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

[TritochHuntr]

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.

[PotatoWafflez]

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.

[MistakeNot]

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.

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.

[TritochHuntr]

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.

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.

[Sida]

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.

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.

[TritochHuntr]

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.

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.

[Rongway]

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.

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.

[GenBroadaxe]

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.

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.

[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.

[TritochHuntr]

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.

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.