Hydaelyn Role-Players
How Do You Treat Time? - Printable Version

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RE: How Do You Treat Time? - Kage - 03-18-2014

A problem I find with trying to stick to Eorzean time is that I've had long sessions outside where it... goes from night... to day... to night.. to day to rain to X.. it's not easy to fit that time constraint xD


RE: How Do You Treat Time? - Candor - 03-18-2014

(03-18-2014, 12:43 PM)Magellan Wrote: I also wonder how people rp distance. The ability to insta-travel and be anywhere at the drop of the hat makes Eorzea feel very, very small to me. Personally, I like to rp airships as cost prohibitive, and crystal travel as being bad for your health (aether sickness and ur body breaking down kind of thing) i'd love to see travel between towns actual mean something, and make the world feel like a bigger place.

I completely agree with this. I vaguely recall somewhere among the RPC forums it being posted that aethernet travel is considered canon by the community. I could not disagree with this more. Aside from making the world insignificantly small, like Magellan stated, it also means that basically anyone has the ability to teleport across a continent, making everyone pretty damned powerful and able to avoid all sorts of compelling RP scenarios like:

-Being unable to rescue a loved one due to distance during a crisis.
-Being captured.
-Forcing RP events in different areas to require travel and time, thus creating scale.
-Giving airships canon purpose again. (What's the point of an airship if you can teleport?)
-Etc.

I have always felt that aethernet teleportation should be an OOC system, and that the shards placed around towns and such should be treated as aetheric rely towers for linkshells.

As for time and my original post, I've seen some interesting replies. I asked because I completely ignore the day/night cycle in game and treat my own time, EST, as Eorzean standard time. I do however acknowledge weather conditions. But I've seen some others in RP make references to the passage of time, one standing out in particular as follows, "I've never held a conversation that lasted several days before."

I might be misinterpreting, but taken within the context I believe the character was referring to the RP they were currently engaged it. This sparked my curiosity as to how adherent other players were to the in-game day/night cycle, which I think we can all agree is ridiculously fast.


RE: How Do You Treat Time? - Naunet - 03-18-2014

(03-18-2014, 12:43 PM)Magellan Wrote: I also wonder how people rp distance. The ability to insta-travel and be anywhere at the drop of the hat makes Eorzea feel very, very small to me. Personally, I like to rp airships as cost prohibitive, and crystal travel as being bad for your health (aether sickness and ur body breaking down kind of thing) i'd love to see travel between towns actual mean something, and make the world feel like a bigger place.

I am very careful about how I handle travel in roleplay. My main character doesn't know how to use aetherytes, so when she's traveling somewhere, it's going to take time, and I will actually take that time. Quests in game describe airships as limited to only high-priority individuals and shipments, so those are out of the question for me.

(03-18-2014, 01:15 PM)Gyr Wrote: I completely agree with this. I vaguely recall somewhere among the RPC forums it being posted that aethernet travel is considered canon by the community. I could not disagree with this more.

It's not just the community that considers aethernet travel canon - it's lore within the game itself. However, only people with sufficient control over their aether (and probably sufficient base aether levels) can make use of aetherytes.


RE: How Do You Treat Time? - Dogberry - 03-18-2014

I think aetheryte travel is granted to those specifically branded as "adventurers", and the average joe isn't able to attune to it, which makes land, sea, and air travel make much more sense. That said, I've always felt like there should be an in-character cost beyond gil price for it. In character, I like to play it as my character hating the sensation of teleportation. It's just so unpleasant. I got the idea from the way J.K. Rowling describes Harry as going through the Floo Network and portkeys in the Harry Potter books. They are horrible and disorienting experiences. To borrow the line from Douglas Adams, "it's rather unpleasantly like being drunk. What's so unpleasant about being drunk? Ask a glass of water."


RE: How Do You Treat Time? - Candor - 03-18-2014

(03-18-2014, 01:24 PM)Naunet Wrote: It's not just the community that considers aethernet travel canon - it's lore within the game itself. However, only people with sufficient control over their aether (and probably sufficient base aether levels) can make use of aetherytes.

Is this true? I don't recall any dialogue or scenes supporting that aethernet travel is canon, or at all utilized by any single NPC. But my memory isn't flawless. Does anyone have an example of aethernet travel being supported by anything via the main scenario or a side quest?


RE: How Do You Treat Time? - Magellan - 03-18-2014

To add onto Gyrs list of why crystal travel is suspect...

... in theory, an invading army (such as garleans) could use them to be everywhere all at once, and totally sack Eorzea. The crystal acces points aren't even guarded or anything :p

Hope I didn't derail here, but it is a thread about time,and I feel travel time is important in settimg the world in rp.


RE: How Do You Treat Time? - Naunet - 03-18-2014

I'll just leave this here for aetherytes, as I think we're getting a bit off-topic.


RE: How Do You Treat Time? - Koninbeor - 03-18-2014

I treat Eorzean time like an estranged uncle. It's good to know he's there, I guess, but he doesn't have a great deal of influence on what I do or how I RP. Weather is like his girlfriend that he's lived with off and on for the last eight years and you're not sure if they're going to get married, have kids, or just keep breaking up and getting back together until the end of time. She's just so sporadic that you can't actually count on her to make any kind of impact. And if you place too much stock in her then all she'll really do is just mess things up by being consistently inconsistent. Kind of like living in Missouri.

In game sun/moon cycles and weather patterns are just there to give the game variety and flavor. Salt and pepper aren't the meal, they're just used to enhance it. All I really worry about is making sure that time makes sense for those I'm RPing with. Making sure that everyone is consistent in the session so that the RP makes sense is the most important thing to me.

+1 for Eorzean Standard Time. That's hilarious. Where does that put you now, though? Since you're on Daylight Savings Time, we mere mortals in the Central time zone are on EST. Do you now RP an hour behind? Evil


RE: How Do You Treat Time? - Kage - 03-18-2014

But as said, you -need- to attune to the aetheryte/shard to do so. To attempt to use a crystal or shard without having attuning would cause our bodies to essentially be ripped to shreds.

I am assuming that Garleans cannot really just easily pay off the guards watching the cities' aetherytes. Or attune to the first unless they're spies.


RE: How Do You Treat Time? - Ildur - 03-18-2014

Besides what ExKage has pointed out, Garleans can't use aetherites because they are unable to use aether. That's why they abuse magitek so much, to make up for their lack of 'proper' magic. I don't think they could teleport their machinery with them, even if they could: people still use carriages, carts and ships to transport goods. This implies objects you are not currently carrying cannot be teleported via aetherite. And garleans without magitek backup are just regular mooks.
Their only choice for sending troops via aetherites would be to somehow smuggle a crapton of Ala Mhigan conscripts into, say, Ul'dah, make them attune to the aetherite and then leave...so they can teleport back again with their battle gear, I guess.
I don't see much strategical value in that: if you have troops who are already infiltrated in the city, would you make them leave so you can send them back in?

Anyway, back to the topic: I don't pay much attention to in-game time too much. I drive myself through convention: we decide if a scene is supposed to happen at a particular hour and then go with it. If it's random RP, I avoid mentioning it until someone else does. I do the same with the weather.


RE: How Do You Treat Time? - Arianne Beaudonet - 03-20-2014

I'm of the same mind as many here. I tend to use my own time as Eorzea's time, though I do use the current weather conditions in game in rp. This isn't the first MMO I've played were a day in game is much shorter than a real life day and that's just the way I've always done it. It's just easier that way.

As for the Aetheryte/travel discussion, I know the Aetheryte's are canon so I kind of take the middle ground on using them. Arielle doesn't like using them at all. They make her feel strange when she uses them, similar to the intro scene for those of us that aren't legacy players. She will almost always try to find another way to travel, even if it takes longer. Her sister, on the other hand, is more comfortable with using the Aetheryte's, but she doesn't abuse their use. She's practical in her use. Does she really need to be at such and such a place in a matter of seconds? Is it an emergency? If the answer is no, she will use use other means to get her destination (ie, chocobo, boat, wagon, etc). Same with the airships. The only time she will use them is if it is on official business for the Grand Companies and they require her to take the airship.

Just my 2 cents on how I rp it.


RE: How Do You Treat Time? - Braddock - 03-22-2014

(03-16-2014, 03:46 PM)Gyr Wrote: This may have been discussed before on an older thread, but I can't find it, so I'm going to start a new one (or the first one.)

Right, so, time. How do you treat RP time? Do you act as if RP conversations last as many days as the in-game day-night cycle passes? Do you treat the in-game time as corresponding to your own time? Do you never think about time, and exist in stasis?

I'm curious how the various RPers of FFXIV treat time, the rate of it passing, and all of that in regard to RP.

For me, time is fluid.

IG time, a minute is about 4 of our seconds (I counted it, so feel free to do so as well).  Which can make it a little odd having an RP that lasts 2 hours IRL be like a few days IG.  So I don't ever use that.

When it comes to RP on the forums or in MSN or Skype, I don't have a set time unless it must happen before or after a certain event.  That's really when time matters to me.

Other than that, not really.