Get rid of eorzea time and just use real time

[Solace]

Does it matter? As long as the game cycles day and night who gives 2 fucks.

Your never ending stream of highly insightful posts, never ceases to amaze..

[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.

[Niqote]

This is too restricting. Some things only happen at certain times in FFXIV (and FFXI) and this would mean people would constantly miss the chance to do those things.

Also knowing if a time is being refereed to as real life times (JP midnight for example) it a pretty simple concept to grasp that does not warrant a work around.

[Meta]

This sounds like a great idea for people who are jobless and leeching off others for support and their sub to FFXIV. They'll be able to login whenever they want to experience variations in in-game time of day.

Unfortunately, we the remaining 95% of the user base will be stuck with the same 1-4 hour chunks of night or day nearly every time we login. So no, this is an awful idea.

[Yrusama]

A neat idea, but probably not for the best. And this is one of those things that's more up to the devs than our bitching, which... well look at the first few comments. Reception for the idea is mixed.

[Tonkra]

real time in a MMorpg just sucks..

for what? playing in darkness every time?.. no just no.. i want to experience all beauties of the weather and time circles..


played too much WoW eh?

[VoltaAsura]

NOOOO OP!!!

MY IMMURSHIN!!!!!!!