Of course, if they actually have a good and convincing reason why GMS needs to be on UTC time, I'd love to hear it, so the topic can be put to rest.
And it all comes down to that. The great issue for them is that they lack any good argument to have UTC. What good does it do them? Is it worth the community backlash for years to come if nothing changes?
The more the community reacts to atrocities like UTC, the more there is a chance of correspondence from and communication with Nexon and subsequently, the issue being resolved in a way that benefits (at least almost) everyone (American based timezone). While Arwoo has basically said we're stuck with UTC, the community won't stop complaining, and they'll have to come back to the issue eventually.
It's so annoying that I log in Luna/NA worlds and have to wait till 9 in the morning for hot time box.... yet I can do other events /dailies before then.
This is dumb. You literally have a European server (Luna). There are also far more western players, yet all the western servers are all on UTC.
Why is the idea of setting the European server, Luna, to a european-friendly time zone while simultaneously setting the western servers to a western-friendly time zone (like PST or EST) such a hard concept to grasp?
Why is inconveniencing 75% of your player base the preferable choice?
People aren't going to server hop just to play content a few hours early, because all of their stuff is on another server. And even if they did, who cares?
If the issue is about not having people on UTC miss out on timed content after a patch, just don't start the events right after the patch! It's not like there won't be 4-16 hours of maintenance right after the patch drops anyway.
Pandering to the minority! You know, the latest and greatest trending course of action among businesses/companies these days.
I can't even begin to say what a slap to the face this has been to ALL the GMS players; EMS migrated over to GMS it wasn't the other way around..........more than HALF your player base lives in North America so why do we have to accommodate for the EMS players? (not hating on you guys) They have their own server why can't they be on UTC time and GMS back to PST??????? I don't understand why this is so hard to have TWO separate time-zones for two completely different servers; I feel you guys have literally told your GMS player base to basically screw off and be okay with it and we're now coming secondary to EMS players; PST was fair for everyone instead now you guys have server time set 5+ hours in advanced from everyone else......not to mention there has been a lot of mix ups with the event times ending earlier than they should have and it hasn't been consistent the programmers still clearly believe its in PST lol
While making event times more consistent would be a good thing, and I don't mind daily/weekly reset times as they currently stand, I'm far more concerned about the timed events that occur in regular day to day gameplay. Several quests and other important regular events require play at specific times of day that are just not viable in much of America as they currently stand. Some immediate examples I can think of:
Resistance Quests:
These aren't especially important as they block off no important content, but it's just an example of something being off. The quests "Eliminating the Rebels" and "The Truth" require you to complete them at specific times, 6pm and 10pm respectively according to their quest descriptions, or 11am and 3pm pacific (2pm and 6pm eastern for me) under the current UTC server time if I did the conversion right? I feel like that might be off, since I haven't bothered with those quests since before the UTC change because they're both unimportant, but if that's right, those times are pretty annoying to do, except maybe once over a weekend.
Call Orchid (Friendstory) for Pillow Fight Chair:
This is all but impossible to do with how things are currently. To get the chair, you must call Orchid in Friendstory 30 days straight from 8-9pm server time, or 1-2pm pacific (4-5pm eastern). This is already all but undoable because I wager most players in the Americas are either at work or school during those times, but the typical maintenance periods for Maplestory drive it straight to impossibility. Maintenance has a nasty habit of stretching way past those times on a pretty regular basis (and sometimes even up to the original pst 8-9pm times like last week). One exceptionally long maintenance with the current times will completely ruin any attempt to do this little side mission.
Ursus Double Mesos:
I don't Ursus much, but if I'm not mistaken, double mesos happens around the same times you're supposed to call Orchid? So most of what I said above applies here, except missing this time period doesn't break any hard to maintain streak, just annoying to people who'd like some extra mesos. Especially my fellow Reboot players.
Flag Race:
Again, I don't do this much myself, but it seems these only occur early-midday in the Americas right now? Again, when most people are either working or schooling.
Kritias Invasions:
Okay, this is the big one for me. To obtain Tyrant Gloves, you need 400 Kritias coins. In GMS, because we lack Hekaton due to alleged performance issues, we rely on daily Kritias quests (which will only result in a single Kritias coin a day, or 13 months and change to get gloves if you only do quests), or invasions, ideally several of those per day to get your gloves in a (more) reasonable timeframe. Invasions occur every 2 hours from 8am-10pm server time. That means that invasions currenly happen at the following times in America:
1am pacific (4am eastern) - People probably asleep, maybe some west coast night owls hit this one
3am (6am) - Probably asleep, some east coast early birds might hit this one
5am (8am) - Probably asleep, maybe some east coasters get this just before heading to work/school
7am (10am) - Some west coaster might get this, but further east people are at work/school
9am (12pm) - Work/school
11am (2pm) - Work/school
1 am (4pm) - Work/school, maybe the kids get let out by now depending on your school district
3 am (6pm) - Work/school, except the east coast folks, who might be home depending on traffic
So, aside from a few potential exceptions, nearly every invasion time is pretty much garbage for the average American player. The cost of Tyrant Gloves in GMS is a separate matter, but if we are to rely on these times to get them in anything less than 6 months to a year or more, then as things stand it's just absurd.
Conclusion:
I may have missed some things, but every example I could think of on short notice results in extreme inconvenience for American GMS players under UTC server times. It's been said before, but if we MUST stick to UTC server time, for whatever arcane reason, something at least must be done to fix these myriad timing issues. Whether it be readjusting the server time these events occur to more closely resemble how they were under PST time, or adding in more periods of availability throughout the day to suit both American and European players, anything to alleviate these problems would be better than it is now.
Can maple just have an in-game clock? i dont want to have to remember that the time zone isn't one that's normal for a U.S. server when i come back in several months. I know im going to come back and miss something cause of this.
Can maple just have an in-game clock? i dont want to have to remember that the time zone isn't one that's normal for a U.S. server when i come back in several months. I know im going to come back and miss something cause of this.
Edit: I see you made a thread so I moved my response there.
Honestly, this is a decision that hasn't had much explanation. You cannot expect us to just go along with a big decision like this without you providing more reason than what's been given.
I really don't think that any of you up there realize just what kind of impact that this time zone has on players. I personally have found it harder to log on and do dailies when I know I have to do them twice in a day because if I don't then I'll miss out. They're dailies, they are not meant to be done twice a day.
There really isn't much else to say that hasn't been said by others, except further explanation from your side. You've alienated more than 50% of your player base. I've been around for a while, and this makes it to the top few things you've done that haven't made any sense.
There really isn't much else to say that hasn't been said by others, except further explanation from your side. You've alienated more than 50% of your player base. I've been around for a while, and this makes it to the top few things you've done that haven't made any sense.
And that's the thing. They know very well that there is absolutely no reasonable explanation that they can give as to why having UTC is a good idea. This will continue to be a problem in the future, without a doubt, regardless of what promises are made about consistency. UTC is inherently inconsistent with the majority of the playerbase.
This coupled with the lack luster events, zero regard for player requests in things even as minor as cash shop update, and ultimately total lack of appreciation of players as a whole leads me to wonder if Nexon is purposely killing off the player base, perhaps before shutting the game down?
This coupled with the lack luster events, zero regard for player requests in things even as minor as cash shop update, and ultimately total lack of appreciation of players as a whole leads me to wonder if Nexon is purposely killing off the player base, perhaps before shutting the game down?
For as long as this game exists, UTC will continue to be one of the most hated things Nexon has done in recent times. It will not stop creating problems and it will not be forgotten by the community. It was a huge change made to the benefit of few and the detriment of many.
We're currently working to address issues of content being inaccessible due to being time sensitive.
We'll be sure to let Maplers know once we have the solution ready.
@Arwoo
I appreciate this, but you're completely disregarding half the problem. EMS merged into GMS, so why does GMS have to use EMS's timezone? It's like requiring the entirity of the United States to learn French, as opposed to a French immigrant learning English. It makes no sense that the vast majority of GMS's population in America should have to conform to a small minority.
Moreso, players can't even trust that times will be consistent in the future, so saying "we'll make times consistent" has little weight in fixing the problem. GMS never had problems like timezone consistency with PST. Wouldn't it be easier for Nexon to not have to deal with it too? If they really want, they could still add the conversions for UTC on event pages and everything.
Creating consistency will still leave American players unsatisfied, due to the inconvenience of reset, 2x times, etc. In PST, or even EST, players would have the whole day to do dailies and reset-dependent things, while in UTC, half the day people are waiting for reset, the other half, with less time actually doing things. Why should it have to be tomorrow for 4-8 hours of the day for the majority of the population? Another thing is the unnecessary process of having to convert UTC to PST or EST times in game.
I don't know which timezone you personally want, but the majority of players would feel far more comfortable with an American based timezone. I highly suggest that you reconsider this decision and would request that you inform Nexon that just creating consistency isn't enough. The issue of UTC is not only about consistency. It's about deciding which part of the playerbase Nexon values more: the majority in America, or the minority European population. In situations like this, it is of everyone's best interest to satisfy the largest amount of people possible. UTC was a mistake, and has caused several problems for everyone.
You honsestly don't get it?
UTC is UTC.
Thing is, its Global Maplestory, not North American Maplestory.
On top of North America and Europe, they also service Brazil and Australia, and parts of the middle east.
So, if it covers 3 different continents and parts of 2 more continents., why should it run on anything BUT Coordinated UNIVERSAL Time, hmm?
I say this as someone who lives a mere 120 miles south (2 hour drive) of LA where the servers are (which means if anything, I should be biased against my own argument), not everyone who plays this lives in America, and not everyone who lives in America runs off of pacific time.
If anything, they should run based off of EST in the first place, since the our capital is there, there are a ton of densely populated states on the Eastern seaboard, etc.
But really, UTC was chosen BECAUSE its the global servers, not in spite of it.
There are quite a bit of Australians, the Euorpeans you probably don't see as much because they have their own server.
PS: I'm 90% sure that UTC wasn't chosen in order to cater to the Europeans, but rather because when you AVERAGE out the GLOBAL time zones, you end up with Grenwitch MEAN Time.
UTC is GMT in the first place may have specifically been because that's where Britain is, but I don't believe that's why UTC was chosen by Nexon.
If they chose any time zone other than GMT, anyone who lives far from that time zone would have a right to complain.
But really, complaining about a supposedly "Global" Server using UTC just makes you sound entitled.
In fact, the simple choice of referring to it as UTC and not GMT is evidence of their motives.
You see, GMT is a time zone, but UTC is a time STANDARD.
You could write it off as PR bull, but diction can often reveal much about subtext. The words someone chooses to use can betray their façade and reveal their true disposition. Most people wouldn't think about their words, and its not the sort of thing you'd check for in proofreading unless you are aware of that.
Which makes it clear that they chose British time because its the GLOBAL standard, not because the Europeans live at and around that general area.
TLDR:
Its not an active attempt to screw over americans or cater to Europeans, but rather because UTC is as close to neutral as it gets.
If anything has to run the same across the globe, UTC is the answer.
Every time zone uses UTC as a reference point, any global affair ought to run on UTC so as to not cater to anyone specifically.
If you want to blame anyone, blame the early ameircans for not overthrowing Britain as a wolrd power sooner, or for not building up America fast enough.
Or blame Britain for still being all too relevant when time was standardized.
Nexon's descision was as close to fair as it gets.
Except that this screws over many GMS players in various ways. For one, Nexon still hosts server maintenances based on PST/EST logic. This can be detrimental to some players, especially if Nexon ends up extending maintenances (usually they end an hour or less before reset in this case), and guess what? People have inconsistent schedules, so they may not be able to do it the night before. On top of that, it restricts access to a lot of content for some people, such as Kritias invasion and flag race. Keep in mind that the population of the Global servers is still majority North American. It's been like this for years. Why couldn't Nexon just create separate server times for the Luna server and the Global server? In fact, people have been playing from Australia, the Middle East, and Europe for years. Problem is, you will always end up screwing someone over with the server times.
Also, using Brazil as an example doesn't help your point, since Brazil is very close to our time zones; some parts are exactly the same.
Comments
And it all comes down to that. The great issue for them is that they lack any good argument to have UTC. What good does it do them? Is it worth the community backlash for years to come if nothing changes?
The more the community reacts to atrocities like UTC, the more there is a chance of correspondence from and communication with Nexon and subsequently, the issue being resolved in a way that benefits (at least almost) everyone (American based timezone). While Arwoo has basically said we're stuck with UTC, the community won't stop complaining, and they'll have to come back to the issue eventually.
Pandering to the minority! You know, the latest and greatest trending course of action among businesses/companies these days.
Resistance Quests:
These aren't especially important as they block off no important content, but it's just an example of something being off. The quests "Eliminating the Rebels" and "The Truth" require you to complete them at specific times, 6pm and 10pm respectively according to their quest descriptions, or 11am and 3pm pacific (2pm and 6pm eastern for me) under the current UTC server time if I did the conversion right? I feel like that might be off, since I haven't bothered with those quests since before the UTC change because they're both unimportant, but if that's right, those times are pretty annoying to do, except maybe once over a weekend.
Call Orchid (Friendstory) for Pillow Fight Chair:
This is all but impossible to do with how things are currently. To get the chair, you must call Orchid in Friendstory 30 days straight from 8-9pm server time, or 1-2pm pacific (4-5pm eastern). This is already all but undoable because I wager most players in the Americas are either at work or school during those times, but the typical maintenance periods for Maplestory drive it straight to impossibility. Maintenance has a nasty habit of stretching way past those times on a pretty regular basis (and sometimes even up to the original pst 8-9pm times like last week). One exceptionally long maintenance with the current times will completely ruin any attempt to do this little side mission.
Ursus Double Mesos:
I don't Ursus much, but if I'm not mistaken, double mesos happens around the same times you're supposed to call Orchid? So most of what I said above applies here, except missing this time period doesn't break any hard to maintain streak, just annoying to people who'd like some extra mesos. Especially my fellow Reboot players.
Flag Race:
Again, I don't do this much myself, but it seems these only occur early-midday in the Americas right now? Again, when most people are either working or schooling.
Kritias Invasions:
Okay, this is the big one for me. To obtain Tyrant Gloves, you need 400 Kritias coins. In GMS, because we lack Hekaton due to alleged performance issues, we rely on daily Kritias quests (which will only result in a single Kritias coin a day, or 13 months and change to get gloves if you only do quests), or invasions, ideally several of those per day to get your gloves in a (more) reasonable timeframe. Invasions occur every 2 hours from 8am-10pm server time. That means that invasions currenly happen at the following times in America:
1am pacific (4am eastern) - People probably asleep, maybe some west coast night owls hit this one
3am (6am) - Probably asleep, some east coast early birds might hit this one
5am (8am) - Probably asleep, maybe some east coasters get this just before heading to work/school
7am (10am) - Some west coaster might get this, but further east people are at work/school
9am (12pm) - Work/school
11am (2pm) - Work/school
1 am (4pm) - Work/school, maybe the kids get let out by now depending on your school district
3 am (6pm) - Work/school, except the east coast folks, who might be home depending on traffic
So, aside from a few potential exceptions, nearly every invasion time is pretty much garbage for the average American player. The cost of Tyrant Gloves in GMS is a separate matter, but if we are to rely on these times to get them in anything less than 6 months to a year or more, then as things stand it's just absurd.
Conclusion:
I may have missed some things, but every example I could think of on short notice results in extreme inconvenience for American GMS players under UTC server times. It's been said before, but if we MUST stick to UTC server time, for whatever arcane reason, something at least must be done to fix these myriad timing issues. Whether it be readjusting the server time these events occur to more closely resemble how they were under PST time, or adding in more periods of availability throughout the day to suit both American and European players, anything to alleviate these problems would be better than it is now.
Best:
Europe to CET/CEST
America to PST/PDT
pls
Edit: I see you made a thread so I moved my response there.
I really don't think that any of you up there realize just what kind of impact that this time zone has on players. I personally have found it harder to log on and do dailies when I know I have to do them twice in a day because if I don't then I'll miss out. They're dailies, they are not meant to be done twice a day.
There really isn't much else to say that hasn't been said by others, except further explanation from your side. You've alienated more than 50% of your player base. I've been around for a while, and this makes it to the top few things you've done that haven't made any sense.
And that's the thing. They know very well that there is absolutely no reasonable explanation that they can give as to why having UTC is a good idea. This will continue to be a problem in the future, without a doubt, regardless of what promises are made about consistency. UTC is inherently inconsistent with the majority of the playerbase.
For as long as this game exists, UTC will continue to be one of the most hated things Nexon has done in recent times. It will not stop creating problems and it will not be forgotten by the community. It was a huge change made to the benefit of few and the detriment of many.
???
You honsestly don't get it?
UTC is UTC.
Thing is, its Global Maplestory, not North American Maplestory.
On top of North America and Europe, they also service Brazil and Australia, and parts of the middle east.
So, if it covers 3 different continents and parts of 2 more continents., why should it run on anything BUT Coordinated UNIVERSAL Time, hmm?
I say this as someone who lives a mere 120 miles south (2 hour drive) of LA where the servers are (which means if anything, I should be biased against my own argument), not everyone who plays this lives in America, and not everyone who lives in America runs off of pacific time.
If anything, they should run based off of EST in the first place, since the our capital is there, there are a ton of densely populated states on the Eastern seaboard, etc.
But really, UTC was chosen BECAUSE its the global servers, not in spite of it.
There are quite a bit of Australians, the Euorpeans you probably don't see as much because they have their own server.
PS: I'm 90% sure that UTC wasn't chosen in order to cater to the Europeans, but rather because when you AVERAGE out the GLOBAL time zones, you end up with Grenwitch MEAN Time.
UTC is GMT in the first place may have specifically been because that's where Britain is, but I don't believe that's why UTC was chosen by Nexon.
If they chose any time zone other than GMT, anyone who lives far from that time zone would have a right to complain.
But really, complaining about a supposedly "Global" Server using UTC just makes you sound entitled.
In fact, the simple choice of referring to it as UTC and not GMT is evidence of their motives.
You see, GMT is a time zone, but UTC is a time STANDARD.
You could write it off as PR bull, but diction can often reveal much about subtext. The words someone chooses to use can betray their façade and reveal their true disposition. Most people wouldn't think about their words, and its not the sort of thing you'd check for in proofreading unless you are aware of that.
Which makes it clear that they chose British time because its the GLOBAL standard, not because the Europeans live at and around that general area.
TLDR:
Its not an active attempt to screw over americans or cater to Europeans, but rather because UTC is as close to neutral as it gets.
If anything has to run the same across the globe, UTC is the answer.
Every time zone uses UTC as a reference point, any global affair ought to run on UTC so as to not cater to anyone specifically.
If you want to blame anyone, blame the early ameircans for not overthrowing Britain as a wolrd power sooner, or for not building up America fast enough.
Or blame Britain for still being all too relevant when time was standardized.
Nexon's descision was as close to fair as it gets.
Except that this screws over many GMS players in various ways. For one, Nexon still hosts server maintenances based on PST/EST logic. This can be detrimental to some players, especially if Nexon ends up extending maintenances (usually they end an hour or less before reset in this case), and guess what? People have inconsistent schedules, so they may not be able to do it the night before. On top of that, it restricts access to a lot of content for some people, such as Kritias invasion and flag race. Keep in mind that the population of the Global servers is still majority North American. It's been like this for years. Why couldn't Nexon just create separate server times for the Luna server and the Global server? In fact, people have been playing from Australia, the Middle East, and Europe for years. Problem is, you will always end up screwing someone over with the server times.
Also, using Brazil as an example doesn't help your point, since Brazil is very close to our time zones; some parts are exactly the same.