Quick PFO calendar questions


Pathfinder Online

Goblin Squad Member

IIRC it was said that the number of days in an in-game year would be increased enough to keep time basically equivalent to a real-world year. Was it mentioned anywhere whether this just means each month has more days? And does anyone know the current plan for the number of days in PFO?

Goblinworks Executive Founder

I think that the Galorian calendar is isomorphic to the Gregorian calendar+3998 years, or something around that. The names of the months and days of the week are different, but the major astrological events (equinoxes and solstices) occur on the same day of the equivalent month.

I could be wrong about that...

Goblin Squad Member

I seem to remember hearing that second-hand, but I don't recall an official statement along those lines, and I can't find anything searching Ryan's posts. Of course, I could very well be wrong.

Goblin Squad Member

In case it helps: Golarion Calendar Info.

Silver Crusade Goblin Squad Member

Okay, I remember a discussion on this from Ryan, but can't find the actual reference for it.

Essentially, there will be something like 4 to 8 game days per real life day. This gives people the opportunity who can't play 24/7 to participate in events that happen at "night" or "day" that they normally wouldn't be online to participate in. This includes access to particular resources, bad guys, and rituals.

However, months are still going to line up with the real world months. This means that in the PFO game, months are just 4 to 8 times longer than they should be.

This is all paraphrasing from what I can remember, but I think that's how it went.

CEO, Goblinworks

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I don't know what we'll do in the end, but we want seasons that roughly correspond with the real seasons in the northen hemisphere.

Goblin Squad Member

Sweet! Having 4 "Winterfests" each real year could get stale.

Goblin Squad Member

DeciusBrutus wrote:

I think that the Galorian calendar is isomorphic to the Gregorian calendar+3998 years, or something around that. The names of the months and days of the week are different, but the major astrological events (equinoxes and solstices) occur on the same day of the equivalent month.

I could be wrong about that...

First, you misspelled Golarion.

Jazzivraz posted the link for it already, but note the line:
"At the start of the campaign, the date is 4707 AR (Absalom Reckoning)."
The campaign started in 2007, so the Absalom Reckoning calendar is +2700 years ahead of our Common Era calendar. I'm not sure where you got +3998

Also, solstices and equinoxes are astronomical events, not astrological ones. The astrologers haven't updated their system in thousands of years (as is typical for pre-scientific ideas) to adjust for axial precession.

Goblin Squad Member

Gregg Reece wrote:

Okay, I remember a discussion on this from Ryan, but can't find the actual reference for it.

Essentially, there will be something like 4 to 8 game days per real life day.
...
However, months are still going to line up with the real world months. This means that in the PFO game, months are just 4 to 8 times longer than they should be.

It's an older blog, but I don't see why it would have changed from the 4x time mentioned in dev blog #8.

From Time is the Fire in which We Burn:
Ryan Dancey wrote:

March 14, 2012

...
Everyone playing Pathfinder Online should have the experience of some time in daylight and some time at night, regardless of where you're physically located and what time you regularly play. So there will be a day/night change every three real-time hours in the game. That means that days in Pathfinder Online will pass four times faster than real time—each in-game minute will pass in 15 real-time seconds.

With respect to seasons, the River Kingdoms are in the northern hemisphere of Golarion, and they will have seasons that correspond to the Earth's northern hemisphere. When it's winter in Seattle, it will be winter in Pathfinder Online. (Of course we'd like to have visual seasonal changes like snow in the winter, flowering foliage in the spring, leaves changing color in autumn, etc. That's a long-range objective which may not be implemented in-game for quite some time, though.)

To preserve this mapping between Golarion seasons and real seasons, the Pathfinder Online's version of Golarion will need four times as many days per year. This is a change from the Golarion of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, but it shouldn't create any significant continuity issues, as one year in Pathfinder Online will still map to one year in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, which maps to one year in real time.

It seems likely that Golarion's moon will orbit four times as slowly in Pathfinder Online as well, but moon phase by day is too fiddly to worry about in terms of continuity between the tabletop and the virtual world so it may not matter. (And the moon may not even have phases in Pathfinder Online, at least not for a long time—it's pretty far down the list of priorities to worry about at this stage of development!)
...
Real Time and the Game Clock

Many aspects of the game design (like skill training, for example) require the passage of real time. We'll ensure that there's a good way to differentiate between game time and real time when providing information about these kinds of timers. We expect that social organizations will also want to do scheduling for activities in real time (although they may then need to specify certain objectives or time limits in game time) so we'll be thinking about ways to address that as well.

It's rather weird, thinking of the planet spinning four times faster than Earth so that it completes 1461 days (365.25 x4) in one solar orbit. Would that make the spheroid even more oblate? What would that do to the tides, or even more dramatically, wind-driven weather patterns? There would be less environmental heating time in the day and less cooling at night, so I guess that might make weather and climate more stable, but I'm not sure.

I wish there was a good planet simulator program to see how different cosmological and geological variables would affect the system. The closest thing I recall was old SimEarth, and I don't think it included a lot of the variables I'd like to mess with.

CEO, Goblinworks

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We may just use 1:1 time and avoid the various problems associated with trying to have 4:1 time. We'll experiment,

Goblin Squad Member

Just a reminder:

I would, however, like to add my voice to those encouraging a slight difference in the 4:1 time scale so that 6PM local time for me is not always the exact same time of day in-game. It almost seems like you would have to do that if you're serious about this quote:

1. Players should not be forced to play in a constant state of day or night based on their local time

And:

Yeah I like the idea of a slightly offset day/night cycle so you're not always playing at the same point on the clock of the virtual world if you play at the same time in the real world.

I know you're of the same mind about it, but wanted to make sure it wasn't forgotten :)

Liberty's Edge Goblin Squad Member

If you stick with 1:1 time, could you possibly cycle sunrise and sunset forward by an hour every day over the course of 24 days (or half an hour over 48 days, etc)? This would at least mean we'd be playing in varied lighting conditions and times of in-game day over the course of that cycle, without needing to do the 4:1 calculation.

Goblin Squad Member

@Nihimon

I am curious about exactly what you are suggesting here. I do see the problems both aesthetic and mechanical to being locked into either days or nights because of play time.

Wouldn't the only real solution to that be an alternating number of Golarion days to real days, each day? Or, a random number of Golarion days to real days, each day?

Wouldn't that make things a little wonky in-game?

Goblin Squad Member

@Bringslite, Deinanira is getting at the exact same thing. The simplest solution would be to make a single Golarion day in Pathfinder Online last for 25 hours. That way, if I get home and play ever day at 6:00 PM, then on Monday it might be 6:00 PM in-game, but Tuesday it will be 5:00 PM, Wednesday 4:00 PM, etc. This all goes back to this from the actual blog:

1. Players should not be forced to play in a constant state of day or night based on their local time

Liberty's Edge Goblin Squad Member

Nihimon wrote:

@Bringslite, Deinanira is getting at the exact same thing. The simplest solution would be to make a single Golarion day in Pathfinder Online last for 25 hours. That way, if I get home and play ever day at 6:00 PM, then on Monday it might be 6:00 PM in-game, but Tuesday it will be 5:00 PM, Wednesday 4:00 PM, etc. This all goes back to this from the actual blog:

1. Players should not be forced to play in a constant state of day or night based on their local time

Exactly!

I play pretty much in the 6-9 pm time slot (Eastern US), which isn't bad and offers both day and night lighting... as long as the server time is East Coast. If the server is on Pacific time, I'm playing at 3-6 pm and rarely seeing in-game night. It can get even more extreme for, say, European players. And with a single-server game, there is no option to simply roll on a server closer to your time zone.

Goblin Squad Member

That would solve it, I suppose. You would still suffer from day/night at least several real days in a row though. Still if that would make the game better for those players, all to the good. :)

CEO, Goblinworks

We can decouple the day/night cycle from the game calendar. That would be odd, I know, but it accomplishes the goals of having people play during daytime and nighttime without screwing up synching holidays to the game calendar.

Goblinworks Executive Founder

Hrm- a 23 or 25 hour day, and each new month begins on the same day as it does on Earth? The months would be 1-2 days longer or shorter, and days of the week would not be congruent unless days were skipped or intercalary days added as needed.

A 23 hour day would also have the effect that someone who played for the same hour each day and started playing just after in-game 'sunrise' would experience morning, daytime, afternoon, evening, and night in that order, over about a month of realtime.

Goblin Squad Member

12 months of 28 days each would cause Earth and Golarion years to synch up if the Golarion days were 26 hours long.

I'm not opposed to simple 1:1 time though, perhaps with an offset so that peak server activity coincides with noon in the Crusader Road area of the River Kingdoms. Modules are instanced, so they can take place asynchronously with the RK, and activity in settlements need not be tied to sunlight hours alone in a world with continual flame spells and races with low-light vision and darkvision.

Goblin Squad Member

What is the lowest common denominator? How small of a play window do they have to cater to? Do we end up with 30 real minute day/night cycles?

Goblin Squad Member

What are the in game differences between day and night? If they are just limits to perception, couldn't there just be a toggle "see" the environment as day or night but keep the "perception" range limited to actual game conditions?

i.e. It appears daytime but the player's perception of mobs etc... is limited to actual game time of day/night?

Goblin Squad Member

Ryan Dancey wrote:
We may just use 1:1 time and avoid the various problems associated with trying to have 4:1 time. We'll experiment,

But then most of us will never see what PFO looks like during the day :(

2:1 sounds right to me.

Goblin Squad Member

avari3 wrote:
But then most of us will never see what PFO looks like during the day :(

This is why I brought up the quote from the blog:

1. Players should not be forced to play in a constant state of day or night based on their local time

And why we've been discussing 23, 25, or 26 hour days.

No one wants you to have to always play at 3:00 AM game time just because you live in Puerto Rico :)

Liberty's Edge Goblin Squad Member

Bringslite wrote:
What is the lowest common denominator? How small of a play window do they have to cater to? Do we end up with 30 real minute day/night cycles?

Under the cycling plan - whether it's a 24-hour cycle, or one of the others - the play window length doesn't matter. Game sunrise and sunset will progress relative to actual sunrise and sunset throughout the month, so someone who plays from 3:00 to 3:30 pm EDT will still experience different lighting over the course of the month.

Goblin Squad Member

Nihimon wrote:

And why we've been discussing 23, 25, or 26 hour days.

No one wants you to have to always play at 3:00 AM game time just because you live in Puerto Rico :)

Ha!

I still kinda think something too close to 1:1 isn't right. I mean our chars get a lot more done in 2 hours than we do. So still voting for 2:1.

Goblin Squad Member

Deianira wrote:
Bringslite wrote:
What is the lowest common denominator? How small of a play window do they have to cater to? Do we end up with 30 real minute day/night cycles?

Under the cycling plan - whether it's a 24-hour cycle, or one of the others - the play window length doesn't matter. Game sunrise and sunset will progress relative to actual sunrise and sunset throughout the month, so someone who plays from 3:00 to 3:30 pm EDT will still experience different lighting over the course of the month.

Unless the in-game day cycles are short though, you would still experience many of your "play days" that are either day or night in a row (assuming you play 30 mins at the same time every day). Is that acceptable?

Liberty's Edge Goblin Squad Member

Bringslite wrote:
Deianira wrote:
Bringslite wrote:
What is the lowest common denominator? How small of a play window do they have to cater to? Do we end up with 30 real minute day/night cycles?

Under the cycling plan - whether it's a 24-hour cycle, or one of the others - the play window length doesn't matter. Game sunrise and sunset will progress relative to actual sunrise and sunset throughout the month, so someone who plays from 3:00 to 3:30 pm EDT will still experience different lighting over the course of the month.

Unless the in-game day cycles are short though, you would still experience many of your "play days" that are either day or night in a row (assuming you play 30 mins at the same time every day). Is that acceptable?

For me? Sure. For everyone else? I'd expect so.

It's not necessary to play both day and night in the same play session, or even alternate them day to day. It's just allowing people to experience both, with some regularity, without anyone having to radically change their gaming time to do so.

Goblin Squad Member

If it allows more enjoyment for all, without making things too weird, I am all for it. :)

Goblinworks Executive Founder

All of the benefits of a 23,25, or 26 hour cycle also apply to a 23/4 or 26/3 hour cycle, except the number of day/night cycles per month needs to be adjusted.

CEO, Goblinworks

I just don't think near-day long cycles are good. The cycles need to be more like 4-6 hours.

Goblin Squad Member

Could day/night cycles be a function of the client operating from the local system time? Thus if I am on the East Coast playing at 3:00 a.m. Eastern it will be suitably dark in game while the player character next to me operated by someone in Sydney would see daylight?


Not if there will be events dependent on in-game timing, like certain monsters appearing only at night or bonuses to stealth at night.

Goblin Squad Member

Those are newly expressed concerns. The first were always having to play in day or night if you always play for say, the same one hour only each time. Like 10pm eastern...

Goblin Squad Member

Ryan Dancey wrote:
I just don't think near-day long cycles are good. The cycles need to be more like 4-6 hours.

The one thing I worry about is activities that need to occur in either day or night only. If there are such things in PFO, then it can be very frustrating to have to sit around waiting for 2 or 3 hours before you can do what you want to do. If the day-night cycle is purely aesthetic, though, then it's not a problem.

Would it work to simply celebrate the key holidays every 4th PFO-year?

Goblin Squad Member

Nihimon wrote:
Would it work to simply celebrate the key holidays every 4th PFO-year?

I think the 'Time is the Fire in which We Burn' blog also stated a desire to have seasonal changes, eventually.

I'm leaning more toward 1:1 time myself, with limited 'must be at X hour' stuff and ways of working around the timing (asynchronous instancing, other ways to achieve equivalent results, etc.), but a day/night cycle isn't necessarily a 'minimum viable product' feature anyway. We could go through a few months of EE and see how server population settles out.

Goblinworks Executive Founder

I could see a system in which Oathday lasted for four or six light/dark cycles.

Goblin Squad Member

DeciusBrutus wrote:
I could see a system in which Oathday lasted for four or six light/dark cycles.

They could make a system where the day/night cycle and the seasons were of random duration, but then we'd have Westeros, not Golarion.

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