Guild Wars 2

Dig this, my little porkchops…

Prior to this event (and the last) I noted some debate about timing of bits and how that affected the ability of players from certain regions to participate.

If we assume that A-Net has a reason (which could be architecture or procedural) for using a single time for event kickoffs, then we might stop and consider the various ways that they can decide on the kickoff time and how we as a community might look at that.

Choosing a start time based on concurrency is both market-based and Utilitarian (needs of the many and all that… thank you Spock). It may be that as a business, ArenaNet has a clear and overarching interest in making sure that “the market” is satisfied.

But, as Jefferson noted in his first inaugural address, the minority must possess equal rights – anything else creates inequity (I know, he used the word “oppression”, don’t hurt me, Hammer).

Rawls advanced the idea of a “veil of ignorance”, which asks that people consider questions related to the societal contract from a position that has no awareness of its particulars – e.g. that as we advocate for one approach or another, we have no idea which group we’re in or who else might be in or out of the group that is advantaged or disadvantaged.

The benefit to this approach is that it quickly strips away a few of the more specious “might makes right” arguments.

Frankly, I understand that folks on the other side of the planet feel a bit disenfranchised when they perceive a timing bias within the game. As a North American player, I’d be willing to suffer through a rotation of starting times that ensured that our friends in other parts of the world got some prime start times as well.

/ducks for cover

This is a video game’s forum, not a college psych class.

Peetee.9406:

This is a video game’s forum, not a college psych class.

Doesn’t make his point any less valid. Ignorance isn’t a substitute

Ryuujin.8236:

Peetee.9406:

This is a video game’s forum, not a college psych class.

Doesn’t make his point any less valid. Ignorance isn’t a substitute

Sorry, I did not understand his point. Could you explain it in dumb-dumb words for stupid people like me?

Peetee.9406:

Sorry, I did not understand his point. Could you explain it in dumb-dumb words for stupid people like me?

If people were taken aside and asked to agreed on a system in the absence of knowledge of which group they’ll fall into (And it had to be a one-shot event) they would likely agree to “pick the time when the most people are online”, because it is the optimum choice, only a minority can’t attend the event.

It’s only in context people feel it’s unfair because they ended up in that minority

Also, OP was reminding you about the importance of a social contract. Which is to say in simple terms “For everyone to have nice things there has to be a system and you have to be willing to obey that system even when you end up getting the rough end of it”

They could easily fix this by making the last part of the event take the span of two days. Problem solved as this allows people on the other side of the world to not have to worry about missing the last part of the event because it ends when they are just signing on.

Meh. I enjoyed the philosophy bits but actually the single standard starting time is the most utilitarian way!

For anything else, at what point in inconveniencing the majority to serve the minority could you draw a line and say it’s ‘fair’? Should fair mean sometimes inconveniencing 1000 players for 100? No, there is no other point.

Given that the resource itself (time) is constant but the number of people it can satisfy is not, it shoud always be the time that satisfies the majority of players.

I do agree with the above poster though, events and event phases should just be designed to last at least two days to minimize the inconvenience to certain zones.

Fyn.4360:

If we assume that A-Net has a reason (which could be architecture or procedural) for using a single time for event kickoffs, then we might stop and consider the various ways that they can decide on the kickoff time and how we as a community might look at that.

Single time events are terrible in MMO’s. Not only do they exclude a large amount of the player base, they are horribly vulnerable to bugs and latency issues caused by overcrowding. Deciding on a kickoff time for something that should simply not be done is moot.