Updates to Guild Trader Swap Times

ZOS_GinaBruno · August 2020

Cani wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Cani wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno About the bid test, do you guys want us to do some special things? Like bid all on one kiosk? Lots of gold?

There are lots of people who already said they are ready to test, if you want some heavy tests on one kiosk or anything, now is the chance!

Yes! If you could bid on a trader on PTS then just let me know (here or via PM) which one you bid on, that would help a ton. Doesn't matter how much you bid. Thanks!

sirinsidiator wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

European (EU) megaserver: Tuesdays - 13:00 UTC, 10am EDT / 9am EST
13:55 Tuesday UTC: All bidding and renting from the previous week will stop

14:00 Tuesday UTC : Tabard of the selected vendor flips to new owners

14:05 Tuesday UTC : All bidding and renting is opened up again for the following week

Just noticed you actually posted two times for the EU change. Which one is correct? 13:00 UTC or 14:00 UTC? 10am EDT would indicate 14:00 UTC is what you meant to write.

Sorry about that. The correct time should be 14:00 UTC. Will edit the original post to correct that.

I am able to bid with 5 Guilds! I could place 5 bids on 10 traders or 50 on random ones. Some sort of guideline or special scenario if needed would be amazing!
I really want to help out in testing.

If it doesn't matter i will probably place 5 bids on 10 traders. Gonna bid on every trader in Rawl'kha and every trader in Vivec beside "Jena Calvus" (the one with the tend who is farthest away from the Wayshrine)!

Thanks for your help! In this case, we just need the guild name and which trader you bid on. To quote Metallica, nothing else matters.

JN_Slevin · August 2020

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Cani wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Cani wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno About the bid test, do you guys want us to do some special things? Like bid all on one kiosk? Lots of gold?

There are lots of people who already said they are ready to test, if you want some heavy tests on one kiosk or anything, now is the chance!

Yes! If you could bid on a trader on PTS then just let me know (here or via PM) which one you bid on, that would help a ton. Doesn't matter how much you bid. Thanks!

sirinsidiator wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

European (EU) megaserver: Tuesdays - 13:00 UTC, 10am EDT / 9am EST
13:55 Tuesday UTC: All bidding and renting from the previous week will stop

14:00 Tuesday UTC : Tabard of the selected vendor flips to new owners

14:05 Tuesday UTC : All bidding and renting is opened up again for the following week

Just noticed you actually posted two times for the EU change. Which one is correct? 13:00 UTC or 14:00 UTC? 10am EDT would indicate 14:00 UTC is what you meant to write.

Sorry about that. The correct time should be 14:00 UTC. Will edit the original post to correct that.

I am able to bid with 5 Guilds! I could place 5 bids on 10 traders or 50 on random ones. Some sort of guideline or special scenario if needed would be amazing!
I really want to help out in testing.

If it doesn't matter i will probably place 5 bids on 10 traders. Gonna bid on every trader in Rawl'kha and every trader in Vivec beside "Jena Calvus" (the one with the tend who is farthest away from the Wayshrine)!

Thanks for your help! In this case, we just need the guild name and which trader you bid on. To quote Metallica, nothing else matters.

Perfect, will do as soon as the PTS is online! The Guildnames are in my Signature, thanks for responding! Lets hope we can get some juicy data out of it.

rotten333 · August 2020

off topic apparently

Iarao · August 2020

i notice that eu is in military time and na is not. so is that 3p or 3a? cuz mixing the 2 is kinda confusing.

Fiktius wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hi everyone!
13:55 Tuesday UTC: All bidding and renting from the previous week will stop

14:00 Tuesday UTC : Tabard of the selected vendor flips to new owners

14:05 Tuesday UTC : All bidding and renting is opened up again for the following week

Okay, so, that planned time you have there is approx 4 PM CET, when actual tabards of traders flip.
That is a time where most people are still working or on a way back to home.
Would it be possible that you consider pushing the time 1-2 hours forwards, so more workers have opportunity to be at home during reset time?
Or is that considered prime time at Tuesday and therefore impossible?

1400 is military for 2p, not 3p

Iarao · August 2020

Iarao wrote: »

i notice that eu is in military time and na is not. so is that 3p or 3a? cuz mixing the 2 is kinda confusing.

Fiktius wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hi everyone!
13:55 Tuesday UTC: All bidding and renting from the previous week will stop

14:00 Tuesday UTC : Tabard of the selected vendor flips to new owners

14:05 Tuesday UTC : All bidding and renting is opened up again for the following week

Okay, so, that planned time you have there is approx 4 PM CET, when actual tabards of traders flip.
That is a time where most people are still working or on a way back to home.
Would it be possible that you consider pushing the time 1-2 hours forwards, so more workers have opportunity to be at home during reset time?
Or is that considered prime time at Tuesday and therefore impossible?

1400 is military for 2p, not 3p

okies so i dont know what cet stands for.

Varana · August 2020

CET = Central European Time, i.e. most of Europe. The UK is usually 1 hour behind, UTC is 2 hours behind.
14:00 is not "military".

Fiktius · August 2020

I also participated into this testing in PTS and placed as total 40 bids in Craglorn and Vivec City.
(All traders in those two zones)

Guilds I did bid with:

The First Trading Guild, Flipping Coins, Shining Coins and Rolling Coins.

sirinsidiator · August 2020

I've placed bids on all 5 kiosks in Daggerfall and 5 of the 6 in Rimmen (leaving out Artura Pamarc).

virtus753 · August 2020

Varana wrote: »

CET = Central European Time, i.e. most of Europe. The UK is usually 1 hour behind, UTC is 2 hours behind.
14:00 is not "military".

24-hour time is indeed commonly known as “military time” in the US, because the military is one of the few institutions here that have used it habitually. The vast majority of US-based people and companies use 12-hour time. I’d venture to guess most people in the US do not know 24-hour time at all.

Feric51 · August 2020

virtus753 wrote: »

Varana wrote: »

CET = Central European Time, i.e. most of Europe. The UK is usually 1 hour behind, UTC is 2 hours behind.
14:00 is not "military".

24-hour time is indeed commonly known as “military time” in the US, because the military is one of the few institutions here that have used it habitually. The vast majority of US-based people and companies use 12-hour time. I’d venture to guess most people in the US do not know 24-hour time at all.

A lot of government agencies use 24-hour time for record keeping to remove any ambiguity from official records, policies and procedures. Whether it's law enforcement, park operations, or even your local village sewer treatment plant, a lot of them run off the 24-hour clock.

Source: I am a former park district employee now a local government worker.

karliahquinn · August 2020

Nurses use 24hr time as well

driosketch · August 2020

Feric51 wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

Varana wrote: »

CET = Central European Time, i.e. most of Europe. The UK is usually 1 hour behind, UTC is 2 hours behind.
14:00 is not "military".

24-hour time is indeed commonly known as “military time” in the US, because the military is one of the few institutions here that have used it habitually. The vast majority of US-based people and companies use 12-hour time. I’d venture to guess most people in the US do not know 24-hour time at all.

A lot of government agencies use 24-hour time for record keeping to remove any ambiguity from official records, policies and procedures. Whether it's law enforcement, park operations, or even your local village sewer treatment plant, a lot of them run off the 24-hour clock.

Source: I am a former park district employee now a local government worker.

I'm thinking maybe only those agencies that run 24 hours, like police. Social services at county and state levels are using 12 hour clocks. Some of that might be that they are open for business for a window of less then 12 hours, so if an application comes in at 4, we know it's PM because offices weren't open at 4 AM. But even those facilities open longer, like when I worked for parks and rec, the only thing running a 24 hour clock were the security cameras.

AlnilamE · August 2020

virtus753 wrote: »

Varana wrote: »

CET = Central European Time, i.e. most of Europe. The UK is usually 1 hour behind, UTC is 2 hours behind.
14:00 is not "military".

24-hour time is indeed commonly known as “military time” in the US, because the military is one of the few institutions here that have used it habitually. The vast majority of US-based people and companies use 12-hour time. I’d venture to guess most people in the US do not know 24-hour time at all.

That may be the case in the US, but in French and German, you use the 24-hour system as much as the 12-hour system, so everyone is familiar with both. Same for Portuguese.

Varana · August 2020

virtus753 wrote: »

Varana wrote: »

CET = Central European Time, i.e. most of Europe. The UK is usually 1 hour behind, UTC is 2 hours behind.
14:00 is not "military".

24-hour time is indeed commonly known as “military time” in the US, because the military is one of the few institutions here that have used it habitually. The vast majority of US-based people and companies use 12-hour time. I’d venture to guess most people in the US do not know 24-hour time at all.

Ah, thanks. I thought "military" meant specifically the notation (and corresponding style of announcing the time) of a 24-hour clock as simple four-digit numbers, so "1405", "0539", and so on.

Sergykid · August 2020

ok all cool but my question is why the change. What was wrong with the Sunday night time? how did this "solution" occur, from what problem? and since i'm here, what's wrong with Saturday afternoon then? ;d

anitajoneb17_ESO · August 2020

Sergykid wrote: »

ok all cool but my question is why the change. What was wrong with the Sunday night time? how did this "solution" occur, from what problem? and since i'm here, what's wrong with Saturday afternoon then? ;d

I can answer that one for ZOS, even if I'm not ZOS :
What's wrong with sunday night time : it's prime time for many players => server load. Also, community managers and maintenance staff are not commonly available in case something goes wrong (and it often does lately).

Why this new schedule was chosen : because it is the optimal time considering the various parameters, among which server load and staff availability.

Whats wrong with saturday afternoon : because it is not the optimal time considering the various parameters, among which server load and staff availability.

Elsonso · August 2020

Sergykid wrote: »

ok all cool but my question is why the change. What was wrong with the Sunday night time? how did this "solution" occur, from what problem? and since i'm here, what's wrong with Saturday afternoon then? ;d

ZOS answered this one:

"These new times will ensure we can fully monitor and react to any issues that may arise when the swap takes place."

Translation: it looks like they want this to happen during the week, when ZOS developers are at work, so that if something goes wrong, the people who can fix it are already there.

sirinsidiator · August 2020

@ZOS_GinaBruno Just wanted to let you know that I didn't receive a winning mail, only 9 lost/refund mails for the bid on PTS, even though I won the primary bid. History shows the winning bid correctly though.

ZOS_GinaBruno · August 2020

sirinsidiator wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno Just wanted to let you know that I didn't receive a winning mail, only 9 lost/refund mails for the bid on PTS, even though I won the primary bid. History shows the winning bid correctly though.

Thanks for the info, passed this over to our QA team to take a look. We also found an additional issue that we'll make sure to get fixed before this goes live - thanks so much for everyone's help yesterday on the PTS!

JN_Slevin · August 2020

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

sirinsidiator wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno Just wanted to let you know that I didn't receive a winning mail, only 9 lost/refund mails for the bid on PTS, even though I won the primary bid. History shows the winning bid correctly though.

Thanks for the info, passed this over to our QA team to take a look. We also found an additional issue that we'll make sure to get fixed before this goes live - thanks so much for everyone's help yesterday on the PTS!

It was the same for me! Lots of loosing mails and no winning mail.

Other things seemed to be fine, the trader was "free" for a second, but this could be an UI issue.

Also i noticed that in the history was the winning bid before the loosing bids, whereas on live its the other way around.

whoathere · August 2020

CynderzLite wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno Has anyone brought up the fact that chapters and dlcs usually drop on Tuesdays
Not everyone has fast internet and the download can take till past 3:00pm edt/est
I realize that the solution would be “Well just bid ahead of time” but for some guilds those hours can make a huge difference as far as deposits and gold available for bidding! So why Tuesday’s?

That is something that has been bugging me for a while. Maintenance usually takes places Monday/Tuesday, so with the new system it will be before the trader switch. That is worrying to me.

If it takes place on Monday and something breaks in the code, we could potentially be out of a trader for a week. When it was taking place on Sundays, you could just forget about the maintenance until after you have secured your trader. Now, it will be a stressful situation, not knowing if it will be done.
I personally have also not been able to log into eso on Mondays due to long maintenance and not being able to log in due to the number of people trying to do this. So that means even more people trying to log in to set the bids for Tuesday.

If it takes place on Tuesday, then we won't know if we won our bids until after the maintenance. Again, we run into the same problem of too many people logging in all at once to try and see what has happened. It also means that there will be even less chance of seeing a free trader since it will literally become a first come first server situation since the 5 mins after the trader switch will be looooong gone.

I am not going to get into how many add-ons for managment will be broken and with ZOS not having any support through vanilla is going to make guild management harder than ever.

sirinsidiator · August 2020

@ZOS_GinaBruno sorry to bother you again and again, but you still haven't clarified if the bidding stays open until Tuesday in this special week, or if GMs should rather place their bids until Sunday, since the ingame interface shows bidding closes Sunday evening on EU live.

ZOS_GinaBruno · August 2020

sirinsidiator wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno sorry to bother you again and again, but you still haven't clarified if the bidding stays open until Tuesday in this special week, or if GMs should rather place their bids until Sunday, since the ingame interface shows bidding closes Sunday evening on EU live.

It should stay open until Tuesday. Does the in-game UI show Sunday right now? It should have updated yesterday around 5pm EDT.

sirinsidiator · August 2020

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

sirinsidiator wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno sorry to bother you again and again, but you still haven't clarified if the bidding stays open until Tuesday in this special week, or if GMs should rather place their bids until Sunday, since the ingame interface shows bidding closes Sunday evening on EU live.

It should stay open until Tuesday. Does the in-game UI show Sunday right now? It should have updated yesterday around 5pm EDT.

Ah yes, it's now the correct time. Sorry about that - wasn't home since yesterday so I couldn't check.

agegarton · August 2020

@ZOS_GinaBruno can we please get a bit of additional info on the win/lose emails?

On a "won" email, it would be great to identify which guild (many GMs operate several guilds).

It was also be really cool to see which kiosk was won. Again, with multi-bidding many of bid 4, 5, or even 10 spots.

I absolutely appreciate that this information can be found elsewhere, it'd just be really helpful.

baratron · August 2020

agegarton wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno can we please get a bit of additional info on the win/lose emails?

On a "won" email, it would be great to identify which guild (many GMs operate several guilds).

It was also be really cool to see which kiosk was won. Again, with multi-bidding many of bid 4, 5, or even 10 spots.

I absolutely appreciate that this information can be found elsewhere, it'd just be really helpful.

Oh goodness, have the in-game mails stopped telling us which guild won? Nooooo! That's absolutely a step backwards.

AnonomissX · August 2020

You don't need to have the email show you what trader you won. You just hit menu / social / guild /the guild you are looking for and the trader is listed on the main page.

Elsonso · August 2020

AnonomissX wrote: »

You don't need to have the email show you what trader you won. You just hit menu / social / guild /the guild you are looking for and the trader is listed on the main page.

Seems to me that the emails should tell what guild the email is for and what trader was won, though.

virtus753 · August 2020

AnonomissX wrote: »

You don't need to have the email show you what trader you won. You just hit menu / social / guild /the guild you are looking for and the trader is listed on the main page.

Ideally, this would be true. Unfortunately that info is only trustworthy after a successful flip, and sometimes not even then. There have been several times when the guild page is bugged system-wide for the week and shows wrong info about the trader. It’s not fully reliable.

It’s also no longer timely. On PC-NA for the past few months it’s often been taking nearly 20 minutes from the time the system figures out what trader you should have (and sends you the mail) to the time you can find out for sure which you got (through updated guild info, bank history, or looking at processed bids). The processing of reimbursements is going on for so long that GMs (and other officers responsible for bidding) are waiting to find out which trader they should have gotten and then whether it actually was implemented correctly (two different questions).

That process has failed outright at least four times on PC-EU. The ~20-minute delay on NA might not have as long-lasting an impact a complete failure, but it happens much more often and is still highly disruptive to guilds that want to ensure their bids were successful, try to find an open trader if they weren’t, and communicate with their members about what’s going on. Letting us know in the mail which trader we should have won would eliminate part of the needless anxiety caused by a system that is obviously straining under its own weight.

Hopefully we’ll know soon if moving the flip to Tuesdays will improve the situation, but more communication is always better than less, especially in a process fraught with a history of problems. There would be no harm in adding the location to the mail; on the contrary, it would go some way towards ensuring peace of mind by letting us know what should happen so we can make sure it does. Otherwise we’re left with watching the bids process and the guild history (hopefully) reimburse us until the process is complete, while guild members who don’t have access to bids or bid histories wait for us to feel confident enough to say when and whether the guild page info is correct. That’s not an acceptable situation.

Quelios · August 2020

Good idea... why? Servers are breathing better on Tuesday and even better when people are still working. Ok, all GMs being at work are not happy, but ZOS will be also on their working time, so they can solve issues fast (I'll hope till I'll die).

Just one thing: 30 min to swap is more realistic than 5 min - medicine against frustration ...

And another thing: new trading system will make me happy, but this is not going to happen in my lifetime.

Have a nice life everyone, stay safe and Corona Free...