Q: Spell durations, 10mins/level vs. hour/level?

[t-ice]

I was under the impression that hours in spell durations are calculated taking into account the IC vs RL timeflow, whereas seconds, rounds and minutes are RL second, 6 seconds and 60 seconds, respectively.

Since the timeflow in acr is roughly 7 RL minutes to the IC hour, this leads to an apparently funny discrepancy IG. At the same caster level, a spell that ICly lasts 10mins/level (say, heroism), by the math lasts longer than a spell that lasts hour/level (say, mage armor).

Anyone know how it's handled by our scripts?

Thanks.

[Blindhamsterman]

Works exactly as stated, i.e. the 10min/level spell lasts longer than the hour spell

[Swift]

One fix would be to go through and change the 10 minutes/level spells down to, say, 3 minutes per level (Note: Number picked entirely at random). That would still ensure the spells lasted a decent length of time as you leveled up, while also ensuring the 1 hour/level spells will still always last longer.

Course, it comes down to who has the time to do it heh.

[Zelknolf]

One fix would be to go through and change the 10 minutes/level spells down to, say, 3 minutes per level (Note: Number picked entirely at random).

Nothing to do with that being our NWN1 solution, eh?

But yeah, there's no convenient TenMinutesToSeconds() function that we could edit to change the duration of all of those spells, but I would suggest that we create one if we're to go and edit these spells, just in case we decide that we don't like 3 minutes/ level. Or whatever "random" number we pick.

[Blindhamsterman]

I'd go for 5 mins personally (if we have to reduce the length of time for 10min/level), However we already have a lot of grumbling about arcane spellcasters getting the short end on ALFA, coupled with the fact that the one hour per level spells are often considered to be too short anyways due to RPing getting in the way compared to pnp - especially at lower levels. And I'd think it'd make more sense to increase the duration of hour/level spells?

[Zelknolf]

We could make an argument for hour/ level spells not increasing duration linearly. Maybe at level 1 it lasts for 20 minutes, and at level 2 it lasts for 35 minutes, and then 10 minutes per each additional level. It would make it so that a low-level caster could drop those hour/ level buffs and have them reasonably last through a "I wonder what's inside this cave?" trip without allowing mid-level casters to cast hr/level buffs when they log in and never have to think about them again.

Still some noteworthy tedium in implementing such a thing, though, if people want either thing suggested.

[t-ice]

If we're talking about changes, I would rather see our RL minutes / IG hour ratio changed, and thus effectively the duration of hour/level spells. That ratio certainly isn't anyhow IC anyway. There's no way to reconcile the IC timeflow in doing different things. The ratio ICly should be from about 1 min / hour while traveling, 10mins / hour in "raiding instances" sans DM, and 5 hours / hour when conversing.

If we're making changes I'd say we should at least triple the lenght of the on-server hour. Or perhaps even just make it 1:1 time. The DM can make time jump for the party (say, while traveling on map) with the set time widget. This entails
1) Things that matter are done with a DM
2) Mostly there's no more than 1 party on server at a time.
This is how I've seen the game played de facto. Jumping time needs some co-ordination if there's two parties, but mostly that should be easy enough.

The gain would be that during events people don't have such a buffs-run-out need to rush forward on-engine at expense of typing talks and emotes. 1:1 timeflow seems about right in DM events, where time is split between convo, emotes and other RP, and "raiding". Another upside is the link to off-screen healing scripts. Lingering types of damage: disease, poison, ability drains, wouldn't trivially just vanish when you log in the next day. Also the flow of time might be better taken into account in RP when a short tavern conversation in the morning doesn't end at dusk.

The downside is that it'll likely spill over at least to the automatic RPXP loop, which probably should work as it does now. Also, on a quick check I only found Heroism and Conviction as 10mins/level spells, so just those two probably don't necessitate a fix. In the end it might not be worth the trouble for the tech team, although I think a slower timerate would add to the game.

[mogonk]

If we're making changes I'd say we should at least triple the lenght of the on-server hour. Or perhaps even just make it 1:1 time.

So either A) We leave crafting times on their current scale and somehow RP around the fact that someone can make a MW weapon in just a few days IG, or B) We change the time scale for crafting as well, and needlessly penalize players who want to craft by requiring an even more extreme time investment.

As it is, a player can devote 4 days to making a simple chain shirt. Would anyone ever bother to do that if it took 4 weeks? And if the time scale is changed for everything but craft times I think that has a negative effect on verisimilitude.

[NESchampion]

If we're talking about changes, I would rather see our RL minutes / IG hour ratio changed, and thus effectively the duration of hour/level spells. That ratio certainly isn't anyhow IC anyway. There's no way to reconcile the IC timeflow in doing different things. The ratio ICly should be from about 1 min / hour while traveling, 10mins / hour in "raiding instances" sans DM, and 5 hours / hour when conversing.

If we're making changes I'd say we should at least triple the lenght of the on-server hour. Or perhaps even just make it 1:1 time. The DM can make time jump for the party (say, while traveling on map) with the set time widget. This entails
1) Things that matter are done with a DM
2) Mostly there's no more than 1 party on server at a time.
This is how I've seen the game played de facto. Jumping time needs some co-ordination if there's two parties, but mostly that should be easy enough.

The gain would be that during events people don't have such a buffs-run-out need to rush forward on-engine at expense of typing talks and emotes. 1:1 timeflow seems about right in DM events, where time is split between convo, emotes and other RP, and "raiding". Another upside is the link to off-screen healing scripts. Lingering types of damage: disease, poison, ability drains, wouldn't trivially just vanish when you log in the next day. Also the flow of time might be better taken into account in RP when a short tavern conversation in the morning doesn't end at dusk.

The downside is that it'll likely spill over at least to the automatic RPXP loop, which probably should work as it does now. Also, on a quick check I only found Heroism and Conviction as 10mins/level spells, so just those two probably don't necessitate a fix. In the end it might not be worth the trouble for the tech team, although I think a slower timerate would add to the game.

Gotta say I'm not a big fan of changing the time scale; it's nice having time go by quickly for RP reasons most of the time, including travel time, and just having a shot at seeing more than just two hours of sunlight while you play.

[Blindhamsterman]

what about if time was changed to 10RL mins = 1 IC hour?

would mean the difference is small, but noticable for those that actually use spells?

[Swift]

If I recall correctly, when NWN2 servers were starting to ramp up we did have a poll about changing the time ratio, and even tested out different options on a beta server, and time and again came back to our current implementation as being in a fairly sweet spot.

[AcadiusLost]

The test was actually on the Live server (TSM) for 2 weeks, at the end of which we basically had 50/50 opinions on it among those polled. Generally the people who were strongly pushing for a slower time rate weren't satisfied with it (still too fast?), and some of those opposed /really/ didn't like it. I had hoped the "try it out" approach would satisfy one camp or the other, but it clearly didn't.

For lack of any strong consensus, we set it back to the standard 7 minute hours we've used for 8-odd RL years now. Theoretically another such test could be run sometime in the future to re-poll the playerbase, since we're got a fair bit of new blood and such, but it'd be a logistical mess now that we've got three servers to deal with, so I'm not too keen to jump on that plan unless there really is widespread support for a slower time compression.