One of the things I believe would help with immersion and event planning in ESO is the establishment of TST, Tamriel Standard Time. This would give players the ability to see what time it is in Tamriel at any given time and would allow players to schedule very specific meet up times and plan their adventures more efficiently.
Topics:
- What is a day?
- An Asynchronous ESO Calendar
- In-Game functionality
- In-Game Calendar
- Crown Store item
- Physical Clock and App
What is a day?
A day within Tamriel should be one full day/night cycle. I go over my 10 hour day concept HERE and believe a 10 hour day would help with the creation of a standard time within Tamriel. Just as earth, Tamriel has a 24 hour day. With a 10 hour day we would see the following:
- 1 Tamriel day = 10 Earth Hours
- 1 Tamriel Hour = 25 Earth Minutes
- 1 Tamriel minute = 25 Earth Seconds
I believe these times should be the same across all of Tamriel, I considered the possibility of time zones across Tamriel where the time would set off of the Imperial City. Ebonheart Pact would be -1 hour and the Daggerfall Covenant would be +1 hour giving Tamriel 3 times zones... but time zones would actually be counterproductive to the core reasons of having Tamriel Standard Time, which is to help with player event scheduling. It would be quite irritating to have to keep up with which time zone your event was in... I only mention it here because I thought time zones were an interesting idea but they would be complication for the sake of complication.
An Asynchronous ESO Calendar
Once we have a standard time, ZOS could establish days of the week, months, and even what year it is in ESO. ESO would benefit from an asynchronous ESO calendar. This would mean that, As described in my
Day Length Adjustment & Holiday Implementation thread, each cycle of the sun should constitute 1 calendar day in Tamriel and ESO should recognize these days. Again, these dates and times are assuming a 10 hour Tamrielic day.
Every 10 hours one day would pass. In one earth day, we would see 2.4 Tamrielic days. This would leave us with:
- 1 Tamriel Week = 2.9 earth days
- 1 Tamriel Month = 12.5 Earth days (approximately)
- 1 Tamriel Year = 21.7 Earth weeks (about 5.4 months)
This would mean that holidays in Tamriel would happen about twice every earth year, sometimes three times a year. I go over the holidays and how they could be celebrated in ESO in my Individual Holiday Concepts Based on Lore thread.
If ESO were to last 10 years, only 22 years would pass in Tamriel. Being that ESO begins in 2E 582 and Orsinium is said to take place in 2E 583 and the next critical event occurs about 2E 800, I don't think ZOS would run the risk of stepping on any toes, lore wise. If ZOS were to start the calendar on 2E 585 they would have 215 years in which to allow the events of ESO to take place. This would equate to about 97 Earth years. I think it's safe to say we have no worries of them running out of time for the game.
In-Game functionality
While the easy way to integrate the time into ESO would be to add a /time function to the game I think there could be more immersive in-game alternatives added as well.
All across Tamriel there could be sundials placed in cities and along roadways. This could even be the source of a few quests. Perhaps you need to repair the sundial of one town, deliver a sundial to another town, figure out why one sundial always shows one specific time (some Daedra is to blame, of course), teach a boy (who is obviously a grown man... as per ESO standards) how to tell time on the sundial after your mother asks you to track him down because he is always late, or steal the sundial of another town.
Every sundial should display the correct time in the correct fashion and players should be able to tell the time by looking at it. If a player selects the sundial they should see whatever is displayed when they type /time.
The time could also be displayed on the players map, as suggested by
@Necrelios in his poll thread regarding just such a feature
POLL: Would you like to see a "Current Time in Tamriel" Calendar on your Map?
In-Game Calendar
This should be accompanied by an in-game account based calendar interface which would show the player both the Earth Calendar and the Tameriel Calendar. This would allow players to schedule events and could even synch with the calendars. This could also lead to ZOS supported and promoted events where an invite to the events that are advertised on ESO Live is sent to all players and players are able to accept or reject the invite to add the event to their personal calendar.
So let's say we plan to meet at 13:00 Morndas, Sun's Dawn the 8th, we both put that in our calendars but a personal calendar will tell us when it is in our time zone. The inverse could also work. If you schedule an event on your calendar, and send out invites to friends, they will receive the invite in Tamriel Standard Time which would, in turn, show them the time of the event in their time zone. There would no longer be a need for players to try to figure out time zone conversions.
Crown Store item
Within the Crown Store ZOS could sell a mechanical Dwemer Time Piece. A pocket-watch that the character pulls out whenever the character types /time. This would pretty much be the purchase of a time checking emote.
ZOS could even sell other emotes that could be attached to /time2 and /time3. Perhaps one simply has the player look up into the sky, with the blade of their hand rested against their brow, checking the position of the sun. Another could have the player kneel, draw a circle on the ground with their knife, plunge the knife in the middle of the circle to create a sort of sun-dial.
All of these would serve the same function and provide the player with the same information. The time.
Physical Clock & App
ZOS could also sell an actual physical ESO Themed desk clock that keeps Tamriel Time. This should be a collectors piece that would be bought primarily by TES and ESO fans. This could display the time, day of week, day, month, year and perhaps even moon phase.
All of this information could also be included in the much needed but very unlikely ESO Companion App. The App could even synch with the in-game player calendar.
This would allow players to schedule their play time more effectively. They could get live updates on their phone of raid schedules, scheule the time they're going to be on and if the app included a guild chat function (why wouldn't it?) they could make plans for later while they can't play ESO.
Overview
Having a standard Tamrielic time would be one of the greatest additions to ESO simply because of the social connectivity it would provide. It would lead to players spending more time in ESO. The time spent in ESO would be more efficient, an actual cross-community social structure would be established, and players would integrate ESO into their schedule more than they do now.
Thoughts?
What ESO really needs is an Auction Horse.
That's right...
Horse.
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Want more crazy ideas? Check out my
Concept Repository!