[Discussion] Rotating Update

[Eluvatar]

This is a topic to discuss my intent to have the daily update occur at different times in the day. There is another topic which, once opened, will be the official space for comments. This topic, however, is for players to discuss the feature with one another and ask clarifying questions. The description of the feature may be revised prior to opening the other topic for comments for better clarity, or to correct any mistakes.

Ground Rules
This topic is intended to be a way for site administration and the community to discuss the feature and improve understanding. This topic will not be permitted to become a flaming free-for-all of an argument, useless to everyone and infuriating to many.

1. A player may post using one (and only one) nation in this topic. Do not use puppet nations.
2. Please address other players only in a completely respectful and cordial manner.
3. Please keep in mind site rules in general and the bad faith policy specifically (which applies to this topic).

Rotating Update
On similar lines to previously aired thoughts, I intend to end the practice of having update begin at 12 o’clock America/New_York (or 9 o’clock America/Los_Angeles) time every day. This is about changing things so that, in the long run, update is equally likely to happen at any hour of the day. (This is not about changing the update order within an update.)

My current preferred plan is for updates to be scheduled a week (or rather 14 updates) in advance. The hour at which an update is to begin will be determined by (virtually) rolling 8 two-sided dice¹, and starting the update that many hours after the start of the previous update.

Sum of 8d2	Probability
8	0.39%
9	3.13%
10	10.94%
11	21.88%
12	27.34%
13	21.88%
14	10.94%
15	3.13%
16	0.39%

Illustration of likelihood of hours between updates

There will be a new page which shows the update schedule for the coming week. This page will unlist an update time as said update starts and schedule the next (14 updates into the future).

Update	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14
Hours	12	14	12	12	10	10	9	13	12	10	10	13	11	-
Start Day	1/1	1/1	1/2	1/2	1/3	1/3	1/3	1/4	1/4	1/5	1/5	1/6	1/6	1/7
Start Hour	0:00	12:00	2:00	14:00	2:00	12:00	22:00	7:00	20:00	8:00	18:00	4:00	17:00	4:00

Example schedule

As you can see, this will result in the start of update “drifting” over time.

The likely change in hour for the start of update over 14 updates

As a result, when update is to begin will be known several days in advance but will tend to change and not stick to a particular time of day.

The primary goal of this change would be to allow players with any schedule, in any timezone, to have an opportunity to participate in update gameplay.

---

¹ Flipping 8 coins and adding up 2 for every heads and 1 for every tails

Please discuss the pros and cons of this form of Rotating Update, of having 13 hours between updates, or a similar plan. If you have questions about the feature as described, please feel free to ask. Please keep in mind, however, that I do not guarantee I will read every post in this topic with full care and consideration: that is the purpose of the request for comments topic.

[Somyrion]

Currently, WA vote starting and ending times are based on the updates. Would having a rotating update mean that the length of WA votes would also be random?

[Eluvatar]

Currently, WA vote starting and ending times are based on the updates. Would having a rotating update mean that the length of WA votes would also be random?

That's a good question.

I believe that it'd be best to have WA vote starts also be randomized but for the length to be fixed, but I haven't given this as much thought. I'd be very interested in what WA regulars have to say on the matter. (It'd also be possible to completely separate the opening of WA votes from the update, leaving them on their own, potentially static, schedule).

[Wrapper]

Currently, WA vote starting and ending times are based on the updates. Would having a rotating update mean that the length of WA votes would also be random?

That's a good question.

I believe that it'd be best to have WA vote starts also be randomized but for the length to be fixed, but I haven't given this as much thought. I'd be very interested in what WA regulars have to say on the matter. (It'd also be possible to completely separate the opening of WA votes from the update, leaving them on their own, potentially static, schedule).

This could be interesting. If the WA vote start is randomized it makes it more difficult to stack in favor of or against a resolution the moment it comes to vote. I think that's a good thing; due to the perceived "lemming effect" (voters blindly voting in favor of the winning side) it's already very difficult to overcome an early vote by a "superdelegate" (delegate with hundreds of votes).

[Tinfect]

If what is going to happen is going to require the WA to be unbound from the standard update system anyway, is there much reason to change the voting interval at all? Or am I horribly misunderstanding this?

[Eluvatar]

If what is going to happen is going to require the WA to be unbound from the standard update system anyway, is there much reason to change the voting interval at all? Or am I horribly misunderstanding this?

It does not require it, no. But I should probably carefully consider the implications, and act appropriately.

[Bears Armed]

If the start of WA votes gets randomized then that's going to give proposals submitted at the identical time on on different dates differing lengths of time in which to gather the necessary number of approvals, increasing unpredictability for authors: I don't see that as a 'good' change.

[Excidium Planetis]

I believe that it'd be best to have WA vote starts also be randomized but for the length to be fixed, but I haven't given this as much thought. I'd be very interested in what WA regulars have to say on the matter. (It'd also be possible to completely separate the opening of WA votes from the update, leaving them on their own, potentially static, schedule).

As a GA regular, I see no harm in a randomized start time but fixed length (4 days, presumably). I don't think we would see a big impact to delegate stacks like Wrapper suggests (since the update schedule is known in advance), but do agree with Bears Armed that it might make proposal submission more difficult for some players.

I believe the impact will be pretty minimal either way, though.

One change we would see is that WA votes might end several hours before the next update, making a space even when another proposal is in queue already.

[Eluvatar]

If the start of WA votes gets randomized then that's going to give proposals submitted at the identical time on on different dates differing lengths of time in which to gather the necessary number of approvals, increasing unpredictability for authors: I don't see that as a 'good' change.

Would it matter if they knew well over 4 days in advance when the start of vote time would be?

[Bears Armed]

If the start of WA votes gets randomized then that's going to give proposals submitted at the identical time on on different dates differing lengths of time in which to gather the necessary number of approvals, increasing unpredictability for authors: I don't see that as a 'good' change.

Would it matter if they knew well over 4 days in advance when the start of vote time would be?

Oops! Missed that detail...

Maybe not, then.

[Wrapper]

If the start of WA votes gets randomized then that's going to give proposals submitted at the identical time on on different dates differing lengths of time in which to gather the necessary number of approvals, increasing unpredictability for authors: I don't see that as a 'good' change.

Would it matter if they knew well over 4 days in advance when the start of vote time would be?

Okay, maybe I'm missing something, because that would throw my argument out the window, if everyone knew when the start time would be.

[Excidium Planetis]

Okay, maybe I'm missing something, because that would throw my argument out the window, if everyone knew when the start time would be.

Ahem:

As a result, when update is to begin will be known several days in advance but will tend to change and not stick to a particular time of day.

[Wrapper]

You know, sometimes, when Elu goes off on one of these techie spiels, you kind of tune it out after awhile.

In this case I agree, it will have minimal effect on stacking. Actually, I think it will have minimal effect on anything as far as voting goes, whether voting time lasts four days or eight updates. There have been some very close votes but I can't recall any that swung the other way in the final few hours. Does anyone have any data on that?

As far as approval times for submitted proposals, that already varies anyway, depending on how long before/after an update it's been submitted (not everyone knows to submit right after an update to maximize the approval time). Again, I think impact would be minimal, if the deadline is known.

[House of Judah]

How about do this, but strip out any ability for people to predict when it's going to happen? I'm sure some scripter will be able to figure out a macro that will let them know that it's started, but let's make the raiders actually work for it for a change. The "game" is already stacked heavily in favor of raiders as is so instead of making it easier to get more people participating in R/D, let's make it harder so that only those really dedicated to wrecking what other people have built will want any part of it.

[Minoa]

I think I would just use a single dice of 12 sides, which should in theory equally distribute all the regions within the 12-hour rolling window, and also relieve pressure on the servers (I think).

[Reploid Productions]

I'm sure somebody could easily quote me saying half-jokingly in multiple discords that I think "update every 13 hours so that the update time drifts in a straightfoward and predictable manner across timezones" is a better idea. Keeps it simple, drifts the update time so that people regularly and reliably get the chance to engage in update gameplay without always having to stay up stupidly late/get up stupidly early. The whole dice roller to randomize the time just seems... well, needlessly complicated in comparison.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

I am not a huge fan of this.

The general "pro" to rotating update ideas is that current update times are not great for play in some time zones. It's a good base to start from, but I believe the effect will a decrease, not an increase, in R/D involvement.

As bad as 12/12 is for some people, it's generally a *doable* if not perfect time for those in the US, and a majority of the playerbase. Majors? Go much earlier, and you start to lose people on the western end who still have to get home, make dinner, etc. Go any later, and you quickly start losing east coasters to bed. Minors? Go much earlier, lose west coasters to bed. Go much later, and you pull the east coast out of the lunch-ish range and into people being busy in the afternoons. Generally, evening/late evening is the best time for update actions to occur. People are done with school, work, errands, dinner, etc, and most likely to be able to get on and play.

So now we look way outside that time frame, at an update that either randomly (dice) or decisively (plus or minus one hour per update) moves around in the day. By the numbers, the vast majority of these will fall outside of the few fairly-doable zones for involvement for most of the US player base. You're trading slightly easier access for a few for generally more difficult access for the rest. While some folks may have issues making updates at 11pm central every day, A lot more are going to have issues making any of a set at 2pm, 4pm, 3pm, 6pm, etc. You're talking about a format which inevitably moves quite a few updates into the active day of many players. Not to even mention that, update could "crawl" to say, early afternoon/the witching hours when many are quite busy, with a series of large or small rolls, and then make rolls that even out for a while and leave it mid afternoon/super early morning for a while.

Let's take that a step even further. For large scale military actions, an important part of planning is often maximizing when the most people can be on. That is, generally, the "weekend" majors - the one between friday and saturday, and the one between saturday and sunday. Fewer people have work, they can stay up generally later, they've done their errands or outings for day and gotten home, etc. You reliably have at least two updates a week, then, that you can get a large force on, right now. So now we add in the cycle, right? You could go quite some number of weeks without having an update on friday or saturday evening. This has a pretty big impact on operation planning and execution. If I'm trying to plan this occupation to begin in two weeks, and then it comes out that that weekend does not have any good updates for attendance....add delays. On the other side, raiders could start an operation on the last good update before a period where all the updaters are during busy hours for most players for the next few days, highly reducing the chances for a liberation.

I think overall, it adds a larger impediment to coordination, and a heavier burden on involvement. More people will be able to make less updates, while fewer people will be able to make more updates. This will reduce overall activity. Not to mention training! It's hard enough already to get trainees to grasp the idea of updates, when they are, when they should come on for training, etc. Add in update constantly moving around, and you just make it even harder to get people online for their first try at R/D.

Adding one final layer - you're also making it more difficult for regions to defend and secure themselves. Any region that wants to cover updates with a watchful eye would need to coordinate 24/7 coverage by RO's over time. Less so than with delegate elect, because at least it's still predictable, but still requiring them to have people online to deal with potential situations at far more times of the day than currently.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

I'm sure somebody could easily quote me saying half-jokingly in multiple discords that I think "update every 13 hours so that the update time drifts in a straightfoward and predictable manner across timezones" is a better idea. Keeps it simple, drifts the update time so that people regularly and reliably get the chance to engage in update gameplay without always having to stay up stupidly late/get up stupidly early. The whole dice roller to randomize the time just seems... well, needlessly complicated in comparison.

To add more on this, since I only passingly mentioned it in my comment above - the same criticisms still largely apply. I've got the math hand for 11 hours rather than 13, but same impact for this point (whether you go with 11 or 13, and overall increase or decrease the total number of updates in a given period, is another topic altogether). Let me quote myself from Discord earlier -

Week one, Friday at 12, day at 11.
(s10, m9, t8, w7, t6) week two, Friday at 5, Saturday at 4 (s3, m2, t1, w12 t11) week three Friday at 10, Saturday at 9, week four is 3/2, week 5 is is 8/7, week 6 is 1/12, week 7 is 6/5, week 8 is 11/10, week 9 is 4/3, 10 is 9/8, 11 is 2/1, 12 is 7/6 ...

It takes a while longer to rotate back to 12/11 losing an hour a day. You do get more overall updates in a given period, but looking at the above 12 weeks, say between 9 and 12 on Friday/Saturday, you only have 8 occurances in 12 weeks.
Similarly, if we block out say, 1am updates through 6pm updates on weekdays as unlikely to be used very much, you’re gonna have a lot of those. As tough as 12 is for east coasters to do on a weekday, it works reasonably well - going much below 9 for west coasters would start to lose people to still doing day stuff, going any later solidly loses east coasters, and so on.

[Funkadelia]

I really don't see why this needs to be changed. It's so much easier to plan for things when you know that update is going to happen at the same time twice every single day. When it's at different times, no matter the advance warning, it will be more difficult to make sure you can be around for them.

Consider you are the point on a raid. You are able to make every major and minor update in order to defend your position from people trying to liberate it. But now, in a day or two, update is going to be at 4 AM instead of midnight. Now, you can't make it because you need to sleep and you aren't about to set an alarm to get up in the middle of the night, defend your raid, then go back to bed for your day. Or, instead, it 8 PM and you're not going to be at your computer quite yet at the time. I'm not saying everyone is going to have those circumstances, and certainly the possibility of a different update time might be beneficial to some people in other parts of the world, but even then, you might have one or two updates that are beneficial for those people, and then back to updates that they can't make because they'll be asleep or what have you. I just don't think this is a very good idea, and will hurt peoples ability to participate most of the time in exchange for more people being able to participate some of the time.

[Eluvatar]

How about do this, but strip out any ability for people to predict when it's going to happen? I'm sure some scripter will be able to figure out a macro that will let them know that it's started, but let's make the raiders actually work for it for a change. The "game" is already stacked heavily in favor of raiders as is so instead of making it easier to get more people participating in R/D, let's make it harder so that only those really dedicated to wrecking what other people have built will want any part of it.

The goal is not to eliminate gameplay.

One would be able to tell that update has started because nations will begin to gain influence and/or population.

I think I would just use a single dice of 12 sides, which should in theory equally distribute all the regions within the 12-hour rolling window, and also relieve pressure on the servers (I think).

The difference in expense of 8 one-bit random numbers versus one random number from 1 to 12 is not guaranteed to be in favor of 1 to 12 and is negligible, particularly for a roughly twice-per-day calculation.

The update would continue to be about an hour long, and all regions would be updated during that hour, under this design.

I'm sure somebody could easily quote me saying half-jokingly in multiple discords that I think "update every 13 hours so that the update time drifts in a straightfoward and predictable manner across timezones" is a better idea. Keeps it simple, drifts the update time so that people regularly and reliably get the chance to engage in update gameplay without always having to stay up stupidly late/get up stupidly early. The whole dice roller to randomize the time just seems... well, needlessly complicated in comparison.

I would prefer to retain 2 updates per day, rather than 1.846 updates per day, on average. I'm open to having something more regular and less random if the community prefers it, such as (13,12) 12 times followed by (11,12) 12 times (which would make the update move day by day first one hour forwards 12 times then 1 hour backward 12 times), repeated in a cycle.

The general "pro" to rotating update ideas is that current update times are not great for play in some time zones. It's a good base to start from, but I believe the effect will a decrease, not an increase, in R/D involvement.

As bad as 12/12 is for some people, it's generally a *doable* if not perfect time for those in the US, and a majority of the playerbase. Majors? Go much earlier, and you start to lose people on the western end who still have to get home, make dinner, etc. Go any later, and you quickly start losing east coasters to bed. Minors? Go much earlier, lose west coasters to bed. Go much later, and you pull the east coast out of the lunch-ish range and into people being busy in the afternoons. Generally, evening/late evening is the best time for update actions to occur. People are done with school, work, errands, dinner, etc, and most likely to be able to get on and play.

So now we look way outside that time frame, at an update that either randomly (dice) or decisively (plus or minus one hour per update) moves around in the day. By the numbers, the vast majority of these will fall outside of the few fairly-doable zones for involvement for most of the US player base. You're trading slightly easier access for a few for generally more difficult access for the rest. While some folks may have issues making updates at 11pm central every day, A lot more are going to have issues making any of a set at 2pm, 4pm, 3pm, 6pm, etc. You're talking about a format which inevitably moves quite a few updates into the active day of many players. Not to even mention that, update could "crawl" to say, early afternoon/the witching hours when many are quite busy, with a series of large or small rolls, and then make rolls that even out for a while and leave it mid afternoon/super early morning for a while.

Let's take that a step even further. For large scale military actions, an important part of planning is often maximizing when the most people can be on. That is, generally, the "weekend" majors - the one between friday and saturday, and the one between saturday and sunday. Fewer people have work, they can stay up generally later, they've done their errands or outings for day and gotten home, etc. You reliably have at least two updates a week, then, that you can get a large force on, right now. So now we add in the cycle, right? You could go quite some number of weeks without having an update on friday or saturday evening. This has a pretty big impact on operation planning and execution. If I'm trying to plan this occupation to begin in two weeks, and then it comes out that that weekend does not have any good updates for attendance....add delays. On the other side, raiders could start an operation on the last good update before a period where all the updaters are during busy hours for most players for the next few days, highly reducing the chances for a liberation.

I think overall, it adds a larger impediment to coordination, and a heavier burden on involvement. More people will be able to make less updates, while fewer people will be able to make more updates. This will reduce overall activity. Not to mention training! It's hard enough already to get trainees to grasp the idea of updates, when they are, when they should come on for training, etc. Add in update constantly moving around, and you just make it even harder to get people online for their first try at R/D.

Would more players not get involved who currently can't?

I will try to acquire easily digestible statistics about the geographical distribution of our player base and post them here.

I have no intention of introducing this before the Next WA Update feature. Indeed, I expect that Next WA Update might even be live before the Request for Comments officially opens for this. Would that help any?

Adding one final layer - you're also making it more difficult for regions to defend and secure themselves. Any region that wants to cover updates with a watchful eye would need to coordinate 24/7 coverage by RO's over time. Less so than with delegate elect, because at least it's still predictable, but still requiring them to have people online to deal with potential situations at far more times of the day than currently.

I think that Delegate-Elect may help make such invasions more reversible. Would this be insufficient because of the prestige loss of brief occupation, because that would not make such invasions more reversible, or for other reasons?

I really don't see why this needs to be changed. It's so much easier to plan for things when you know that update is going to happen at the same time twice every single day. When it's at different times, no matter the advance warning, it will be more difficult to make sure you can be around for them.

Consider you are the point on a raid. You are able to make every major and minor update in order to defend your position from people trying to liberate it. But now, in a day or two, update is going to be at 4 AM instead of midnight. Now, you can't make it because you need to sleep and you aren't about to set an alarm to get up in the middle of the night, defend your raid, then go back to bed for your day. Or, instead, it 8 PM and you're not going to be at your computer quite yet at the time. I'm not saying everyone is going to have those circumstances, and certainly the possibility of a different update time might be beneficial to some people in other parts of the world, but even then, you might have one or two updates that are beneficial for those people, and then back to updates that they can't make because they'll be asleep or what have you. I just don't think this is a very good idea, and will hurt peoples ability to participate most of the time in exchange for more people being able to participate some of the time.

I will say that this feature would be motivated by allowing more people to be involved, and viewing making some people who can currently be involved every update no longer being able to be involved in every update as an acceptable loss. I'd be interested to hear reasoning for why those priorities might be backwards, however.

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”. ~John Lydgate, Abraham Lincoln

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

Overall, it's my firm belief that you'll see far more people be able to participate less than be able to participate more yes. An informal polling of TBH concurs. Next update does not change that at all.

Delegate elect and rotating times *together* make regional security, both of native held regions and of occupied regions, a nightmare. As with most such things, though, it will generally impact the native regions *more*, because occupations have understanding of and planning for these mechanics, and the initiative.

[Moneyness]

I don't see how changing the time that updates occur would allow more nations to get involved. We currently have two updates that occur 12 hours apart which provides an opportunity for people to participate twice a day. If they have work or school or something else during one of the updates they can choose to make being on for the other update a priority. For people to participate in updates they usually already make time in their schedule to plan to be on at that time for it. It does take a commitment and active choice from people to decide to be on then. No matter if when update occurred if it continued to change it would still require new players to make being on for update a priority which is a bigger barrier than the time of update. That is one of the things about weekends. It allows new players are a chance to be able to participate during updates then.

Having rotating updates would actually hurt gameplay since it would in effect make things more confusing for new users joining in. Having updates occurring at the same time allows consistency and them being able to know when it occurs without having to come check. Having the same time allows for people to clear out and make themselves free for that part of update to occur. If every 14 updates were at different times it makes it a lot harder for people to make time to be on then for it. This also will effect regions more harshly as they won't be able to have people in their region that they can find to be on at the same two times a day that updates occurs with always changing. That would leave their region more vulnerable with there not being a high chance of somebody being on during or before that update to eject nations. Making these changes to when update occurs would actually lower the total amount of people participating during updates. It would cause the current player base to in the future not be able to be on for as many updates. With randomized updates it would make it harder for there to be more experienced people that participate to be able to be on for it to help teach any new players that joined. It would also make R/D more unfair for raiders for having less consistency for which updates that the person is point could be on for. Especially with the requirement that the point has to be delegate at least 26 hours before appointing a BC officer. That could make it possible that the point would have to go through 3 updates. Another way that this would hurt gameplay is that if the people are able to be for a few updates one week with the rotating update how long it would take for it to get back to an update they could be on for. There is a high chance they will have lost interest by then if they aren't able to participate on a regular basis which having the updates occur at the same time each day allows. I know on the raiding side that those that stick around and keep participating are the ones that choose to raid several days in a row which with the time changing they wouldn't be able to do. They would loose interest and move onto something else.

I appreciate what you are doing trying to do to help gameplay get more users but I don't think that this will help but will actually hurt gameplay a lot.

[House of Judah]

I didn't say eliminate, I said make it harder, and it should be harder. Raiding requires considerably less effort and dedication than regional community building does, yet every time a change has been made it ultimately results in raiders having an even easier time to have their version of fun at the specific expense of the experiences of those who want nothing to do with R/D. I've seen players leave this site because raiders decided to target and destroy their region. All I'm asking for is that for once the programmers say "let's not go the route of making it easier to be an asshole on this site, let's actually make player bases more secure from what can be considered a form of cyber bullying and harassment".

[Eluvatar]

Overall, it's my firm belief that you'll see far more people be able to participate less than be able to participate more yes. An informal polling of TBH concurs. Next update does not change that at all.

I'm not sure that polling people who are already active in R/D (for whom presumably the current update timing works) is the best way to tell if you could find more people to participate with shifting update start times.

I asked about next update regarding your suggestion that "It's hard enough already to get trainees to grasp the idea of updates, when they are, when they should come on for training, etc. Add in update constantly moving around, and you just make it even harder to get people online for their first try at R/D."

Delegate elect and rotating times *together* make regional security, both of native held regions and of occupied regions, a nightmare. As with most such things, though, it will generally impact the native regions *more*, because occupations have understanding of and planning for these mechanics, and the initiative.

The difference in understanding, planning, and initiative you suggest makes sense. If you submit a comment in the Request for Comments topic along the lines of your posts so far, I think it would definitely be worth including. I would also be very interested in argument you could build from there as to why this would be bad for the game as a whole, accounting both for what becomes better and what becomes worse.

I don't see how changing the time that updates occur would allow more nations to get involved. We currently have two updates that occur 12 hours apart which provides an opportunity for people to participate twice a day. If they have work or school or something else during one of the updates they can choose to make being on for the other update a priority. For people to participate in updates they usually already make time in their schedule to plan to be on at that time for it. It does take a commitment and active choice from people to decide to be on then. No matter if when update occurred if it continued to change it would still require new players to make being on for update a priority which is a bigger barrier than the time of update. That is one of the things about weekends. It allows new players are a chance to be able to participate during updates then.

Having rotating updates would actually hurt gameplay since it would in effect make things more confusing for new users joining in. Having updates occurring at the same time allows consistency and them being able to know when it occurs without having to come check. Having the same time allows for people to clear out and make themselves free for that part of update to occur. If every 14 updates were at different times it makes it a lot harder for people to make time to be on then for it. This also will effect regions more harshly as they won't be able to have people in their region that they can find to be on at the same two times a day that updates occurs with always changing. That would leave their region more vulnerable with there not being a high chance of somebody being on during or before that update to eject nations. Making these changes to when update occurs would actually lower the total amount of people participating during updates. It would cause the current player base to in the future not be able to be on for as many updates. With randomized updates it would make it harder for there to be more experienced people that participate to be able to be on for it to help teach any new players that joined. It would also make R/D more unfair for raiders for having less consistency for which updates that the person is point could be on for. Especially with the requirement that the point has to be delegate at least 26 hours before appointing a BC officer. That could make it possible that the point would have to go through 3 updates. Another way that this would hurt gameplay is that if the people are able to be for a few updates one week with the rotating update how long it would take for it to get back to an update they could be on for. There is a high chance they will have lost interest by then if they aren't able to participate on a regular basis which having the updates occur at the same time each day allows. I know on the raiding side that those that stick around and keep participating are the ones that choose to raid several days in a row which with the time changing they wouldn't be able to do. They would loose interest and move onto something else.

I appreciate what you are doing trying to do to help gameplay get more users but I don't think that this will help but will actually hurt gameplay a lot.

It is my hope that by rotating update one could have a more even playing field between players in different timezones and by adding Delegate-Elect or something else that allows for immediately effective activity one could allow all players to play at any time.

I would be interested in reasons suggesting that my hopes would be dashed.

I didn't say eliminate, I said make it harder, and it should be harder. Raiding requires considerably less effort and dedication than regional community building does, yet every time a change has been made it ultimately results in raiders having an even easier time to have their version of fun at the specific expense of the experiences of those who want nothing to do with R/D. I've seen players leave this site because raiders decided to target and destroy their region. All I'm asking for is that for once the programmers say "let's not go the route of making it easier to be an asshole on this site, let's actually make player bases more secure from what can be considered a form of cyber bullying and harassment".

It is my hope that with these changes, natives of invaded regions will be, and therefore feel, less powerless. I would hope this would help.

If anyone believes otherwise, their reasoning as to why would be of interest to me.

[Minoa]

I would prefer to retain 2 updates per day, rather than 1.846 updates per day, on average. I'm open to having something more regular and less random if the community prefers it, such as (13,12) 12 times followed by (11,12) 12 times (which would make the update move day by day first one hour forwards 12 times then 1 hour backward 12 times), repeated in a cycle.

I am aware that this is not about the credibility of R/D and the what not, but I think that it would be fairer on the server resources to spread the updates equally over a twelve hour period (or eleven if you think there should be an hour's break between). The idea of a 1d12 dice was there as one possible way we could shuffle the order of the updates, because going from 0-Z can get boring after a while.