Gauntlet hours fairness

Roadrunner {SG-66}

Most probably a lost cause since everyone in America is quite happy with it but I’d really like to petition for the Gauntlet starting/ending time to rotate once in a while.

Right now for most of Europe/MidEast/Africa it’s in the middle of the night. Some of the best rewards in the daily play are in the Gauntlet and the only way to finish high is to play in the last hour.

Can this time be changed once in a while? Can’t wake up at 3am every other day

[DB-DO BETTER] [7TW] Captain plim123

Gauntlet is one thing. It must **tsk tsk** being in East Asia or Australia playing events! You start late and end early. Almost impossible to compete if you have a regular daytime schedule.

Best time zone is US West coast, right?

Irial

@Roadrunner {SG-66} - It is actually a bit more extreme than what you describe, as the current way The Gauntlet works makes it possible to climb a huge amount in the rankings in just the final 15 minutes. Here is a screenshot of where I stood with 15 minutes to go in my most recently completed Gauntlet:



I was in 50th place, 956 Trophies behind the player in 3rd at the time. When you are ranked that low, you can get matchups that give you a chance to win a lot of Trophies at once (anywhere between 100 and 250), whereas when you are already near the top of the rankings, you mostly get matchups that offer you the chance to add 10 - 50 Trophies to your total per battle.
I did not spend any Dilithium to refresh any crew, but I did dip into my plentiful pile of Merits to cherry pick matchups I liked, and was able to finish as follows:



Basically, if you were to last log in with one hour to go in your Gauntlet, that would still likely result in your falling substantially in the rankings.

Regarding fixing the time zones fairness issue, I think a better option rather than having the start/end time rotate, is to have different start times throughout a day, instead of just a single one every 24 hours. For example, if a new Gauntlet began every 6 hours (i.e., 4 different start/end times per day), then each player could get into a Gauntlet that ended at a good time for them to participate in the final 5 to 15 minutes dash for ranking.

Roadrunner {SG-66}

@Irial
yes you can and I did it once. But it’s quite an expensive endeavor. Much cheaper to wait till the last 5-10 minutes and hit players above you for 100+ trophy each.

I always go to bed in the top 3 and wake up in the top 15. Once you reach #1, it’s impossible to progress further in trophies without refreshing like crazy to have the top 5 players to give you more than 10.

[TFA] Gaois

Totally agree, wrote about it in ”make it so”in the beginning of January, has not been made so😉

SST - 9of7

+1 i so hate it to go to bed every time being 1st with a few 100 trophies in lead, just to wake up being second place and loosing out on two boxes every time...
And they would just need to start 2 more gauntlets 12hrs in between. We have them overlapping anyway. No reason not to add additional gauntlets.

To-Ni

Gauntlet, the Arena, the most expensive price ......
It is clear that DB does not estimate the European players

Cal.me.Ishmal

I’ve gotten all 3 of my old men from rank 30 - 50 rewards. I don’t even try for top 20. In fact I was pissed the other day somehow I was in top 10

Ironagedave

So far I have been ok with Gauntlet but that's because it finishes at bang on midnight therefore I can finish around 11ish and hope for the best or try my luck some more by staying up and be that ebay sniper.

I think the easiest solution would be to regionalise the gauntlet to specific time zones maybe 4 to begin with. However I don't think you will ever get a one size fits all, if you regionalise it too much you may not get a decent pool of players. Also the more timezones you muck around with may conflict further with people's lifestyle/work relationships (e.g. shift workers et al.)

mejoyh

Yea totally agree with this... Im playing from Asia and can only wake up to get the last round before reset. The Gauntlet is won/lost in the final 2 rounds. Seems to unnecessarily penalize non-US players

Roadrunner {SG-66}

They fill up very quickly everytime. Stop having this “hard time” and let them start/finish at the time when the minimum treshold number of players is reached to start it.

That would be easy and fair for everybody

Jim Steele

Roadrunner {SG-66} wrote: »

They fill up very quickly everytime. Stop having this “hard time” and let them start/finish at the time when the minimum treshold number of players is reached to start it.

That would be easy and fair for everybody

True, but probably not that easy to program. The gauntlet has a 2 day alternating schedule, would it be possible to have one ending at 12am and the other 12pm (GMT)?

That would at least give players options of which Gauntlet they want to participate in..

Jim

Roadrunner {SG-66}

Jim Steele wrote: »

Roadrunner {SG-66} wrote: »

They fill up very quickly everytime. Stop having this “hard time” and let them start/finish at the time when the minimum treshold number of players is reached to start it.

That would be easy and fair for everybody

True, but probably not that easy to program. The gauntlet has a 2 day alternating schedule, would it be possible to have one ending at 12am and the other 12pm (GMT)?

That would at least give players options of which Gauntlet they want to participate in..

Jim

What I’m saying is drop the schedule completely. No schedule, set the time it start/stop when the minimum number of player has been reached for every individual gauntlet. One extra field in their database and some programmation.

That would give amazing flexibility to players.

Problem I can see is that is will put extra load on their servers (need to track multiple guantlets instead of running one script every night). Not worst than voyages or shuttles

Major_Tom

I agree it isn't fair to all players, I find being online to finish out my refreshes very helpful. The only time I've seen offline players manage to stay #1 is when they have spent enough to build a huge lead. It doesn't matter how well you maximize your points, if you're offline at the end of gauntlet and I'm online the only way my last 5 contest are less valuable then yours is I was already ahead of you. That's completely fair if you are in the same time zone. It isn't fair if it's the middle of the night for you and early evening for me.

Roadrunner {SG-66}

Well, case and point. Nature called (TMI) at 2h45am easily finished on top of my gauntlet. Was able to rack up over 600 trophies from the guys that passed me while slept in the last minutes.
- 180 crons
- 4* equipment
- 4 3* crystals

Cost me 30 dils and 150 merits in refreshes. I’d say quite worth it.

This timing really **tsk tsk** for a vast part of the world. Knowing DB history, it will never change. Time to look for a job in the -8GMT time zone

AviTrek

I wouldn't say never. After enough complaining they finally did address the issue with starbase rewards. They just haven't gotten the pressure to do it with this one. I'd love to see gauntlet split into 4 waves starting every 6 hours instead of the single wave. That would solve the problem for Europe and let players in the US even have more flexibility.

Dirk Gunderson

Roadrunner {SG-66} wrote: »

This timing really *chocolate cronut* for a vast part of the world. Knowing DB history, it will never change. Time to look for a job in the -8GMT time zone

The timing isn’t good for most time zones but what I imagine DB is looking at is where the bulk of players - or, probably more accurately, sales - are located. If the bulk of people paying dilithium to revive gauntlet crew are on the eastern seaboard of the U.S., populous parts of Canada, and parts of central and South America, optimizing the time for UTC-5 (or UTC-6) makes the most financial sense for them.

(HGH)Apollo

You can start them any time you want but yes the end time must be annoying for many. It would be fine with me if the times rotated. Maybe like every three months they push it three hours forward.