Most certainly religous holidays should not get a postponement, but under extreme events whether in this country or not, (9/11, Katrina, Irene) affecting 10 million people I wouldn't have a problem with a delay for all WIS activities.

Rails makes a reasonable point. WIS could reasonably make exceptions for significant disasters. They can't be in the business of honoring religious events, but it's not crazy to expect them to consider such disasters on an as-they-occur basis.

Still, logistically, it's tough to implement. To do so makes them kind of become weather forecasters, earthquake scientists, etc. In this case, they'd need to monitor the news services, determine the severity of shutdown to customers, etc. Then decide whether or not to delay or not. Not very easy, and would produce unhappiness no matter what decision. Probably most efficient to just rely on "no delays" as a hard policy. That way, all know this, and there's never any "I wonder if WIS will delay" question for customers.

Ok, I'm arguing with myself. That's just sad.

Easier to follow your argument jsk if it's only you.  That said, I feel I'm very fimly on the fence.  It' really doesn't matter.  Hope all is well out east.  

I'm not too opposed to the 3 hour window OR, 3 might be too short, I think 6 might be a bit long... I could compromise in between though. I do 100% agree that we need the first cycle to be longer than two hours.

I'd like to see an option where you could queue up your recruiting actions before the recruiting period starts.  The actions wouldn't go live until the first cycle.  Probably not a very smart way of recruiting, but useful for those who realize that they'll be out of town during the recruiting period. 

Those are great ideas, Z and OR.

Posted by zhawks on 8/30/2011 11:03:00 AM (view original):
I'm not too opposed to the 3 hour window OR, 3 might be too short, I think 6 might be a bit long... I could compromise in between though. I do 100% agree that we need the first cycle to be longer than two hours.

Z - I think we could live with 6, I wanted to propose something that would fit with what they now do - i.e. updating in 3 hour increments.  Maybe a compromise would be to have the 6 or 7 pm to 9 or 10 pm window remain - i.e. the first round stays the same, then go to 6 hour increments thereafter????  Having fewer updates would even be a cost savings for the game I would guess!

It would be interesting to get sebel's input on changes like this.

Personally I enjoy checking my recruiting every three hours (wow I totally got sucked back in pretty dang quick...) as I am sure others do but I also understand that some people aren't able to. Maybe it would be a change that could be based on type of world? Maybe the 1 game a day worlds have 6 hours and the 2 games a day have 3 hours??? (just a thought)

the simple number one change would be to widen the period for the FIRST cycle - allow folks to enter their actions during the 5 or 10 hours prior to the start of recruiting.  they would not know what sims were on players - so it goes.  With a wider first cycle, some - not all - of the issues would be better.  The single toughest constraint is that 2 hour window for the first move