Change how the time system works

[Snowie]

Short description: Change how the time system works in game to make day or night roleplay more flexible.

Detailed description: Currently, the time system is based on UTC 0, which means most of the roleplay happens during night since most players around Europe are able to play at that time and it's the most busy time (Over 250 players on). That means that at 9AM you'll barley see any players, while on 4AM everyone will be working or doing their thing. Night roleplay can be fun however most of it focuses on clubbing, which I find quite boring. As other players have mentioned before, there are tons of open clubs and barley any players in them. So what I suggest is to change the 24 hours system and speed up time or forward time within 12 hours once in a few days. That will make roleplay available at both daytime and nighttime, and thus a more diversed roleplay will come.

Commands to add: There's /time and it's displayed when you login, so I don't see one needed.

Items to add: N/A

How would your suggestion improve the server?: It'd create a more diversed roleplay and let other players roleplay at different times regardless their timezone.

Additional information: N/A

[Vash Baldeus]

This suggestion was made in the past, honestly making 24 real life hours into 2 days in-game will be rather confusing for people and throw allot of people off that. Honestly I understand your reasoning but sadly the early ain't flat and the sun rotates and each side of the earth has different time zones. So trying to adhere to the US/Canadian players for example with the time would severely affect the European player hard, or other way around it would affect US/Canadian players. Sadly there is no honest way to make it fair for everyone.

 

I am not supporting this due to the confusing it might cause between players and their time zone.

[Lionhearted]

This would create severe confusion on date and time specific events as dates and times won't align with any given real life date or time zone thus confusing players and many events may go missed due to the confusion.

[FearnR]

As a north american I rarely see the day light in game, as much as it would be nice to be able to play more during server day time, I do understand how this will cause confusion. Especially for gov't workers and other business that have documents that they have to time stamp. No matter the time or time speed, there will always be people happy with it and not happy with it, considering we roleplay being in north america, following NA laws and what not, it would be sense to have NA time. However, it is what it is, and there will never be a perfect time for everyone. For that I don't support this post, because we might as well just keep it consistent.

[Pan Grama]

I've seen threads like this before and I absolutely get it. Some timezones are so out of whack that it's kinda an immersion breaker.

 

How about we utilize a Daylight Savings Time kinda system where we switch the timezone every few months. Say every 4 months, on a set date so we all have to adjust. So Europe gets 4 months, the Americas gets 4 and Australasia gets 4 months.

 

We RP it like a Daylight Savings Time where we go to bed and it's daylight and wake up in the dark.

 

It's a small immersion breaker that we could all share to cater for players everywhere.

[Vash Baldeus]

14 hours ago, FearnR said:

As a north american I rarely see the day light in game, as much as it would be nice to be able to play more during server day time, I do understand how this will cause confusion. Especially for gov't workers and other business that have documents that they have to time stamp. No matter the time or time speed, there will always be people happy with it and not happy with it, considering we roleplay being in north america, following NA laws and what not, it would be sense to have NA time. However, it is what it is, and there will never be a perfect time for everyone. For that I don't support this post, because we might as well just keep it consistent.

Honestly, no, there was a server (does not exist no more, poor management) who went with NA California timezone while the majority of the players were European. No one was happy with that since most night time Roleplay was inaccessible for European players. This is a European server, with majority of European players, there were votes on the Timezone matter before and the management decided. I wish there was other ways of dealing with time but the earth is not flat (cough Flat Earthers you are wrong! cough) and thus we have different Time-zones. Trying to eat the cake and keep it whole won't work here meaning if you cater to the NA players you will put EU on the down side, same applies with catering to EU. 

 

Initially the server was +1 UTC when it launched, then down the road they changed it to -2 UTC which for me personally made it impossible to attend ANY night time event since I am on +2 UTC hence a 21:00 means 01:00 for me and so on. Then they changed to 0 UTC which I am happy with even though it's more or less Neutral timezone, since I am 2 hours ahead of it. With all honesty this isn't the first thread about the Timezone, definitely not the last one ( I personally wrote at least one about it here or in General Discussion back when the server was -2 UTC ) 

[Pillsbury]

I see the issues and I actually some-what agree with them. Being in the North American Time-zones (specifically EST) - I am five hours apart from the server, witch is not to bad compared to some others who are six, seven and even eight-ten hours. At the time of 07:51 AM in-game, there are 48 players on. In realistic terms, since San Andreas (supposedly being near/in the USA, or a remote island near NA), we would think the timezones would either be PST, CST or EST. I don't see it being a big problem in-game, but in reality, in this time in the morning, people would be getting up and getting ready for work, sending kids to school and preparing for there daily lives. Me being the epic gamer I am, staying up till 04:00-05:00 AM every night, the player base usually does not rise from there, and by that time, it is usually around 10:00 AM. At 10:00 AM, the majority of the world is up and running. 

 

At 10:00-12:00 AM my time, the server is already at 04:00/05:00 PM. We are in the middle of the day, and half of the North American population has not started there day yet, due to our timezone differences within our country. The server (from what I have seen), peaks around 02:00 PM/03:00 PM EST, at this time, North American timezones are fully up, and either in the mid of there morning, or in the afternoon and have started there day. At 03:00 PM - it is already 08:00 PM, the sun has basically set, and the NA Population has just joined. 

 

I have also found it extremely hard to run a business with NA Timezone workers. We have to RP having meetings at 02:00 in the morning and call it 'normal'. 

 

I definitely think we either need to set a custom sort of time to meet in the middle, or move it to a realistic terms for actual life RP. Five hours is not that *big* of a difference, however, in RP terms it really sets certain moods with RP terms. 

 

I also would like to say, EU people seem like pretty big gamers themselves.. I have plenty of EU friends that stay up at the times Americans would stay up to get night and even morning sometimes. 

Edit: I looked into some timezones, I decided these might be helpful to meet in the middle for all of the players:
UTZ+0 (Hour behind the typical UK timezone)
GST-2 (King Edward Point Island - this is two hours from both UK timezone and EST Timezone - IMO, this is the most fair one, it gives NA 2 more hours of daytime, and EU Area's still have time for night-time RP.)

Edit 2: Per say if we used GST-2 - at 03:00 PM in-game, it would be 05:00 PM for EU and 01:00 PM for EST, this meaning 12:00 PM for CST and 10:00 AM for PST - at 08:00 PM in-game, it is only 10:00 PM for EU.. GST-2 splits the difference completely and gives both sides the opportunity to have day and night-time for a few hours. I personally think it's a bit unfair to lean one way and not the other. Giving up two hours of night-time RP as-well for the EU side would seem like a decently fair deal in the trade as-well.

Edited June 15, 2019 by Pillsbury

[St3fan[NL]]

This was changed a year ago to compensate with USA players. However the mayority of players are from Europe or east from it hence the time is probably staying like this to compensate for everyone.

 

People with +6 from server time would become even more behind if the time changes more towards the US timezone. Changing it towards them causes the time to be more ahead of the US players hence the time is most likely center on the GMT so its fair for everyone. 

 

I'll be against changing for this reason to keep it fair for the eastern players who are already +x hours as it is. Which would only become more if changed.

[1357]

The only two reasons clubs are so popular in the server i feel like is because due to the large map GTA V has it makes it difficult to find role play elsewhere and because we need more things to do and right now there isn't much variety in the server.

 

I think it's fine as it is now, and once the server picks up more NA players it no longer be as much of a problem.. the low player base just makes it seem so.

[Nervous]

We made a big poll not so long ago to change the server time, it'll remain as is for now.