Suggestion: Summer Event Start Date

[Shian]

Most of the other events have a set start date, so everyone knows when to expect it.

Not sure which events you were referring to specifically, but actually none of the token hunt events have set starting dates. Easter inevitably has different starting dates each year due to the holiday falling onto a different day each time, but even Halloween events don't have set dates (earliest was October 17, latest was October 25).

I get what you're saying but I don't think that can be compared to quite in the same way. People don't have weeks worth of anxiety waiting for Easter or Halloween because they can just look at a calendar figure out when it is. Some events don't start on time but there's still a central pole that the event revolves around and makes it concrete.

With the summer event having a start date difference of two weeks, that means I either get to participate or not at all thanks to vacation. Not knowing one way or another creates a bit of stress.

[PikaPerfect]

I don't really think we should give it a set start date, but just make the window for it to start much, much smaller, or just more similar to that of existing events. Like Shian said,

People don't have weeks worth of anxiety waiting for Easter or Halloween because they can just look at a calendar figure out when it is. Some events don't start on time but there's still a central pole that the event revolves around and makes it concrete.

But in general, yes, I agree with most/all of the others on this thread saying the summer event should have a more defined start date.

[Aurore]

I don't care about when it starts, I'd just like it if it were announced at the start of the month, or at least like a week in advance. Isn't that how it's normally done or am I misremembering? Seems weird that nothing's been said about it yet, I keep coming on and expecting to see a "prepare yourself" announcement, since we're coming into the second half of July when it normally starts. But if not all of the assets/pets/etc are done yet it would make sense to keep it unspecified. Still though, not specifying a date leaves higher risk of people missing the start of it. Not that it's not usually pretty easy to get everything if you participate enough, but a late start combined with a busy schedule could make for some tight token budgets.

[LissaJo]

Most of the other events have a set start date, so everyone knows when to expect it.

Not sure which events you were referring to specifically, but actually none of the token hunt events have set starting dates. Easter inevitably has different starting dates each year due to the holiday falling onto a different day each time, but even Halloween events don't have set dates (earliest was October 17, latest was October 25).

I get what you're saying but I don't think that can be compared to quite in the same way. People don't have weeks worth of anxiety waiting for Easter or Halloween because they can just look at a calendar figure out when it is. Some events don't start on time but there's still a central pole that the event revolves around and makes it concrete.

With the summer event having a start date difference of two weeks, that means I either get to participate or not at all thanks to vacation. Not knowing one way or another creates a bit of stress.

but honestly if you knew in advance, would your vacation be planned to avoid it? Generally speaking the event generally has a chance of happening from july 15th the August 10th that leads roughly 4 to 6 weeks before hand to do summer stuff and a week or 2 after..

There are people who take vacations towards the beginning of summer too when it's not scorching hot, so no matter what it will be an inconvenience to some players..


As for Easter/Halloween, we know the event starts 7 to 10 days before to he holiday, is it really any different for the summer event, since we know an approximate start date which it starts


Personally, I wouldn't mind a heads up together day before though instead of a couple hours or no warning.. that way those people who's rollover is in the middle of the night can know and be awake if they want toheohehoae (it happens at 7pm for me, so it's not a huge deal for me to check)

[Shian]

but honestly if you knew in advance, would your vacation be planned to avoid it? Generally speaking the event generally has a chance of happening from july 15th the August 10th that leads roughly 4 to 6 weeks before hand to do summer stuff and a week or 2 after..

Uh, not this one, no.... but the usual vacation? It could. The vacation date is flexible and I usually get lucky. But not this one.

But I would know for sure that I wouldn't get to participate at all which would be enough for me. Instead of spending my time worrying, it would be spent finding a trustworthy babysitter for my account. Everything just gets so much easier if you know what's going on for the week.

[lil rascal]

One thing I have noticed about token events over the last few years is they seem to start on a Friday or Saturday (based on GMT).

2014 -
Fri April 4th Easter event started
Fri 25th July Summer event started
Fri 17th October Halloween event started

2015 -
Sat 28th March Easter event started
Sat 25th July summer event started
Fri 23rd October Halloween event started

2016 -
Sat 19th March Easter event started
Fri 15th July summer event started
Fri 21st October Halloween event started

2017 -
Fri 7th April Easter event started

Looking at those dates I would think the event will probably start this Friday or Saturday GMT

[nickjr]

I wonder if maybe the testing/checking/calculating/etc of the event takes a variable amount of time and/or is done at variable times depending on the schedules of whoever does the testing/etc. Sometimes the trade-in net is a bit complicated due to needing to trade in tokens for... other tokens that we need to use lol (looking at you, medieval faire--although that event started on July 18, average on the early side haha)

Perhaps a compromise could be that we are told that events will only start on a certain day of the week (could even give two options, like "Friday or Saturday"), and we're given an answer weekly about whether the event will start that week or not (e.g. 2 days before the designated day of the week--like Wednesday if events only start on Friday).

So e.g. maybe we could get
"Weds 5th July 2017: Sorry, the summer event won't start this week! We think it'll start in 2-3 weeks"
"Weds 12th July 2017: Sorry, the summer event won't start this week! We hope it'll start next week, but it might start in 2 weeks instead"
"Weds 19th July 2017: The summer event should start this Saturday!"

edit: ... not that it would be of much help, now that I'm looking at it OTL buuut since I posted this here already...

Side note: I'm not sure how many schools in the US still start the day after Labor Day (September) and therefore end in mid/late June, but... I grew up in a VERY populated county (I would identify it, but... identifying information lol), and they weren't able to start before Labor Day until recently. And that recent change only happened because we got too many snow days in past years and therefore had to extend school to end after June 20 in several years and so the state FINALLY approved an earlier start date for us. And... it's only one week earlier. The end date for this school year is still in the middle of June, assuming we don't have a snow drought.

June is summer vacation? what kinda nonsense is that lol I wish :'D I don't know if I'm in the minority of the US, but my county was super populated, so I'm kinda wondering how many other populated counties out there are in the same position as mine... (and the US userbase on CS is pretty big)

[Keir;]

@nickjr
As to the time school starts/ends now, personally, my county and all of them around it go back in very late July (30-31) to very early August (1-9) - looking at past events, school would've started during the "summer" event quite a few times. And here they just keep moving the start date of school earlier and earlier in the year, but we still get out the same time, around the middle to end of May (24-27). We have a lot of snow here and miss a lot from it, but the last couple of years they've been sending home work that everyone is supposed to do on snow days so we don't have to add them to the end of the year anymore.
This year school starts for me on August 9th and gets out on May 17th, but I know one year I went back on August 3rd; some other counties earlier than that, though. My country is rather small, but I know that the biggest county in the state starts even earlier most years.

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August is summer vacation? More times than not, the summer events have ran into August;;

I don't think there is a way to time it to not interfere with school starting/ending at all, considering how big the gap of start and end time is. But, maybe it would be better if it could be held earlier in July? Then it could possibly be more in the middle and work for more people; it won't start before school gets out in June, but it also, hopefully, wouldn't run into school starting in August. Possibly try to fit the entire event into the month of July. The time for the 2012 and 2016 events seems to be better; they start earlier in July and both were over before August.
2012 event - July 14 - July 24 (~11 days long)
2016 event - July 15 - July 30 (~16 days long)
If the 2013 and 2015 events had been moved up to be around that time, they both would've ended in July as well, being ~15 and ~16 days long, respectively. As for longer events, such as the 2011 and 2014 ones, it may not be possible to avoid them running over into August, but it would still help if they started earlier in the month so they wouldn't extend quite as far into August. The 2014 event ran all the way until August 15th.