200 Minutes

[Chris]

As I understand it, the 200 minute daily playing limit is primarily intended to limit bandwidth use. I remember reading that that concern may not be as important as it once was, but I'll assume that the game will continue to have some limit. Although I think that there are better ways of accomplishing the goal, the 200 minute limit probably does what is intended.

However, the 200 minute limit has a few annoying side effects:

1. It penalizes people for server lag.

2. It penalizes time spent reading and thinking.

3. People log out and immediately log in again so that they won't waste their minutes. Thus, at least three extra pages (log out page, home page, and log in page) are requested much more often than necessary.

Without radically changing the whole system, here is a quick and simple fix. When the game subtracts time from a player's allotment, allow a maximum of one minute per page. If less than one minute has elapsed between page requests, subtract the exact number of seconds. If one minute or longer has elapsed, subtract only the maximum of 60 seconds (one minute).

[ceselb]

Another possibility is to have a certain number of page loads per day, though that would penalize town leaders and such that have to constantly move a lot of stuff around.

[Chris]

Another possibility is to have a certain number of page loads per day, though that would penalize town leaders and such that have to constantly move a lot of stuff around.

I believe that has been suggested many times, without a positive response from TPTB. As I said above, we can easily think of other systems to accomplish the same end. However, developers are conservative, so I am offering an idea for change that is minimal, both in the number of code lines to be changed and unexpected effects. Creating a limit on page loads, or an action point system, or whatever, would require effort and testing to calibrate the allotment so that people are neither overly restricted nor permitted unlimited use.

[Wolf]

There's already something in place that takes no time if someone spends some time on a character's main page, or the main character page, I forgot which it was... but basically, I could spend ten minutes or more looking at the events for character X, and only lose 5 minutes... something along that line.
That already worked wonders for me, though I obviously haven't paid attention lately to just how it works.

Also, I can think of a few ways to tamper with things if there was a one-minute maximum... messing with referrers, certain tabbed browsers might be able to be used so the system treats each page opened as a new one, instead of going from one page to another (I'm not certain just how that works, but I remember reading something where someone on another game cheated using such a trick).
Basically, some people would be able to cheat and upset game balance for many others.

Of course, my favorite suggestion (and the favorite of many) would be to get rid of the timelimit all together.
But then people with more time would be able to play more than others who might have jobs, school, social functions or a life to attend to, which would be just as bad, if not worse, in how it would upset the balance.

Maybe a way of allocating certain timeblocks spread over a day would work.
For example, you get 1 hour between 8AM and 11AM, another hour between 1PM and 4PM, another hour between 6PM and 9PM, another between midnight and 3AM, and so on...
I'm just pulling those numbers out of my rear opening, if you catch my drift, and there'd have to be a way that it takes into account the timezone where someone lives.
But even that way, there'd probably be people with valid bones to pick.

[marol]

Bandwith is not an issue. It was very long time ago, but now it is not.

Briefly - there are two important aspects:
1. Real life. If you need more than 4 hours of game a day, it isn't good. After all it's just a game. I know some other massive multiplayer online games - their providers keep making players more and more addicted (and when game is enough popular usually sells them extra upgrades for extra money). Addicted players are really big problem, expecially younger ones. We don't care about money, we care about players.

2. Cantr is role playing stuff, not chat channel. There are many players who have a lot of time and they would turn game into IRC-like chat channel without time limit.

[ceselb]

they would turn game into IRC-like chat channel without time limit.

Ugh, imagine every town like Dory. *shudder*

[formerly known as hf]

Or Seatown... Bleurgh...

I'm always surprised just how much time some players must have...

[Cdls]

Whats wrong with Dory, or Seatown for that matter?

Anyways, the points brought up about keeping the time limit are good ones. There are many people on here that have claimed to have been or are addicted to this game, and I believe the staff have made a very responsible decision to keep that in place.

On the other hand, there are times when I see my time running down and I wish that there were ways to make it last longer, but in the long run, Im glad there isnt. Its great to enjoy the game, but is an increased time limit going to really help that much? Its not going to make you finish projects or travel any faster, and if you follow the advice from those that have been here a while, they can tell you how to conserve.

[Arlequin]

Meh, I've got a different and kinda offroad suggestion nobody is gonna like.

That is, adding a fame (karma) system, like those on web social communities. Once per day you can *admire* or *frown* a character's play, which therefore gains or loses some fame. There would be an upper and lower limit for each character.

The player whose characters average more fame for his language area would then have 300 minutes available, and the one with lower fame only 100. Everyone else's time would be calculated proportionally to that range. New players would start with a half-way fame value.

Now if that just could work ideally...

[Cdls]

The problem with that is it would become a popularity contest with no real RP going on. People would be afraid to RP a confrontation thinking they would get a negative reading.

I do like the idea of a ranking system though, but not for time limit. Maybe something that is made invisible to everyone but the player. Each character has a plus or minus rank symbol next to their name, and the tally gets checked weekly for the players rank amount the rest of the players and so on.

[faolan]

I don't like the ranking or the popularity contest one because one of my characters would get trashed into the ground because they are stuck in a perpetual argument with another character that hates her. It's fun as hell to rp and absolutely hilarious, but she'd sort of frown and yeah.

[SumBum]

I'm kind of surprised at some of the reasons for not increasing the time. People have complained that 200 minutes sometimes isn't enough to RP after taking care of the "maintenance" type activities for your chars. I thought the idea was to encourage RP and interaction?

[Talapus]

I would prefer if perhaps half of your minutes at the end of the day were added to the next day. It has a built in cap, and allows players to deal with those days when important things are happening (wars and such), without allowing the players to average more then 200 minutes per day.

[Elros]

I didn't read all the replies to this topic, but I believe that the time should not run when you are sitting on the Character Selection page. I like to sit there for a while and keep refreshing it every few minutes to see if something happens. At the moment I have to log out then back in 5 minutes later and check again. Someone just sitting on the character page isn't using bandwith, so it should not count down their time...

Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining at all. I was just giving my opinion on the current topic.

[faolan]

I agree with Elros on sitting on the character page. It would be a lot easier for me than logging out and logging back in.