[ACuriousGrey]

I have already put most of my thoughts in the discord suggestions thread regarding this exact topic, but I suppose I'll just put it all here, as well as some other things that have come to mind since that thread. I wholeheartedly agree with the idea that this would be unbearably slow. In fact, I entirely disagree with the idea that there are positives, for a number of reasons. I feel as if the problems that this would address have absolutely nothing to do with the year system in the first place. But, I will break down my thoughts into several points.

1) A vast majority of characters probably don't even last until they hit age DR. Yes, I will note that age DR hasn't come up in arguments for the week-long year, but the main reason I bring it up is simple: It is the only part of your character that is actively degrading for taking a long time. And, as it stands, that's thirty years since creation- five entire months. With Age DR taking another two and a half months to full kick in, for an entire lifetime of seven and a half months. That's a long time.

2) This change might feel better for the people with not as much time, but it will become stifling to the people who actual do have time, to a painful degree. Let's look at, for example, not the time that it takes to do things, but rather the extra time that would be added if we did the new year system.

-You will need to wait 2 days more for a Sabbath/Plaguelands/Faceless racial/anything that requires a year cooldown. This also, for you faith friends over there, means that you need to wait 2 extra days to pray on that person that got AFK prayed on while you weren't looking, and 2 days longer you suffer that -10 vit from blessing.
-You will need to wait 6 days more for Festivals/anything that has a 3 year cooldown.
-Anything that has a 5 year cooldown (often certain dev items/mechanics on uniques) will need a little over 2 weeks longer to wait.
-Artisan/Master/Grandmaster will take 4 weeks/6 weeks/8 weeks longer to come off cooldown.
-You will need to wait 3 weeks longer for your kids to spawn, assuming they spawn at 11. If your kids spawn at 13, that's almost 4 weeks. At 16, that's almost five weeks you need to wait.
-Going from 11 to 16 (to escape age DR) takes a week and a half longer.
-It will take an entire two months extra to even hit mature adult, if you enjoy RPing older people. At least a month or two more if you want to hit Elder in your time playing the game.

I feel as if, looking at all of the waiting you have to do, this would become severely more painful. An artificial increase to the wait times.

3) The feeling of things going too fast is not related at all to the year system. It's related to the players around you and the community at large.

One of the things I've seen talked about most was that the year increase for Baldur's Gate 3 felt really good and really relaxed. And, honestly? I entirely agree with that. It was nice, and felt relaxing. However- That had nothing to do with the days per year being increased. I think the reason people fixate on the year when they speak about things going too fast is because it's the only measurable metric for how "fast" or "slow" things are going.

In reality, the true reason for things feeling "fast" or "slow" is because of what the players themselves are getting up to. Throughout E4 there's been several waves where I've felt things were going way too fast and several waves where I've felt things were going way too painfully slow. I do not feel as if people will slow down in their activities unless they are actively forced to- something that, notably, feels really terrible. I don't know about you, but I despise time gates in games, and I quite frankly don't want to deal with it in Eternia. (also related to my previous point)

4) One of the biggest joys in Eternia for me is watching several generations of families grow, and seeing how they develop and change over the years. I think the most prominent and long-lasting example of this is probably the Equisols in Aphros. A family that has had a legacy since the start of E4, and a family that still continues to have a legacy, 80 IC years later. A family that has seen four distinctly different generations with different trials and tribulations and experiences. If we go from 5 days per year to 7 days per year, we will lose about a one and a half generations we could have seen in a year.

Ultimately, this is the end of my schizo rant. If you read through all of this, I am thoroughly surprised, and I thank you.

[Shanal]

5 days is fine imo. 7 days is a bit too slow.

But there are some positives, a lot of people have busier schedules and time passes too quickly, so 7 days would help them. I think it'd also encourage players to not make their characters super young just for the sake of it; as in my experience (at least from prior games), people tend to enjoy having their characters be super established and powerful during their "prime" years (aka 20s), but it's hard to do that if you're not starting really young, specially if you have tighter schedule; so having more time per year to do all that would probably inspire more 16+ starts.

Also very few would want to spend multiple weeks being stuck playing as an 11-13 years old lol, specially as really younger age can lead to bit of stagnancy in development

Though on a personal level, I used to enjoy time locks and longer years, but now I think 5 is perfect, not too short, not too long.

[Robo]

For someone who has fallen from being a pretty active (majority of free time goes to Meranthe) to being a somewhat inactive casual player (a few hours of weekly free time goes to Meranthe), 7 days per IC year is inciting, as I won't feel as bad for not getting online and realizing 4/5ths of the IC year passed without me doing anything for the year, as my character that started at 11 is now 35 or 36 years old (and is only 214 RPL because of my somewhat unsocial playstyle / low time dedicated to Meranthe).

While it does make seem more friendly to casuals for Age DR reasons, making it feel like they can take X day off from playing on the week to spend on Y hobby, really active players will continue on, and who knows, we could see a 220 RPL character that is 13 years old due to this change. It's an exaggeration, but 210 doesn't seem like too much of a stretch.

Additionally, I'll always think back to the beginning of the E4 wipe where war between nations happened 3 days in, and while X was being negotiated and needed to pause due to sleep, Y happened on the side and stopped X. These players could also make progress in doing (insert activity / conflict) while the casuals decide to take more breaks, and when the casual player comes back, they could get lost if a lot were to happen. Longer years wouldn't stop this and could potentially make it worse if someone higher up in a faction decides to use the extra two days as a break from Meranthe and the equivalent of Aphros getting set on fire happens on the first day of that.

With a game like Meranthe, you get what you put into it (most of the time). So with casuals (like me), a change like this wouldn't change my character's status other than being able to fight for a bit longer.

Though, I do think longer years could help someone flesh out their character's interactions, instead of having to rush it. However on the topic of raids, during the most active wartimes, we saw raids happening every week, so instead of a year and a half, it will be yearly (ICly) raids.

Just a few thoughts that I had at the top of my head, and honestly, I'm fine with whichever is picked. (Hopefully I do get more free time in the future, though.)

[Iotasilver]

My thought that would fix this whole thing.

If you don't log on at all during a year, you don't get age dr.

So you have to afk for a month IRL due to medical/work/school/ect? your age dr gets sent back 6 years. I feel like this would fix most of the problems...

[Spicy Serious]

I don’t think I can confidently vote on it one way or another.

I don’t really have a ton of spare energy for getting on the game for extended periods, a lot of the free time I do have is usually spent on other hobbies/spending time with friends in other games (since most of mine have migrated away). So I wind up with the…fun scenario of blinking and realizing that I got to spend a grand total of one week of actual play time as a teen, or young adult or what have you. And I could care less about age dr, I don’t fight and I’d lose if I had 109 dr or -109, what I care about is there’s certainly a difference in role playing as a teen and roleplaying a proper adult. And it’s never felt like I’ve really gotten the proper time with any of it.

But ultimately I donnnt know how it -would- effect people with the time to enjoy these things. I’d want it, it’d probably(?) help me enjoy characters more. But I can’t anticipate wider consequences past that.


Idk man I jus like rp’ing and don’t always have the time/energy for hunting ppl to do it with ingane

[mat13295]

If it's changed and year changes aren't on a Monday i will riot.

[Raffile]

Hello! Experiencing the one really long year this wipe has made me kind of really want it. The year was jam packed with many events and the year felt very important to both me and the growth of my character. I do understand that a lot of people think that shorter years mean faster development but sometimes that's not true. After casting my vote also I noticed a lot more people most of thought the same thing.

I vote for longer years for more impactful years, instead of speed running characters and really focusing on the story and arcs. I do understand the negatives but I believe the stories are more important. Thank you for creating this thread

[Cloutio2x]

If the injury/cool down stuff stays the same ig it’s okay. Or y’all could just slow the years down when the traffic is low then have things pick back up when everyone is playing idk fr but uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh lower the cooldown on power smash

[Nectarine Sunset]

powersmash is fine, clout, shut the fuck up

[Cloutio2x]

: ( i just want to have a running joke that one day may be taken seriously even tho I don’t really care but said thing that im jokingly asking for still benefits me. I think the comedic value here is immense as the post has nothing to do with the skill power smash regardless uh yall seen what I said in the first post get on tht