Get rid of eorzea time and just use real time

[HamHam]

Is there a dislike button? I want one!

[AlexNiculaie]

Actually you would be wrong, still. You could do a game hour to real life hour. He wasn't asking to make days/weeks/months match, just hours. Either way, it's a bad idea.

By the by, if you overcame your pedagoguery, you could easily have compacted your point to a sentence. Sometime info bombing is actually counterproductive.

[Matsume]

Actually you would be wrong, still. You could do a game hour to real life hour. He wasn't asking to make days/weeks/months match, just hours. Either way, it's a bad idea.

By the by, if you overcame your pedagoguery, you could easily have compacted your point to a sentence. Sometime info bombing is actually counterproductive.

...

One of the primary reasons for both FFXI and FFXIV having game time is because the servers were all in a central location and people from a wide range of time zones around the world connected to the same servers, so game time helped make things consistent. But FFXIV is moving to regionally-located servers, so I think it would be a good idea to just have day/night match real life, with servers in each region being set to the time zone they're located in (most likely PST in the US, JST in Japan, GMT in europe).

This would also eliminate confusion between the two time systems e.g. "Is that over the next real life day / jp midnight? or is it just one game day?" and prevent the ingame date from going drastically out of line with the time the game as originally set in as the years go by (in FFXI, the game started in the 900s C.E. and the current date in game is 1166 C.E.).

Oh he IS talking about an entire time system and not -just- lighting correspondence. He is actually talking about days, weeks, months and years corresponding to real life calendar...

How do I say...No, you sir, are wrong.

[Tinks]

No.


/10char

[Lirion]

The problem with this is that those who can only play a couple of hours a day would never get to experience the game during night or day depending on when their gaming hours are set and they would miss out on events that happen during nights for example. It's an interesting idea but I don't think it would work that well in practice.

[Shadowedge]

I'd be against this. As someone who works very long hours during the day, I'd really only get to see the game at nighttime. Which looks great, btw. But I'd like variety in the game, no matter what time I play.

[Myranda]

I wouldn't like this either. The current rate of day/night cycles is just fine and enables you to see both, and its quite frankly not that hard to keep track of the two different times. If the only difference is day vs. night, there should also be a time of twilight transition, giving you a visual queue without even having to look at the exact game time. Most of the time I have no reason to pay attention to real time anyways, and if you've got somewhere you need to be, set an alarm.

While time-restricted content may not be necessary, done right it can also add a lot of depth to whatever its used in. So that argument doesn't go very far IMO.

Finally, let's say you do sync it to a certain time zone... now what latitude do you use? The length of daylight changes much more dramatically the closer to the poles you are, and doesn't change at all on the equator. And what about the latitude of the region of the game you're in, let alone the real world? Hell, it will only even match if you live in the center of the time zone, if you're near a zone boundary the transitions would be half an hour off. I also imagine NA/EU will only get one, maybe 2, servers per region so which time zone within those regions gets picked? Does one coast or the other get screwed? It's much more complex an issue than it seems at the surface.

The only argument I can buy here is for the cycle to be lengthed to say 2 hours per day instead of 1 hour, or something similar. But as many have pointed out, 24h just isn't right for an MMO, let the single player games deal with that level of realism.

[Myranda]

This would also eliminate confusion between the two time systems e.g. "Is that over the next real life day / jp midnight? or is it just one game day?" and prevent the ingame date from going drastically out of line with the time the game as originally set in as the years go by (in FFXI, the game started in the 900s C.E. and the current date in game is 1166 C.E.).

This was also explained by a dev once (Fernehawles, maybe? I can't seem to find the post) that for the purpose of overall storytelling, units of time such as years don't even follow the in-game time perfectly and are better tied to the completion of main story quests. Depending on when someone joins the game and completes the quest, you could have claims that some major battle (or maybe a moon falling??) happened in the year 1572 or say 1584 according to the in-game clock. Clearly such events only happen once and the devs need to ascribe a defined time to that. Essentially, time is frozen between quests. That and I doubt our characters are living to be hundreds of years old with no signs of aging. Realistic time is just something that needs to be given up in the concept of most games.

[Priya]

They should never get rid of Eorzea time. Having a gameworld time is an absolutely amazing thing, and it's not exactly common among MMOs currently.

It allows people to experience the game at all hours instead of always seeing night or always seeing day. There have actually been a few complaints about this on WoW over the years.

It also has the potential to allow the devs to add a bit of depth to the game. Such as mobs that spawn at night.

I've always loved the idea of a gameworld having its own time independent of the real-world. Especially when it comes to hours in the day. As long as they don't drag the game day out too long or make it way too short (I found FFXI's cycles to be really well done), Eorzea time should, more often than not, be a fairly positive experience for people.

As far as realistic dates... this is a Fantasy game. I don't mind if my character makes it to 300 years old in game while still looking hawt.

EDIT: In regards to realm time: the devs can add a clock that is on server time. WoW has two clocks, one is server time, and one is your time zone (in case they're different). SE can do something similar to show you game time and Realm time, maybe even your time zone as well.

[HiirNoivl]

But FFXIV is moving to regionally-located servers, so....

Your premise is wrong. You do not have to play on servers in your region.