Time in ALFA

[FoamBats4All]

Simple poll. Here's my post on the subject from the admin forums:

Current RL minutes per IG hour: 7
Current timescale: 7/60

The pros/cons of a longer timescale, as far as I see them:

Pros:

• Both players and dungeon masters won't have to try to rush events to prevent buffs from vanishing quicker than they are supposed to.
• Hour/level spells will no longer be shorter than 10 minute/hour spells.
• Spells will be balanced closer to their intended durations. This means we can look at seriously implementing other intended restrictions, such as material component costs.

Cons:

• You have to wait longer to rest.
• 'Waiting' for a certain time will take longer. E.g., waiting until nightfall to speak with some vampire lord. The benefit, however, is that it's no longer dusk of the next day when you finish talking with the NPC.

Other notes to consider:

• We can keep spells at any ratio we want, independent of module timescale, as described in this post.
• If we make days last longer, we may want to adjust the resting system. Currently you need to wait 24 hours to rest. That's not very reasonable, as most people stay awake 16 hours, then rest for 8 hours. We may want to reduce the wait time to something like 16-20 hours, and maybe make it take a bit longer to rest.
• We do not want a number of minutes per hour that fits evenly into 24 if we can help it, this becomes more important the closer we get to 60 IG minutes/1 RL hour. This prevents certain time zones from being shrowded in darkness all the time.

I'm keeping this poll simple. Should we change time, or leave it as it is?

I'd also like to create a poll in the DM forums, like with the 2-PC policy, but it seems I don't have the forum permissions to do so. Can someone like Hialmer, Curmudgeon, or Regas take care of that?

[Pinkpink]

Change it to make it longer!

[Magile]

I voted "Yes," as the day and night cycle annoys me. Anyway, time to inform the masses.

As a note, please realize that any input on the subject will not necessarily lead to anything. If you missed the post on Standards, it is as follows:

I believe this falls under the DMA portfolio. At least in the past it's been regarded as such.

The current time compression constant was not chosen at random, and has been the one ALFA has used since early NWN1 days.

Yes, those who play casters bring up the question on a regular basis - this is another of ALFA's well-flogged dead horses, with arguments both for and against contending.

Let us be clear: changing this will affect the balance of our game. Is it so far out of whack now that it needs to be upset? If so, how in the name of the thousand tiny gods have we gotten along with it for so long?

The DMA has complete control over this decision. He has already stated that this was not chosen at random (though we have no explanation as to how it was chosen) and believes it to involve players being selfish for their caster's abilities. You may also regard my signature for what he feels about the community as well. You may enjoy the poll and put in your two cents, but be aware it will most likely lead to nothing.

[Ithildur]

Voted for tweaking time. I'd like to vote that we keep snarkiness/personal attacks out of this thread however.

A conversation should not last half a day, and a high lvl caster shouldn't be getting anxious about the relatively small number of 'cast and forget' stuff like mage armor wearing off under normal circumstances. I really don't care if it's 14 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes or 60 minutes so much, just that the way the game works, that guy should not be getting antsy about spells specificly designed to last all day.

(btw for what it's worth this rarely affects my own PC, as I never use Mage Armor, and stuff like Protection from Evil, SS, etc will be nerfed to PnP duration)

[Xanthea]

I don't care about spell durations (besides the stupidity of 10 minute/level lasting longer than hour/level), but I really object to how it makes RP about the time basically impossible.

Would it be possible to dramatically decrease the rate of IG time without impacting spells? And, if not, would it be possible to give all spells a custom duration to compensate for the decreased server time flow? As a random example if time was set to 1:1 then could current hour/level spells just be given a 7 RL minute duration?

[chalksoul]

I'm all for it, for me it feels weird days flying by as i sit roleplaying

[CloudDancing]

Spells should last real-time as the player is playing in real time. Yapping with a party takes up to two-four hours IC and if you are unlucky enough to cast your spells too early or accidentally rest, you get screwed later on in combat.

[Swift]

Since this is entirely about how long buff spells last, why not have simply put forward a proposal to the DMA to scale spells independently of the time scale rather than try to force his hand by going around his back?

I am not sure how this thread gets us anywhere, especially after the recent standards thread had the DMS chime in as Magile has noted.

[Zelknolf]

To be fair, we did exactly that, and FoamBats wrote the foundational bits to make that conversion possible if we could get folk to stop fighting about it-- but we're running nine months on that particular issue with no response.

Not that as much is atypical-- but the pattern remains that one can't even have a discussion without first demonstrating that only a rare few people think that everything's fine.

[danielmn]

Will the next vote be to lower the cost of expendables, since if this passes, expendables will be that much more pronounced in game as an unintended consequence? We already have a number of complaints over the past years expendables cost too much ect ect by numerous parties.

How serious are we on looking "at seriously implementing other intended restrictions, such as material component costs." Shouldn't a time change go hand in hand with these restrictions, instead of having them done independantly of one another?

[Xanthea]

Can we seriously just change the RP time scale first as I doubt anyone would have any objections to having a real day/night cycle?

Once that's done then spells and resting can be discussed independently of an apparently easy to make and sensible change that does nothing to impact server balance.

[FoamBats4All]

How serious are we on looking "at seriously implementing other intended restrictions, such as material component costs." Shouldn't a time change go hand in hand with these restrictions, instead of having them done independantly of one another?

We already have the infrastructure and some spells are already coded to use material components, if we flip the switch to require them.

[danielmn]

How serious are we on looking "at seriously implementing other intended restrictions, such as material component costs." Shouldn't a time change go hand in hand with these restrictions, instead of having them done independantly of one another?

We already have the infrastructure and some spells are already coded to use material components, if we flip the switch to require them.

Good to know. Then all we'd realistically have to do serverside is install the material components at correct price in local stores where applicable after getting the components on server. That makes me a little less apprehensive.

[Adanu]

Just so we're clear here...

YOu're saying that tech can adjust rest timers and spell durations independent on timescale changes, and that this is more for roleplay purposes? Because if that's the case, I'm all for this.

[FoamBats4All]

YOu're saying that tech can adjust rest timers and spell durations independent on timescale changes, and that this is more for roleplay purposes?

Yes.