Please Stop Having Orokin Reactors/catalyst Alerts At Late Night.

[Gehinnom]

I know that DE is canadian and so it privileges its own time-zone players, but it's frustrating that we european players are losing each and every goddamned reactor/catalyst/good mod because all the stuff is usually given between 3AM and 7AM and only rarely at our afternoon or evening.
http://i.gyazo.com/54bb0d3c67da5f1a3ed08c4ef3473f69.png
Maybe putting up some alerts for GMT +1/-1 would be nice, and not to be scrooge, I'm already buying a lot of slots, catalysts and stuff, but it's really disappointing to have lost at least 3 reactors and a couple of catalysts in a month or so.

 

[Jag272]

They actually don't priviledge people on their time zone, the alerts are pulled from a randomly generated quota created on each cycle last we heard about it (unless they said something during U13). EG one alert cycle finishes, every item available from alerts is then randomly ordered into a quota and appear with random timings between then and the end of that cycle when that quota is used up, a new quota is then generated.

 

DE actually has no control over it other than forcing alerts such as the devstream ones to appear, the rest are just RNG unfortunately.

Edited October 28, 2014 by Jag272

[Shion963]

It's random, bro. Only special alerts are queued.

[Seraphyx]

Umm.. I think the alert was around 12am here on the west coast... that's pretty much after all the normal people have gone to sleep so I don't think they're "favoring" their timezone.

[(PSN)LK-GriM]

Another look at me I spend money so I deserve more. -_- its random chill, I miss them too

[Tsukinoki]

I know that DE is canadian and so it privileges its own time-zone players, but it's frustrating that we european players are losing each and every goddamned reactor/catalyst/good mod because all the stuff is usually given between 3AM and 7AM and only rarely at our afternoon or evening.

http://i.gyazo.com/54bb0d3c67da5f1a3ed08c4ef3473f69.png

Maybe putting up some alerts for GMT +1/-1 would be nice, and not to be scrooge, I'm already buying a lot of slots, catalysts and stuff, but it's really disappointing to have lost at least 3 reactors and a couple of catalysts in a month or so.

The alerts are 100% RNG outside of special ones (such as the "Gift of the Lotus").

DE doesn't directly control the system and schedule alerts.

It has RNG select a random item a random time and a random duration(within some constraints of course) and then that's the alert.

DE doesn't favor or 'privilege' its own time-zone at all.

And honestly, that's the only fair way to do it.

Otherwise, like you said, they would be favoring one time-zone over another.

And since they have players in every time-zone, that would be a pretty stupid thing for them to do.

And by putting alerts up for GMT +1/-1 they would be putting it in the middle of the night for a lot of other timezones at the same time....so not solving the issue for anyone but yourself really.

So basically: RNG is RNG and you've gotten unlucky that RNG has rolled a few alerts too early for you.  But I also think that you are ignoring all of the good alerts that have appeared during the best hours for your time-zone that would have been midnight over here in the US.

Edited October 28, 2014 by Tsukinoki

[Gehinnom]

Implying a totally random timing on a planet with 3 major time zones (Europe, USA, Asia) and unpopulated oceans and deserts between them, is fair and not a broken one.
But as completely #*($%%@ up drop rates percentages shows, DE devs are no good at statistics, let alone normalizing them.
And for "They can't do anything to fix it." I remember clearly that some Orokin stuff lasts full 24 hours, so they can force the alerts on them to last at least 6 or 12, it's not unfair.

P.S.: take a look at the Twitter alert page and you'll see that most of the real interesting stuff shows up in the 8-hours-span covering the late afternoon and early night of USA time zones, more or less. Fact, not fiction. And for the one saying "Another look at me I spend money so I deserve more." it's how it works in the grownups world...I pay for a service, I have at least some degree of saying on the matter.

[Tsukinoki]

@Gehinnom
And what other system would be fair?
Because if they did schedule every single alert they would be screwing over someone somewhere on purpose.
By having it random they aren't doing that.

The last Orokin Reactor was middle of the night for the Americas.  So hardly favoring us.
The Kubrow Egg was pretty late at night, again hardly favoring us.
The Esprit Vauban Helmet yesterday was at 5AM for us, closer to noon for GMT, again hardly favoring us
The Markhor Helmet yesterday was midnight for us, so in the morning for you, again hardly favoring us.
The Locust Ash Helmet on the 26th was 9AM, when the americas were at school and work.  So hardly favoring us yet again.
The Swindle Loki Helmet on the 25th was at 4:40AM for us, again not favoring us.
The Flux Nova Helmet on the 23rd was at 8:49AM for us, so when we were at school and work, again hardly favoring us.

And that was the great alerts going back 5 days.

So I'm not seeing the pattern of them favoring the americas time zones at all.
If anything there have been a *lot* more helmet alerts that we were screwed out of than anything favoring us.

So no, DE favoring the US time-zones is complete fiction.

[Shady_Steve]

-snip-

Give this man a cookie. To the original poster, it's a random system. That's fair to everyone.

Take a breath and stop raging just because you missed a few alerts, there will be others.

Edited October 28, 2014 by Shady_Steve

[darkkterror]

Dear DE,

Please make sure that all alerts I care about only occur when I'm sitting at my computer and ready to play.

Thanks.

[fatpig84]

It's RnG man.

[Khawz]

There was someone who made a list of Orokin Reactors/Catalysts alerts, around 70% were during night time in EU, since that thread was made i noticed that this percentage is still around the same. Now people can say its RNG(and I'm pretty sure its true), but something as valuable and rare as Orokin Catalysts/Reactors, should not be influenced by RNG. Increasing this alerts time would be a good option.

[Rekkou]

1 potatoes are worth 1.3$. Each time there is a free potatoes on alert, they are losing profits from potatoes that can be bought from the market.

 

DE profits loss = 1.3$ x numbers of players obtaining potatoes

Your loss = 1.3$ x 3

 

You want fairness? then how about DE stop giving out free potatoes and made every single one of it can only be obtained through purchase? That's how grownup economy works right?

[Letter13]

RNG doesn't privilege anyone.

 

I can't begin to describe how many times I missed out on good alerts because they were in the middle of the night. I'm a -5:00 Timezone player, same timezone as DE.

 

Times are in GMT (London, UK Time)

Oct 28: 2:50 AM GMT an Orokin Reactor went up.

Oct 21: 1:50 PM GMT an Orokin Reactor went up. (Afternoon)

Oct 18: 7:30 PM GMT an Orokin Catalyst went up. (Evening)

Oct 5:   9:50 PM GMT an Orokin Reactor went up. (Evening)

Sep 26: 1:20 AM GMT an Orokin Catalyst went up.

Sep 16: 9:30 AM GMT an Orokin Reactor went up. (Morning)

Sep 13: 1:00 AM GMT an Orokin Catalyst went up.

Sep 4:   9:55 PM GMT an Orokin Catalyst went up. (Evening)

Aug 24: 8:00 PM GMT an Orokin Reactor went up. (Evening)

Aug 16: 12:40 AM GMT an Orokin Catalyst went up.

 

I don't know, but it looks to me like there have been quite a few reactor/catalyst alerts that fall squarely within the "ideal" time for playing games for European players. The times also look really quite random. In fact out of the 10 previous random alerts, 6 have been during the day for European players (I consider "daytime" to be 8 AM to 11 PM, the hours in which most daily activity takes place). 4 of them fall in the "sweet" spot of 7:00-10:00 PM.

 

P.S. Every single 24-hour alert was set manually by DE following devstreams/certain events. These alerts are not RNG. All other alerts are random.

 

P.P.S. As humans we have a tendency to fail miserably when trying to truly grasp the concept of randomness. We have a tendency to see "patterns" in random systems when there are none. Ironically, in truly random systems you do in fact see a lot of "repeats"; when you flip a coin heads or tails you'll find that sometimes you'll get heads many times in a row, or tails many times in a row. Considering there are 3 major timezones, it's similar to flipping a 3-sided coin.

 

P.P.P.S. Expanding on randomness and strings of 'repeats', that's actually often how you can tell the difference between a truly random set of results and a set of results that were created by a human told to "make it random." Human-made results with the instruction of "randomness" will often contain very little or no repeated results (i.e. "HHTTHTTTHHHTHTTHHT"), while in a truly random system repeated results (i.e. "THHHHHHHTTHHHHTTTTTHTTTHHTTH") are fairly common.

Edited October 28, 2014 by Letter13
Added alert timetable for the past 3 months

[Gehinnom]

Let's debunk this fabrications:
- The last Orokin Reactor was middle of the night for the Americas.  So hardly favoring us.
It was around 4 AM here at GMT+1 so in the US it was 6 to 9 hours earlier, late night my bollocks.
- The Kubrow Egg was pretty late at night, again hardly favoring us.
It was 2 hours earlier, learn to count.
- The Esprit Vauban Helmet yesterday was at 5AM for us, closer to noon for GMT, again hardly favoring us
Vauban is not interesting anymore after the event giving all pieces for 2 days.
- The Markhor/Locust/Swindle/Flux Helmet yesterday was midnight for us, so in the morning for you, again hardly favoring us.
Helmet and interesting in the same sentence? Are you trolling?

- Please make sure that all alerts I care about only occur when I'm sitting at my computer and ready to play.
The only one supporting this argument are US players complaining about it being after 10PM while complaining about it being at goddamned 2-6 AM makes a lot more sense.
 

- RNG IS FAIR HURR DURR
No, it's not fair because it's apparently NOT-SO-RANDOM if you go look at alerts and place them in the different GMTs.
Facts always beats theories, it's the empirical method and your staunch defence is worth nothing against it.
Not counting this:

 

There was someone who made a list of Orokin Reactors/Catalysts alerts, around 70% were during night time in EU, since that thread was made i noticed that this percentage is still around the same. Now people can say its RNG(and I'm pretty sure its true), but something as valuable and rare as Orokin Catalysts/Reactors, should not be influenced by RNG. Increasing this alerts time would be a good option.

Edited October 28, 2014 by Letter13
Removed profanity

[Shady_Steve]

Let's debunk this fabrications:

- The last Orokin Reactor was middle of the night for the Americas.  So hardly favoring us.

It was around 4 AM here at GMT+1 so in the US it was 6 to 9 hours earlier, late night my bollocks.

- The Kubrow Egg was pretty late at night, again hardly favoring us.

It was 2 hours earlier, learn to count.

- The Esprit Vauban Helmet yesterday was at 5AM for us, closer to noon for GMT, again hardly favoring us

Vauban is not interesting anymore after the event giving all pieces for 2 days.

- The Markhor/Locust/Swindle/Flux Helmet yesterday was midnight for us, so in the morning for you, again hardly favoring us.

Helmet and interesting in the same sentence? Are you trolling?

- Please make sure that all alerts I care about only occur when I'm sitting at my computer and ready to play.

The only one supporting this argument are the US players complaining about it being after 10PM while complaining about it being at goddamned 2-6 AM makes a lot more sense.

 

- RNG IS FAIR HURR DURR

No, it's not fair because it's apparently NOT-SO-RANDOM if you go look at alerts and place them in the different GMTs.

Facts always beats theories, it's the empirical method and your staunch defence is worth anything against it.

Not counting this:

None of this was constructive. If you don't want to have a calm discussion like a normal human being, don't discuss at all.

You're clearly just angry and paying no mind to the arguments of others.

[Letter13]

No, it's not fair because it's apparently NOT-SO-RANDOM if you go look at alerts and place them in the different GMTs.

Facts always beats theories, it's the empirical method and your staunch defence is worth S#&$ against it.

Not counting this:

It only seems like it's "not-so-random" because human beings in general experience a fundamental failing when it comes to identifying actually random systems. See my post-scriptum statements above.

 

This fundamental failing of understanding randomness is why the "shuffle" function on your ipods/mp3 players isn't random at all. Because when it was actually random, people complained that it wasn't random enough. 

 

Humans find the concept of randomness hard to understand, and this can get us into big trouble. Randomness fools us all.

[Tsukinoki]

@Gehinnom
Since only potato alerts are 'interesting' to you lets break down the potato alerts from October 6th to today:

-Orokin Catalyst: Oct 17, 12:30PM: Oh look, during school/work for the US.  Much better for GMT +/-1 time zones

-Orokin Catalyst: Oct 18, 3:30PM: Look, everyone gets this one at decent time ranges.

-Orokin Reactor:  Oct 21, 9:54AM: Oh look, during school/work for the US again.  Much better for GMT +/- 1 time zones

-Orokin Reactor:  Oct 27, 10:49PM(quite late for me, work at 5Am and all that): Good for the USA.
Please note that this isn't showing the 24 hour "Gift of the Lotus" alerts that are after dev streams.

So that is 2 that don't work for the US time zones at all, 1 that works for US and EU, and 1 that is good for the US.

Again, how is this 'favoring' the US time zones?
Especially considering that its an even split of catalyst and reactors for once.
And considering that you got 2 catalyst shots instead of the one that we got, using just this month I dont see why I shouldn't use the same argument as you are that they are favoring EU.

You got good times for 2 Catalyst's and 1 Reactor.  US got good times for 1 catalyst and 1 reactor.
None of those were 'late night' if 10pm isn't late night.
So what data points are you seeing that illustrates your point?

Currently nothing is backing up your 'points'.

Edited October 28, 2014 by Tsukinoki

[Dalawantahr]

Solution: stop looking for potato alert history. What you don't know and missed won't bother you as much.

[Gehinnom]

It's ludicrous to see how even in front of the alert list, which highlight uncontestably the uneven distribution (around 60-70% on the afternoon-evening time slot of GMT +5-+8 if you look on middle-long run), some goes for "We too have bad timing" that is not real due to us europeans too having stuff to do in the morning, while others barricades themselves behind the "It's unbiased randomness, deal with it." and after a while "It's not random because people complain." and those two position are of course incompatible.
And after all it would just need a "rule" to fix this, either to increase the duration of some "high value" alerts to more than a couple of hours to five or six or to "bind" those alerts to specific time ranges.
I don't see the point of you all digging your heels in against an easy improvement that would benefit everyone.
 

[endevite]

They could partially solve the missed alerts due to bad timing problem if they run a 12hr base instead of 24hr and mirror it so there is a second chance at said alert.

[Letter13]

I don't see the point of you all digging your heels in against an easy improvement that would benefit everyone.*

*except DE.

 

Also, almost all alerts used to be around 15~20 minutes long. People complained and the length for lucrative alerts were tuned up to an hour or more in length. Any more is a bit unreasonable.

 

What it comes down to is the fact that the alert system runs off of a Random Number Generator. As I've detailed in my posts, human beings in general tend to fail miserably when it comes to interpreting/understanding what is and isn't random.

 

Times are in GMT (London, UK Time)

Oct 28: 2:50 AM GMT an Orokin Reactor went up.

Oct 21: 1:50 PM GMT an Orokin Reactor went up. (Afternoon)

Oct 18: 7:30 PM GMT an Orokin Catalyst went up. (Evening)

Oct 5:   9:50 PM GMT an Orokin Reactor went up. (Evening)

Sep 26: 1:20 AM GMT an Orokin Catalyst went up.

Sep 16: 9:30 AM GMT an Orokin Reactor went up. (Morning)

Sep 13: 1:00 AM GMT an Orokin Catalyst went up.

Sep 4:   9:55 PM GMT an Orokin Catalyst went up. (Evening)

Aug 24: 8:00 PM GMT an Orokin Reactor went up. (Evening)

Aug 16: 12:40 AM GMT an Orokin Catalyst went up.

 

I don't know, but it looks to me like there have been quite a few reactor/catalyst alerts that fall squarely within the "ideal" time for playing games for European players. The times also look really quite random. In fact out of the 10 previous random alerts, 6 have been during the day for European players (I consider "daytime" to be 8 AM to 11 PM, the hours in which most daily activity takes place). 4 of them fall in the "sweet" spot of 7:00-10:00 PM.

[Reccettear]

i believe that it IS completely random, simply because its far easier than creating some intrigate pseudo-randomness that favors specific times without making it obvious...

that said, as far as i am aware there are different servers/playerpools for europe/america/asia. it should be possible to run alerts server-specific and weight important alerts toward specific times that fit the server region. wether or not that is actually desirable is something else. i'm pretty sure we could find some guys who work shifts and are not amused by the prospect of having all important alerts in THEIR worktime.

 

1 potatoes are worth 1.3$. Each time there is a free potatoes on alert, they are losing profits from potatoes that can be bought from the market.

 

DE profits loss = 1.3$ x numbers of players obtaining potatoes

Your loss = 1.3$ x 3

 

You want fairness? then how about DE stop giving out free potatoes and made every single one of it can only be obtained through purchase? That's how grownup economy works right?

that's stupid cuz it implies that same amount of items would have been bought. it's like "economic damage from copyright violations" that is calculated from the amount of downloads or steams.

 

they are given out during alerts cuz free2play, nobody said that they have to be available in abundance tho.

[ToxicTroublermaker]

Implying a totally random timing on a planet with 3 major time zones (Europe, USA, Asia) and unpopulated oceans and deserts between them, is fair and not a broken one.

But as completely #*($%%@ up drop rates percentages shows, DE devs are no good at statistics, let alone normalizing them.

And for "They can't do anything to fix it." I remember clearly that some Orokin stuff lasts full 24 hours, so they can force the alerts on them to last at least 6 or 12, it's not unfair.

P.S.: take a look at the Twitter alert page and you'll see that most of the real interesting stuff shows up in the 8-hours-span covering the late afternoon and early night of USA time zones, more or less. Fact, not fiction. And for the one saying "Another look at me I spend money so I deserve more." it's how it works in the grownups world...I pay for a service, I have at least some degree of saying on the matter.

No you dont get any more say in stuff than we do just cuz your paying. You know why? Cuz everything can be gotten for free anyway. This isnt the real world, this is the internet so get over yourself

[SHOCKED]

The perception that the alerts are skewed to favor a particular region is simply a pattern recognition error.