How the schedule is forming, and some questions and suggestions for the future.

It does seem apparent that the racing schedule is now being altered by the appearance of PvP.

I am not someone who complained about the schedule before, sometimes there were just races you couldn't make, that is life.

But looking at the schedule for the next 3 weeks, and seeing how "top heavy" the schedule is and how "bottom heavy" the PvP schedule is, I tend to draw the conclusion that there was an effort made to not have them conflict.

Times are Eastern

Races Midnight - Noon - 69
Races from Noon - > Midnight - 51

I could be off by a race or two, but I am doing this in 12 hour windows, which is a huge section of time to compare.


Conflicts cannot possibly affect that many people, (Edit, Am I wrong here? How many people had more than say 400 race points and 300 pvp?

... but I think that going forward the decision needs to be made to do one of two things:

1. Disregard conflicts when it is in the best interest of either mode. Meaning players have to make a meaningful choice: Do I PvP or Do I Race?
2. Start staggering seasons while also allowing conflicts to happen a bit more when the seasons touch.

We've been having seasons for 4 weeks, and then off time for 3-4 weeks.

We could easily have weeks 1 - 5 racing, then 3 - 7 pvp 2 weeks off and on wards.

Honestly anything is better than the schedule we're seeing for the current weeks.

I agree 100%, although the next week looks a little skewed to the early hours because of 2 sets of 12 min bursts at 7 PM and 9 PM (US Eastern) which make it look like there's a lot of nothing the rest of the week at those times. As someone who races but does not play PvP, I obviously would not mind any overlap in the schedule and I would prefer more race events in the evening rather than have that slot dedicated to PvP.

Staggering the schedule for seasons also seems like a good idea for the people who play both, and could maybe give us racers a longer break every now and then. The gap between race seasons after 9 have been a little too short in my opinion.

PvP is also split between US and EU, so they try to find convenient times for the events for each region, but that should not mean shoving races to the side and making PvP seem like the priority event at that time slot.

Also, somewhat off topic, but why do only future PvP events show on the 'B' menu in-game until a race is about to start? Even then it only shows that once race.

The biggest issue with event scheduling, in my opinion, is the overemphasis on race/pvp points. I'm curious if there is some way to have a packed schedule of events where only certain races award points (or the points are weighted somehow). This way there could be several races to do during the week with no downside to missing them or dying in them or even having them overlap with other "fun" events.

"

Throzz wrote:

The biggest issue with event scheduling, in my opinion, is the overemphasis on race/pvp points. I'm curious if there is some way to have a packed schedule of events where only certain races award points (or the points are weighted somehow). This way there could be several races to do during the week with no downside to missing them or dying in them or even having them overlap with other "fun" events.

Like if the races still awarded a demi but didn't give points.

I like the suggestion of the staggered start times for the competitive seasons.

First two weeks just race, middle two weeks race and PvP, last two weeks just PvP. This might not extend the number of races past the 120 events mark, but it would enable the first two weeks to be full of events at all times, and have the season taper off once the PvP events started up. The mirror of this would be true for the PvP players. Their first two weeks a little slow while both competitive seasons are sharing the calendar, but the last two weeks have access to all time slots with no race conflicts.

Yup totally agree,

In the past there seemed to be some pattern to races (especially noticeable because they would accommodate every time slot with the signature for each week). Now it seems like they created the pvp schedule first and then slapped some races here and there. The pvp schedule seems to be very U.S. focused which leaves the racing schedule to be very Euro friendly. Proof is clearly evident now because there have been three 7 AM EST signature races this week (March 1st to 7th week).

Let's be honest, it's difficult enough for them to arrange schedules as is. Having a weird half-overlap like that doen't seem very likely.

"

unsane wrote:

Let's be honest, it's difficult enough for them to arrange schedules as is. Having a weird half-overlap like that doen't seem very likely.

why not? it's currently all overlapped....seems like it would be easier to me.

i support the notion of staggered schedules.

-HeaT