Should Europe players get a VIP price discount, or maintenance hours be moved?

Jeronimo

Jeronimo

Playing since 2006
Personally I really dislike that the weekly maintanence affects prime time for us in Europe.

I'm a Swedish player, in the CET timezone. I love to relax after work, playing DDO, but sadly I cannot do this on Wednesdays due to the maintenance.

The europe prime time is roughly between 5 to 10pm CET (11 am to 4 pm EST). The weekly maintenance usually lasts between 3 to 7 pm on Wednesdays plus 20% of the maintenances gets extended. If you look at it historically for the past year, it means that european players gets roughly 3 hours less play time every week on average (sometimes the prime time loss is 2 hours... sometimes up to 5 hours like Wednesday this week).

This means that on average, european players have nearly 10% less of the total prime time hours compared to US players, while paying the same VIP price.
Why should US players get more play time than european players, when we pay the same VIP price?

I suggest that either european players get a 10% VIP price discount or that SSG starts their maintenance at 7 am EST (this would be much better for european players and most US players don't play much at that time).
I could also live with moving the transfer window 7 hours later, but I don't think that US players would be so happy with that idea. :)
 
CherryBomb

CherryBomb

Well-known member
No. Typically, Wed morning, sometimes until early afternoon, DDO is not available to the west coast US. Just something we have had to get use to and work around.

It is sometimes frustrating, but not not nearly as so as the times before the weekly reboots when the entire system would randomly crash and be down, sometime for hours, until they came into to push the reset button to restart the servers.

We have maintenance interruptions that takes place on somewhat of a schedule now.
 
Geezer

Geezer

Well-known member
Yeah, I know the downtime comes at a bad time for different people. Depends on where you live and your daily schedule. I can see that its not great for players in Europe, but its interfered with my playtime here in the US also. Good luck trying to get them to compensate for it.
 
Greyhawk5

Greyhawk5

Was Amorais
This is the same for all MMO's really. I'm from the UK and had the same issue with all the MMO's I've played. Its just "the way it is". Best thing about DDO is that its a regular schedule and not all over the shop like a lot of others. Weds I always know will be limited so can plan to do other stuff. Occasionally its Thursday but 90% of the time weds.

So I'd say no to this too, despite being from UK.
 
Dandonk

Dandonk

Beater of Dead Horses
My guild group of three doing TR runs basically never count on being able to play DDO on wednesdays. It's pretty annoying. But it's been like this forever (or at least 2009, which is pretty much the same), so I don't see it changing. SSG doesn't care about this issue... but they don't really about any of the players' issues*, so this is not special.

*I Want To Believe
 
N

Necrodancer

Ancient beyond measure
CherryBomb said:
No. Typically, Wed morning, sometimes until early afternoon, DDO is not available to the west coast US. Just something we have had to get use to and work around.

It is sometimes frustrating, but not not nearly as so as the times before the weekly reboots when the entire system would randomly crash and be down, sometime for hours, until they came into to push the reset button to restart the servers.

We have maintenance interruptions that takes place on somewhat of a schedule now.
Click to expand...

Yes, exactly. You lose the morning, sometimes early afternoon if extra maintenance is getting done. In EU we lose the hours after work when we would like to play, some don't even play because of this. DDO is open 24/7 but let's not try to pretend what peak hours are.

That being said, I also cannot expect SSG to run maintenance at midnight when both USA and EU are fast asleep or just waking up. Whatever hour we pick we're going to inconvenience a certain time zone. I'm not happy about Wednesday either but it helps reminding me the world does not spin around my needs (although it should).

The 10% discount will NEVER happen. We can consider ourselves "lucky" the automatic price converter automatically adjusts for euro. Bet SSG would love to just swap the $ with the € and call it a day. ALL in all, I don't see enough of an inconvenience to justify a discount.
 
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Jeronimo

Jeronimo

Playing since 2006
I understand that SSG would never implement a euro-player discount, but it's a fact that paying prime time eu players gets less value for their money then our US friends does.

I think it would be reasonable to shift the maintenance hours a little bit.

I work for a company where we provide hosting for our customers. We do our maintenance on a monthly basis from 0 to 3 am on weekends.
I don't think it would be that bad for SSG having staff starting to work at 7 am once per week.

You cannot please everyone in the world, but doing maintenance in a time frame where a big chunk of your players have their prime time game play is not good at all.
 
Uska

Uska

Drum knight
Jeronimo said:
Personally I really dislike that the weekly maintanence affects prime time for us in Europe.

I'm a Swedish player, in the CET timezone. I love to relax after work, playing DDO, but sadly I cannot do this on Wednesdays due to the maintenance.

The europe prime time is roughly between 5 to 10pm CET (11 am to 4 pm EST). The weekly maintenance usually lasts between 3 to 7 pm on Wednesdays plus 20% of the maintenances gets extended. If you look at it historically for the past year, it means that european players gets roughly 3 hours less play time every week on average (sometimes the prime time loss is 2 hours... sometimes up to 5 hours like Wednesday this week).

This means that on average, european players have nearly 10% less of the total prime time hours compared to US players, while paying the same VIP price.
Why should US players get more play time than european players, when we pay the same VIP price?

I suggest that either european players get a 10% VIP price discount or that SSG starts their maintenance at 7 am EST (this would be much better for european players and most US players don't play much at that time).
I could also live with moving the transfer window 7 hours later, but I don't think that US players would be so happy with that idea. :)
Click to expand...
I'm in america and maintenance is during my prime playing time
 
G

Gadgetdawg

Well-known member
My assumption is that maintenance happens when it does because that's when their small staff if available to do it. I am not aware of any other game that has weekly maintenance providing any sort of 'perk' for folks inconvenienced by it and doubt DDO will be the first.
 
saekee

saekee

long live ROGUE
If I were a dev, all downtimes would be followed by a loot boost for the same time the game is down.
 
M

mikarddo

Well-known member
OP - I understand your question and why you pose it.
But I dont think it warrents a lower price.
Some people play 60 hours each week - others maybe 2 hours each week. Yet they pay the same. Thats also not a problem imho.
 
S

Sylvado

Well-known member
Some people play at lunch time, some work 2nd shift, some work 3rd shift. Regardless of when you have the downtime someone is impacted. So you start downtime at the start of the day for the people working on the update.
 
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