Rationing Playtime - An Unpleasant Sounding Temporary Solution

[Naridar]

If they rationed playtime, you, and those of us stuck in the queue-error-requeue Bermuda triangle would be able to play, and the ones who net lose playtime would br those who have the privilege of not needing to work a 8-4 job and those who currently break ToS bypassing AFK detection.

[Snorky]

Deleted. Variable considered

So he got called out because his suggestion is rather like rationing and not in line with his drival political views. Considering he deleted the post because he realized he was showing his troll side. Because you know the comparison of governments locking down people to SE rationing play time would ensue so quick the troll deletes his post. I love when people who spout a view point just do it for theater and not for any real belief. What a tool.

[Krotoan]

So he got called out because his suggestion is rather like rationing and not in line with his drival political views.

Considering how extreme and inflammatory his posts are.. I don't think there's any actual expression of personal values in them. Just trolling.

[Loonies]

Most of the players can weekdays only play in the evening, so what will it help when the daily playtime ist reduced to for example 3 hours? Wont change anything. Only solution is to upgrade the server and yes sadly this will take time until done.

[Reinha]

If you give everyone 3 hours per day, most people will still try to play at 7-10 pm. There will still be a massive queue and most people won't be able to play at prime time.

If you give everyone 3 hours per day and distribute them to random hours of the day, some people will still get to play more. One person can play at 8 am, 1 am and 3 pm which he got assigned to, while another person will not be able to play at those times and is locked out for 3 days.

Stop trying to punish everyone because you can only play in the evenings.

[UkcsAlias]

The only advantage of rationing playtime is that those who abuse the afk detection to not get kicked, now simply cant afk as they still get kicked (and with it waste their playtime in the process). But outside of that it barely does anything positive, because in the end, the spike of players still remains far too high.

If rationing should happen, i would adjust the system: Each person collects 2h a day. Outside of peak hours, this time depletes at a reduced speed (promotes playing outside peak hours, causing a lower peak). Players can collect up to 8h (casual players dont get to feel any limited time as they can do a session of 6h easily). Watching a cutscene gives a grace period in which time doesnt deplete (so there is no benefit from skipping, and no gain to extend the duration for no reason), the time is based on the expected cutscene length (and on that also displayed). Players also get the ability to request a certain time to play at (the queue tries to get them to log in at that specific time), and this queue is based on the last time someone queued (someone who wasnt able to play the previous day gets priority over someone who could).
But this would require a big update and still frustrate players, while i rather see that money spent on detecting AFKers that use bots to avoid the autokick (because they are truly abusing the system).

[Seera1024]

It will also cause issues in any party content.

The new tank who isn't comfortable with big pulls gets more pressure to do so because now he's "wasting the playtime" of other players.

A new player messing up mechanics is more likely to be kicked so that they can get someone new who may do better to avoid spending all of their allotment in that dungeon or trial or whatever.

[Lanadra]

''Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.'' -Spock

Ergo, why should the majority of people who manage to get through the queue and log in, or sideline the queue by logging in before the pile on begins, then be punished with 'your allotment of 3 hours are up, out you go.'? I've said it in a similar thread, as long as I am actively playing the game, SE has no business telling me to log out after 3 hours, or worse, doing it for me. If I'm afk and get booted by the timer, entirely fair. But rationing? No.

[Lihtleita]

op are you ok? you only post bad ideas in some weird way to get ppl to talk to you. do you need friends?

[Catwho]

Not sure why every assumption is that people are "afk botting" all day. I'm sure there are some out there who've wrangled a basic VB script to quote shakespeare to their summoning bell, but a lot of us now work from home and it's trivial to set a timer for 25 minutes to poke your game manually.

I craft and gather during my breaks in the daytime hours. I can't run dungeons or any other more time demanding content until I'm off work, but I'm doing the most selfish tasks during the off hours when the queue is the standard "load no more than 100 people at a time" hours (mine was 44 when I logged in.) Then sticking with group content when my friends can log in, so the get the benefit of me playing. And then logged off pretty early to free up a slot. (I've gone to bed earlier in the last week than I had in the last year.)