Interesting post about time.  I had though that the 2 systems of time was a deliberate feature by wise ones of old to speed up the development of long term pcs while keeping in game days fairly short.  But apparently it was just bad estimating (very bad, since it was off by about 2:1).

But the big change, I see, is that long term time is going to slow down.  It used to be 17 ZL years to 1 RL year.  Now it will be 8.4:1.

Alot of OOC conventions about time are going to have to change because of this.  Like getting paid once a month now will happen every two weeks instead of one.  A year in the Byn now is 43 days instead of 3 weeks.  Your special custom orders will take twice as long (since there are IC time limits imposed on such things).  

Characters will stay younger longer.   A 17 year old rookie played for a year will only be 25 instead of 34.  After a RL year your character might be captain of the guard, or have your own merchant house or gone up in whatever rank.  

And I hope the RP police are lenient about 25 year old grizzled warriors with max skills.  Or a 20 year old masterthief who started at 13.  Or a defiler with world-destroying spells who's only pushing 40 after 3 rl years.

Time to step up the player-on-player brutality, it seems. (no, Big Mr.B isn't joking)

Also, it's been established that Zalanthas isn't our soft, fruity Earth world. I wouldn't be shocked if a 16-year-old Byn recruit grows into adulthood, survives untold horrors and many missions, to where he becomes a hardened veteran of combat at 24 years-old since he made it there though work and determination. If your character survives to be skilled and well developed, it doesn't matter what age they are imo. You have to think that he/she was strong, lucky, or clever enough to hack it for as long as they have.

I just wanted to say that I think this is a great change.

Tiernan has truly gone above and beyond on this and has litterally and completly earned his title of "Timelord."

Tiernan, You Rock!

Quote from: "da mitey warrior"Your special custom orders will take twice as long (since there are IC time limits imposed on such things).

This point I don't understand.

Although the OOC aspects of getting custom items are now going to be a lot easier to roleplay. Now when Merchant X says "you'll have to wait a month" it'll give the Imm and player more time to write up the description and load it in.

Quote from: "da mitey warrior"I hope the RP police are lenient about 25 year old grizzled warriors with max skills.

That's an interesting point that I think should be addressed in another thread. How would people who have seen horrifying acts, react? Would a 25 yr old become a cynical grizzly "old" warrior?

I have thought of one point though. It use to be that each reboot when the "weekend" would happen would shift a fair bit. So 1 week the IC weekend might happen around 8AM every day. And then the other week it might happen around 10PM ever day. This was good because it gave everyone throughout all the timezones more a chance to experience certain days (this is important for clans that offer free time on the weekend).

This isn't to sound ungrateful. This is a very big bug that has been around since Arm was made (AFAIK). It is a very cool bug to have fixed Now we can know for certain whether time-based aspects of the game are suppose to behave exactly how they do. But there is going to be a period of "how do we change our gameplay because of it?" as people adjust to it.

Quote from: "Mr.B"Time to step up the player-on-player brutality, it seems.

I don't understand this. What has that got to do with time?

Just wanted to say nice work Tierman!  That solves many issues with planning things in advance.  Good work, that's definitely something to be proud of.



Waroth

Quote from: "DrunkenSalarr"I just wanted to say that I think this is a great change.

Tiernan has truly gone above and beyond on this and has litterally and completly earned his title of "Timelord."

Tiernan, You Rock!

Agreed.

John - strictly speaking of warriors, it will not be uncommon to find a young, more dangerous fighter. It will also be more uncommon to know of an old warrior. This is as it should be. Men of the battlefield and bloodshed should not commonly live a long time.

http://www.samurai.com/5rings/intro/

Just thought I'd back up the 25-year-old grizzled warrior image. Aged 28, good old Musashi was pretty much uncontested as Japan's finest swordsman after a certain duel.

It's rather like most highly physical sports - people tend to reach a peak in their 20s-30s and then gradually decline from that. I'd expect the 25-year-old warriors to be among the most capable.

Whether the code factors the decline in of course is another question.

Quirk

While I like the synchonization of the times, I do not like how long it will take for one year to pass.  One thing I have always liked about Arm is how fast a year went (was approx every 3 weeks RL, give or take a day or two).  This way, a player was able to grow up at a steady rate.  I have played characters who I have started young, so that the feeling of the character is more realistic.  They would have set themes for each stage of their life (if I was lucky enough to have them survive to that time).  Now, they aren't going to reach those stages any time soon.

Look back over the History of Zalanthas.  Some of the things happened in different ages, but now, they would be recent history.  The sacking of Tuluk?  Well...only some 40 years ago?  Retaking of Tuluk?  Now...what, 20 years ago?  Bah, the Ironsword Clan's siege of Allanak, only what, 90...100 years ago?  Realistically, that would be about four or five generations, but I've played probably 40 characters since then (each of various lengths).

Some of you may like that, but I, personally, like to see history move along.  Want to play that son of your character in the future?  Forget it, will take two years to get to that point, and what will be the point then?  Noone would remember the original character.

Is it possible we can shorten the time period?  One hour in Zalanthas would take 5 minutes?  Making the day go faster is always better when you are playing in a clan with a set schedule.  Bynners will be rping cleaning the latrines for 30 minutes, as opposed to a more realistic 15.  Sparring for 30 minutes?  Bah.  Sitting at the bar for 20 minutes before needing to go back to duties?

Shorten it please!!!!

I like the extension of time better actually, makes it so those clan schedules that are broken up into several things each day easier to play IMO, more real time to spend doing them.

Also, those conversations that should take up only a small part of your IG time but, because they are going on real time, take most of a day or a whole day now can take place in a more realistic amount of time than before.

Quote from: "jhunter"I like the extension of time better actually, makes it so those clan schedules that are broken up into several things each day easier to play IMO, more real time to spend doing them.

Also, those conversations that should take up only a small part of your IG time but, because they are going on real time, take most of a day or a whole day now can take place in a more realistic amount of time than before.

Hmm, I may be wrong here but I don't think that time will pass slower IG at all.  The way I understood it is that time will pass uniformly bow, there wont be times when the game crashes and *poof* its a few days later.  10 RL minutes is still an IC hour.

Makes it alot easier to plan schedules though...

I don't know, but it sure seems like each part of the IG day lasts longer.

Might just be me.

Quote from: "Olafson"Is it possible we can shorten the time period?  One hour in Zalanthas would take 5 minutes?

While that would put long-term time back to what it use to be. It would make short-term time MUCH too fast (IMO). As it is, some situations can go on for an unrealistic length of IC time. Halving short-term time would make it even more unrealistic and more difficult to play (IMO).