that information specifically.

The system has figured out what to do by 9 (i.e. who has won what trader and who needs refunds for which bids), but it takes a long time to process the lost bids. My guild history, for example, shows that refunds for bids in one zone processed at 9:08, while bids in another zone were refunded at 9:09. All bids in the same zone were processed at the same time, suggesting to me that the game is going one zone at a time. From what I’ve observed, however, the traders themselves flip all at once at 9:17/9:18 or so, once all the lost bids are refunded, regardless of when individual bids were processed.

virtus753 wrote: »

The system has figured out what to do by 9 (i.e. who has won what trader and who needs refunds for which bids), but it takes a long time to process the lost bids. My guild history, for example, shows that refunds for bids in one zone processed at 9:08, while bids in another zone were refunded at 9:09. All bids in the same zone were processed at the same time, suggesting to me that the game is going one zone at a time. From what I’ve observed, however, the traders themselves flip all at once at 9:17/9:18 or so, once all the lost bids are refunded, regardless of when individual bids were processed.

However it doesn't seem to be in the same order every week as others I've talked to have noticed that some zones flip faster one week than another. Who knows what algorithm ZOS is using to process this.