Game Update Times

[HnKMephisto]

Would it be possible to schedule game update at a later time than just before day reset?

Contests sometime are fought on the last 15 minutes of the day just before the reset, and putting a game maintenance just before is a pain.

I just lost a place 2-4 (in ComixHarem) for a 100% girl because i couldnt log in, and this is after investing a LOT of resources in the contest and waiting at the end to fight for those positions.

 

I'm sure that if you put a maintenance say 1 hour after day reset, this would have less impact.

Best regards

[Horsting]

Updates outside of Wednesday are not supposed to take longer than a few minutes, and even Wednesday updates are supposed to be done hours before the reset. This was an unexpected incident: 

45 minutes ago, HnKMephisto said:

I'm sure that if you put a maintenance say 1 hour after day reset, this would have less impact.

That is a great suggestion, we had the same idea in chit chat! Probably this topic fits better into "suggestion"?

[Attirm]

On 9/19/2023 at 5:27 AM, HnKMephisto said:

Contests sometime are fought on the last 15 minutes of the day just before the reset, and putting a game maintenance just before is a pain.

Contests being so incredibly competitive at a specific time of the day is a problem in general, and the more rewards that get added to contests the bigger this balance issue becomes. In my time zone, the reset time is 4:00 AM, so I can basically only win by overkilling to the point at which nobody is willing to snipe me. Traditionally this wasn't a huge deal since it was just a handful of kobons, but contests have been getting increasingly important.

I doubt it will ever happen, but I hope some change is made to contests to either make the last 15 minutes less critical, or to rotate the contest ending times so no time zone has a permanent advantage. 

[Horsting]

13 hours ago, Attirm said:

make the last 15 minutes less critical

I have thought about this as well, but couldn't come up with a good idea how to achieve that with a public scoreboard. It is naturally always best to score as close to a contest end as possible, where you can see the scores as final as possible and use your resources as spare as possible. Any earlier scoring raises the price for everyone, and there are many who score or enter scoring battles early, even that they could do later or even snipe.

One could hide the score board until the contest is done, so everyone just scores blindly like those who cannot be online around reset now. Fair, but also takes away the major point of a contest, as those score and sniper battles can be fun as well, or at least interesting to watch.

13 hours ago, Attirm said:

rotate the contest ending times so no time zone has a permanent advantage.

I like that idea. But to achieve that, either contests are sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, or in general shorter but with some hours delay between them in which they are moved back and forth, or happen only every 2 days, to keep 24h duration + 24h to move them around.

[jpanda]

Topic dear to my heart.  My idea was contests from people within your country which is data we know they have from the flags displayed (even if wrong).  This doesn't solve the problem but it narrows it a lot IMO.  Could possibly be abused with folks using VPN tho.

Another alternative (just thought) is to enter a time zone when you start and thus you get that data.  Of course if you change time zones you're either screwed or need some way to change it (which could be abused).  Could limit the "change" to once per time period (like once a year) or have it cost something (more than a contest win obviously:P) to limit abuse.

But yeah it's a hard problem to solve if is solvable at all. Older veterans will remember it used to be a different time and the problem just moved 😜

Edited September 27, 2023 by jpanda
typo fix (doesn't change responses below it)

[Attirm]

7 hours ago, Horsting said:

One could hide the score board until the contest is done, so everyone just scores blindly like those who cannot be online around reset now. Fair, but also takes away the major point of a contest, as those score and sniper battles can be fun as well, or at least interesting to watch.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this exact solution. I think you can do a much softer touch. You don't need to hide all scores, just the top 4 during the last 8 hours of the contest. Letting people joust earlier in the day when everyone is going to have a chance to react to it is fine. Having 5th place visible would also be very tactical, as it would put a lower bound on the 4th place score, and 5th place and lower aren't particularly competitive anyways so there isn't a significant need to hide those scores. This would mean that 4th place could be sniped (since you'd know once you passed into the top 4) but it would be riskier since you really don't know how big the gap between 4th and 5th is.

I've had a couple other ideas, but I don't think they'd work. Some kind of king of the hill system could work, in that if you ignore the contest until right before reset the winner might have already been declared. You'd have to compete at least two points in the day, and someone in a different time zone could win at an earlier hour. However, it doesn't sit right that a contest might effectively be closed hours before the actual close time. The idea of having staggered brackets, where you can choose which 8 hour period you want to compete in contests and be bracketed with other people who also want that period, has the same issue in that most of the day the contests are closed for you.

Another possibility is that in the last 8 hours of the contest all earned points are reduced. In the last 10 hours before the contest closes points start to drop off, with a 5% penalty on all earned score that increases by 5% more every hour. So in the final hour all scoring is only 50% effective. It would still be possible to fight up to the end, but sniping in the last hour would be really inefficient and you'd want to get most of your points in earlier in the day. However, this could be really nasty for more casual players who only log in once per day and are always taking a big penalty in contests.

8 hours ago, Horsting said:

I like that idea. But to achieve that, either contests are sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, or in general shorter but with some hours delay between them in which they are moved back and forth, or happen only every 2 days, to keep 24h duration + 24h to move them around.

Contests would last 23 hours under this suggestion. So over a 23 day period there would be 24 daily contests. CBC and LC would have a delayed start, and would begin at the next contest reset after the daily reset. Given that these are 3 and 4 day events each, the drift over the course of the event wouldn't be enough to have a significant impact.

1 hour ago, jpanda said:

Topic dear to my hear.  My idea was contests from people within your country which is data we know they have from the flags displayed (even if wrong).  This doesn't solve the problem but it narrows it a lot IMO.  Could possibly be abused with folks using VPN tho.

Doesn't really help those of us in large countries where there is a substantial time zone difference within the country (Canadian here)

[Horsting]

13 hours ago, Attirm said:

15 hours ago, jpanda said:

Topic dear to my hear.  My idea was contests from people within your country which is data we know they have from the flags displayed (even if wrong).  This doesn't solve the problem but it narrows it a lot IMO.  Could possibly be abused with folks using VPN tho.

Doesn't really help those of us in large countries where there is a substantial time zone difference within the country (Canadian here)

Also it is worthless as it can be abused via VPN (as you noted), and some people might even need to use a VPN so wouldn't be to blame. But most importantly, actually the problem is not about the time zone only, but about personal daily schedules as well. If reset is while you are sitting in a multi-person office, you are as f***** as when it is in the middle of the night. So the country only is a too narrow view/condition, which misses the actual problem.

13 hours ago, Attirm said:

Contests would last 23 hours under this suggestion. So over a 23 day period there would be 24 daily contests. CBC and LC would have a delayed start, and would begin at the next contest reset after the daily reset. Given that these are 3 and 4 day events each, the drift over the course of the event wouldn't be enough to have a significant impact.

Ah, so you mean moving the contest by 1 hour each day. Yes that allows a consistent contest length 👍.

The only problem I still with changing contest reset times is that one needs to check (or remember) every day again to not miss it or take a break too early 😄. Could be seen as quite annoying, but something I would accept.

Edited September 28, 2023 by Horsting

[HornyCat]

It looks like it to me, that with the update that got done yesterday, someone (probably Rosso) instructed them to make that fucking "offer" thing panel, to keep popping back up 20+ times a fucking day too, especially during the first couple of hours after the end of the Daily Contests.       DOH!

[Horsting]

I also experienced it yesterday (not today), but what does it have to do with this topic 🤔?

[Attirm]

3 hours ago, HornyCat said:

t looks like it to me, that with the update that got done yesterday, someone (probably Rosso) instructed them to make that fucking "offer" thing panel, to keep popping back up 20+ times a fucking day too, especially during the first couple of hours after the end of the Daily Contests.       DOH!

The offers aren't even particularly good. Almost all of them are significantly worse value than just buying kobons. Just looking at the first weekly offer being presented to me, 800 gems and 22 million ymens for $10. So... half an equipment pachinko spin and 1/10th of the gems needed to upgrade a single girl? That's not even a noticeable amount of progress. Literally, you could give me that for free and I wouldn't even notice.

[jelom]

The only fair solution to the contest ending time would be moving them by one hour each day, having contest of 23 or 25 hours, but it has the drawbacks noted before: you have to remember each day the hour of the finishing contests, and there are still the problems with the contest formatted events, Cumback Contests and Legendary Contests: Make them change hours to have the same start-end as the daily contests or keep the actual fixed schedule?

[Der DinX]

The only really fair solution would be, to set fixed values you have to achieve and resources to spend, to get a certain reward.
Make that depending on your Level and everybody has an equal chance.

But that might for some part take the competition out of the contest, and therefore the need of investing real money into it, if you want to score top position.
And that is probably a reason why this will never be considered.

[Master-17]

The following system is also possible: the League and Contest begin and end in the evening at 21:00 (can be put to a vote), but taking into account the current time of the players in it. It is formed from players ±1 hour from the league/contest time zone (for example, if the league/contest is in CET time, then players from the CET-1, CET and CET+1 time zones get there). True, questions arise here - will the game be able to determine the real time zone of players, and not countries, because there may be players from countries where there are many time zones, for example, in Russia there are 11 of them.
Another option is to set this time zone in the settings and you can change it only once a week (or you cannot change it at all without the intervention of technical support).
Or make several leagues and contests that will have a start and end time and players will choose the league and contest they want to participate in at the beginning of the day/week.

[Horsting]

13 hours ago, Master-17 said:

True, questions arise here - will the game be able to determine the real time zone of players

That is naturally impossible and can be abused via VPN.

13 hours ago, Master-17 said:

Another option is to set this time zone in the settings and you can change it only once a week

Actually, why bind it to a time zone at all. As I stated already, the time zone is not the actual issue, and does not define at which time a player can be online or not, as there are many other, even more forcing reasons why one cannot be online. Why not let players select a reset slot. So there is a setting to select a preferred contest reset time. Every hour every day contests start with those players who selected the respective slot. And if one changes the slot, it becomes effective after current contest(s) ended, so next contest(s) will start with a delay 1-23h, so that one cannot shorten the time to next contest by changing the setting.

But there might be slots with an insufficient amount of players in it. Generally the pool of players which can face each other is smaller, which actually causes the issues some face now in CxH BoD, facing the same opponents in contests over and over again. Awesome for the whale(s) in those slots, but nasty for everyone else. So non-whales will probably leave the already small slot, leaving the whale(s) alone, and then what? Hmm, actually I think separating players in contests is not gonna work. Same with the leagues.

14 hours ago, Der DinX said:

But that might for some part take the competition out of the contest

which removes the part which defines it as a contest at all 😄. Fixed rewards for fixed amount of resources is what we have in all the reward track events, but a contest is defined by a competition.

Edited September 29, 2023 by Horsting

[Master-17]

11 hours ago, Horsting said:

why bind it to a time zone at all

Because it’s the easiest to code, plus there won’t be a situation where you forget to select a contest league at the beginning of the day and the points you received will be wasted. At the time I indicated, most people have most likely already finished work and returned home, but have not yet gone to bed, so they can spend time pouring more points into the contest. However, no system will allow us to get rid of the whales.

[Horsting]

2 minutes ago, Master-17 said:

Because it’s the easiest to code, plus there won’t be a situation where you forget to select a contest league at the beginning of the day and the points you received will be wasted. At the time I indicated, most people have most likely already finished work and returned home, but have not yet gone to bed, so they can spend time pouring more points into the contest. However, no system will allow us to get rid of the whales.

Ah, I didn't mean that you need to select a slot every day. You do this once in settings, and there is a default, 13:30 MET (the current one), reasonably, so nothing changes until you change it manually (or maybe the default based on time zone). That is not more or less difficult to code than selecting a time zone. Of course a time zone based pool is better for most than the current overall pool, but it makes it even worse/more discriminating for people who have different schedules, work at night, are travelling much (hence the correct time zone today might be bad tomorrow/when the contest ends), cannot play at work, can only play at work 😄, etc. So IMO, if any pooling is done, it must be a free choice for everyone.

Yeah, no system eliminated the chance that you face whales in contest you cannot defeat. But when pools are too small, there is a risk that this never changes over weeks, and that you face the same whales over and over again. I mean even facing the same opponents over and over again is bad already. IMO a good variation must be assured, and I fear that this is impossible when splitting level brackets further by time zone or freely choosable time slots.

[Master-17]

3 hours ago, Horsting said:

So IMO, if any pooling is done, it must be a free choice for everyone.

On 9/29/2023 at 1:02 PM, Master-17 said:

Another option is to set this time zone in the settings and you can change it only once a week

Actually, that's exactly what I suggested. At the beginning of the week, you set your time zone in which it will be convenient for you to participate. And to avoid abuse, the next time zone change will be available only in a week or through technical support.
13:30 in most cases occurs at the height of the working day, few people find it convenient - they have to take time off from work to immerse themselves in the game and keep track of what is happening. Therefore, in my opinion, 21:00 is a more appropriate time. But, as I wrote earlier, this can be put to a vote.

[Horsting]

3 hours ago, Master-17 said:

Actually, that's exactly what I suggested. At the beginning of the week, you set your time zone in which it will be convenient for you to participate.

Jep, my suggestion does not really change something about that, just that you do not select a "time zone" (which sounds like it should be yours and correct or something) but a contest reset time. So it is really more about the wording, where I would make clear that the time zone is irrelevant, but you are simply free to choose at which hour of the day you want the contest to start and end, regardless which time zone you are living.

As far as I thought it through, there is no need to restrict the setting to be used once a week or via ingame support only (they would be SO happy to have more work, for sure 😄), as long as it affects the next contest after the current contest ended. In this case, any change will always move the next contest further away for you, between 1 and 23 hours, hence it always comes with this little cost, and switching it one day and reverting it the next day means you basically loose one contest. So it cannot be abused.