possibility for sharing minutes

[SierraBreez]

I just randomly thought of this tonight. I'm half tired so if it sounds dumb sorry. ok you know how you get into roleplaying something with someone else or a group, and then someone runs out of minutes and has to wait till the next day to continue but you still might have tons?

Well I think it would be neat to have an option to donate some minutes to a friend. You could have a drop down box or a text box or something to enter the minutes you want to donate, and somehow specify the player. Like i suppose their player id number or name or something.

--> you just donated 10 minutes to player # xxxx <----

Some people don't always use their full minutes or people all go quiet it seems when the others are out of minutes and so they often might waste those minutes. I know some will see it as hogging cause they get extra and having a lot of friends can be your benefit then, but i think it would have more ups than downs.

Just a thought, its kinda like in some of the other role playing games where you can die multiple times and your life can be refreshed with each day, or with so much money and other players can give you money. You then can use that money to buy life. I'm probably not explaining it very good, so i'll shut up for right now, lol.

[Slowness_Incarnate]

Mmm..A few of us joke about that all the time ^_^

[berserk9779]

If this would be posible we would have tons of people trying to get double accounts in order to pump minutes from one to the other

[trage]

That is the first thin that came to my mind beserk. I don't think this would be a very good idea, but that is just me.

[Anthony Roberts]

I don't like it, and it would never be put in. Noooo wayyyy.

Think about it. With the way it is, everyone has 200 minutes. Some people would use 30 minutes, some 100, some all 200.

If it were changed, those people that didn't use all their minutes would give them to someone else. Which in turn, that OTHER person would use all those minutes like they did their original 200. So in turn, a lot more bandwidth would be used.

Ie: Before, 50000 minutes used. After, 100000 Minutes used.

Get what I'm saying?

This is why minutes won't ever be increased for people, because more minutes will be used, in turn, more bandwidth. Precious, expensive, bandwidth.

[ArcticCandle]

Maybe however we could have a time storage for the accoutn we have. such as you are not able to get on you could store say up to 100 minutes for those days when things are going by quickly by saving time when nothing is happening for the character. Personally I hardly ever run out of time.. but i have RL duties that I must attend to.


AC

[The Industriallist]

There is no magical reason for 200 minutes a day. If they wanted, it could be 400, or 600. There is no reason whatsoever to make up complicated ways to give people more time.

[Jos Elkink]

Anthony is right - people forget that the 200 min allowance does not mean that everybody can play 200 mins. If they did, we would lower the limit ... It is possible to allow 200 mins because we know most people won't use them, so the usage will be much lower.

Compare the huge mail accounts at Google and Yahoo. If everybody would store the Gb of data they offer, they could never have enough space. But they know people don't ...

[SekoETC]

And anyway, though I used to run out of time before, it doesn't happen anymore. The limits are a good thing, otherwise you'd be hooked on Cantr 24/7. Ok, my thoughts are there almost all the time but with the limitation I don't spend the whole day playing.

[kabl00ey]

One important reason why this shouldn't be implemented is then you could end up with the situation whereby people are co-erced into donating minutes (eg. "I'll kill you if you don't give me 100 minutes"). Also, might lead to in-game trading of minutes for goods. I know that this breaches the rules, and *shouldn't* happen, but a black market in minutes is possible.

This is kind-of similar to people buying and selling Everquest money on eBay. In Cantr you can probably find or trade for anything - anything except minutes, thus the above possible situations.

[Jos Elkink]

That's a very good point, actually. Not noticing the dates, I was first reading the suggestion and getting enthousiast, but that last point is smart thinking ...

[Jos Elkink]

Actually, thinking about it again on my way home, I think it's not as valid an argument as it sounds. Clearly, trading like that would be severily violating the Capital Rule. But trading with money, like those Everquest people, is already possible. It's a serious violation of the CR, but it is possible. So, taking that, I think either of the following scenarios is logically the case:

1) Trading Cantr goods for real money by out-of-game transactions is not currently happening. In that case, why would it happen with minutes?

2) Trading Cantr goods for real money is happening, but the PD cannot see this. That would be bad. But would adding the minutes thing make the situation much worse? Note, also, that trading minutes can be observed, whereas trading outside Cantr will be difficult to see. So in suspicious cases, the PD will be able to compare minute-trading-logs with events.

3) Trading Cantr goods for real money is happening, the PD can observe this, and is punishing them. Well, what would be the difference? PD can also research, as I said, this new idea.

Hmm, I make it sounds like more interesting an argument than it is ... But what do you think, kabl00ey? (Or others, of course)

[Floyd]

Dont like it one bit, gives an unfair advantage to those capable of playing for more than 200 minutes a day.

[kabl00ey]

I think that, for the most part, you can obtain most anything in Cantr through trading, stealing, gathering, or any other form of acquirement. The single thing in Cantr that is highly demanded, yet there is zero supply for, is minutes.

Sure, other things might be traded for money currently, but if so, it's likely only to be very large items or highly sought resources like steel. I personally feel the selling issue is the less likely of the two I mentioned, and I think that coercion of characters to donate minutes would be more likely.

Inherently, people are risk-averse. Given a situation whereby they must donate 50 minutes or risk the death of their 50-year old character, which they'd invested much time into, I think most people would donate the minutes. Some, of course, would rather stick it to the 'bullies', but they shouldn't be put in this position in the first place.

But then again, this is all conjecture. People might not really care about minutes as much as I'm assuming.

[Sho]

There's no compelling reason to allow players to exchange minutes, and there are several strong reasons not to (inequity between players with OOC contacts and players without, temptation to create multiple accounts, possibility of players trading in-game favors or items for minutes). I think that's clear enough.