Time

[Silent Bob]

Why is time set to go by so fast?  Why can't hours be longer?  Its seems like I just stepped out and the day is over.

[mansa]

Because it helps playability.

Ever tried to walk around in a In Game Sandstorm, for an HOUR RL?
It's death, and you would hate the mud and never play again.

Each day is divided into nine equal hours: before dawn, dawn, early morning, late morning, high sun, early afternoon, late afternoon, dusk, and late at night. Note that there are only two hours of sundown for every seven hours of sunup. One hour of Zalanthan time is roughly 10 minutes of real time, but this may change slightly without notice.

It helps time flow by.  It helps plots move, when the day is shorter.

[Gorobei]

Because then nights would last for fuggin' ever, and when you get lost in the dark without a torch and can't find your way back to a quit zone and it's still 'late at night' after the fourtieth fuggin' time you typed 'time' and your clothes are dirty and you character is about to die of hunger and thirst and all the people are laughing at you, you fuggin' know it... and you can't leave to go get a snack, because you still have to watch as 'Alas, you cannot go that way!'... then you'll realize why hours aren't longer.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Heh.

Have you ever noticed that this even happens in real life at times?

Answering the question: If time was not set to go by at the pace it does, there would not be as much story told. I think that considering the fact that one can get from Allanak to Tuluk in under a day, that you can make a sword in under 10 IC minutes, and so forth, time is set up quite correctly. You can actually have a character live for 20 years in a bit over a real-life year.

[Silent Bob]

I think thats way to fast.  It seems silly to age 20 years in one RL year.  How about 20 minute hours?  Its still fast it just is not so fast that if you say hi to someone an hour passes.

[Silent Bob]

I was rereading the above comments.  I have one thing to say about them.  Plan for the unexpected.  Take extra water, take extra torches, take extra food, etc.  I mean you are saying you can't learn from dieing once? This mentality contradicts what I have read in many other messages about this game.  Its hard, its rough, its Armageddon!  I say slow the game down for more roleplay and you say no its to hard.  I just thought it silly to have a RL convesation of an hour or so takes up a whole day in the game.  If the days have to be so fast let the races live longer.  The planet is spinning out of control, oh no who wants off the spinning tea cup ride?

[creeper386]

I played a MUD with a full 24 hour day, basically same hours as Earth has with 10 RL minutes per hour. Shops were set up to be only open during certain times, gates to cities and such only opened at certain times. And it boiled down to ALOT of waiting. It really sucks.

Now, it may have been more realistic and such, but it isn't really necessary. It's probably similar to why we don't have bathroom necessities coded and such, just not needed for the most part.

Anyways... How it is now, if things go wrong, it really sucks. A night lasts FOREVER while sitting out huddled in a circle after the strongest guy in your group just got chewed to pieces. Days out in the desert seem to drag on and on while waiting for reinforcements, or just kicking it in a tavern waiting for someone to show up. An hour in a half per day works out fairly well. Over all though, it can sometimes seem even to fast because you can't even play through a week in one sitting. And if your playing a character who really has nothing to do except the routine excercises on the week days it sucks very badly to log in at the beggining of the weekend. Or on the other end of the spectrum you have to go to those excercises and no other PCs are ever about... That day lasts forever... And yes, I've played in the Byn a few times.

[Silent Bob]

I was just looking at the PC I started with and it seems like just about the time you get in the normal cycle you are going to die of old age.  I would like to RP my PC longer.  If you dont want to change the the speed of the days going by let the pc's live longer, or let them age per the actual game time played and not the RL time that has passed.

[X-D]

Well, I don't know how long your char has been around IC'ly Silent Bob, but the odds on it lasting long enough that the imms might say something about it's age are extremly small. And you do not "die of old age" Your pc might be human and have started at age 50, when he is 68 he is not going to drop dead, when he is 90 (40 ic years, or 3 rl years) the staff may say something if you still have it running around the same as when it was 50, and if it were to make 120 or so (say 5rl years from now) staff may ask you to think about retiring it or something.

I like time the way it is, sometimes it passes too fast for what you are doing and other times way too slow, just like RL.

[Carnage]

I wouldn't mind seeing about five minutes or so added to each IC hour. Time goes by WAAAAAY too quickly.

[Silent Bob]

I am just looking to enjoy my character longer.  I would like the time to pass slower.  Some dont like that.  I thought ok let me live longer, or let me age according to how much I get to play.  I don't want to make the game less fun for someone else.  I want to make the game more enjoyable for everyone.  I can see relating the time aged linked to time played and also pay.  You can be paid a small wage for food and just show up to collect your food wage which you never spend because you are never on line long enough to have a desire to eat being used to buy super armor.  But if you are paid based on game time played you can't do something like that.  I don't know of anyone here doing that but it just occured to me.  It also means being old and well known makes you something not to be messed with in the game.  Unless you started out old.

[creeper386]

I am just looking to enjoy my character longer. I would like the time to pass slower. Some dont like that. I thought ok let me live longer, or let me age according to how much I get to play.

And you were just told, even if you started at a very old age, like, around 50, it's probably going to be close to a RL year before you get to the average death age... I know I've played a character for two-three months and barely put four IC years on him I think? Something like that. You aren't going to die of old age even in a RL year. And the number of characters who even live for that long.. Isn't a hugely grand number. Shouldn't have to worry about dying of old age before your character gets "into the flow of things" whichever you mean by that. I've been tossed into some wild mixes right from hour one... Longest time I've never really been involved with too much was when I was purposely avoiding it and that only lasted a week or so... So you kind of lost me on what your point was.

Five minutes per IC hour... That'd be another 45 minutes... And even that would really suck. Some people don't have the 10+ hours a day, I know when I log in and only have about two hours, time already goes by ridiculously slow. I know when I'm playing all day it seems to go by alittle fast, but if you slow it down, you end up hurting people that can only play an hour or two at a time. It really sucks when you can barely play out ONE DAY of your characters life every week.

[Rindan]

Aging according to online time is just a bad idea for continuity.  If a kid vanishes for a few IC years, he shouldn't show back up still a kid.  It just makes no sense to the people who know him.  People who are logged on longer shouldn't get old faster.

I don't really see the large issue.  1 RL year is about 15 IC years.  If you start a character at 20, then in 2 RL years you are only 50.  A 50 year old veteran warrior doesn't have to give up his day job.  Sure, he bones might creak a little more, but he also has 30 years of experience that make up for the occasional rusty joint.  Most characters are short lived.  The rapid pace of time is what keeps people from knowing a dozen people who die over the course of a RL week.

The rapid pace of time also keeps movement across the desert at least somewhat easier to swallow.  If you are pushing at full speed you can make it from Allanak to Tuluk in an IC hour or two.  If you are taking your time you can take a day or two.  While still a little fast, this is a lot more reasonable then people being able to make the trip in an IC hour.

The speed of time as it stands also allows for grand sweeping events.  You can have a 40 year occupation like in the case of Tuluk and have a chance of having a character living through the entire thing without dedicating 5+ RL years to a single character.

[Hoodwink]

I too am in favor of extending time on Armageddon.  In fact if I were to write a critique on the MUD, one of the few negative points I'd make would be relating to how fast time goes by.  While I'm not hoping to have my character live from age 16 all the way until she's 90 there are still the years in between which transpire at, seemingly, a startling pace.  Make a child character and if you find yourself offline for a lengthy period of time the next thing you know your character is an adult and you've missed the opportunity to truly sink into that role.

And if nothing else, I still agree that it's odd to have one conversation last an IC day.  I'd rather see gates left open at night for playability issues in order to compensate for longer time than for the Armageddon clock to spin as fast as it presently does.

[Silent Bob]

I went to an in-character event once.  It took 4 rl hours.  So I ask does that make sense?  If it took place in RL it would have taken less than a day so I think its not realistic that it took 4 days.  Now if you all would just type at 1500 wpm and the game link worked that fast as well ... It still would not make sense to me I can't read that fast and my screen buffer would be dumping.   Besides how can I ever leave the keyboard to go to the little boys room when time goes so fast?  I feel I missed something!

[Armaddict]

You have to balance playability with realism.  Don't get stingy with every detail, or you'll spend all your time thinking about how wrong it is instead of just playing the game.

[crymerci]

I'm pretty happy with the way Zalanthan time works as it is. I do like to see my character mature more than a month before I manage to kill it, and the points others have made about how long nights & sandstorms will last are important too.

Hey, at least the speed of time is consistent...it could be worse.  We could be operating off soap-opera time.

[Anonymous]

I don't mean to be a bastard, but I couldn't help thinking 'great, now instead of people travelling the length of the known world in a day, they'll do it in half of a day.'

The quick passage of time makes things like the abundance of NPCs or the minor delay riding/running through HUGE rooms make sense.

[Gorobei]

... my screen buffer would be dumping.   Besides how can I ever leave the keyboard to go to the little boys room when time goes so fast?  I feel I missed something!

(unrelated to the topic) If this is a problem for you, download SimpleMU.  I don't know how many fancy features it has, because I've never gone looking for them, but it's free, works well, and has an infinite buffer.  This is great for when you want to log and forget to hit the log button.

[Flying Erdlu]

Silent Bob: How many IC years do you think is reasonable to have your character age in a RL year?

[drunkendwarf]

I agree that you really can't be as picky as some of you are about time passage...IT'S JUST A GAME. I think time passage is great just where it's at.
Case in point: I work in a computer lab, and often have shifts lasting only an hour or two. Being the addict that I am, coupled with the fact I'm currently playing a quit-anywhere-you-like ranger, I'll pop onto the mud and see what I can manage to accomplish in those two RL hours. First thing I do when i jump into the game is 'time'....even with as fast as the time passes already, I'm fairly annoyed when I get 'It is dusk....' or even 'Late afternoon'....there's 30-40 mins of my two hour gap eaten up already. I'm sure as hell not going to go wandering through the scrubs at night, and my char often times does little else. I quit out, and wait for dawn. It'd -really- suck if waiting for dawn meant 1 or two rl hours...those of us non-city-dwellers would get quite screwed.

Forgot to mention the 'only aging while playing'. I agree this would make absolutely no sense IC, and cause for some very strange situations. Two players make chars at the same time, the same age. One plays three times as often as the other. Suddenly, he's aged 3 times as much? That's some funky wicked magick...or he's a dirty dirty defiler! Kill him kill him!
:?

[Angela Christine]

I've never been on a MUD or MUSH where time was ideally set for all situations.  Probably because the ideal time setting changes depending on what you are doing.  

During social events like conversations, parties and sex the time setting seems absurdly fast. Especially durring sex, even a few "quick" emotes and a fade to black can take 10 RL minutes, an hour IC, so Zalanthans must have amazing stamina.    Most people speak faster than they type: a short conversations might take 5 minutes to speak but 10-15 minutes to type, maybe longer if you take time to think up good emotes.  So even if time were running the same speed as real time these things would take longer than they should.

On the other hand, for many things the time is already set to go by too fast.  Like if you are marching an army from Allanak to Tuluk you will probably get there in a day, even if your army includes infantry and undisciplined, rag-tag bands of volunteers.  No worries about organizing supply lines, you'll be there before anyone gets hungry.  :roll:  Any sort of travel takes less time then it should.  That makes sense for playability though, if it took several IC days just to get to the target it would be hard to get the mission done in one session, and multi-session missions are a real pain in the ass on a MUD (table top games are better for that, since everyone starts and quits at the same time).  Likewise, if you are sitting and waiting for something to happen at a certain time the time seems to pass unnaturally slowly.

The days pass quickly, but Zalanthan days are only about half as long as Terran days so they really do go by quickly.  I think the time setting is ok the way it is.

AC

[Kalden]

The general policy that I've RPed with is that time slows down during scenes. Of course, this gets tricky when night falls and you're in the dark, but I still hold that time slows down to real time when you're doing a scene. You don't talk super slow... your conversation didn't actually last an entire day.

It's one of those things you have to gloss over and try to ignore, like the fact that people tavern sit during the night and don't sleep. Like the fact that if everyone actually did sleep in our "boarding" rooms, they'd be robbed blind nearly every night.

[My 2 sids]

Is it just me or are their two separate issues here?  What if we kept the hours and days the same, but added more days or months to the years?

[Wintermute]

Or, alternatively as was suggested, lengthen lifespans for all races.  Considering the number of people that actually will die of old age this wouldn't be a major impact on the game.. but would allow those that get there that extra time 'to enjoy their character' that everyone's seeking.