RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes

Auralily · **05-23-2014, 01:25 AM**

My friend and I were discussing day and night cycles, and it brought up a few questions I cannot find the answer to.Â

24 bells, one sun, is 70 minutes. Given that, the night and day cycle is obviously much less than Earth's time. So ICly, do we just completely ignore the game time unless it's convenient? And if anyone does adhere to the time in the game, how does the sleep cycle work?Â

I understand time is probably a game play mechanic with less focus on the lore. But I argue perhaps the denizens Eoreza just don't sleep -every- night. It does feel shorter than what we have on Earth, and it is during a time of conflict. Sleep is decided by when you're tired, not the cycle of the sun.Â

I know there won't be one answer about the matter, just curious on other people's thoughts. If it's already been discussed, please link me in the right direction. I checked first, but had no luck.

FreelanceWizard · **05-23-2014, 01:57 AM**

(05-23-2014, 01:25 AM)Auralily Wrote: 24 bells, one sun, is 70 minutes. Given that, the night and day cycle is obviously much less than Earth's time. So ICly, do we just completely ignore the game time unless it's convenient?

Pretty much, yes. Smile

In my experience, most RPers ignore the cycles of the game and RP the time as being "whatever everyone agrees to in the scene," which often means "whatever the time is IRL for most people in the scene."

To be honest, time compression is a very common thing in MMOs, especially if they have quests or other in-game behavior that changes based on the time of day. In this regard, it exists purely to serve the game and has no lore explanation. Time compression also fits, more or less, with the perceived size of the game world versus its asserted size in lore (otherwise, Eorzea would be like... 50 miles long or something Smile

). Finally, any planet spinning fast enough to go through a day in 70 minutes would likely be unsuitable for life, based on our current understanding of physics -- not that that should necessarily be a determiner in a fantasy setting, though. With all that in mind, I personally think there's good reasons to ignore the game's day/night cycles.

Gwen · **05-23-2014, 10:16 AM**

The majority, if not all RP's will ignore it for the most part. You have to aslo take into account that it takes us 5minutes to say 5 seconds worth of conversation, so if we put that with the in game timer... Our characters would stand still for hours taking all that time to think up thenext 6 words they say!

K'nahli · **05-23-2014, 10:45 AM**

It is honestly only there so players have a frequent association with both cycles, regardless of their availability to play as well as a myriad of other reasons such as that Wizard has already mentioned. I prefer it the way it is as opposed to having an extended duration just to make it more realistic. You could use similar logic to say that traveling between zones or even city states actually takes a very short amount of time when in reality it's supposed to take at least a few days(?)

Also the healing and death mechanic. You can't expect the game to take a realistic approach so it's a simple case of curing all ailments in less than a second, players not being hindered by their near-death-like state and their incapability of dying being handled in a way so that they simply use the last of their "reserves"(or however it was explained) to teleport away from danger when they have fallen.

You can't take everything as it is given to you because for the most part, trying to make everything as realistic as possible would only make the game a lot more difficult to balance and would only leech the enjoyment out of it for the majority of players. I mean personally, I'd LOVE vast, open spaces and an 'actual' desert, but most people hate pointless scenery that only serves to steal more time from their playing hours needlessly.

Auralily · **05-23-2014, 04:47 PM**

So do we base time off the servers location? Overall avoiding time specifics seem ideal, but with miqo'tes day and night seems important to some degree.Â

I would love more realism, like you said an endless desert you literally can get lost in. Even a longer night and day cycle. I would love a long RP excursion, making camps at night and traveling in the day. But I accept game play put before too much realism. I'll flow with the community, not against it. Just curious :)

Rosekitten · **05-23-2014, 07:35 PM**

If you could get a small group to agree on a time you could probably still rp out the traveling and setting up of camp. I'll be honest that is one thing that I miss from forum rp's compared to the game. There isn't a lot of group traveling and having to deal with one another on a daily basis (or least not any I've run into).Â

Though on the topic of this thread.. is there any indication to the year that the characters are on? I toyed with a idea recently of aging my character a year given that I just did remember her birth date .. I'd kinda assume that aging characters time wise followed more along real life or whenever a certain event passed in the characters life.

~just thinking aloud feel free to ignore me or add your thoughts~

Auralily · **05-23-2014, 08:23 PM**

Another issue where real time benefits over the game. It's pretty specific that there 24 bells in a sun (day) and 70 minutes in a sun. A week is 8 suns, a moon (month) is 32 suns, and a year 12 moons. Meaning in one real year, we'd be pretty old pretty quick.

FreelanceWizard · **05-23-2014, 08:48 PM**

(05-23-2014, 07:35 PM)Rosekitten Wrote: Though on the topic of this thread.. is there any indication to the year that the characters are on? I toyed with a idea recently of aging my character a year given that I just did remember her birth date .. I'd kinda assume that aging characters time wise followed more along real life or whenever a certain event passed in the characters life.

Year 1572 of the Sixth Astral Era was the year of the Calamity. Five years later (year 5 of the Seventh Umbral Era) is when version 2 launches, timeline-wise. After that, the timeline is a little squishy, depending on where you are in the main scenario quest. If you RP that the events of the 2.0 MSQ have happened, we're basically in year 1 or 2 (depending on how close you hew to RL time) of the Seventh Astral Era. If not, we're in year 6 or 7 of the Seventh Umbral Era. The RPC wiki has a pretty detailed timeline of Eorzean history for your perusal. Smile

Question about Time

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes