Games with "real" time vs. in-game time

So, games that show the time passing. Do you prefer it when the clock syncs up with your real clock? In-game sunsets only at sunset where you life? Or do you prefer it when it's more compressed, so you see more days ticking by?

Honestly I think I prefer real time. Something about twenty minute long "days" weirds me out. Plus then it feels like you're spending half of your game time in the dark. (Granted, I suppose in a game with real time, if you only played at night you'd be spending your ENTIRE game time in the dark.)

I also liked when this was pulled off with Pokemon Gold/Silver. Want an Umbreon? Gotta stay up late! (Or trick the game's clock, I guess.)

How about you guys?

I don't have a preference. The day/night system like in Ocarina of Time never bothered me, nor does the one in Gold/Silver.

I like it best when there's no real telling of how much time passes other than for story purposes. FFX, Vagrant Story and Dark Souls come to mind; noone really knows how much time passes in these stories and it's great :roll2

I smurfing hate having to wait for IRL days or times to do certain things.

I"m looking at you Pokemon.

I prefer in game time. I play a lot of games at night and I don't want to spend my whole game time at night

Depends really. If there are very big effects on the gameplay from playing in night, it's nice that it passes soon enough for me to get the stuff i want done done before i have to go to bed irl. However, if the game lets you wait or sleep that's not much or a problem.

20 minute days are way too short. I think a full 24 hour cycle should at least take 2 hours.

And pumpkin, even if the game had one hour lasting one hour, the game wouldn't necessary sync the time with your own. It could be made to only make time pass while you're actually playing, so the first two nights you play it would be day, then the second two nights you play it would be night.

I don't think I've ever played a game that follows "real time", now that you mention it. I feel like I may be missing out.

Well, unless you count Metal Gear Solid 3 during the fight with (SPOILER)The End where if you take too much real time to kill him he dies of old age. That was amazing to me at the time.

I definitely prefer condensed. If there's actually a need for different times of day then it'd feel more like a chore having to actually wait for that time in real life.

what if you could fast forward it by a wait/sleep feature? Would 1:1 time be all right then?

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Originally Posted by Mirage

what if you could fast forward it by a wait/sleep feature? Would 1:1 time be all right then?

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I don't know. I didn't even like having to do that in Skyrim and that wasn't 1:1. I think I just dislike time having an effect on gameplay.

Castlevania 64 was another one that did it. Some times you'd have to wait for day/night for a room to open, or a particular cut-scene to happen to advance the plot. You could cut the wait with Moon/Sun cards, but it was still kind of annoying.

I enjoy both, thought I think I like the compressed time just a bit more. Xenoblade Chronicles pulled it off perfectly, IMO, with each hour lasting a bit longer than a minute and you being able to manipulate the time.

Though there was something unique about having to explorr that creepy manor in Pokemon Diamond at Midnight.

Game-time. I like how FFXIV does it - roughly an hour for a game-day. It's not too long but not too short. I dislike the idea of having to be gaming at a certain time in order to be able to access something - it's not user-friendly at all. You could fix it so that the game didn't match the real-world clock, but just time progression pace... but I would not want to have to leave my game sitting for 12 hours so the sun can come up/down in order for me to progress with whatever I was doing.

FFXIV is the same as XI, and also the same as Xenoblade, with each minute ingame lasting roughly 2.4 seconds, for a roughly one hour long day. That's way better than the crazy 20-minute days but i still think it is a bit short.

But again Loony Bob. Most offline games let you fast forward time. TES and Fallout games let you just press t and forwards time one hour per second. Xenoblade lets you manually set the time to whatever you wish.

The 1 hour=1 minute system works pretty well for The Sims 3.

The sims isn't a game where you immerse yourself in the actual environment, though.

3 is actually an immersive open world, so it counts. Too bad they decided that 4 didn't need that :gator:

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Originally Posted by Mirage

But again Loony Bob. Most offline games let you fast forward time. TES and Fallout games let you just press t and forwards time one hour per second. Xenoblade lets you manually set the time to whatever you wish.

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I still prefer actually feeling like the day is progressing. It's more immersive to have a faster flowing time because it allows you to actually "feel" the time passing by. Skipping time takes away that immersion for me.

if it was up to me, i'd put one day into either 8 or 6 hours. 3x or 4x progression. I use this when i just cruise-drive in GT6, and it works great. Goes from dark to dusk in about one lap of the nurburgring, and then you see the sunrise on the 2nd or 3rd lap and then it's daytime on the 4th or 5th.

I think car racing games are extremely different, though, for obvious reasons.

Personally, though, I would find it really weird to see a sunrise and sunset in a matter of a few laps of a racetrack. I can see how it would be cool, don't get me wrong, but it certainly doesn't fit in with any kind of immersion because of the entire fact that races are something heavily based on time.

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Originally Posted by Loony BoB

I think car racing games are extremely different, though, for obvious reasons.

Personally, though, I would find it really weird to see a sunrise and sunset in a matter of a few laps of a racetrack. I can see how it would be cool, don't get me wrong, but it certainly doesn't fit in with any kind of immersion because of the entire fact that races are something heavily based on time.

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Nevertheless, PD thought it was a great idea to only put super-compressed 24-minute "endurance" races in the game, where you literally go from mid-day to midnight over the course of one nurburgring lap. It's stupid, and that alone was enough to put me off from those races. I really think 4-6 hour day/night cycles would work in an offline/single player game, especially if timeskip was possible. 90 minutes of daytime, 90 minutes of nighttime, 30 minutes dusk, 30 minutes dawn. It would give me time to really soak myself in the beautiful sunset, and not basically miss it if i was inside a building the 2 minutes it lasted.

Yeah, much much prefer compressed time. Not sure what the ratio is for Elder Scrolls is but I think it's done well. And I don't mind having my character taking naps to kill time until a shop opens. Xenoblade did good but not realistic or immersive. So it was really game'y. But also super convenient

elder scrolls is 24 minutes for a day i think, and that's way too fast!

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Originally Posted by Loony BoB

Game-time. I like how FFXIV does it - roughly an hour for a game-day. It's not too long but not too short. I dislike the idea of having to be gaming at a certain time in order to be able to access something - it's not user-friendly at all. You could fix it so that the game didn't match the real-world clock, but just time progression pace... but I would not want to have to leave my game sitting for 12 hours so the sun can come up/down in order for me to progress with whatever I was doing.

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I do agree - I tend to game at night-time, due to me being busy during the day. If there was a morning or afternoon specific event going on, I'd have to really plan my day. Condensed is best, I'd say.

Having said that, I do appreciate the idea behind in real life time. Someone mentioned the act of sleeping to get to what time you want to be at, which is a good idea. It means you don't have to wait around for a time specific event to happen.

EDIT: Having thought about it, I think Lightning Returns actually did a decent job of it, to be honest. With the whole countdown as well, you really felt time slipping away.

Almost always in-game time. Real-time can work, but only if the game really calls for it or if the effect is almost exclusively cosmetic.

LIke, I'm okay with real-time in Animal Crossing, but would dread if a game like Xenoblade functioned in real-time.