Speeding Things Up

[Petra]

Does anyone else feel the way I do about how slow events sometimes take when playing Arm?  I dislike the unnecessary length many standard activities take, especially as someone who sometimes only has an hour or two to play in one sitting.  I've known at least a couple players over the years who have quit with the reasoning of "I just don't have 4+ hours to sit around anymore and MUD."  Here's a couple examples of what I consider unnecessary length it takes to do things.

One time I and another player agreed to go barter with a band of gypsies for an item they were selling.  We had other agendas that day so the idea was to go in, bicker over a price, buy the item, and return to our other affairs.  Yet still the exchange took 3 hours of real time to accomplish.  Three friggin' hours!  The other player was all ready to continue with what we had going on when we were finally done but I'm sorry, I just sat here for 3 hours, I'm not devoting any more time today.  There are so many activities that take hours and hours to accomplish what, realistically, can occur a lot faster.

Less specific examples include clan RPTS, perhaps a desert training mission.  If the event, itself, requires 2 hours to complete, that's fine, but often times you have to wait until a certain time of day, or a certain player to show up.  Then when everyone is ready we have to wait because maybe someone has to run to the tailor real quick and run back to get his refitted helmet.  Or perhaps your officer leading the expedition likes to whip out grandiose emotes so you have to wait for them to describe every minute detail with excessive poetry.  One thing leads to another and before you know it you've spent 4 hours online and still haven't finished what should otherwise be a very simple task of, say, gathering herbs from a mountainside a mere 30 rooms away from your homebase.

So what's the solution?  Stop playing?  I really don't know but I am curious if any other players feel the way I do on this matter?  I'd like to see things speed up somehow because, sadly, I've committed myself to playing only isolated or socialite roles; characters who can logout in the drop of a dime without  a whole lot of fuss.  I would love to some day play a grunt militia in a clan that gets to go on outdoor hunting escapades but, man, I'm sorry, I just don't have 4 hours to sit and stare at the screen anymore.  Though the same can happen in the social arena too, where I sit there for an ungodly amount of time just to even meet someone.  An hour of my time just waiting before I can even begin.  3 hours later, all we've done is complete a very small trade agreement, or some such.

[Anonymous]

Roleplay takes a long time, always does.  Same thing happens in tabletop roleplaying games.  It just comes with the territory.

[sarahjc]

There is definitely an annoyance factor of doing the -maintenance- type things on arm and the time that it takes as well as the annoyance of just getting people together for simple RPT's. I know that I truly hate the hurry up and wait factor of most the Hunting/travel RPT's that I have had the joy of dealing with. RPT's can be fun, but mostly the hurry up and wait makes them a pain in the ass.  

Then there is also long winded RP of having or giving an interview for employment. I find that to be drawn out and boring as well, It should really take about fifteen minutes, but for some reason, can go on for hours.

Arranged events, Long..Very Long.. And though most of them are fun, really fun at first, by the end, the luster is lost and I would rather shove splints under my finger nails than sit there nodding off at my computer.

Besides RPT's and perhaps in a self admission of guilt I will state that there are things I -hate- doing because they take up time that I could be out doing something else and sometimes (shamefully) I spam through them.

Things like eating, as a few of my PC's were never really starved for food, for them, hunger was more of an annoyance than something to worry about, So when I have to take time out of what I am doing to eat, I sometimes I've been known to sometimes spam it. Same PC's have also sometimes worn the same thing for a while, when they should most likely change their outfit. But I hate the annoyance of that as well and it seems to take forever to put things on and takes things off. You can waste a good half day, if not more, just getting dressed.

Thing is, there really isn't a way around any of this. You have to respect the fact that people have lives outside ARM, and for what ever reason, they may not be able to do things, just when you want. You have to just deal with the fact that yes, in real life a party/auction/event/trip to your moms house wouldn't last a few days. But on Arm, it has to because that’s as fast as everyone's little fingers can type. No it doesn't take a day and a half to get a job, but on arm there is too much to show you and just not enough time.

It's just the quirks of it being a -fantasy- world with a bunch of different people with conflicting schedules/styles/agendas/typing speeds. Rp takes time and rushing it can ruin it. Best you can do is make the most of the situation. And if you have to leave, then don't sweat it.. and don't feel obligated either.  Yeah it sucks to miss out on something cool, but real life always comes first.

[jmordetsky]

I personally see nothing wrong with cutting corners and making choices about whether or not to roleplay specific minutia.

Theres times it's just not neccessary. Times when it is. Thats up to you I think.

[Bestatte]

Usually when I get a "hunger" message, I'll grab whatever food is available, spam-eat til I'm full, and emote once before, and once after, to remind people watching that 10 seconds of Real Time is actually a few minutes of game-time, and that my -character- isn't really wolfing down her food like that.

In real life if I'm hungry enough I can rip through a 1/2 inch rib-eye in around 5 minutes. Fortunately I don't get that hungry, and I don't like steak enough to rip through it. But if it was oatmeal, a bowl would be gone in less than a RL minute. Especially if it has a little butter, a sprinkling of brown sugar, and tons of raisins in it

That's the thing though - even though it's spamming on your screen, game time is different from real time. So if you want to have a "game-time" hour conversation, it only takes around 10 minutes real time, which is nigh on impossible. So a RL hour of conversation is a whole day of game-time, which is ridiculous, but that's the nature of games that don't reflect real time in their code.

[spawnloser]

Time has to be fluid, that's the thing.  It needs to go fast so that anything can happen, but it needs to go slow so that anything can happen at the same time.  Those people that slow things down need to try to make an effort to keep the slow things moving as fast as possible, though, so that things can get done at all.