Time

[Xanous]

Also remember that long term time speed (17 years per rl year) and short term time speed (1 game day per 90 rl min) are 2 different issues, since the game clock resets itself every time there's a reboot.

In my opinion, both speeds are about right as long as you think of time as being a bit relative.

A trip from Nak to Tuluk and back takes about 2 RL hours with a medium sized group, which usually runs from dawn of day one to dusk of day 2.  This seems about right to me for a "major" trip.

On the other hand you can start a character at age 13 and after 5 RL years he'll only be 98 years old.  Even if you're one of those guys who loves paying teenagers, you still got 7 ic years from 13 to 20, and that'll last you a good 6 months.

[Silent Bob]

I myself think time goes by to fast at 10 minutes an hour, some on the other hand like it that way.  I think 15 minutes to hour is better. So dark is 20 minutes longer, but daylight last 25 more minutes.  Some said leave the gates open longer.  I myself would not go much beyond that I would not want to be trapped outside myself, or have to wait so long for a sand storm to pass, that I pass out.  I like the idea of a longer year by adding a month or more days to a year.  I am happy to say I have read many good ideas here to think about.

[Rindan]

One thing that should be pointed out is that a Zalanthas day is half as long as an earth day.  The years match up evenly.  An 20 year old human is the same as a earth 20 year old  human.  However, there are nearly 700 days to one of their years.  In other words, it takes two full Zalanthas days worth of time before you have an Earth day.  So, if you go spend and IC days doing something, that is like spending half a day doing something on Earth.  It is still a fair amount of time, but not as insane as 2 earth days.

[X-D]

Wintermute wrote:

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.

Alright, that makes two people that I know of that seems to think your char is gonna drop dead from old age (sigh) And I can't find at the moment where it says you will not, might be in char creation.

Anyway, first of, if you are playing a human he is not gonna drop dead on his 68'th birthday, the ages is the average lifespan. Hell, I have heard of people not playing for years and coming back and having chars 2-3 times the ave age for the race. But anyway, ave lifespan for humans on earth is like 76 years, does this mean 76 years from the day of birth every human is gonna croak, no, whats the record, 112, 120 years?  So, for a human on zalanthas to live 20-30 years or more beyond the race ave would not raise to many eyebrows.

So If you started a human char at age 15 you could easily play that char for 6 RL years or more before anybody would bat an eye.

[CindyLou]

I thought I posted, but I guess I didn't. Here's my sids worth:

I'm pretty comfortable with the way things are now. However if I was going to change anything with the time, it would be to just add a game-hour of daylight - an extra 10 minutes. This would extend a full cycle of day/night by just ten minutes, without changing the duration of night.

It would also mean less days per week -probably even giving the term "a ten-day" more logic, since a week in Armageddon is 11 days, not 10, even though everyone calls it a 10-day.

That's it. It's the only thing I'd like to see changed, if such a thing could be changed.

[Wintermute]

Well presuming that the listed average lifespans are natural averages (whatever that means) instead of averages that take into account all actual death ages, then theoretically a character could die at say around 50.  That's to say, your character could (and should) have an equal opportunity to pass on at 50 than at 86.

That said, as far as I know there aren't any hard-coded provisions for ensuring that sort of thing occurs, or even if death by old age occurs at all.  I believe in the past imms (maybe together with the player) have just decided when the right time was..?

Anyway, I like the extra time in a day idea too.

[My 2 sids]

I think what people are missing about the "add years to life" ideas is that some players don't care about how old they get... its how fast they get there.  I don't think players who've never played a child role before really understand what all is involved in the evolution of that character.

First, one must create a character based on that age.  Lord knows if a person has to make a spechal app how long -that- can take.  With the years going by so quickly it becomes a race against time.  You wanted to play a child (not forever... not trapped in one age) but a child for how long it takes to evolve.  Part of thrill or RPing a child is to have it mature due to IC reasons... not outside of game ageing.  Even the PCs who interact with the child... get used to it being a child.  People loose track of age and time, but with a child PC one must alway remember that race against the clock.

It takes time for a child PC to mature and grow.  It takes time to have IC interaction, it takes time to update backgrounds and descriptions, it takes time to find an IC sutible employment.  Suddenly, you have a young adult acting like a child because ICly not enough has happend to age the youth, but the time goes by so quickly.  For an adult or young adult age might not matter as much, but for those who pick out a child... the age guide matters a great deal.  A bit of added time for years wouldn't change other PCs a lot (we have fifty year old warriors and all) but it would make a great deal of difference to child pcs.

[Hoodwink]

I agree with My 2 Sids.  As far as aging goes for those of us who select the youngest starting age and go from there it really requires settling into the concept of "youth" for such a short period of time.  And I couldn't have said it better than:

I think what people are missing about the "add years to life" ideas is that some players don't care about how old they get... its how fast they get there.

Very few of us can hope to survive long enough to reach the average lifespan max. of our character's race, but it's not about that, it's all the years between then and just how fast they transpire.

I will say, however, nobody (special requests aside) plays a "child".  13 is the starting age (or whatever age your race equivalent is, such as 20 for a dwarf, 18 for an elf, etc.).  In a world like Zalanthas being an adult could very well be 13 as far as what is expected of you.  What's more, your physical makeup, while clearly not mature, isn't really that of a child.  There's no reason it should take more than one sdesc/desc change to go from from 13 to 18 and beyond.  'The [...] girl' becomes 'The [...] woman', and so on.  

But because of the speed of time in Arm I highly suggest considering your sdesc carefully.  When I start characters at 16 I always use woman over girl because it's really only a matter of weeks, literally, before I would need an sdesc change.  I would avoid boy/girl/child sdescs unless selecting the minimum possible age.

[creeper386]

WARNING: This post is the best to skim over, as there is alittle bit here and there with lots of rambling. I'm not going to go through and edit stuff because I have no clue what might be useful and what isn't. Have fun, and no bitching, meh!  :twisted:

The whole thing brought up by My 2 Sids is where abit of, it's a game, we put RP over code, and suspend beleif abit.

Adding five minutes to each hour wouldn't help much. It'll add three RL weeks to an IC year roughly. The IC time has to be suspended at least alittle because time jumps forward during downtime and crashes, and for the fact that the Staff or anyone else isn't going to be ruining anyones plans just because they couldn't connect to the internet for awhile and their character older then they want now.

It's still a game no matter what. You have to log into Arm with the mental mindset that it's a game, and you have to suspend your beleives abit. It's also a RPI MUD, that means that if it's realistic, the RP can be just as solid and real as the code is, specially in cases where the code doesn't touch or is rather unstable, such as the current time.

If there was an extra five minutes per IC hour, instead of a conversation taking 4-5 hours to a day, it might take just 4-6 hours. A large combat situation or RPT might be shortened by half a day, it might take a day-day in a half as opposed to two days. There is still going to be problems with time. But what that extra five minutes well do is be a HUGE pain to people that can't log in for several hours at a time. Heck, I average probably about four hours each log in, and I hate to log in and see that it's late in the day. When I'm in a combat role in a guild I hate to see it's the weekend. It's not because I want to be uber leet it's because thats where most of the interaction comes from. A Byn Runner isn't going to be interacting alot with Noble Aides and High ranking militia for the most part, he's going to be interacting more with low level commoners and other Bynners like himself. So the weekends tend to be alittle bland specially when numbers are low and it's hard to find people in the sparring yards.

Over all, the time is not even close to perfect... But the time in a MUD can't be perfect. Because it can't very well be minute for minute which would be proper in some cases, and it can't be IC hour for a minute which would be good for when doing some normal every day stuff that you've been doing for the past six hours and still have to do it for another two. The times never going to be perfect. Your not going to be able to add enough time to really effect things in terms of slowing down aging, but just adding a few minutes an IC hour can be a huge problem for other people.

It just depends on playing style, and time you have to spend on the MUD. The more time you spend on the MUD the easier it is for time to be slow, the less time? Well slow is ussually bad. As you can only play out a small part of the day at a time at the current time rate.

And I think I'm done, although probably should have been done WAY up there.