Poll: The Seven Minute Hour

[t-ice]

The only thing I don't like is the day/night cycle. Cycling through multiple periods of daylight and darkness during a single conversation or walk down the road is immersion breaking and disruptive to RP.

This is a good point to consider. There's two separate issues here:
1) Flow of time as relates to spells and other per day effects, their duration and how fast they become useful again.
2) Flow of time of day on a server and how it affects RP and events. Primarily day/night.

For the second part, it would be equally "disruptive" to have several day/night cycles pass during one long conversation, as it is to walk across server area tens if not hundreds of kms IC without day/night changes or need to rest.

Crucially however, seems like an event can be held hostage by the day/night cycle. I'd claim that ICly most events would suffer a immersion breaking if being forced to ICly start at what server time happens to when the event start in RL. Almost any event that isn't forced on the players as an emergency would reasonably only start certain time of day. Like people leaving on lengthy travels on a morning, undead milling about during the night, etc. Caravans leaving at 2am and vampires in the daylight are none good, and forcing the players to play like it's mid-morning when the game shows a moonlit night is simply stupid.

Don't know if it's possible, but if the "two separate times" could be decoupled in some way, it should provide for tools to make the game better. So would it be possible to allow for DMs to set the day/night cycle to be hour X without affecting flow of time as far as spells/resting/recovery is concerned?

[fluffmonster]

I would argue macro-time should not be a part of the consideration...long time or distance horizons. We are already heavily dependent on comic-book time for such scales and for good reasons. Anything less than weeks or months of travel time is unrealistic, so we ignore realism in that context. The game year is the RL year...it is currently high summer in TSM. In these contexts, differences in the compression ratio simply doesn't matter so let us recognize that and ignore these contexts for the matter at hand.

What really matters is the micro-time environment...how long spells during a session, how often the dawn comes during lengthy RP, things already mentioned.

And for gods sake, stop waiting for some super huge majority to consider change. That's such a lame way to run a game, in this and most every matter. It's not the Constitution.

[oldgrayrogue]

And for gods sake, stop waiting for some super huge majority to consider change. That's such a lame way to run a game, in this and most every matter. It's not the Constitution.

QFT

[Lokan]

Opinions are divided over the effects of a time compression change in terms of primary casters; some say it boosts their power significantly by upping durations of hour/level and day/level spells, others say it limits them unfairly by decreasing availability of spell restoration during a given game session.

I see both these things as fitting in well with what we look for in magic in general. I think mages/priests should be stingy with magic, but when it is used it should be noticeable and truly useful (even in low levels). So them not being able to cast as often but with greater effect seems fit into our low magic philosophy.

[paazin]

The oddity we now get is that 10min/lv spells last far longer than 1hr/lv spells which is sort of absurd. We should probably do something about this.

[kid]

thats crazy.

the lv/hour spell last 7min/lv?
is that too short?

if not maybe we can make the 10min/lv a 1min/lv?

(neverd played a spell caster so I have no idea if thats too short)

if so It might go a bit to balance the uberness
of casters in ALFA in a low magic setting.

[I-KP]

The oddity we now get is that 10min/lv spells last far longer than 1hr/lv spells which is sort of absurd. We should probably do something about this.

[Castano]

The oddity we now get is that 10min/lv spells last far longer than 1hr/lv spells which is sort of absurd. We should probably do something about this.

Consider: kill all time compression and allow resting once every "7 days" - e.g. when the normal game clock runs 7 days of its time. Can we do that techinically? - that leaves only the quick day night time shifts as a problem - can we force shifitng once a every 7 game days?

[Ithildur]

I've always been a proponent of slower timescale; it's pretty simple. Nothing more aggravating than the party casters warding the group with the relatively small handful of buffs that are specifically meant to last hours and hours... i.e. enough to last through a good part of an adventure/session/dungeon, not simply an encounter or two... and watching them wear off after one encounter in the middle of a ten minute RPing discussion of what lies deeper in the dungeon and whether they should continue on, what tactics/formations to use, etc. (a discussion that really is the equivalent of a very reasonable three minute chat IC if we were all 80wpm typers btw).

Except maybe starting out at dawn, running into other PCs on the road, having a fairly routine exchange, and watching daylight dwindle to dusk. That might be slightly more aggravating.

[Zelknolf]

Consider: kill all time compression and allow resting once every "7 days" - e.g. when the normal game clock runs 7 days of its time. Can we do that techinically? - that leaves only the quick day night time shifts as a problem - can we force shifitng once a every 7 game days?

The technical feasibility of this varies depending on what you mean.

"Kill time compression" is easy. We tweak the server settings for time compression to 1:1.

"Allow people to rest every seven game days" is a little more involved, but not by much. We'll spend as much time getting arsed to do it as actually doing it.

"Have the game clocks continue to operate at the 9:1 ratio while all spells, effects, and mechanics operate on a 1:1 compression" would be a ridiculous project to take on, especially in light of how much easier it would be to just change the compression.

[Castano]

Part 3 of my suggestion was: I just want the day night changes to not cycle so fast. One of the main reasons we altered time compression in NWN1 was so that day/night changes did not fly by as you RP'd outdoors. Sorry if it was not worded clearly. If this is hard coded to the game clock it seems not feasible.

Seems to me going to 1:1 would put our spell durations back into some semblance of order.

That does not mean we should not actively consider 1:1. We toyed with the mechanics of time for some reasons in NWN1 and they seem to have had mechanical consequences to how DnD spells work, driving their durations far out fo whack from the PnP rules. I'm a big PnP fan, so at the risk of asking our very creative elite RPer players to ignore a rising/setting sun, I will still advance the 1:1 position for consideration.

[Gebb]

Concur with above!

[Creslyn]

1:1 time has never been considered for a good reason. If you only ever get to play at night, your character will never see the sun. Considering how time affects quite a few things ingame from spawns to stores to npc's being around, that's not acceptable.

[I-KP]

Conveniently, there are many options that sit between 8.57142857143:1 and 1:1.

[Keryn]

I would totally be in favor of a change!!! Please just do it!!

If we look at it in perspective and I think Zelk made a very good job of pointing out why this is so important, when mages have the opportunity to refresh their spells so often in the end this is a huge advantage over non-casters, and changes quite significantly how the player needs to think about the strategy of their gameplay.

On other note, Ithildur is completely right, lets take mage armor as an example, we cast it on a party member and expect it to last for...1 hour, and it doesn't last through 2 encounters, whats wrong with this? Means that there is no real point in buffing party members, and makes the different about time durations almost insignificant, 1/min lvl, 1/hour lvl, 10/min lvl spells suddenly are not that different. Then people feel the need to rush their RP cuz time is ticking and spells will wear off.... because the spell that is meant to last for one encounter IE 1/min lvl, faded, but also those that should last for the whole day are starting to fade.

So mages get less offensive spells per day, is that a bad thing? Mages should have the need of the fighter types, as much as fighter types should feel the need to ask mages to team up. The problem mages should face is that their offensive power is limited, though they can be mighty when in battle, but making smart choices in how they use it. Then the need for a fighter by their side becomes evident, they are the ones who can be offensive all the time.

What we have now is a shortcut for mages, that obviously have it easier as we can see on how fast they can progress and be active, the claim that mages are slow at start and then become stronger and their progression rises in higher lvls is just not the truth.

At least a 45/min IG hour would be desirable, and this way what creslyn says would not happen, since since day/night cycles would rotate.

1 IG day would = 18 RL hours.