Why not three hour dayz?

[hefeweizen 254]

In every topic that gets posted like this there is always a few people who are all "I work 27 hours every day, and I don't want to come home an play in the dark, so I play on Day time only servers!"

How come nobody calls that for still being a "cheap" playstyle?

[Rantanplan 18]

There is a statistic that in the stone age ~3h of hunting and gathering per day was enough to organize the upkeep with food, water, etc. And I would expect that they usually choosed to do so in daytime. (not so happy with it, but here is a german link that mentions this statistic, first section after "Der grosse Kater")

Okay, that includes working in a group, but that also means that you need to feed more than one, feeding kids and old ones.

 

Once my character has reached a certain state, he can choose when he is active. That's what my suggestion is about. If he is wellfed, he can choose when he goes out and looks for more food. He can pause for one hour, five hours, or 12 hours if he likes to. He will drain his reserves while doing so, but that's up to him, no?!?!

If he is hungry and/or thirsty he loses that luxury.

 

Changing the timezone since your last login is no problem, but it feeds upon your reserves. You have little reserves, you can only skip a short time. You are fully stuffed, you might maybe even skip an almost full day (max. 23h). Or you jump even multiple times, as long as your reserves allow.

 

Do your work at day, and you don't need to be up at night, simple as that.

Edited January 9, 2014 by Rantanplan

[floj 393]

In every topic that gets posted like this there is always a few people who are all "I work 27 hours every day, and I don't want to come home an play in the dark, so I play on Day time only servers!"

How come nobody calls that for still being a "cheap" playstyle?

Yeah, I think anyone requesting 24/7 cycles is basically the same. Most players play at the same time of day due to RL obligations, so playing at the same time everyday is pretty much the same as playing on a permaday or permanight server.

 

Unless they make it so your player has to setup a camp/barricade a room which remains within the server until you log in again, a night shelter possible for bandits and/or zombies to come across and kill your character whilst you're away. Or you have to setup a watch system with some friends so that you take it in turns to stay logged in to watch your camp overnight.

 

Some occasional night time play would mimic this and if it's employed on the public servers as the summertime 20hr cycle as above, it can easily be avoided by playing on a private server for an hour whilst the sun comes up.

 

I virtually closed the same topic yesterday with my post, let me try it again :P

Said topic has been reopened by my rebuffing of your argument :P :D Thanks for the accurate long/lat for Chernarus though. It means that potentially night-time could be a continuous twilight from sunset to sunrise without the complete loss of sunlight...all they have to do is change the time of year to nearer the summer solstice instead of the autumn equinox.

 

"At latitudes greater than about 48.5 degrees North or South, on dates near the summer solstice, twilight can last from sunset to sunrise, since the Sun does not go more than 18 degrees below the horizon, so complete darkness does not occur even at midnight." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight

[libertine 351]

I would NEVER, EVER turn my flashlight on at night on a PvP server. NOT EVER. NOT FUCKING EVER! So in that case, with what we have had previously, my only options are to play with night vision or do the gamma trick. Said another way, my only options are to play with DAYLIGHT cast in shades of green (night vision) or shades of gray (gamma) for hours on end?...  No thank you. Actually another option is to quit playing, which is exactly what i did when the private [daylight] Origins server i had been playing on went down while waiting for an update.

 

I really think only a very new person to the game would actually turn on their flashlights at night on a PvP server. Maybe a non-KOS player who roams the woods and smaller towns...

 

The solution: Limited visibility moonlit nights where you can still see the landscape and things in it, the colors remain, but you must look a little harder. That would work and potentially look beautiful too. Thats also more realistic because for one, you sleep at night, and two, you would probably often be doing things just before it got totally dark in real life.

[floj 393]

To be fair, flashlights are broken in that they light up buildings "like a chinese lantern" (couldn't find who posted that originally, but it was spot on)...

 

but at the moment night servers are empty, so it's safe enough unless you're in Balota/NWAF/NEAF/Chern/Elektro

[Rantanplan 18]

Yeah, I think anyone requesting 24/7 cycles is basically the same. Most players play at the same time of day due to RL obligations, so playing at the same time everyday is pretty much the same as playing on a permaday or permanight server.

 

Unless they make it so your player has to setup a camp/barricade a room which remains within the server until you log in again, a night shelter possible for bandits and/or zombies to come across and kill your character whilst you're away. Or you have to setup a watch system with some friends so that you take it in turns to stay logged in to watch your camp overnight.

 

Some occasional night time play would mimic this and if it's employed on the public servers as the summertime 20hr cycle as above, it can easily be avoided by playing on a private server for an hour whilst the sun comes up.

A character that is permanently "online" is no option for someone that plays only 5h per week. And I would like to see the face of your boss when you explain him why you can't make that 2 week business trip to China :P

 

But you miss my main point:

With my suggestion all servers connected to the public hive run the normal 24h day/night cycle. But every server can pick his offset at which it is running.

An example: you have two servers in England that give you the same ping, one is running on UTC, the other on UTC-10. If the player wants to switch from the first to the latter, he has to "pay" with 14 hours worth of his energy.

Did I say 14 hours for a change of 10 hours? Yes, as in-game we don't travel back in time ;)

If he doesn't have such reserves, he can't make that time transition. Maybe he can just jump to a server that is max. 6h ahead. But there may also be such a server in London. Or he changes to another UTC server which "costs" him nothing.

The admins could "report" to the public hive at which time offset the server shall run. But the server gets this offset from the public hive. To make it a bit more attractive for those that pay for those servers, the offset can be changed once in 24h. On private hives you could drop such limitations.

 

What you probably miss are the (as I think positive) implications of this system:

To achieve the flexibility to change time zones, the players will need to pay much more attention to their character. They need to spend more time on scavanging for food and such, instead of just waepons and ammo to otherwise keep camping the beaches or airfields.

Neither can they easily jump from a full daytime to an (almost) empty nighttime server to restock on food and ammo with exploiting the gamma hack, to then jump back to the daytime server where their friends are waiting - that 2x change of time zones costs 24h worth of energy!

It puts more focus on the survival aspect of the game, instead of being just another shooter with an initial server hopping phase to fetch the best equipment. (okay, server hopping is still there, but more limited with respect to the time zone; he can still freely jump between 20 servers that all run on UTC or whatever time zone he happens to be in)

But ultimately you will get more nighttime action because there may be people that just can't "afford" to jump to a daytime server.

Loot hoarding will also be more difficult, because tents and vehicles are server bound (if it is like in the mod) => to switch back and forth between your base and whatever other server (in a different time zone) will also cost 24h of energy. You will need to pack a lot of beans to make such a transit worthwhile!

Shortening the day/night cycle would hurt this system; with the in this thread suggested 3h cycle there would be almost no penalty to switch between night and day.

 

Do I now get your beans?!

Edited January 10, 2014 by Rantanplan

[Tyrael75 (DayZ) 21]

Currently, night cleans out servers. its just a fact of Dayz. I honestly think the only way to get people to play at night is to make switching to a daytime server not an option. To do that all public servers would have to be on the same Day/Night cycle. But how do you do that without casting certain parts of the world in eternal darkness?

Well, first of all you're going to have to give up on 24h days. I know some realism hounds are flipping their beans right now, so bare with me. Changing 24hr days doesn't necessarily mean shorter days. We could make the days 25h if it was the best choice. The point is in order to make having all the servers on the same time cycle fair, the time in game in relation to the time in real life needs to change on a fairly regular basis. I think that is a fair place to start.

Now personally, I think much faster days are the right way to go. First, it would offer more variety in game play. Playing at night all the time can be terrible, but I think more players would stay on the same server through the night time if they knew it wouldn't be that way for 6+ hours. Second, honestly I think it fits better with the whole "starving to death in a couple hours" thing. It makes absolutely no sense that your survivor can starve to death over the course of a few hours, however if those hours were meant take the place of a day or so, maybe a more believable balance could be struck where your survivor starving to death so quickly would make a bit more sense.

So, lastly over discussions with a couple of friends about how long a usual DayZ session last we arrived at a little more than 3 hours. Roughly two hours dawn to dusk, with about one hour and fifteen minutes of night. This would allow players to experience the full range of the day/night cycle in what can be considered a "normal" play session. It would accomplish the goal of changing the time in game in comparison to the time in real life on a regular basis and it would make starving to death quickly more believable, if still slightly too fast.

I'm guessing a lot of people would absolutely hate this idea, but other will like it. I'd love to hear why.

TL;DR Nobody plays on server thats are dark because nights are too long, and they can always find a day time server. We should make days much shorter, and put all the servers on the same cycle.

P.S. All this would also hinge on Rocket and Co. making the night time experience better overall. Making flashlights more ambient, Fixing light going through walls, locking down the gamma cheaters, adding more light sources. But I can't see that NOT happenings, its just a matter of when.

For one the player base is currently "shoot everything that moves (whether its a player, rage induced human(other name: zombie) or in-animate objects such as trees), for two dayz standalone's engine is a heavily modified arma 3 engine (due to rocket being apart of bohemia staff he was given permission to modify the arma 3 engine) with THAT both dayz standalone AND dayz mod servers use naturally use LOCAL time (place where the server is hosted from) so the 24 hour cycle is actually 24 hours, say the server is in NY the current time is 3:59 PM you have around 2 to 3 hours of day light (being winter here) then you have 11 hours until a glimpse of day light. Rinse, repeat until days gradually get shorter or longer.

[GoTo2k 12]

Custom Day/Night cycles are coming :)

 

https://twitter.com/rocket2guns/status/446626835670261760

Edited March 20, 2014 by GoTo2k

[irl-calibre 744]

well that fills me with dread

"This will allow custom server owners to change day/night cycle "

 

1000 vehicle / full loadout / 3p:on servers on the way then..

[Jex 1104]

7 hour days, 2 hours for night, 5 for daylight, 15 minutes twilight either side, done.

Edited March 20, 2014 by Jexter

[real meatshield 424]

I used to play highttime when the gamma exploit worked for me. Something changed, and now my vid card (670 gtx) doesnt work with it.

 

I used it because everyone else was. Now, everyone else still does, but mine is useless, even if i change the settings in nvidia control panel- so I am at a decided disadvantage, worse than the disadvantage of playing in the dark,

 

 

7 hour days, 2 hours for night, 5 for daylight, 30 minutes twilight either side, done.

 

This could actually work, with 30 minutes twilight either side (to make it a solid 8 hour cycle, which would repeat 3x daily). I could justify carrying weapon flashlights for more than just bling, and there would be a valid reason for carrying headtorches again.

[Jex 1104]

I used to play highttime when the gamma exploit worked for me. Something changed, and now my vid card (670 gtx) doesnt work with it.

 

I used it because everyone else was. Now, everyone else still does, but mine is useless, even if i change the settings in nvidia control panel- so I am at a decided disadvantage, worse than the disadvantage of playing in the dark,

 

 

 

This could actually work, with 30 minutes twilight either side (to make it a solid 8 hour cycle, which would repeat 3x daily). I could justify carrying weapon flashlights for more than just bling, and there would be a valid reason for carrying headtorches again.

 

No I mean a 7 hour day total so the times rotate as you play so each day isn't the same time if you play at the same time. That way you get to experience all the different times of day if you're on the same server all the time :)