This is something that’s bothered me for quite some time, but the way that Coin Shop games and sometimes even the daily deal works just isn’t fair for people in different timezones.
My timezone is AEST (UTC +10), and I’m getting really sick of waking up in the morning to an email about a great game being added to the Coin Shop, only to open the page and find out that it completely sold out before I even had the chance to buy it.
This even happened recently when Enter the Gungeon was the daily deal, it sold out before I even woke up, and I didn’t even know daily deals could sell out.
What I suggest would be to sell the Coin Shop games in staggered releases.
For example, When the new games get added to the coin shop, only a portion of the keys are available to purchase before the game ‘temporarily sells out’.
Then after a period of time, another chunk of the keys are made available to purchase, until all the keys are gone.
Theoretically, this type of staggered release would make buying coin shop games fair to people from ALL timezones, instead of it just being a rush for the fortunate people to buy out all the keys in the first hour and leave the unfortunate constantly out of luck.
This idea can also be tweaked and fine tuned immensely, including how many staggered releases there are, to when they get made available.
I sincerely hope you take this advice on board, and try to find some way of making the Coin Shop games fair to people from other timezones!
I think that whatever is done with this, it is going to be unfair to someone. If a game is going to sell out, it is going to sell out. Even if keys become staggered it might be likely that more and more people are waiting for the new keys to become available and will sell out each time they become available. Someone could be waiting for several available key openings and still not get a chance and I think that would be unfair on that person.
I am in the same boat as @Easternsanarise and while it would be nice to have keys available when I get my first chance to look at chrono, I don’t know if anything can happen to help that but while writing this I did come up with an interesting thought. What if coin prices decrease over time, chances are it won’t change anything and games may still sell out to those with enough coins but it may have some people waiting for a coin price to lower or OR…what if those buying the last keys get some kind of incentive that will have those that care, delaying their purchase. I doubt these will happen or work but maybe this triggers someone to build on the idea.
Sure, but it still means that a chance exists at all.
As it stands, unless I’m awake at an insane hour, there is literally no chance for me to get a more popular coin shop game.
There’s no perfect solution obviously, but staggered releases would make it more fair, even if it can’t make it completely fair.
They already do put discounts on games that stay in the coin shop for extended periods of time.
If they made the prices automatically decrease over time, not only would that make the more popular coin shop games sell out even faster, but it could also encourage having multiple accounts to snipe multiple keys.
A lot of people have been collecting coins for a long time now, they have too many coins to care about what the price is and aren’t gonna risk waiting for a slightly better price.
For example I have 93K coins, and I would have bought Underhero is a second without even looking at the price, I have all these coins but I can’t spend them because any coin shop game worth buying sells out before I’m awake.
That’d definitely remove the ability for people to rush buy the games and make them sell out, but it’d be replacing it with an entirely luck based system instead.
Not really sure if that’s an actual improvement though, and yeah, it’d probably be more work than a staggered release or possibly some other solution.
This right here is the underlying problem. Everyone has a bunch of coins.
And there is 3 ways that I can think of to fix that and they almost all screw over new people.
Inflate prices. Quite simply it costs more to get the games. This is what is currently happening.
Deflate the amount of coins. Doing some very Rough math. If you spin everyday for a month, you’ll get about 4400 coins. Reduce that number you get and keep prices the same or go a bit higher.
Soft reset the coin counts by converting to “another currency”, then deflating the amount gained. Scale it using logarithms. This’ll no doubt piss people off, but will be pretty effective.
No matter what you do to “fix” the coin shop someone will always lose out, whether its staggered like only giving out 100 copies each hour until they run out, Or making the coins have a lesser value and that would only last temporary over time until you have to do it again. the only thing they can really do is Buy more keys for the coin shop (which is a huge gamble) or have two batches of the same game and if the first batch sells out before the new games show up you put another batch out at a certain time, but even with that people will still miss out because of time zones & because people are watching the site almost all the time.
Yeah, you are right, it would be an improvement over having no chance at all.
Complete luck is just something I dislike in general, so my first response was more based on that.
You’re right, but it’s a completely self-sustaining problem.
I don’t have this many coins because I want to, it’s because I can never purchase the games I want to because of my timezone, and I’m not exactly going to waste them on games I’ll never play.
Of course people are always going to miss out when there’s limited supply of something, but you’re missing the point.
Why should I always miss out based on an entirely unrelated factor that is also my control?
If a Coin Shop game went up while I was awake, and I was too slow to go to the page and buy it, I would be fine with that!
I was too slow, other people were too fast, and that’s my own damn fault!
But the fact that the coin shop games always go live when 1/3rd of the entire population is asleep?
There’s nothing I can do about that.
I’m not looking for some impossible solution that lets everyone win, I’m asking for a solution where everyone actually has a chance to try.
So you probably want like what i said, do a two batch thing then right? so for instance the coin shop got a new game released at its normal time every other Friday @ 12pm EDT and if they sold out do another batch at a different time like @ 12am EDT. And if they haven’t sold out within a certain amount of time just add the rest of the keys to the batch so they just aren’t sitting on unused keys.
Yeah, that’s exactly what I was trying to describe with a ‘staggered’ release.
Even if there was only two batches released, that would do so much to let more people have a shot at getting a key.
I don’t know much about how a system like the coin shop would look from the back end, but with how it seems to work currently I can’t imagine it would be too much extra effort to add in a second batch and then merge the unsold keys after the first 24 hours.
You are pushing for a giveaway system that we can already see at dlh.net. What actually happens is that people script or bot their ways to take the limited staggered supply that you rarely get a chance to get it manually. So let me ask you this, why should the majority of users accommodate for your special needs when the current giveaway system gives the rest of us a human chance to get a game?
Having bots snipe the keys isn’t specific to staggered releases though, those types of people can do the exact same thing with the current coin shop system too, they just all snipe at the one release date.
Plus, Chrono restricts users to only be allowed to purchase 1 key of a coin shop game, so anyone who is going to try and cheat a staggered system is already cheating the current system.
Let me ask YOU this, since when is not screwing over up to a third of Chrono users over concerns of exploitation that could already be happening a “Special need”?
Do we just not matter just because we don’t share your timezone?
problem is, while you might have such sensible sentiment, past proves not all do
the faster games sell out, the more complaints there seem to have been
a staggered system (could)would just increase that, as there’d now be even more easily batches of people that “see the games disappear right before their eyes”
With a limited amount of keys it’s going to be mighty hard to find a “sweet spot” balance that results in least negative feedback. Opening your window to “easily” increase that by disappointing even more people with their local times/sold out might be something they have considered, since they are quite aware of this already/having been suggested in the past and Chrono obviously seeing/commenting on its consideration
But just because something gets to be considered doesn’t mean it adds up to something they find to enact in the end, and/or could even have landed on deciding against it.
Also “we”/us users need to consider, it’s a fairly small staff, and they probably have a fair load to deal with already, thus “improving”(to some’s perception) how they dole out free dosh, might be lower on their priority list than other business stuff they have to deal with.
-we aren’t privy to their decisions or schedule
and in the end it also sorta boils down to “US company, US times”, having (a) staggered release(s) could mean they might have to divert some resources to keep up, making it more “costly”/more of an effort -just to give free stuff away.
as it stands, we “know” when games release, and sorta just like other limited giveaways you have to jump at it when you can. So if you are truly gung-ho about getting games, albeit “inconvenient”, set an alarm and get up in the middle of the night to improve your chance at a freebie.
Until one of the Chrono cats has an update, that’s pretty much all there is to accept and do
You’ve actually got some very valid points there, I didn’t really think about a staggered system increasing negative feedback here seeing as I don’t often jump into these forums.
The Chrono team being small is also very fair, but partially depends on just how automated parts of the coin shop are.
Setting an alarm to wake up when the games get posted definitely is inconvenient though, especially considering no one knows what games are going up or if you’d want them, and I don’t always have the freedom of messing up my sleep for the next day.
If nothing else though, I would really appreciate one of the Chrono staff taking the time to comment on this whole issue, even if there truly is nothing they can do about it.
dlh.net has the same 1 key per user restriction yet the difference of getting an actual game from chrono versus dlh is clear
That’s a problem of time zones, do I get to complain if my EU time zone isn’t at the best time for me when an event happens in NA or Asia? There are plenty of people that would change their sleep schedules to watch sport games for example.
It’s not that you don’t matter, you are simply given a harder chance because you aren’t in the same time zone and that’s life, it happens. You can try to set an alarm if this is that important to you.
But what’s a discussion without offering a solution. I believe that the chrono staff should hire a team of scientists to make the earth flat, making the sun rise equally on every part of the earth would eliminate time zones and this whole problem. A solomon solution, don’t you think?
I can’t lie, I know nothing about that website, I just don’t see how a staggered release would increase the amount of bots sniping as opposed to humans getting the keys.
Anyone can make multiple accounts to cheat the rules, anyone can set up a bot to snipe at a different time, only difference is one big opening to multiple smaller ones afaik.
No, because there is an insane difference between a massive organized sports event and some game keys being put up for sale, and I sincerely hope you realize that.
You’re able to provide feedback and offer potential solutions if you’re constantly missing out on purchasing or redeeming something on a website/service because there’s never any window for your to do so based on your timezone.
Whether or not the staff of the website/service do anything is up to them of course.
Do you really think i made this entire thread to complain and bicker without feedback?
Did you not even bother to read the OP, where I very politely addressed the issue and proposed (what I thought to be) a very simple and fair solution?
Have you not seen how everyone else has calmly presented their opinions on my solution, or offered their own one instead?
So quit it with your straw man comparisons and take a look back through the thread, you’re the only one here who’s arguing unreasonably and jumping to extremes.
I don’t see how it would increase it either, but here we are. I figured I would share the experience of something that happened compared to theorizing about it.
Who’s to say how much value an individual puts in one thing or another? They are both sources of entertainment. If you ask me personally I would even value a game key higher than a massive organized sport simply because I enjoy doing something more than watching someone else do it.
The point of this “solomon solution” was to point out the absurdity of solving the problem.
I appreciate your politeness and your efforts to calmly discuss your frustrations. I am at fault here for making you lose your cool, I used a provocative method to present a different perspective in this topic, so I’m sorry for that.