Proper mail time from hirelings, is this possible?

[QuadroTony]

I discussed about this in the comments to this addon, MailTime
http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info716-MailTime.html
AFAIK, we cannot make an addon to calculate time for the next mail from hireling, because the game displayed only client received time, not real received time?

right?
Explntion

for example i received an email when joined the game, and it displayed exactly the time when i get it, "<1 minute ago"

but in fact i can get anohter mail not after 12 hours of this one, but after an hour, because the real time of first received mail was not "<1 minute ago", but "11 hours ago"

so we cannot make proper timer of the mail's next arrival?

I thought the hireling mail start counting from the moment you earn the passive skill, isnt it? i mean if you get this skill at 12 am(3rd update), you will receive mails every 12 hours at every 12 am/pm if you are online 24/7 if you are offline, the mails still will be sent to you, but they will override each other, and when you become online at 8 am for example, you will receive last mail, from 12 pm and in 4 hours, in 12 am you will get the second one, isnt it?

[sirinsidiator]

As far as I understand the mail system, there is no hidden server received time and what you see in your client is the time your mailbox received the mail on the server.

To my best knowledge, there are only two cases when your mailbox gets updated by the server.
1. when you change your own online state (e.g. by switching zone or by logging off and on again)
and
2. when any player who sent you a mail - that you did not receive yet - changed their online state

The time you see in your inbox is the time when it got sent to you and not when it was made available to you. For example when you buy something in the guild store, you will get a mail that says received 15 minutes ago when you wait 15 minutes before changing your online state (and case 2 did not happen in the meantime).

What does that mean for hireling mails? It means the time you see, is the time it was sent to you.
Because the hireling mail is generated by the system when your mailbox gets updated, which happens in the two cases mentioned above.

Another special rule for hireling mails is that they are not generated when you are offline.
When you are logged out for 3 days you don't get 3 (or 6) hireling mails for one profession, but only one because your are now online and one of the two cases above occurred.

TL;DR: It should be possible to calculate the next estimated arrival time based on the last hireling mail you received.

[QuadroTony]

I thought the hireling's mail time start counting from the moment you earn the passive skill, isnt it?

i mean if you get this skill at 12 am(3rd update), you will receive mails every 12 hours at every 12 am/pm if you are online 24/7

if you are offline, the mails still will be sent to you, but they will override each other, and when you become online at 8 am for example, you will receive last mail, from 12 pm

and in 4 hours, in 12 am you will get the second one, isnt it?

[sirinsidiator]

No, I don't think it remembers the time when you learned the passive.

Let's say you invest your first point into the passive at 7pm.
The moment you invest the point, the 24h cooldown starts for the first time.

When you log in on the next day at 6pm you have to wait for one hour to receive your mail.
As soon as you received it, the cooldown is reset and you have another 24h before the next one.

On the following day you log in at 8pm (one hour after you are supposed to receive the mail).
The cooldown is already finished since one hour ago, but you only received the mail at 8pm and the countdown starts again when you receive it. So on the next day after you won't get the mail when you log in at 7pm, but an hour later.

That's what I have experienced so far.

[Sasky]

@sirinsidiator, that's the same with all the interpretations I've seen. There have been several complaint threads in the main ESO forums about the 12h/24h period because it's tied to login/zone change and invariably it creeps.

(Although, most of the people with the 3/3 passive can't get to each 12h mail except maybe on the weekends. So it's always up when logging in in the evening.)

Keeping track of login for each character would be enough to know about hirelings for the most part. For the zone change part, probably just reset the timer a) after the previous would've expired and b) you change zones. Should be a 'good enough' ballpark.

[QuadroTony]

Originally Posted by sirinsidiator No, I don't think it remembers the time when you learned the passive. Let's say you invest your first point into the passive at 7pm. The moment you invest the point, the 24h cooldown starts for the first time. When you log in on the next day at 6pm you have to wait for one hour to receive your mail. As soon as you received it, the cooldown is reset and you have another 24h before the next one. On the following day you log in at 8pm (one hour after you are supposed to receive the mail). The cooldown is already finished since one hour ago, but you only received the mail at 8pm and the countdown starts again when you receive it. So on the next day after you won't get the mail when you log in at 7pm, but an hour later. That's what I have experienced so far.

i using MailTime addon and yesterday i got two mails from each hireling in short times, near 6-7 hours
i dont record tis i thought all okay and it was 12 hours between...

but today i joined the game and i just got new timer - 11:59

bu i didnt get any mails from hirelings

is smthing with the addon, or your theory about arrival time wrong... dunno

[QuadroTony]

ok i will record when i got next mails, i will not logout from the game