[Discussion] Rotating Update

[Flanderlion]

Not convinced on the implementation of the rotating updates, but I like the general idea of expanding it so all timezones get a shot at it. I quite like the 12 hour spread of updates, so can we keep it around that. Also varying update frequently is more annoying to plan NS ops around RL events, so preferably instead the switch happening weekly rather than each update (so it changes each week, but stays the same throughout the week). Varying update by an hour offset a week I like, rather than 13 hours every update. That would mean it would slowly drift, but you wouldn't have to wake up everyday with a different time update.

[Consular]

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 tend to agree with this. The system described in the OP just strikes me as needlessly complicated.

Is there any particular reason we /need/ 2 updates every 24 hours? That seems quite an arbitrary requirement.

[Aurum Raider]

Is there any particular reason we /need/ 2 updates every 24 hours? That seems quite an arbitrary requirement.

Please reduce the number of updates to 1 so that defenders only have the opportunity to lib us once a day.

[Tim-Opolis]

Is there any particular reason we /need/ 2 updates every 24 hours? That seems quite an arbitrary requirement.

Please reduce the number of updates to 1 so that defenders only have the opportunity to lib us once a day.

It's also worth mentioning that having only one update would give 12 more hours for piling, which would provide significantly more endorsements and regional influence to the raiders, due to more pilers moving in.

[Consular]

Is there any particular reason we /need/ 2 updates every 24 hours? That seems quite an arbitrary requirement.

Please reduce the number of updates to 1 so that defenders only have the opportunity to lib us once a day.

I was responding to Elu, who was reluctant to pursue the every 13 hours idea because it would result in only 1.8 updates per day, or something like that. I was wondering if there was a specific reason he wanted exactly 2 updates per 24 hours.

[Trotterdam]

The game should benefit the largest pool of players it has as much as is practical.

Yes, and "the largest pool of players" is "everyone".

Benefiting people from one particular time zone, no matter how many players are from that time zone, should only be done if it is completely impractical to make the game fair for everyone regardless of time zone.

Raiders from common time zones already have an advantage simply because it's easier for them to find more allies to pile with, regardless of the exact details of how update times work.

[Moneyness]

I feel the argument that "the majority of players are in the US" and therefore this change disadvantages them is not a powerful as its proponents think it is.

On fairness principle, the game should not try to favour one player over another because of location, I vaguely recall somewhere that the current update times are set so it's mildly inconveniencing to as many people as people.

My proposed change is to rotate update so it benefits people roughly to the proportion of the player base. So 20% of time update is at time that benefits best to those in the Asia Pacific, 30% to Europe, 40% to the US etc or whatever the case might be.

Do you understand how the updates currently work? Right now with minor it has those in Europe getting the same privilege as those in the US receive during major but on the opposite update as those in the US get. It has so a few hours in each direction for Europe and Africa experiences the same as those in South and North America do. For Asia Pacific they could theoretically depending on their personal location be able to wake up a little earlier to participate or be able to participate once they would get home from work or school. How it is currently set up is exactly pretty well and accesssible to almost every timezone. They would just need to make it a priority to be on outside of work or school and would be able to make one update a day and possibly more on the weekends.

[Land filled with People]

The proposed change seems needlessly complex, although I support the idea behind it.

As suggested by many others, why not just have updates be consistently 11 or 13 hours apart (but one or the other, not both). Combine this with the suggested page listing update times for the coming week.
This provides certainty to players (gameplayers and non). It allows people to make updates that couldn't before enabling more growth for organisations. It adds further strategy as to which update to launch a big raid (i.e. where do the natives live).

My understanding is that the current update times were chosen as they were times of minimal server load. People and organisations have since built around that. Why not reward organisations that can better engage multi-nationally.

As it is, for everyone outside of the US update shifts by 1-2 hours during the year anyway when daylight savings starts/end. I see this as just an expansion on an already existing phenomenon.

[Kylia Quilor]

The game should benefit the largest pool of players it has as much as is practical.

Yes, and "the largest pool of players" is "everyone".

Benefiting people from one particular time zone, no matter how many players are from that time zone, should only be done if it is completely impractical to make the game fair for everyone regardless of time zone.

Raiders from common time zones already have an advantage simply because it's easier for them to find more allies to pile with, regardless of the exact details of how update times work.

But it is completely impractical to make it 'more fair' for 'everyone'. As has been pointed out several times in this thread and before.

That said, if we really need to completely undermine the entire central operating thesis of Update time, then Flanderlion's idea of week long static times makes a certain degree of sense - especially if the week is like, Friday to Friday, since most major operations happen on weekend nights anyway (I imagine we should keep the UDs as happening in the night, whatever the timezone of the night) and then there's more chance of point being on at the minor.

[Lenlyvit]

I don't even need to read everyone else's posts to know that I'm against this. Right now update is at 12am and 12pm for me, which is doable because at 12pm I'm on lunch break from work and I can live with staying up until 1am and getting up at 6am for work. If you add in rotating updates, there is a very high likelihood I will no longer be able to participate in R/D action because of work and sleep. If update happens anytime between 1am in the morning and 3pm the next afternoon I won't be able to participate, due to my work schedule and needing sleep. If the update happens between 3pm and 8pm in the evening I won't be able to participate because I actually have things I need to do after I get out of work. That only leaves me a margin of 3 hours where I can update, and you can see how that's a problem because I'm a Tactical Officer for TITO and update operations depend upon TITO Command being online for update.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

Not convinced on the implementation of the rotating updates, but I like the general idea of expanding it so all timezones get a shot at it. I quite like the 12 hour spread of updates, so can we keep it around that. Also varying update frequently is more annoying to plan NS ops around RL events, so preferably instead the switch happening weekly rather than each update (so it changes each week, but stays the same throughout the week). Varying update by an hour offset a week I like, rather than 13 hours every update. That would mean it would slowly drift, but you wouldn't have to wake up everyday with a different time update.

It also means that for a month or two in a row, most of GP will not be able to update. Yay!

I tend to agree with this. The system described in the OP just strikes me as needlessly complicated.

Is there any particular reason we /need/ 2 updates every 24 hours? That seems quite an arbitrary requirement.

Less of a needed thing for the core game these days now that issues do not pass at them and the census is also pretty well separated, but still a good balance for R/D involvement, election frequency for natives, etc.

The proposed change seems needlessly complex, although I support the idea behind it.

As suggested by many others, why not just have updates be consistently 11 or 13 hours apart (but one or the other, not both). Combine this with the suggested page listing update times for the coming week.
This provides certainty to players (gameplayers and non). It allows people to make updates that couldn't before enabling more growth for organisations. It adds further strategy as to which update to launch a big raid (i.e. where do the natives live).

My understanding is that the current update times were chosen as they were times of minimal server load. People and organisations have since built around that. Why not reward organisations that can better engage multi-nationally.

As it is, for everyone outside of the US update shifts by 1-2 hours during the year anyway when daylight savings starts/end. I see this as just an expansion on an already existing phenomenon.

Shifts for 1-2 hours, and then comes back. Not all over the day. The point about less involvement overall still stands. Standing by the running assumption that the largest chunk of the playerbase are americans with a normal schedule, as IIRC provided some guesstimates for, well... Let me repost my earlier math again:

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 occurrences in these 12 weeks, rather than 24.

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 9-10est would start to lose west coast people to still doing day stuff, going any later solidly loses east coasters, and so on.

EDIT: and lenly ninja'd the point of that. The window of most likely involvement for most folks in the Americas is a few hours in the evening, and any fully rotating schedule takes a huge portion of the NS population and reduces them to only a fraction of the possible updates.

[The Atlae Isles]

I live in the PST/PDT/Goldilocks time zone and even though it’s good for me, what I like most about it is its consistency. The last thing I need (and probably everyone else) is inconsistency and unpredictability.

[Miporin]

Do you understand how the updates currently work? Right now with minor it has those in Europe getting the same privilege as those in the US receive during major but on the opposite update as those in the US get.

Not exactly true. Updating from midnight to 1AM is significantly more viable on weekdays than updating from 5/6PM to 6/7PM for anyone who has work or academics, coupled by a commute. Certainly, weekends work just fine in contrast, but that's 2/7 days of the week. And that's only considering EST on the 'merican end. As you go further west, making it to major gets easier and easier, going from a baseline that was already more accessible than that of the average european.

[Vuori Kunin-Grrs]

The Rotating Update would definitely not benefit the largest player base of R/D, who are Americans, but that is directly due to the Update taking place at a time that is the most convenient for Americans. The Rotating Update would make R/D more open for all time zones, as well as shake things quite a lot in how R/D is done, but again, it may also displace established players that benefited off of the Rotating Update. It would definitely cause more participation, and make things slightly more unpredictable.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

The Rotating Update would definitely not benefit the largest player base of R/D, who are Americans, but that is directly due to the Update taking place at a time that is the most convenient for Americans. The Rotating Update would make R/D more open for all time zones, as well as shake things quite a lot in how R/D is done, but again, it may also displace established players that benefited off of the Rotating Update. It would definitely cause more participation, and make things slightly more unpredictable.

I still think you're wrong about "more." More people, perhaps, but I would bet money on less volume, as discussed repeatedly.

For another angle, with napkin math, If you take the most active playerbase locations 7ish updates likely to be doable per week, and take them down to say, 3 per week, but counter that with taking smaller playerbase locations from 0 or 1 updates per week up to, for the sake of fairness, the same 3 updates per week, you've decreased the overall number of people-updates.

[Vuori Kunin-Grrs]

The Rotating Update would definitely not benefit the largest player base of R/D, who are Americans, but that is directly due to the Update taking place at a time that is the most convenient for Americans. The Rotating Update would make R/D more open for all time zones, as well as shake things quite a lot in how R/D is done, but again, it may also displace established players that benefited off of the Rotating Update. It would definitely cause more participation, and make things slightly more unpredictable.

I still think you're wrong about "more." More people, perhaps, but I would bet money on less volume, as discussed repeatedly.

For another angle, with napkin math, If you take the most active playerbase locations 7ish updates likely to be doable per week, and take them down to say, 3 per week, but counter that with taking smaller playerbase locations from 0 or 1 updates per week up to, for the sake of fairness, the same 3 updates per week, you've decreased the overall number of people-updates.

The most active player base locations are directly correlated with the time of the update, which is most convenient for Americans.

If the update is rotating, the many other English-speaking countries out there, with potential NSGP players, would benefit, and thus their player bases would increase in number.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

Vuori Kunin-Grrs, I didn't think I'd actually have to go quote this, because I assumed people would have already read it,
but -

According to Nationstates' Alexa ranking information, 57.6% of the site's visitors come from the United States.

Based on the detail of the 2014 US Census, the timezone breakdown within the US itself is as follows:
- 47.1% Eastern
- 29.0% Central
- 6.70% Mountain
- 16.6% Pacific
- 0.70% Hawaii, Alaska, etc

While I wager the NS details don't add up to exactly similar numbers, I imagine the percentage breakdown is pretty damn similar. So, based on that, you could assume that about 1/4 of NS players are from the Eastern US Timezone, which I would imagine is certainly the largest single congregation of players within a timezone. With that much of a congregation, you're going to have less people active in R/D if you make update less accessible for the the US players, and particularly the US East.

I also concur with Souls. Any time that he, Cormac, Aurum, myself, etc agree.... yeah.

The most active player base is not because update is in the US, the servers (and update) are US times because that's where the majority of the player base is ;P Other way around. Elu may come back at some point with something like IP distribution which could give us a better idea of where the playerbase is, but network traffic is a good guestimate, and as above - almost 60% is US. Making update less convenient for the americas means making it less convenient for approx 60% of players, for the favor of a fraction of the other 40% at any given point in the rotation throughout the day - and to repeat myself in other words, not even *all* of that other 40%, going by the assumption that most populations of people have a few hours in the evening where they're most likely to be able to participate in update. So that means, if the update is at a point where it's say, convenient to Australia with 4% of players (+like, japan and a few other places with even lower %'s), it is inconvenient for a *huge* percent of total players. While it's convenient for most people in the americas, it's convenient to ...well, most of 60% of web traffic counting the US alone, who knows how much if you add in canada, mexico, etc.

[Warwick Z Codger]

The Rotating Update would definitely not benefit the largest player base of R/D, who are Americans, but that is directly due to the Update taking place at a time that is the most convenient for Americans. The Rotating Update would make R/D more open for all time zones, as well as shake things quite a lot in how R/D is done, but again, it may also displace established players that benefited off of the Rotating Update. It would definitely cause more participation, and make things slightly more unpredictable.

I still think you're wrong about "more." More people, perhaps, but I would bet money on less volume, as discussed repeatedly.

For another angle, with napkin math, If you take the most active playerbase locations 7ish updates likely to be doable per week, and take them down to say, 3 per week, but counter that with taking smaller playerbase locations from 0 or 1 updates per week up to, for the sake of fairness, the same 3 updates per week, you've decreased the overall number of people-updates.

Everyone knows the maths.

It just comes down to whether "catering to the the locations where the majority of players are located" or "equal opportunity to each individual in every time zone" is more important.

More people benefit from the former but it isn't "fair". The latter is "fair" though less people benefit overall.

(This division is also pretty much the root cause of every city vs country, or do we need to support minorities argument in RL; unlike most I've made my peace that it is a question with no right answer)

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

I still think you're wrong about "more." More people, perhaps, but I would bet money on less volume, as discussed repeatedly.

For another angle, with napkin math, If you take the most active playerbase locations 7ish updates likely to be doable per week, and take them down to say, 3 per week, but counter that with taking smaller playerbase locations from 0 or 1 updates per week up to, for the sake of fairness, the same 3 updates per week, you've decreased the overall number of people-updates.

Everyone knows the maths.

It just comes down to whether "catering to the the locations where the majority of players are located" or "equal opportunity to each individual in every time zone" is more important.

More people benefit from the former but it isn't "fair". The latter is "fair" though less people benefit overall.

(This division is also pretty much the root cause of every city vs country argument in RL; unlike most I've made my peace that it is a question with no right answer)

As I have said, I totally think it's a fair avenue to talk about. I respect the argument that people being able to participate where they previously could not, could rarely, or could only do so with a lot of effort is worth some drawback. What I'm calling bullshit on is that this will increase overall activity/participation, which is a stated goal. Because, overall, many many more people will be able to make many many less updates, in favor of a few people being able to make a few updates. If you want more R/D activity, you do not move a hefty chunk of updates into times when the vast majority of the playerbase is unavailable.In this case, the cost of a bit more "fair" would be a lot of activity.

[Land filled with People]

snip

I believe your maths is very, very incorrect, please rectify it before posting it again.

As for the rest, I find it almost laughable that you "block out say, 1am updates through 6pm updates on weekdays". Because holy smokes Batman, people live all around the world and can actually make updates during those times already! Not so much during the early mornings granted, but definitely during the day. But the bonus of two updates a day is that if one is at 1am then the next will be at noon or 2pm (depending on 11 or 13 hour gaps). Update is at 2-4 for me. Go to NZ and it's more like 7. Go further West and they're earlier. In Europe they're around 5. Guess what? There's people from all those timezones currently making updates. I wonder if American's can do the same? Go figure.

The most active player base is not because update is in the US, the servers (and update) are US times because that's where the majority of the player base is ;P Other way around.

My understanding was that update was placed during times of lowest server use rather than to benefit any particular timezone. But that would need confirming by someone around at the time.

[Kylia Quilor]

Making it so that at any given day, a much smaller proportion of players can make update is not a very useful approach - I mean, hell, if Raiders used it to grab a region and pile it fast enough, right before the UD shifts to a period when a vastly smaller number of people are going to be able to make it, they might not even need to be online to stay in power, since it could be days or weeks until defenders would actually be able to mobilize the adaquate numbers.

EDIT:

"My understanding was that update was placed during times of lowest server use rather than to benefit any particular timezone. But that would need confirming by someone around at the time."

And why do you think that was the period of lowest server use? Because so much of the playerbase isn't online at the time because so much of the playerbase is in the US.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

snip

I believe your maths is very, very incorrect, please rectify it before posting it again.

As for the rest, I find it almost laughable that you "block out say, 1am updates through 6pm updates on weekdays". Because holy smokes Batman, people live all around the world and can actually make updates during those times already! Not so much during the early mornings granted, but definitely during the day. But the bonus of two updates a day is that if one is at 1am then the next will be at noon or 2pm (depending on 11 or 13 hour gaps). Update is at 2-4 for me. Go to NZ and it's more like 7. Go further West and they're earlier. In Europe they're around 5. Guess what? There's people from all those timezones currently making updates. I wonder if American's can do the same? Go figure.

The most active player base is not because update is in the US, the servers (and update) are US times because that's where the majority of the player base is ;P Other way around.

My understanding was that update was placed during times of lowest server use rather than to benefit any particular timezone. But that would need confirming by someone around at the time.

First of all...go reread Tim and me on playerbase %'s.

Second of all, you're correct, I was saying it's based on US time in general because the playerbase is in the US ;P

[Flanderlion]

The only reason the majority of players can make the update is because we've adjusted to it. No matter what it changes to, I can adjust to whenever it is, and most serious GPers can do the same. Obviously no one can make every update due to RL unless they're stuck at home with no social life/job whatsoever, but for ops I've updated from classes/set an alarm for the middle of the night and tons of others use mobile.

I'm fairly sure the update was scheduled for when there was low server load, not for accessibility for the US. Do you East Coasters seriously think midnight for your TZ is about making it accessible for you?

Also NZ update starts at 4 - 6 depending on daylight savings. If Chingis can get up at 4am daily to update on minors, I'm not seeing that a week or two of tough updates is going to kill anyone.

Edit: Subsequent posts from me posting this rendered part of this post pointless, but I'd already written it.

[Warwick Z Codger]

Not convinced on the implementation of the rotating updates, but I like the general idea of expanding it so all timezones get a shot at it. I quite like the 12 hour spread of updates, so can we keep it around that. Also varying update frequently is more annoying to plan NS ops around RL events, so preferably instead the switch happening weekly rather than each update (so it changes each week, but stays the same throughout the week). Varying update by an hour offset a week I like, rather than 13 hours every update. That would mean it would slowly drift, but you wouldn't have to wake up everyday with a different time update.

Back to this, since I think there's consensus that Elu's original idea doesn't work.

What if instead we shift update +1 hour per day (or week) until it is +/- 7 then it shifts back. For the US it means from the initial day, people need to stay up/be earlier by +1, 2 hours from their optimal time before it gets out of reach ....which is what Aussies do all the time anyway.

[Eluvatar]

For those trying to remember why we have 12 Eastern time updates, enjoy.