PLEASE provide an option to make game days last as long as real days.

Game days are 70 minutes long. The fact that a game day is so short when the graphics are so good is actually harmful to our health as human beings, because of a little thing called "circadian rhythm."

Humans are HARD-WIRED to respond to light and dark (sunrise and sunset). It tells us when to wake and sleep by releasing hormones such as melatonin. Ever since the advent of modern technology (electricity, indoor lighting, etc.) humans have been screwing up their natural circadian rhythms, eroding their health in subtle ways that have all sorts of health implications.

Looking at a phone screen late at night is really bad for you. The ideal situation would be to STOP using ALL screens at least 1 hour before bed. But that's unrealistic. So virtually all modern phones now have a feature that shifts the color to a reddish tint as it gets later in the evening. If you are not already using this feature, you should enable it! Combined with dimming the brightness late at night around the entire house, it is the next best thing you can do for your ability to sleep well and feel good on a daily basis.

Why the reddish tint? A study demonstrated that blue-colored light tells us to "wake up!" because it looks like the daytime sky, whereas reddish colors tell us to "go to sleep" because it looks like the sunset. Most screens actually have a lot of blue light in them, even when the screen looks white. In addition to automated blue/red tint control, many apps/OS's now have a dark mode theme, which is less hard on the eyes at night.

When it's 10pm in real life but you see a blue sunrise in game, it messes up your circadian rhythm and creates poor sleep. If you DON'T think this is affecting you, you're probably already accustomed to feeling crappy all the time, because you ignore your circadian rhythm. Once I started slowly dimming the light level each evening as it got progressively later, I started sleeping SO MUCH better. Give it a try; you will see I'm right.

Square Enix, PLEASE add a UI option that would allow players to change the flow of time in game to match their local time. A day in game should last 24 hours in my timezone. It should be dark in game when it is dark in my timezone, and it should be bright in game when it is bright in my timezone. Or close enough.

I understand there are certain quests or mobs with rare drops that only spawn at certain times. Which is why this should be a config option. If we force this change on players, some may never be able to play at night (or day), and can therefore never play at the times needed. Making it a config option solves this problem.

But what about the potential to abuse this setting? Couldn't players keep toggling it to get all kinds of rare drops? Solution: limit the number of times in 1 earth day that a player can change this setting, e.g. 1x per earth day.

Even if nobody else WANTS this change, it's probably only because they have no idea how badly this is already affecting them.

I feel like this is overly complicated and the quick and easy fix is just to have a toggle that will lock the day/night lighting affects client side, while the actual day/night isn't affected.

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Originally Posted by TritochHuntr

Square Enix, PLEASE add a UI option that would allow players to change the flow of time in game to match their local time. A day in game should last 24 hours in my timezone. It should be dark in game when it is dark in my timezone, and it should be bright in game when it is bright in my timezone. Or close enough.

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So you are saying that since at this time of year it is dark outside about 16 hours per day where I live, and since I (like most other players) mainly play in the evening, then it should practically always be nighttime in the game when I play?
No, thanks. I do not want to play a game with perpetual night.

I think the Eorzea Time is tied to the server so it probably just isn't possible to allow some players to adjust the time to how they want it (so locally). Also it needs to consider that not everyone will be in the same time zone to begin with, like the NA worlds have players from all over the globe. Having Eorzea time the way it is, every player can get to experience night and day in-game without having to wait for it to happen in-sync with Earth hours.

Personally I don't need this change and my sleeping pattern works just fine as it has for the many years this game has been going, so it may just be you OP who that has sleeping issues.

I'd like to also add that the "day matching a real day" thing makes the game so much more immersive. Coming from WoW, this is the one thing I was really disappointed to see FFXIV did not do.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

So you are saying that since at this time of year it is dark outside about 16 hours per day where I live, and since I (like most other players) mainly play in the evening, then it should practically always be nighttime in the game when I play?
No, thanks. I do not want to play a game with perpetual night.

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First off, this would be a config OPTION, so you wouldn't HAVE to use it if you didn't want it. But secondly, oh man, no, that would be awful. Matching the local day/night should simply be APPROXIMATE, i.e. it doesn't have to match exactly, just close enough to simulate a real day anywhere on the planet. More importantly, just make the days longer overall in the game.

This is also not just a matter of circadian rhythms, but the fact that I find it irritating that every time I log in, it's NIGHT in the game, or daytime but IT'S DARK AND RAINY. Like seriously, even with the SHORT days in game, I feel like I hardly ever get to SEE the day or any amount of brightness when I DO want to see brightness.

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Originally Posted by Kurando

I think the Eorzea Time is tied to the server so it probably just isn't possible to allow some players to adjust the time to how they want it (so locally). Also it needs to consider that not everyone will be in the same time zone to begin with, like the NA worlds have players from all over the globe. Having Eorzea time the way it is, every player can get to experience night and day in-game without having to wait for it to happen in-sync with Earth hours.

Personally I don't need this change and my sleeping pattern works just fine as it has for the many years this game has been going, so it may just be you OP who that has sleeping issues.

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If you don't need this change, then you don't ever have to use it; just leave it as is. That's why they should add it as a config OPTION, so it can be OPTIONAL. Everyone can play the way they like.

The game is capable of displaying your local time in the upper right if you just click on the clock (it cycles through Eorzean Time, Local Time, and Server Time). So the game has access to your local time (presumably whatever your system time is set to). It should be possible to sync it with ET, LT, or ST.

I don’t think that this messes with my internal clock to the point you try to describe. If the game does start to throw you off balance then the best option might be to cut back on your playtime, because in-game time does serve a purpose regardless how small that purpose is. Also, as stated by someone else in the thread, I wouldn’t be as enthusiastic about playing a game where the time of day in game always fell between the same late afternoon/evening hours. As far as my circadian rhythm goes, I can see what time it is through my real-world window and by taking breaks to move around and venture outside from time to time. Having the game change it’s time system to be more realistic is overthinking things.

The day night cycle won’t mess you up, staring at your screen too long will.

Wouldn't it be far far easier to adjust your own display for your own needs? I mean, even a setting like this fails to account for the fact that not everyone's rhythm is the same. Or just get yourself a pair of gunnars.

This over reliance on devs to solve all your problems creates more issues than it solves. Simpler solutions exist without the need for dev intervention.

I don't think the day/night cycle within the game is going to affect your circadian rhythm directly.

Yes, the blue light of a daytime sky scene might have some percentage more of an effect than at night, but it's very different to being out in the real world. Your screen is still shining light at you regardless, and some of that light is blue. Factor in blue-tinted spells, menus, dungeons, and anything with a mixed colour that is partly blue - not to mention that all light, not just blue light, is bad for your circadian rhythm - and it's nowhere near as simple as "my body will understand it's night-time if it looks like night in the game!"

For that matter, night scenes in the game are going to be rendered with a blue-ish colour anyway. Not as bright as daytime, but it's still blue light coming from your screen. And in the 'daytime' you're just as likely to be seeing yellows and browns on the ground as looking up at the sky.

I'd be very interested if there's actually a study on whether portrayal of time-of-day within a game can affect your perception of the time-of-day outside of it, but I would be surprised to learn it's the case. Games have been portraying short day/night cycles for decades, and I've never heard of it being proposed as an issue.


If you're really concerned about it, perhaps you can adjust your own screen settings towards red light.

Yeah I’m not interested in all that/don’t want game daytime hours to match what I’m experiencing in real life. We don’t need to try to pretend this is for health reasons if we want some more options for day/night cycling. Just wanting it is enough to suggest it. If someone is actually concerned about their health in this regard, night in the game is still blue light, so this wouldn’t help anyway. You could easily just go and set your screen to night mode with the more reddish hue like you said. Plus I often play at night and would hate to be locked into perpetual darkness. What I would like is an option to just disable the visual appearance of the day/night cycle amd choose whether I want the lighting to be day, midday, or night. I generally prefer the way the game looks during daylight hours amd feel there is too much night time in game, so I would just choose day lighting all the time.

I know I've already said this, but I'll say it again... Most people in this thread don't seem to understand that I am asking for a config OPTION, i.e. something a user can CHOOSE at their own preference. Therefore it doesn't affect you, as long as you don't enable the option. Graphics are rendered locally so there is no difficulty in rendering a time of day on one person's system that differs from the time of day on another person's system. Square already does this with quest NPCs -- the player doing the quest can see certain quest NPCs, but other players don't see them. Having players see a different time of day is not really that big of a deal compared with letting people play with a day the length roughly of their choosing.

I also like Tempest222's suggestion above (choose whether you want morning, midday, evening, or night and lock in the appearance). While my original post in this thread focuses on health reasons, the character limit didn't allow me to express that I also want this option because the game is just way too dark overall. It feels like I always log in at night, and when daytime finally come, it's dark and rainy. I'm getting kind of sick of it, and almost want to go back to WoW for this reason alone.

Day/night is tied to the server, and Eorzea time is important to many mechanics in the game, particularly gathering. This change doesn't benefit enough to justify it even being an option, because changing Eorzea time would change many aspects of the game

What the heck is this? Our circadian rhythm has nothing to do with whether it's day or night out. The very fact that we have a slight degree of control in adjusting it, and that some people are wired to be awake more during darker hours indicates as much; think back to us being nomadic individuals. Plus the whole 8 hours thing is inaccurate, we are supposed to have natural broken sleep, like other animals, but out society dictates we should sleep at night.

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Originally Posted by TritochHuntr

While my original post in this thread focuses on health reasons, the character limit didn't allow me to express that I also want this option because the game is just way too dark overall.

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You can edit your post after making it to add in text beyond the 3,000 character limit.

That being said, I don’t personally see the need for development time to be invested in coding in this option. I don’t believe that it has that big of an impact on your sleep cycles as you believe it does—your computer screen is the main culprit here; much like how you described phone screens screwing up the melatonin production in our brains and convincing us it’s not actually time for bed yet, a computer screen does the same thing.

If you’re simply concerned with how dark the game is, you can try out ReShade to adjust the coloration (assuming you are a PC player), or mess with your monitor’s own color settings.

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Originally Posted by Lambdafish

Day/night is tied to the server, and Eorzea time is important to many mechanics in the game, particularly gathering. This change doesn't benefit enough to justify it even being an option, because changing Eorzea time would change many aspects of the game

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Lambdafish also brings up a good point—if you’re asking for an option to toggle the game clock to matching your clock, that will mess with several other systems already in place, mainly DoL systems that rely on the game’s clock for timed gathering nodes, since they are based on Eorzean Time (which, as you know, is multitudes faster than real time), and Eorzean Time is a set configuration server-side. It could also affect the weather, as the weather changes on a set schedule (I believe it’s every 12 Eorzean hours? I could be wrong, but it does change in set intervals), which would affect Sightseeing Vistas and fishing (as awful as the weather-based fishes can be, this is something to consider).

How would you propose the developers fix these issues, if you’re asking to have the option to toggle a game’s day time to match your own?

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Lambdafish also brings up a good point—if you’re asking for an option to toggle the game clock to matching your clock, that will mess with several other systems already in place, mainly DoL systems that rely on the game’s clock for timed gathering nodes, since they are based on Eorzean Time (which, as you know, is multitudes faster than real time), and Eorzean Time is a set configuration server-side. It could also affect the weather, as the weather changes on a set schedule (I believe it’s every 12 Eorzean hours? I could be wrong, but it does change in set intervals), which would affect Sightseeing Vistas and fishing (as awful as the weather-based fishes can be, this is something to consider).

How would you propose the developers fix these issues, if you’re asking to have the option to toggle a game’s day time to match your own?

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Did you actually read my entire original post? I addressed all those issues in it, aside from weather.

I don't have any experience with DoL classes yet, so it seemed to me as if the weather was primarily cosmetic. I might not know all the solutions or problems that could arise, but I will say this:

If Square Enix will hire me, I will gladly implement this issue myself. That is how badly I want to have longer days/nights in game. (I am a programmer with over 12 years professional experience, btw, so I am accustomed to dealing with all the problems that come up when implementing a new feature, and coming up with solutions for them.)

I'd like to also add that it makes a lot of business sense (for Square Enix) to implement this option. You'll capture a lot more of the WoW crowd this way. I came from WoW (which has full length days and nights) and I almost gave up on FFXIV because it really bothered me how the days/nights were so short. I know I am not alone in this. 10 million WoW players means a lot of potential future FFXIV customers.

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Originally Posted by TritochHuntr

I know I've already said this, but I'll say it again... Most people in this thread don't seem to understand that I am asking for a config OPTION, i.e. something a user can CHOOSE at their own preference. Therefore it doesn't affect you, as long as you don't enable the option.

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Yeah but some people don't want developer time put into things that ....well, just one single user may want.
All for a client side option that breaks world lore, possibly messes with timers tied to it, and have developers not spend time on something that would please a much larger group of people.

It being night time in the game absolutely does not affect your circadian rhythm. Open up a window, play with a blue light filter, take a break to step outside or even just look outside. This is an overly complicated solution to a non issue. While I'm generally all in favor of options, the implementation of this one is so complicated and with so little benefit as to not be worth developer time. Something being an option doesn't always mean it's worth considering.

Also, a number of things in the game are tied to the Eorzean day/night cycle - gathering points, fishing, hunts, and vistas all have time components to them.

today on things I don't want the developers to waste their time on: this.

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Originally Posted by TritochHuntr

Did you actually read my entire original post? I addressed all those issues in it, aside from weather.

I don't have any experience with DoL classes yet, so it seemed to me as if the weather was primarily cosmetic. I might not know all the solutions or problems that could arise, but I will say this.

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I did read your original post. You mentioned nothing about how to solve issues with DoL nodes. The only thing even remotely close was you suggesting a "once per day" limit to avoid exploiting. But that wasn't with regards to gathering nodes, just mob spawns that are affected by time of day. Timed nodes are a bit different from mob spawns.

My point is, is that your change affects more than you think, and it's implementation would have to come with rectifying all of the issues it would cause (which are far more than just mob spawns). And your reasonings for implementing it are flawed and flimsy at best. It's a personal QoL that you want, which is fine. But let's not hide behind overblown and misconstrued "health concerns" here.

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Originally Posted by TritochHuntr

I also want this option because the game is just way too dark overall.

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Turn up your game brightness.
https://i.imgur.com/p6KWSBz.png

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Originally Posted by TritochHuntr

I don't have any experience with DoL classes yet, so it seemed to me as if the weather was primarily cosmetic.

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Well, just FYI: There are a lot of gathering nodes that only show up at certain times of day. Lots of fishes are also more likely to be caught at certain times/weather than others.
For example the node for Adamantite Ore only shows up at 12AM/PM (Eorzean Time). A longer day/night cycle would mean fewer options to gather Adamantite Ore.
(That is just one example - there are a few hundred more....)

The weather and day/night cycle is far from only cosmetic in this game.


All of the problems could of course be solved one way or another - but it would be a lot more work than you expected.

If the colors on your screen can affect your circadian rhythm, then you have far too much of your ambient light coming from your screen, and you're playing for much too long. That's terrible for your eyes to begin with. Open the curtains or turn on a light. The light from your screen should never be the majority of light in the room.

Aside from that removing your reason for asking, there's at least three reasons why the suggestion would be a problem:

• As some others have mentioned, there are several game features (gathering, fishing, sightseeing) that depend on Eorzea time. Perhaps they could all be adjusted to allow for a 24 hour rather than 70 minute cycle, but it does rule out having different players use different cycles.
• Players also sometimes use Eorzea time to coordinate with each other, since that time is set at the server and not dependent on the platform you're playing on. If it were player specific, we'd lose the ability to say "Pulling at 3:00 Eorzea Time" or the like.
• Most people have a particular time of day that they're most likely to be available. For instance, someone who works a typical daytime shift is likely to be only playing in the evenings. Should late evening be the only time of day they ever get to see in game? You actually went on to complain that it's so often night in the game, yet your suggested solution would make it *always* night in the game for anyone who only plays at night. The short day/night cycle was chosen to ensure that everyone can see both daytime and nighttime in the game no matter what time of day they're playing.

As several people have mentioned this would mess up DoL completely and for that alone it should just be forgotten.

That being the case even if they could make it so that changing the day night cycle could be a cosmetic thing and became a config option due to the fact
that time is currently connected to the servers... well lets just say this line of coding could probably have bugs upon launch, and bugs possibly associated with
(like I don't know mucking up DoL in some way, even if it wasn't intentional) could cause enough fall out with players to unsub (and some folks have refused to come back after certain things... I know a few people who have quit just because of the way blue mage was implemented). This also doesn't factor in the fact of how upset the community
would get as a whole to work on such a function that only a small percent of the population would enjoy (especially if it caused bugs and broke DoL temporarily).

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Originally Posted by TritochHuntr

Matching the local day/night should simply be APPROXIMATE, i.e. it doesn't have to match exactly, just close enough to simulate a real day anywhere on the planet.

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You do understand that it is impossible? The world is round and somewhere is always an opposite time of the day than somewhere else. I play with people who I have 12 hour time difference with, it would always be wrong to some. That said, the one thing bad in wow is that it always forces people to play on night time, for those who actually have work to do and can't stay on their computers all day. I even dare to say that if computer game day cycle starts to effect someone's perception of daylight hours other are spending way too much time in the light of their screen.

thats some realism that i'll pass on,

why not just download flux or turn on night mode on your system

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Originally Posted by Acelyn

thats some realism that i'll pass on,

why not just download flux or turn on night mode on your system

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Because I already do this! Health reasons aside, I just WANT to play at day when it's day, and at night when it's night. That's all, plain and simple. I should have kept quiet about the "health reasons" aspect, because at the end of the day (no pun intended) it's a strong personal preference for many different reasons. (Health is one reason, but not the only one.) I'm also tired of it always being nighttime in the game (or dark and rainy when it's daytime). I like to see the sun in the game and would prefer to see the sun more, especially during the day. Suggesting this as a an OPTIONAL PREFERENCE does no harm to other players.

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Originally Posted by Sida

You do understand that it is impossible? The world is round and somewhere is always an opposite time of the day than somewhere else. I play with people who I have 12 hour time difference with, it would always be wrong to some.

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You're obviously not a programmer. The game has access to your local time. Just click the time display in the upper right corner and it will cycle between ET (Eorzean Time), ST (Server Time), and LT (Local Time). So all the game needs to do is read your local time, and then render an approximate position of the sun in the sky relative to that. Likewise the same thing would happen on your friends' computers (which read out a different local time value) if they have this preference enabled. So it would look correct relative to their local time, while at the same time it looks correct to your local time. Yes, it means they would see the sun in a different position than you do, but we already have all kinds of things that one player sees and another can't (quest NPCs especially).

Obviously this is notwithstanding solutions for other issues. For the DoL issue, Square could just make this preference unavailable to anyone if they have a DoL class equipped.

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Originally Posted by TritochHuntr

Obviously this is notwithstanding solutions for other issues. For the DoL issue, Square could just make this preference unavailable to anyone if they have a DoL class equipped.

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Over-complicated solutions aren't helping your case.

This isn't a change I feel like we should be wasting dev hours on. But if we did, everyone would still be under the mechanical effects of Eorzea Time regardless of whether they wanted the day night cycle to render based on Eorzea Time or Local Time. The cosmetic passage of time shouldn't affect the availability of content for anyone; not just because of potential abuse cases but because decoupling universal events from Eorzea Time to give everyone individual events based on local time would just be too much work.

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Originally Posted by TritochHuntr

You're obviously not a programmer. The game has access to your local time. Just click the time display in the upper right corner and it will cycle between ET (Eorzean Time), ST (Server Time), and LT (Local Time). So all the game needs to do is read your local time, and then render an approximate position of the sun in the sky relative to that. Likewise the same thing would happen on your friends' computers (which read out a different local time value) if they have this preference enabled. So it would look correct relative to their local time, while at the same time it looks correct to your local time. Yes, it means they would see the sun in a different position than you do, but we already have all kinds of things that one player sees and another can't (quest NPCs especially).

Obviously this is notwithstanding solutions for other issues. For the DoL issue, Square could just make this preference unavailable to anyone if they have a DoL class equipped.

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This isn't a matter of being a programmer or not. What you're asking for as an "option" is something that would directly impact in game events and systems. NPC's don't do that. Weather and time both have direct server wide effects on multiple systems that are intended for multiple people to participate in. Weather and time can't be an instanced option specifically for those reasons.

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Originally Posted by TritochHuntr

I'd like to also add that it makes a lot of business sense (for Square Enix) to implement this option. You'll capture a lot more of the WoW crowd this way. I came from WoW (which has full length days and nights) and I almost gave up on FFXIV because it really bothered me how the days/nights were so short. I know I am not alone in this. 10 million WoW players means a lot of potential future FFXIV customers.

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You may not be alone in it, but you're exaggerating to an extreme if you want others to believe 10 million WoW players would agree with you. One of the most common complaints among WoW players was the 24 hour day/night cycle. Frequent requests for Blizzard to shorten it had been getting made since the game's launch. Players who could only play at night were finding themselves stuck in perpetual darkness, making it unpleasant if not also difficult to play the game. For many, it would be a reason to not bother switching to FFXIV and to choose one of the other MMORPGs that does have a shorter day/night cycle instead if they were looking for a new game to play.

Certainly I was one of the ones who moved from WoW to FFXIV and found the shorter day/night cycle a major improvement for game play and immersion. When a couple of hours spent in game is supposed to represent days if not weeks of game world time, there should be several changes in the day/night cycle occurring independent of my real local time.

You're incorrect when you say no one else is impacted by making it an option. The combination of lighting and weather conditions serve to impair a player's view to varying degrees. A player who is changing what they're seeing compared to players who are displaying the intended effects can create a practical advantage for themselves in certain content (PvP and the Hunt being examples). For that reason, it's something SE shouldn't allow.

so.. say you’re watching a long movie at night, you’d rather have the scene set at night the entire film just so it wouldn’t mess with your circadian rhythm?

don’t get me wrong, i use night shift on my phone, but hell not on my laptop for crying out loud.

also, a moonlit night doesn't give you an orange tint. well red, if that’s what you call it.

Some people have jobs or school, etc (can't play 24 hours a day).

Would be really annoying only to be able to see the nighttime in game when I play 3 hours in the evening.