Wrong date in the new automatic "next game" post

When I update the next game time for our game, I got the new automatic forum post " Your Next Game Will Be: 10/28/2020 " except that the game I added is October 27th.

Aside from going back and checking there wasn't an accidental shift while selecting/setting the date, did you also check the time zone to make sure it's displaying in the same time zone as when you were originally setting the game?

I am getting the same issue.  I think it is using GMT time for the date instead of local time (CST for me).   The next game time is the correct time, but JUST the forum post is wrong.

I set the game for October 27th, 9pm EDT.  No misclicks or anything, the next game shows as correct, timezone is correct, etc. The new automatic forum post says " Your Next Game Will Be: 10/28/2020 ", it does not list a time or a timezone. I don't see a timezone setting in user or game settings, so I assume it pulled the EDT from the browser when I set it or just stores it as GMT and maps it to the browser's local time.  The automatic post thing looks like it's just using GMT, which is worse than useless, it is confusing since it doesn't list the time and timezone.

Okay, that may be the case then (that it's in GMT).  Interestingly, I don't ever see any "Next game date/time" messages automatically posted to the game's message boards in either games I participate or DM in (I guess that's a good thing because I actually would rather not have those extra annoying posts anyways ;P), so I can't verify if it's always GMT or not, but from Jake's report above, it looks like it. :)  However, I did realize that one needed to be careful to check the time zones used on the various screens when I first started using Roll20 a few months back.

Yeah...it's definitely a head-scratcher. Don't really understand the need to have it auto-post at all when the time is clearly posted. Never mind it also posting the incorrect time. Yet we *still* don't have confirmation on the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide which has been repeatedly promised 'by the end of the year'. haha Priorities, I guess. /shrug

Yeah, in theory having this option is GREAT.  But it should be an option.  Currently I immediately delete the post after it gets auto-posted.  If it was accurate, then I would probably not delete it. Mike Peace said: Yeah...it's definitely a head-scratcher. Don't really understand the need to have it auto-post at all when the time is clearly posted. Never mind it also posting the incorrect time. Yet we *still* don't have confirmation on the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide which has been repeatedly promised 'by the end of the year'. haha Priorities, I guess. /shrug

Just had this happen to me when scheduling a game.  I schedule for 11/2, and it posted for 11/3.  I delete these posts anyway and would love an option to turn them off entirely.  I don't find them helpful, especially when the feature is poorly implemented and can give an inaccurate date.

Just came across info on the looking for games, advanced search page that says game times are shown in your local time regardless of the originators time. Must mean your "machine" is converting the time to local. However you can't convert a post, so maybe the post is local time for the server.

Mike Peace said: Yeah...it's definitely a head-scratcher. Don't really understand the need to have it auto-post at all when the time is clearly posted. LOL Right on.  Usually dates/times are pre-agreed or DMs manually post a message to explain the situation and date/time change.  I suppose the one scenario where some might find it useful would be the one where the player rarely looks as his "My Games" list (which is actually kind of difficult since you see a partial list of it when you log on or go to your account's main page), and the DM suddenly changes from the pre-agreed date/time without any notice/explanation message or advance warning. Having said that, I started thinking that perhaps only some accounts are "gifted" with this automatic posting feature. ;)  (Certainly not a "gift" I would want. ;P)  As mentioned before, I have never seen such a post in any games I play or DM in.  BUT, now I realize we should check/confirm something.  When you all say "automatic forum post", are you actually referring to getting an automatic email, or do you actually see a post in the game's forum / message board? If you are referring to an automatic email, there is an option in your account preferences for that. "Do you want to be reminded by email of upcoming scheduled games?"

Markus said: Having said that, I started thinking that perhaps only some accounts are "gifted" with this automatic posting feature. ;)  (Certainly not a "gift" I would want. ;P)  As mentioned before, I have never seen such a post in any games I play or DM in.  BUT, now I realize we should check/confirm something.  When you all say "automatic forum post", are you actually referring to getting an automatic email, or do you actually see a post in the game's forum / message board? It's an automatically generated post, on behalf of the game creator, that goes into the game forum.  In my experience, they're located underneath all other posted content, so it doesn't even post them in the most recent position, despite being the most recent post. Judging by your question, have only Plus/Pro accounts been blessed with this new 'feature'? 

Hmm, that is very interesting then.  I guess only some accounts get gifted (or cursed ;P) with this feature. I am on free account, and my games don't do that.  The games I play in include both free account and Pro account DMs, and they don't have that automatic post/thread (even looking at "View All Posts").  In fact, sometimes the DM will manually post a "Next game is scheduled" message/thread after a mult-week break or something.  Also, the account creation date of the DMs range anywhere from about half a year ago to many years ago... so, unless it's only with the newest accounts or those "special" accounts or something...

It's been happening over the past few days in my games too. The dates are always a day ahead, and now my players are just confused because I use the recent discussion to post written session reviews based on notes taken by myself (and sometimes my players) to help keep everyone caught up to what's happening. When it first started happening my players got very confused because they were getting notifications of a new thread in recent discussion only to find out it's just a 'next game' post and I had to explain that it's automatic and right now I can't turn it off. Not sure why roll20 decided this should be a thing but at the very least we need an option to toggle it off instead of having it forced on us :/

I have the same issue. And I agree with others, that I don't find this very helpful even if it worked. Now I have to delete this post every time to not confuse my players.

Okay, it looks like more and more people are getting it now too, as a DM/group which didn't have this "feature" just a few days back are now being affected as of today too. ;(  Hope Roll20 will just remove this feature and return things back to normal, or at the very least make it a game setting that is disabled by default .

This is happening for me also, for a game that is a normal Tuesday 8:30 PM Central Daylight Time game. It posts that next game is on Wednesday (11/4 in this case for an 11/3 game). For now I will have to delete these. I would find this feature useful if it posted the date AND THE TIME (and time zone), both correctly. It can't just post the date, that's useless because they would still have to come look at the forum heading for the time. If it posts the date and the time then they can just see it in their inbox and/or email notices. If you're going to auto-post something, post complete and accurate information. Kind of surprised this made it beyond QA testing in this format.

New week, new game, same error -- single correct click-through to set it, so it's not due to user error when setting the date/time So now I guess I'm just forced to delete a post every time I set the next game?  Idiotic. Roll20 please fix or remove this "feature".

Same issue. I have to delete these automatic posts. (Two weeks in a row now.)

I'm deleting each time too.  It's so dumb :( Alex said: New week, new game, same error -- single correct click-through to set it, so it's not due to user error when setting the date/time So now I guess I'm just forced to delete a post every time I set the next game?  Idiotic. Roll20 please fix or remove this "feature".

I myself was a little shocked at this feature. At first, I thought someone hacked into my Roll20 account. Then I found this "Feature" existed but it's seems like it's always wrong. As programmer myself, I am baffled how this passed QA. Where I work, QA would have sent this back to me to fix. Let alone as someone pointed out, why there isn't a per game setting to turn it on or off. And lastly, was this really important?? Seems like there are plenty of other features that could have been worked on instead that should have a had a higher priority. At this point, I just going to have to delete them each week because it seems to confuse the hell out of my players. 

Jeff B said: And lastly, was this really important?? Seems like there are plenty of other features that could have been worked on instead that should have a had a higher priority. This +100.  I know people generally like creating/developing things more than validation/debugging, but given the state/stability of the platform, devoting or transferring resources to debug & fix (followed by ongoing validation for stability) the super-lag/freeze/crash problems happening from October on many people's browsers was 100 times more important than this "feature" (curse ;P).  Stability is a most basic part of functionality for people to realistically use the system.

Alex said: I don't see a timezone setting in user or game settings, so I assume it pulled the EDT from the browser when I set it or just stores it as GMT and maps it to the browser's local time.  The automatic post thing looks like it's just using GMT, which is worse than useless, it is confusing since it doesn't list the time and timezone. I would think they would store time in GMT, which makes sense. And yes it seems to get the TZ from your browser. I never understood why you couldn't tell it what TZ to use. Actually two settings on the game would make this feature OK. First the ability to turn it on/off for a game, and the second is tell it what timezone to set email for. They could actually post that in the Message instead of just the generic "next game". Even then, I'm pretty sure this a feature no one really asked for.  

I am also getting this error. Stupid. Just report the date/time selected and let the GM/players worry about time zones. Submitting an actual ticket, not that anything is going to be done about it since this has been a problem since this was introduced.

Getting the same error. Honestly, this feature just needs to be rolled back and disposed of unless Roll20 can come up with a way to make forum post titles adapt to the user's local timezones like the regular game time function works.  Otherwise it just confuses everyone, especially newer folks who may not know it's buggy until they miss their first few games.

I would like to join the chorus of voices calling for this buggy feature to be rescinded, or fixed so that it copies the entire date and time scheduled including time zone. People miss games because of stuff like this.

Jesse said: Getting the same error. Honestly, this feature just needs to be rolled back and disposed of unless Roll20 can come up with a way to make forum post titles adapt to the user's local timezones like the regular game time function works.  Otherwise it just confuses everyone, especially newer folks who may not know it's buggy until they miss their first few games. I want to add my voice for rolling this fuction back, if not ending is as a failed idea. If nothing else, make it an option. I've had this happen twice now. The first time it happened, I wasn't even aware of it until a player asked if it was correct. Most of my game forum is for rules, session alerts. I've had to go in a delete the post.