Feedback - Halloween event 2015

[Droidhak]

Now that the event is ending, it's turning out that those of us on Ares are getting short-changed with the timings of the event. The timer on our screens is apparently the same as for Zeus, but it shouldn't be. Zeus has its server maintenance before Ares does. Ares players can't start an event until it's been activated on our server at the end of our maintenance. Same with Zeus. But us Ares players don't get to play the event all the way until our maintenance again. Our timers expired some 12 hours before our maintenance. By 6 hours prior to the maintenance, the Halloween merchant is closed, there aren't any pumpkins on the Trade Office, the pumpkins have disappeared from our inventory, and any pumpkins that my fields produced aren't showing up anywhere; I'm assuming that BB traded in coins for pumpkins in inventory at the same time (I didn't have any left). Basically, Removal Phase 2 has gone into effect hours before our maintenance, except I still have my fields.

Am I missing something?

[Thambetochen]

Now that the event is ending, it's turning out that those of us on Ares are getting short-changed with the timings of the event. The timer on our screens is apparently the same as for Zeus, but it shouldn't be. Zeus has its server maintenance before Ares does. Ares players can't start an event until it's been activated on our server at the end of our maintenance. Same with Zeus. But us Ares players don't get to play the event all the way until our maintenance again. Our timers expired some 12 hours before our maintenance. By 6 hours prior to the maintenance, the Halloween merchant is closed, there aren't any pumpkins on the Trade Office, the pumpkins have disappeared from our inventory, and any pumpkins that my fields produced aren't showing up anywhere; I'm assuming that BB traded in coins for pumpkins in inventory at the same time (I didn't have any left). Basically, Removal Phase 2 has gone into effect hours before our maintenance, except I still have my fields.

Am I missing something?

The event phase deactivations are tied directly to the timer and not to maintenance, the Dev Diary, homepage, and changelog are wrong. If you logged in or refreshed after the timer ran out things were gone, both weeks.

Unfortunately the timers all seemed to be set to Greenwich Mean Time +1 which is 6 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time (GMT -5). If you're playing on a GMT +1 instance it generally works out to being right around the scheduled time for maint, if your server is set to another timezone the timer didn't reflect that and things ended early. Very early here on .net and an hour early on .com (EuroEnglish, set to GMT) forum.thesettlersonline.com/threads/32007-Halloween-countdown-wrong

In short, there was a lot of variation in how much time different language versions had for both phases of the event and the ending times had nothing to do with maint.

The actual pumpkin:coin conversion was postponed until next week: Removal Phase II and Pumpkin Exchange

[Ciara_Belle]

so what happened to being able to drag treats to Mayor's house and getting our resources back?? Its not letting me do this.

[SweaterPuppies]

That was never an option Ciara_Belle. The waters is what you get your resources back for. Tricks and treats you keep.

[Raubhautz]

That was never an option Ciara_Belle. The waters is what you get your resources back for. Tricks and treats you keep.

Yep. Perfectly correct on this one. I love using the tricks/treats to patch-buff during the rest of the year. x4 for 2h is sweet. *Pun intended*

[Raubhautz]

The event phase deactivations are tied directly to the timer and not to maintenance, the Dev Diary, homepage, and changelog are wrong. If you logged in or refreshed after the timer ran out things were gone, both weeks. [...]

Yes, this is the problem. Basically, us on PST (-8GMT), were screwed out of 8 hours of pumpkin search time at end of phase 1; and shorted the same 8 hours of 'shopping', known as phase II. Other time zones, it appears might have also been affected, idk, I am on Zeus.

Our event did not start until maintenance was finished; we should be given the same time to get collection items and spend them that the European servers are obviously getting. Shutting us down/out at 1500 hours is kind of bogus - many are still at work and/or traveling from work.

Interesting point is that no prior event had that 'feature'... why is a working function being messed with?

I hope that BB take that into consideration for the next event and gives all players world-wide the same time to conduct the event.

[Ciara_Belle]

dag nabbit - if one only has treats they're useless... just more junk in the star - along with the dozens and dozens of world cup buffs.

[Gwalben]

I only have the single ones that were a mail reward. Just deleting to free up clutter.

[Droidhak]

Yes, this is the problem. Basically, us on PST (-8GMT), were screwed out of 8 hours of pumpkin search time at end of phase 1; and shorted the same 8 hours of 'shopping', known as phase II. Other time zones, it appears might have also been affected, idk, I am on Zeus.

Our event did not start until maintenance was finished; we should be given the same time to get collection items and spend them that the European servers are obviously getting. Shutting us down/out at 1500 hours is kind of bogus - many are still at work and/or traveling from work.

Yes, I'm on Pacific Time as well. So not only am I on Ares, which has a later maintenance time than Zeus, but my timezone messed up the Halloween event even more. I didn't think about timezones with all this.