Posts: 3,898
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Joined: Apr 2005
if players have a need to do things in private (e.g. crafting) then it would be possible to allow them to play in the past, but it would have to be carefully managed.
let's suppose that our player, Jack, trades with other players during 'daytime' and crafts magical items during 'nighttime' (let's suppose these items *must* be crafted at night for lore reasons, perhaps because demon summoning is involved). when he last logged off, he was in his shop (closed) and 'nighttime' was just beginning. today, he is logging on and it is currently 'daytime'. because he logged off in a private area (his shop) the game gives him the option of resuming where he left off (still 'nighttime') or fast-forwarding to the current time ('daytime'). if he chooses to resume, he can play in the past, crafting items or whatever, but he must stay in his closed shop. once he's done with that, he can then fast-forward to 'current' time and open his shop, at which point Jack becomes visible to other players in his now-opened shop (but he can never do anything in the past that would have been visible to other players if any had been there to see it). if it has been many in-game days since he last logged off, and he's restricted to making only a certain number of items each night, Jack might choose to fast-forward to the next night to do more crafting. but until Jack fast-forwards to the current time and opens his shop, other players only see a closed shop and there is no way for them to know whether Jack is inside or not.
and, like the box containing Schroedinger's cat, there is no reason for other players to care whether he's inside or not (or what times he was and wasn't there) as long as the door remains bolted.
but this only helps if players have things they can do in private while waiting for the current day/night cycle to get to where they want, and of course you can never rewind once you've gotten current. and it's only *useful* to do this if the things you can do during the day are different from what can be done at night, or if long crafting cooldowns are involved. otherwise you might as well always play at the current time.
and it is absolutely no help at all for anything that requires interacting with others, or which changes visible game state for others, which is almost everything in most MMO's, especially PVP MMO's.
there is some room for abuse with this, of course. if demand for an item with a long crafting cooldown suddenly spikes (and prices go up) you can take advantage of this by logging on a crafter who hasn't played in a while and making a lot of those items in the past (but only if you already had all the ingredients available -- you wouldn't be able to leave your shop to buy ingredients without fast-forwarding to the current time).
-ken
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