Recent Change to Generals

[Foundation]

I'm always in favour of common numerical references for players, but that could be just me.

[Tom]

Not worth it. If the players care, they can already reference days, nothing is stopping them.

[Velax]

Server time is displayed prominently on several pages, and has been for years now.

And yes, it includes the day.

Just because it's Tuesday in one place and Wednesday in another doesn't mean that talking about the Wednesday sunrise turn as the Tuesday sunrise turn in the areas where it actually occurs on Tuesday would make any sense at all. If you tried to talk about it like that, you'd frequently end up talking about the Tuesday sunrise turn, and the turn after it, the Wednesday sunset turn—and then the Wednesday sunrise turn.

Which is obviously silly, and I doubt there are many people who would actually try to operate under those conditions.

I'm talking about specific, in-game, non-real world days. Not Thursday or Friday, but Jackday or Terfday or whatever the hell. It doesn't matter how prominently server time is displayed (and it's not very at all), if you say Tuesday server time, people will screw it up and think you're talking about their Tuesday, not server's Tuesday. Having a common day/term to reference would make a big difference, and make those conditional Standing Orders much easier.

[Revan]

I'm talking about specific, in-game, non-real world days. Not Thursday or Friday, but Jackday or Terfday or whatever the hell. It doesn't matter how prominently server time is displayed (and it's not very at all), if you say Tuesday server time, people will screw it up and think you're talking about their Tuesday, not server's Tuesday. Having a common day/term to reference would make a big difference, and make those conditional Standing Orders much easier.

If people already aren't paying much attention to server time, why would they pay any attention to 'Terfday'? I suspect in-game terms would just complicate things further.

[Anaris]

If people already aren't paying much attention to server time, why would they pay any attention to 'Terfday'? I suspect in-game terms would just complicate things further.

Yes. Absolutely. Trying to introduce arbitrary names for days is way, way, way harder than just getting people to understand how time zones work.

[Penchant]

One idea I got from reading, feel free to make it a new thread:

Delayed Standing Orders.

I think many marshals would like to avoid saying "next turn" in the standing orders, because when the next turn rolls around, well, it still says "next turn.". Some sort of "rolling" standing orders would be nice. I see it like this:

Current orders: Move to Region A
Next turns orders: Wait for stragglers and misdirect to region B
Next: Move to region C
Next: Wait for stragglers and misdirect to region D
Next: Move to region D

Each turn, the orders move up one slot, so that everyone knows what they should be doing at that time, and what they should do the next turn.

To keep this from becoming useless in actual combat, marshals should be able to delete one or all of the orders.

And yes, there is a risk from planning 4 days in advance: if your marshal gets stabbed, then players may follow the wrong orders.

+1

[Gustav Kuriga]

Yes. Absolutely. Trying to introduce arbitrary names for days is way, way, way harder than just getting people to understand how time zones work.

Not true... people have the tendency to subconsciously believe that everyone online is running their time or at least are only 1 time zone away, even when they know this is not the case.

[Anaris]

Not true... people have the tendency to subconsciously believe that everyone online is running their time or at least are only 1 time zone away, even when they know this is not the case.

And yet, I have been in multiple realms that successfully talked about "Wednesday sunrise" and "Friday sunset" turns as timings for movement, with people spread around the globe, for long periods of time, with very high response rates.

In addition, I, personally, have no trouble keeping track of when people online are in relation to me. I'm very used to dealing with the 6-hour difference between my time (EST) and CET, the 3-hour difference between EST and PST, and the 11- or 12-hour difference between my time and Hong Kong time (from when my wife took regular business trips there).

So unless you can produce some kind of actual research on the subject, I'm gonna have to call BS on your bold claim :-)

[Foundation]

Wow, I can only deal with the 3 hour difference between PST and EST, as well as the 12 hour difference between EST and China.  No idea how CET works.

[Anaris]

Wow, I can only deal with the 3 hour difference between PST and EST, as well as the 12 hour difference between EST and China.  No idea how CET works.

...CET is server time.

[fodder]

... isn't this the reason why there's a server clock inside the game already? or is it necessary to move it from play info/play status to top bar/bottom bar/left menu?

[Foundation]

Yeah, I know CET's the server time, but I never notice the server time anyways.  I convert the turn times to my own timezone and forget about it.

[JPierreD]

What would be easy to implement and intuitive for the players would be for the game to display the date in relation to the season. That would mean "First/1st day of Summer", "Twenty-third/23rd day of Spring" and so on.

If you want to add it even more complexity you can also add the year, starting with the date in which the continent was founded, but I don't really see a need for that.

Edit: the advantage, btw, would be from a RP perspective. It would be natural to address the 3rd day of Autumn, but not so much the 11th of September.

[Tom]

I'm talking about specific, in-game, non-real world days. Not Thursday or Friday, but Jackday or Terfday or whatever the hell.

Discussed before, rejected before, at least twice.

[Penchant]

What about JPierre's suggestion of the 7th of Spring, 1st of Winter, etc.