8.4 In-game years in one real year...Bummer.

[Galdun]

I don't know how the rest of you feel about this, but 8.4 years in game just doesn't seem like enough time in relation to 1 year in reality.  To me, and this may be a tad bit premature, it just seems like no character can be as epic or grow and develop quite as substantially as they once could.  

In one year, a little over 15 IG(in-game) years elapsed, leaving ample time for your young, rogish little ruffian to grow into a well mannered –man- with a sense of morals and place.  Now of course this can still happen(And most certainly within any amount of time be it 2 years or 15 years), but those people who want their characters to age a significant amount(Those of you whose dream it is to die of old age) will have to wait much, much longer.  I think the game feels a bit more epic when time passes quicker.  

I do in fact like the way the clock synchs up now a days, but we won't see as many aging characters who have earned their veneration.  I personally think it would be great if the amount of days in a Zalanthan month was decreased and played off as if it had always been that length, just for the sake of adjustment – the game is after all, always changing in terms of code and whatnot.  

Maybe I'm crazy, and I suppose you can let me have it if you think I am, but I wish the years just came a little quicker...you know, to progress massive shifts in the environment or general state of affairs between cities, etc.  I think people like the fact that their characters age and grow, altering not only their style of play, but the feel of the game from their perspective.  Alls' I'm sayin' is, after playing for a year in reality, I'd just like the feeling that my character has been through a hell of a lot more than I have...which is simply sitting infront of a computer screen.

Let me  know what you fine, fine people think.
[/u]

[EvilRoeSlade]

I like things better the way they are now.  The 15 years per RL year was always the case.  The only difference is that our age timers are now telling the truth.

People will now have more time to develop their characters personalities as they grow old, making them more believable, more distinguished, and more detailed.

At any rate, old veteran characters will be rare now, but they'll be that much more special because of it.  I fully intend to have my young dwarf die of old age.

[Marauder Moe]

I liked my characters aging at the old speed.  Only 8 years per RL year seems way to static for me.  The old speed made it hard enough to play out a character's life and have him/her develope through life.  Now it seems nearly impossible.  To go from 20 to 60 is almost five years of play time.  I've known of several characters who managed to survive for two RL years, but going for four or five doesn't seem doable (and imagine all the other fun character ideas you'd never get to try!).

[Kankman]

Regardless of how this change affects the speed of characters aging, the synchronization with earth time will benefit the game's scripts greatly. I'd rather play Armageddon with slow aging characters and a vividly animated real-time interactive world, regardless of PC presense than a rapid aging process and no spiffy scripts.

[Angela Christine]

I agree with Kankman that getting time "fixed" so that it flows at a steady, predictable rate is an excellent thing.  If I -had- to choose between unpredictable fast-moving time and predictable slow moving time, I would choose the latter.

However, I would prefer that it were not a two party system.  I belive 12 game years per RL year is the ideal ratio.  One year per RL month is easy to remember and refer to.  A little slower than the percieved passage of time under the old system, but still 50% faster than the current way.  But nobody asked me.

The old way had some benefits and some drawbacks, and the new way has some benefits and some drawbacks.  My personal scales are tilted very slightly in favor of the new way, but I would really prefer a third option.


AC

[jhunter]

I personally like the fact that time is now more stable...I do think that some time based things need to be tweeked a bit as they now seem to last an unrealistic amount of time.

[Twilight]

I just like knowing exactly when the time is going to change, and exactly just how far into late afternoon I am, rather that shrugging my shoulders and saying dusk is coming soon, and ten minutes later it appears.  Or sitting in the tavern muttering about how it is nearly dawn, and then dawn actually arrives just a couple RL minutes later.  Everything else pretty much pales to irrelevance for me.

[sarahjc]

I enjoy the predictability of time nowadays.. makes things a lot easier to judge. However that said, I also agree with AC that I think 12 IG years per 1 RL years is an ideal rate for aging.  I think 8 per year is a bit slow.

[Stroker]

Is there a way to increase the span of time per RL year to twelve Zalanthan years or is there some sort of difficulty in coding that in accordance with Earth time?

[RideTheDivide]

Since the time code is so handy, and we don't want to give that up, maybe we can ask whoever it is that runs "Real Life" time to tweak their code a bit.  That way, Zalanthan time can stay the same, but we'd still grow older over a shorter amount of "Real Life" time.

Does anyone know who we can talk to about this?

:lol:

[Twilight]

They coded it so that every hour is 10 rl minutes.  This makes it very convenient, as every time my computer's clock gets to minutes ending in zero (ie :00, :10, :20, etc) the game time changes.  Nifty.  They also kept the years/days/hours the same as described in the help files.  You cannot change this, and have 12 IC years in 1 RL year, and still have 1 hour (dawn, dusk, earling morning, etc) be exactly 10 minutes in RL.  It doesn't work.

Its pretty obvious I think that they aren't going to change the helpfiles on what constitutes an IC year in terms of the number of days in a year, or hours in a day.

Given that, it is much, much, much, much more important to me that 1 hour ingame = 10 minutes RL, and that I can predict when the time is going to change with absolute certainty, than it is to have each 1 hour ingame = 6 or 7 minutes RL or whatever it would be necessary to get 12 IG years to 1 RL year, as that change would -destroy- the predictability we now have as to when the IG hour will change.

[Tamarin]

In all honesty, I never went by my character's age.  I kept track of the game years and days, and judged my character's actions accordingly.  And if you think about it, 8-10 years isn't a small amount of time to accomplish something prolific.  Napoleon, for example, took control of an army of infantry, and in a mere few years, conquered a whole shitload of territory.  We aren't all Napoleons, of course, but I don't think 8 years is such a small amount of time.  That's -two- university degrees.  Or enough time for a multinational to either go bankrupt, or gain the wealth of several medium sized countries.

[SailorMars]

If it's okay to chime in with an anti-gripe, I like it how it is now.

It used to seem that your character's life was slipping away. You had a sense of urgency to do things. You could theoretically accomplish momentus world altering feats in a fairly reasonable amount of time. Now it could take (more) RL years. But to me, this is a fantasy game, I want to accomplish things faster, faster than the time is now, and get more bang for the buck of my playing time. But that's just me.

10 years contracts are fucking ridiculous now btw.

[Angela Christine]

10 years contracts are fucking ridiculous now btw.

True.


AC

[Gilvar]

You should be playing your character for the day, not worrying about how long it will take them to become old. Play and have fun and when they get old they get old. You can still achieve anything you could, and no it doesn't take longer as many are saying, it would take the same amount of time, just you'd be younger during it. You can achieve more.

no one is saying it has to take 60 years for you to achieve your lifelong goal.

Very few characters as it is live to see more then a few years of actual life pass by with their current character, and they will not be any less remarkable with their age being slightly lower despite their real-life longevity.

[Galdun]

Alright, I see all that, and all of the arguments are perfectly valid, but why not just decrease the amount of days in a Zalanthan month?  I really can't imagine anybody would care...It wouldn't screw up clan pay cycles because of the way things are synched up, and it would bring back that fantasy feel, that larger than life, tale of epic proportions thing that myself and others loved so much.  All we would be doing is finding how many days to decrease a month to in order to fit 12(Seems to be what most people who like the idea want to see) years into one real life year.   If that is at all possible, why the heck not?  Unless its insanely difficult to code.  Once again just offering an idea...

PS:  Since very few people sleep in game, months just really feel like one gigantus day anyways.  I'd love to hear back from the staff on this, just as an idea.  Thanks guys, and by all means keep the ideas and opinions flowing.

[flurry]

10 years contracts are fucking ridiculous now btw.

Negotiate a 5 year contract instead?

[Clegane]

I am a big fan of the new passage of years. I have always felt that, previously, time went by far too quickly. I often felt like I hardly had aenough time to truly develop and 'get to know' my character before he was already rocketing headlong into the next stage of his life.

In my opinion, the slower passage of years promotes greater depth of character and a more fulfilling sense of emotional and psychological growth. I'm quite thrilled with the scale as it is now.

[Angela Christine]

Game hour = GH
Game day = GD
Game month = GM
Game year = GY

Real life second = RS
Real life minute = RM
Real life hour = RH
Real life day = RD
Real life year = RY


There are a couple ways to re-synch time.

1)  One is to change the number of real minutes (RM) in a game hour
(GH).  The problem here is that you don't want fractions, so your options
are limited.  You also don't want a game day (GD) going by too fast.

Right now :

1 GH = 10 RM
1 GD = 90 RM
16 GD =  1 RD
8.4 GY = 1 RY

Not many numbers will work evenly, one of them is 8.

1 GH = 8 RM
1 GD = 72 RM
20 GD = 1 RD
10.5 GY = 1 RY

This would make days and hours go by a little faster, but not too fast, in my
opinion.  A game day would take 72 real minutes instead of 90 real
minutes.  Not a big change.  You get 10 years per real year, which is a little
better than 8.

4 would also work out evenly, but that would mean  a game day would only
be 36 minutes long, that 40 game days would go by per real day, and 21
game years per real year.  I think most of us would agree that would be far
too fast.



2)  The other way to change the balance is to alter the number of game days
in a game year.

There are 16 game days in a real day, and on average 30 days in a real
month, leading to about 480 game days per real month.
16 GD * 30 RD =  480 GD

A game year is 693 game years, change that to 480 days and you get 12
game years per real year.  That would be 3 months of 160 days each.

The problem here is that it would mean altering some of the documentation,
and probably the programs that run the seasons and the phases of the
moons would have to be adjusted to a 160 day month instead of a 231 day
month.  Apparently the phases of the moons were important in some
historical events, so there would have to be some jiggling to get the dates
and phases to line up, and then assign these events to a new date near the
old date.

Personally, I believe that people are not perfect.  The kids that set up the
time system 10-12 years ago were not perfect.  Having the passage of time
linked into the number of cycles (the way it was before the recent change)
seems inherently messed up to me because changing the number of users or
possibly even changing the hardware could change the passage of IC time.
If you allow for the possibility that the original time system was not perfect,
then there is no crime in altering it to make it work better today.  I think
altering the number of days in a year is the best option, because it allows us
to set the passage of hours, days, and years to the speed that seems best
today.

AC

[Anonymous]

To take a PC from 20 to 50 now takes 4 RL years.  That's hardcore and a bit much, IMHO.

I liked it much more previously.  1 year eating up 16 game years still meant that in order to take a PC from young to old it took 2 years or so.  That's a pretty decent accomplishment right there.

[Seeker]

I love the sync-up of time, and appreciate the amount of the sheer effort that went into it.  It is simply deluxe.

I agree with AC, and have agreed with her comments since the correction was first implemented, but there is another possible solution that I do not think has yet been proposed, or commented on.

So far, the concepts of Zalathan time are not really hinged upon any firm correlation to RL equivalents.  I mean that Zalathan time has its own system of measurements, and it can now be determined how these Zalanthan measurements of time pass in comparision to Real Time measurements of time, but that does not mean that a Zalanthan year means the same thing at all as Real Life year.

Assume that a ZH is equivalent to living about a two and a quarter hours of RL time.  Then a day of Zalanthan Time is roughly equivalent to living a Real Life day as far as wear and tear on objects and as a tick off the old life-expectancy chart.  But a Zalanthan year, then, of 693 equivalent RL days, suddenly is equal to about -two- years of RL time.

If you want to adjust the -actual- flow of time on Zalanthas, without changing its correlation to RL time by its measurements, or by changing its own internal structure of measurements, this would be an easy way to do it.

You could either alter the docs to reflect the proper life expectancy in Zalanthan years for each race, or you could have a "conversion" under the stat command.  You are 22 years, 1 month and 98 days old --- equivalent to age 45.

We wouldn't have to anything to the aligned code in place now, or screw with the Sun or Moon cycles, and we could define the Zalanthan hour any way we chose.  If its only equivilent to an hour and a half of RT, then a Zalanthan Year would count as roughly a year and a third in comparision to life expectancy and a RL year.

I am not proposing that as a solution yet, but just as another way of looking at the problem.  For amusement purposes only, of course.


Seeker

10 years contracts are fucking ridiculous now btw.

Negotiate a 5 year contract instead?

How clever. Anyhow I think they shouldn't even ask for it. For playability reasons in my opinion.

And if the time is SOOO stable, they should have something on the website where you can type in 9 pm EST Aug 17 2004 and it tells you what day of the week and what time of the day it is.

[Carnage]

And if the time is SOOO stable, they should have something on the website where you can type in 9 pm EST Aug 17 2004 and it tells you what day of the week and what time of the day it is

It's currently being worked on.

You should be playing your character for the day, not worrying about how long it will take them to become old. Play and have fun and when they get old they get old. You can still achieve anything you could, and no it doesn't take longer as many are saying, it would take the same amount of time, just you'd be younger during it. You can achieve more.

no one is saying it has to take 60 years for you to achieve your lifelong goal.

Very few characters as it is live to see more then a few years of actual life pass by with their current character, and they will not be any less remarkable with their age being slightly lower despite their real-life longevity.

You get paid less often.  Special orders and what not now have a greater excuse for taking so long. If you were asking for a building to be built in 2 years is now twice as long as it was before. You'll get stuck in boring jobs for horrendous amount of time. Perhaps you should hunt less now that time is so slow. I liked when I used to be able to say I've been hunting these parts for 15 years. Now that will take a lot longer to ever achieve that. I mean, we can't adjust our rl time. We are all gonna die. I say let us have as much time as we can in this fantasy before we bite it

[Tlaloc]

Alright, I see all that, and all of the arguments are perfectly valid, but why not just decrease the amount of days in a Zalanthan month? I really can't imagine anybody would care...

I would care. I would care because this is not the way the world is. Simply because something is documentation, and in a .txt file, does not make it something that is simple, easy, and more to the point, should be changed. "Just changing the months" would be like deciding that our RL months no longer have an average of 30 days in them.

In effect, you're asking for us to up and change when the seasons change, and how many days there are in the Zalanthan year. While its all very possible, the documentation is written for a reason - because thats the way it is. You can't just up and change the days in a year, just because you don't like how long it takes to get older.

It wouldn't screw up clan pay cycles because of the way things are synched up, and it would bring back that fantasy feel, that larger than life, tale of epic proportions thing that myself and others loved so much. All we would be doing is finding how many days to decrease a month to in order to fit 12(Seems to be what most people who like the idea want to see) years into one real life year. If that is at all possible, why the heck not? Unless its insanely difficult to code. Once again just offering an idea...

I really don't understand this notion of "epic" ness, and "larger than life" in terms of time. In my opinion, the new time-frame makes characters more epic. Now it will take work to become "Old". Now 13 year-old PCs actually have some time to play out thier teen-angst, rather than seeing it all slip away in under three months. Now a year is a half-decent amount of time, and people have to actually think about commiting to something for a while.

I, personally, see this change as wholely good, and not needing any sort of adjustments at all.

[ShaLeah]

It's my understanding that we went from 3 approximate weeks equalling a year to 6 weeks equalling a year... is that right?
I think it's too long and too drastic a change from our old system.

No doubt I'll adjust, we all will I'm sure, but I would still prefer a RL Month = an IC year.


ShaLeah
-who doesn't like abrupt change...

[Delirium]

Somehow I'm failing to see what the big deal is..

Maybe because this is something that happens every time Immortals change a game from the way it has been for a set amount of time - even if the change is ultimately very beneficial. People flip out about all the hard work just because IT'S DIFFERENT, OH GOD SAVE ME NOW! I CAN'T DEAL WITH CHANGE!

.... Sheesh.

[ShaLeah]

People flip out about all the hard work just because IT'S DIFFERENT, OH GOD SAVE ME NOW! I CAN'T DEAL WITH CHANGE!

.... Sheesh.

Sheesh indeed.
Aside from the not so subtle simmer of a flame I fail to see where any of the responses to this thread even hint at that kind of "flipping out", especially about the "hard work" the immortals have put into this coded change.

The great thing about Armageddon Mud is that the staff does care about the opinion of it's players.  Player feedback  actively changes this place on a weekly basis, this is what these discussions are for.  There is a large likelyhood that this discussion won't change anything but there is the slightest chance that it will so.... discuss away... or flip... depends on who reads it I guess.


ShaLeah
-who flips off her soap box...

[Akaramu]

For those who can only play a few hours a day (if that much), it means that their characters are less ancient by the time they finally get good with some skills. *shrug*

[Delirium]

Nowhere in the post I made did I target you, nor did I intend to.. I've been following the thread since it started. Perhaps it was a badly timed post.

I just really think people could stand to take a chill pill or two whenever there are changes made, and wait to see how well they adjust before jumping the gun and proclaiming that they just detest how things work now, blah blah. Remember the uproar about d-elf stamina? Yet people adjusted just fine.

If you feel offended, it certainly wasn't my intent. I was simply making a point.

[Angela Christine]

I just really think people could stand to take a chill pill or two whenever there are changes made, and wait to see how well they adjust before jumping the gun and proclaiming that they just detest how things work now, blah blah.

We did wait.  The change/correction was announced, there was some discussion, and then everyone settled down to live with it for a while.  After a while, the player that started this thread apparently decided to note that after living with it for a while he still wasn't entirely happy with the "new" way.

I don't see the problem.


AC

[Marauder Moe]

no one is saying it has to take 60 years for you to achieve your lifelong goal.

What if my goal is to play my character until he -is- 60 years old?  And please, don't tell me that if I want to play an old character I should make a character with a high starting age.  I could NEVER come up with as rich and interesting a history as an actual life played out IC.  Having to wait two years for that seemed difficult enough, but within the realm of possibility.  But four years?  That really is a big difference.

I think its safe to say that if someone has been playing the same character with some regularity for a RL year then he is considered a "long-lived character".  I think its also safe to say that long-lived characters are fairly rare and impressive.  However, if this character gets a job early on and sticks with it for the whole RL year, he would only be able to say that he's had this job for 8 years.  In a world where slaves and other occupations involving lifelong commitments is very common 8 years doing the same thing doesn't seem that impressive to me.  The value of playing for an entire real-life YEAR is greatly diminished with this change.

Now, I understand that the original rate of aging for people was technically a bug/design flaw in the game code.  However, that doesn't make it neccesarily a bad thing.  I think the time ratio and accepted RL time to Zalanthas time conversions worked out pretty well then.  It seemed like a good balance of having enough time to play out parts of your character's life but also being able to last long enough to see him grow older.

Another part of playing Armageddon that I enjoy is having a dynamic character.  When people age they DO change.  The idea of guiding a character through different stages in life and having a chance of ending in old age is very appealing to me.  You can't go from a hot-headed young cadet to a seasoned older captain to a sad tale-spouting codger in 20 Zalanthas years (~2.5 RL years).  If you started at 20 years old and wanted to reach 60 years old it would take -five- RL years.

We play this game to be entertained.  Each character's life is a story.  Must every story in Zalanthas end in an untimely death?

Those of you who believe this time change is a good thing (for reasons other than the increased stability and predictability of the Zalnathas calendar) please share your opinion.  I understand that this may be a play style difference.  Is it that your character contecpts are focused around your starting age and getting older messes it up?  Are lots of people being forced to 'retire' characters because their characters are too old to be alive and healthy?  I honestly am not seeing the appeal of playing a smaller slice of a character's life than a larger one.

Thank you anyone who actually read all of my sleep-deprived ramblings.

[Peabody]

I love the fact that game time is now predictable.  I've played characters before that had to interact with individuals on a monthly/yearly basis, having to break the rp to inform them of the RL date that the next meeting would have to be was a bit cumbersome.

So what changed now?  Now I get paid every 2 weeks... In effect the amount of sid my char has for food, water and clothing is half.  Tho.. the amount I would have to pay in rent is the same.  Is that so bad?  Maybe I kinda like struggling for money.

[spawnloser]

You know, I'm not sure why people keep bringing up the stability of time now.  I don't think ANYONE thinks that is a bad thing, or even a mediocre thing.  I'm pretty sure that everyone thinks it is a good thing.

The issue is simply that not as much time will pass, preventing characters from attaining the age they used to.

[Dracul]

You know, I'm not sure why people keep bringing up the stability of time now.  I don't think ANYONE thinks that is a bad thing, or even a mediocre thing.  I'm pretty sure that everyone thinks it is a good thing.

The issue is simply that not as much time will pass, preventing characters from attaining the age they used to.

That should just make it more of a challenge....
Kinda like that game with the five settings...easy being where you get your ass kicked. Only now...you have to play it twice as hard as the hardest. Oh yea....

(I'm starting to get that goal in mind...the oldbie character.)
Wish me luck, all of your bad luck.

[Galdun]

Marauder Moe put my own thoughts better than I did myself.  Thanks.  And for those who are still interested in the thread, and not necessarily the outcome, keep sharing your opinions.

PS: It was never my goal to whine or complain, simply to offer my opinion and my reasons for it.

My personal preference is for the months to be cut in half. Time synch is good. Current length of day is good. But the years should move faster.