How long should a day be, in game that is. Options

[Pandra]

There's alot of diffrent games out there and they each have differing amounts of time that consitute a day in game. Personally I like an acctual 24 hour game day, but I'd like to know what other people's prefrences are on a 'day'.

[jaminben]

I think maybe every 2 or 3 hours could be a day because then it would seem long, but days would still go by. The biggest reason why I wouldnt want actual 24 hours to be one day in game is that some people who log on at about the same time when they play could end up only seeing the world at night, i think that would be kinda wierd. Also, if you have some quests better done at night (easier to sneak around, people are asleep) you dont want to wait 5 hours just so you can do that. Maybe 4 hours per day, 2 hrs night, 2 hrs day?

[glibdud]

Yeah, I think that's the basic question... do you think people who play at the same time every day want to play in the same game time every day?

I'd say make it a 11 hour day. Then at X o'clock every real-time day, the game-time will be two hours later. Casual players will get to play the full range of morning, mid-day, evening, and night every week or so.

[greendots]

I think a shorter time works out better in a game. About 2 or 3 hours for a full day. Also we should keep in mind that just becouse earth has about even times of night and day it doesnt mean we have to have it that way. There could be two suns or more to provide light all except 30 minutes of those 2 or 3 hours.

Alternatively we could use the day/night cycle to spawn different or special mobs at certain times of the day. This should also have short timed days because it wouldn't be realistic for some one to wait until midnight or so just to kill a mob to complete thier quest.

[echorev]

http://www.projectwish.com/index.php?showtopic=2843&hl=

[Minthos]

Uneven day/night distribution is a good idea, because playing when it's dark ingame sucks. If nights aren't dark, there's no point having nights at all, so nights should be short and days should be long.

Too short nights is bad, same with too short days. A normal raid (be it pvp or pve) often takes 2-5 hours, sometimes more, so I think our night should be long enough for it to be possible to conduct a full raid in complete darkness. That means about 5 hours of night. If Wish's 3:1 distribution is anything to go by, that means 15 hours of day. Total time for day/night cycle: 20 hours. Someone who plays at the same time every day will experience 4.8 ingame hours of rotation.

20 24
40 48
60 72
80 96
100 120
120

5 RL days become 6 ingame days. 7 RL days become 8 ingame days and 9.6 ingame hours, so someone who plays only on a specific weekday at a specific time, will experience 9.6 ingame hours of rotation.

I think the best way to do this is to make one ingame minute equal to one RL minute and one ingame hour contain only 50 minutes (or vice versa with minutes/seconds). Instead of accelerating time during night. Let the night start at 2200 game time and end at 0400 game time (daylight saving time :p).

[glibdud]

I don't really see any reason why playing at in-game nighttime has to suck. I personally would enjoy a 1:1 day:night distribution. Or something close to it.

[Dwilf]

We need a decent length night for nocturnals to do their stuff.
We need time to pass fast enough for crops to grow, stuff to get built and characters to grow older and die and stuff.

Do:
A 10 "real hour" "game day", with 4 hours of dark and 6 of light (favor the normal law abiding folk)
A 12 "game day" "game season". (months are a culture thing, season are "real")
A 4 "game season" "game year". (it seems to work on earth so why not?)

We get:
2.4 game days per real day.
17.75 game years per real year.

A game season lasts 5 real days so crops would take about 5 real days to grow.
A game year lasts 20 real days so completing a big building (fort, guild hall, etc)will take long enough to give a real sense of achievment.

I think this sort of a setup would be pretty good for both the sort term and long term.
The website and launcher could easily tell you the game Date and Time, even have little icons for what season we're in and if its light or dark out there in our world.

[Minthos]

I don't really see any reason why playing at in-game nighttime has to suck. I personally would enjoy a 1:1 day:night distribution. Or something close to it.

Night is dark. Players don't like darkness because they don't see anything. There's a reason why humans generally sleep when it's dark and are awake when it's bright.

If we want to make ingame nights bright, there's no real point discussing night at all imo, since it will only be cosmetic.

[glibdud]

Night is dark. Players don't like darkness because they don't see anything.

I don't think that sentiment necessarily speaks for everyone, that's the point I was making. People who go out at night make sure they have a light source with them. (Plus, perhaps some races have better vision at night.) And since dynamics change at night, there are things you can do/see then that you can't see in daylight. If you brush off nighttime as an annoyance, you leave the nocturnal characters out in the cold.

Mulling it over some more, I guess a 2:1 or 3:1 day:night distribution could make sense, though. As long as the days aren't so short that there's less than 3 hours or so of night.

EDIT:
Of course, there's no reason why you couldn't give the players their choice of more light/more dark. If the land mass is large enough, you could simulate an axis tilt such that some of the world (probably the more heavily populated portion) has more day than night, while near the other "pole" there's more nigth than day.

This post has been edited by glibdud: Apr 16 2007, 06:57 AM

[Pandra]

Well we all know how awake my sorry behind is during 'daylight' hours. Some players are nocturnal by nature, I think instead of looking at night as a hendrence we need to look at a way to make it add to game play.

Otherwise, excellent discussion thus far <3 please keep going.

[Minthos]

Well we all know how awake my sorry behind is during 'daylight' hours. Some players are nocturnal by nature, I think instead of looking at night as a hendrence we need to look at a way to make it add to game play.

And yet you don't sit in utter darkness and you usually stay indoors when it's dark outside.

I'm nocturnal myself, I love the night, I want long, pitch black nights in the game, but from previous experience with dark games (Doom 1/2/3, Quake 4, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.), I know that too much darkness gets really tiresome and annoying in the long run. Which is why I suggested the 20 hour day with 5 hours night and 15 hours day.

If I get my way, the servers will limit view distance at night-time, so even if players turn up their monitor brightness to the max, they just won't get any info about creatures outside their view radius (unless those creatures are illuminated [torch, fireball, etc]). The players would then be encouraged to carry torches/lanterns or use light spells at night and inside dungeons, to increase their view radius beyond a few meters. For added realism and creepiness, the server could tell the client to play sounds but not exactly where the sounds come from.

If the land mass is large enough, you could simulate an axis tilt such that some of the world (probably the more heavily populated portion) has more day than night, while near the other "pole" there's more nigth than day.

I like that idea :)

[glibdud]

If I get my way, the servers will limit view distance at night-time, so even if players turn up their monitor brightness to the max, they just won't get any info about creatures outside their view radius (unless those creatures are illuminated [torch, fireball, etc]).

Careful with that, though. Under some conditions (open plain, clear sky, full moon) visibility could be just about as good at night as during the day. Depends on the cosmos in this universe. I like the idea of being able to hunt the nocturnal animals. Definitely wouldn't want to announce your presence with a torch in that case.

Of course, in a forest or under cloud cover, light sources will definitely be needed to get around.

[echorev]

I think a day and night should be less than a normal day, but long enough that the passage of time is real, and that I'll be able to go to a lunar carnival every 6 months I play, and unique things that people can look forward to. As for how dark it should be or how far someone can see (maybe I hear an eyesight skill? ) that should really be relative to the area the person is playing in. While a dense forest will really afford no light, unless there are certain plants that light up, an open plain with a full moon, as glibdud said, wouldn't be much darker than a really, really cloudy day.

[greendots]

I think some type of vision skill would be a good idea echo. We do have to cut off rendering of stuff after a certain distance but we could have something that tricks the user into thinking an object is something else? At midnight a the far away tree stump looks almost like a bear or something. Also using a fog type thing like minthos said is a good idea to go along with the skill. Certain peoples who like to play at night (in game) will create a player that is more adept to the night. examples: vision, sneeking, hiding, stealing, pick-pocketing, ambush, etc....

[Honis]

Has anyone concidered time zones yet?

I know the world map land mass is very up and down in terms of its foot print. But the mountains in the west could have a sunrise later that the east coast. (or have the sun go from top to bottom OMG).

So far I don't know of an MMO that does this (maybe I just never noticed).

In FFXI I was annoyed how 3 continents, hundreds of miles across each, had the same sunrise, time of day and sunset.

Only disadvantage I can think of is the early time zone could get into shops faster than the west coast, and depending on the mounts that make it into the game, could effect the economy. (Fly from store that just opened to store that is going to open and buy out expensive items.

A quest challege could be to see the sunrise in x different places in one day.

/end rambling

[Maxwell]

I like the timezone idea and the world on an axis idea. There is not much more I can add to this except that is seems to be opening up a whole bunch of new Ideas. So another question has roused me, what about the nocturnal in the day light. Is everything going to seem blindingly bright and then they are going to need some kind of tinted goggles, or are they still going to be seeing things like normal.

Personally I think the nocturnal need some of that down time. Which brings me around full circle. If this is put into play how long should the night and day be. 1:1 or are the nocturnal players going to suffer. Or am I just rambling to much?

[joshpurple]

This is cool, and an excellent thought on the nocturnal in the day light Maxwell .

It makes me think of only certain animals, or monsters, that would travel only by day, or by night. Maybe even certain fields of magic would only work in daylight, or in darkness?

And Dwilf has a nice lay-out for game day times, I like the sound of the;

"A 10 "real hour" "game day", with 4 hours of dark and 6 of light (favor the normal law abiding folk)

[RicoSuave]

I like the idea too. Only Fable used this acceptably imo, and only on a small-scale at that. I would love to see it here.


However...
We need to realize that many, many people out there will not have high-end computers and the components necessary to make the effect we intend with this. Are we going to make it so people can simply "turn it off?" Are we going to just make a $10,000 computer mandatory? Are we going to impede and hinder players if real-life makes them unable to play except at certain times?

Above all, I want this game to be fun. If realism needs to suffer a bit, so be it! The reason I play games is to do the things I can't, or sometimes shouldn't do in real life. I play for the fantastical-part, not to live just another gruling life... my life is boring enough as it is.
J/K


I would hope for something a bit different. Let's consider the majority of the expected player base for a moment. How often and for how many hours do we expect them to play?
My ideas are thus:
Hardcore (kids and virgins): Everyday -- 10+ hours daily
Serious (mostly teenagers): Nearly everyday -- 6-10 hours
Moderate (college students): 3-4 days/week -- 3-4 hours
Casual (familyman/woman just relaxing): Occasionally -- 1-4 hours
Light (geriatrics): Only when asked to cover for the Hardcore during a 'Bio.'

I expect (perhaps I'm wrong) somewhat of a standard deviation here:
5% - Hardcore
15% - Serious
60% - Moderate
15% - Casual
5% - Light

If we consider when the majority will be on and how it will affect them, I think we'll come up with a different solution. More to come, I hope.

This post has been edited by RicoSuave: Apr 26 2007, 02:53 PM

[joshpurple]

Yup, Excellent point(s) Rico!

I agree that, "If realism needs to suffer a bit, so be it!"

I see it as a project that will continue to develop in stages. As the stages of the game get developed, I think this aspect will get more and more defined.

For example, having our characters in-game, on the world map, -and able to move. Once we have PW at that stage, we will have an idea of how resources are getting used & at what 'minimum system requirements' we will want to list for PW. And the speed of the moving character in-game will most likely be a strong influence on how far a character can travel in a day?

So, here's a guess

At a default I'd say for Minimum System Requirements: (just for the very fist PW ver. 1.0)

Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000/Windows XP
CPU: 1.4 GHz Pentium III or AMD Athlon (2.5 GHz Pentium IV or AMD recommended)
RAM: 256 MB (512 MB recommended)
Video Card: 64 MB DirectX 9.0c-compliant
Sound Card: 16-bit DirectX 9.0c-compliant sound card
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c
CD-ROM: n/a Downloadable
Hard Drive Space: 1.5 GB
Multiplay: Broadband with 64 Kbps upstream (128 Kbps recommended)

With... maybe... "TEEN" (Violence, Strong Language), -ESRB Content Rating ( http://www.esrb.org ).

Remember, that's a complete guess & I could be completely wrong
But, and I'll see if I can remember and find my source, I believe according to Ubisoft ( ~2005 ), the above stats were considered "within reasonable market demographics" for retail PC Games at $19.95

Please DO feel free to rip any of that! I take no offense .