Changing time zone costs energy

[Rantanplan 18]

I posted this in threads in the General section, but I think it is worth its own suggestion here.

I think this may be pretty close to what the devs have in mind with the food and energy handling, but anyway, let me quote (with slight edits) myself:

 

(to better understand the quotes, they were posted in threads on the subject of changing the length of the day/night cycle and the possibility to switch between time zones to always play in day- or nighttime)

 

People have to understand that day/night cycle, sun, moon, star positions are all correctly simulated in the game!

We have an autumn map that is located at 45°N 30°E (if it has not changed from the original Chernarus). Autumn implies that we are near autumn Equinox or later, so nights are about equal or longer than days.

You can also navigate by sun or stars, or you build your own little Stonehenge for sun observation and date definition ... ^_^

However, if you start messing with day/night cycle, you will complicate or make it near impossible to do such things.

So my vote goes to real 24h day/night cycles.

 

With that said, I also want to have free reign on when my char is active, whether he is a night owl or an early bird.

 

It could be made that (hardcore!) way, that every change in time zone consumes an appropriate level of your energy level. That way you could always jump time zones as you like, as long as you are still well-fed; before you really join you could get a warning that it would make you starving if you enter a certain server. (worst case would be a 23h jump)

It could also be an interesting option to beach the player at a random time (=server) and only once he has achieved a certain level of nutrition, he may change to his preferred time zone/server (hey, his friends could come and pick him up and bring some food and drinks along - if they have the appropriate energy level)...

Of course, the time would have to be clearly visible in the server browser.

Interesting options for role-playing, probably less so for PvP focussed players, or private servers/hives :P

...

 

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"; I'd welcome a better reference...)

Okay, that includes working in a group, but that also means that you need to feed more than one, feeding kids and old ones. After 3h someone may have found nothing while the other found food worth of a normal 6h hunt.

 

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 multiple times, 24h and more, as long as your reserves allow.

 

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

 

 

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. At a reset 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 can drop such limitations.

 

... 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.

They can't easily jump between time zones and back. Jumping from a full daytime to an (almost) empty nighttime server to restock on food and ammo..., 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, until they find some more food.

Loot hoarding will 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; ...

Edited January 10, 2014 by Rantanplan

[Rantanplan 18]

Elaborating a bit on how servers, server browser and player time could be handled with this.

 

The server browser would not show the time zone as such in which the servers are running, but the relative time offset to the "player time" (PT). E.g. the player could have last played on a UTC+5 server when he disconnected. In that case the server browser would list the UTC+7 servers as a PT+2 (to keep it simple, the list would go from PT, PT+1...PT+23; no need to complicate things with a PT-x)

 

When the game starts and loads the player configuration as the background, that same background would also reflect the time of day he is currently in.

In the server browser, when the player selects a server in a different time zone (but not yet joining it!) the background lighting could be adjusted accordingly. This way the player could easily jump from a dusk to a dawn server, if he has the energy to do an ~12h jump. With some food in his backpack, he can make a PT+6 jump, eat some, and then do another PT+6 jump to reach his "destination".

Just by browsing over the server list, the player would also get an idea how much time he has till dusk or how long it is until dawn.

You could also skip all this indication of the time in the background, but I think that would just lead to PT+1h connect/disconnect orgys until they reach their preferred time of play; it would just creat unnessessary server load.

 

 

This scheme offers also some options to intentionally mess with newcomers and respawns.

If a player dies and does not respawn in the same server but disconnects, he will "lose" the time reference. In that case, all servers in the browser would be listed as PT and the background would not indicate whether a selected server is currently day or night. Only once he connects and spawns to a server, his new time base will be defined by that server. And as a new-spawn has a low energy state, he will not be able to disconnect and jump to a server with different time zone. A scary thought to many, but it is not that bad, as players can have their list of favorite servers, and they know the relative offset between those.

Alternatively to that, if a player dies, his respawn could be limited to the same time zone he died in. In that case the server browser would just list servers in that same time zone. He would not be able to connect and respawn in a different time zone. Probably a bit restrictive; I think I'd prefer the first option.

 

 

If the devs feel particularly evil, they could also change the time base of the hive from UTC to whatever offset the hive may be in, e.g. UTC+5. The servers would be configured relative to the hive time (HT).

In a first place that would change nothing for the player and server browser, it would still show the server time relative to PT.

What is the difference? Just out of the server name you can't deduce whether a server is currently day- or nighttime. The server could be labeled HT+0, but depending on the HT that could still be a day or night server.

And the ultimate evil: well, the devs could decide to "randomly" change the hive time from HT to HT+12, turning all day servers to night and vice versa >:( Now that would be a nice little prank, obviously not realistic, but fun for the evil-minded hive manager...

[o_grande_rafael 24]

i think that the utc time is clear and usefull. i dont know if it's my amateur radio skills or the fact that i do not live in US and have more european friends than US ones, so i have always to do these calculations...

[Rantanplan 18]

Except if they go for evil mode and mess with the hive time (HT), the UTC reference is still possible, also "hard" in the server name. If they don't go for the concept of "hive time" or leave it at HT=UTC, then nothing changes with that respect.

 

 

The player time reference can be handled independently as a separate column and filter option in the server browser. It can also highlight which server/time transitions are impossible (=red) due to a too low energy level, leave you at a dangerous energy level (=yellow), and which cause you no immediate trouble (=green).

This also enabled clans to coordinate such jumps over time zones, as everybody can check whether the proposed destination is within his reach.

 

A drawback may be that players can log out after eating to check how much time they just "bought" with that can of beans, by seeing which time zones are within their reach. But that information is a bit "fuzzy", as the player may want to know about their active time, but time zone changes would be based on idle energy consumption (or even less than that).