Arena Time Limits

Bukariin

Currently there's a hard limit on how long a spar can last, and it's fairly short.  While it's generally sufficient for sparring, it's rather awkward for testing and novice training purposes, often requiring two or three separate Arena entries just to finish up your work.

I also understand that the time limits are necessary as other people could be waiting for their turn.  But if nobody is waiting, there's no reason for there to be a time limit in the Arena. 

So I propose an ARENA QUEUE mechanic.  Basically, if you wish to use the Arena and it's already in use, do ARENA QUEUE CHALLENGE (person).  If (person) accepts your challenge, a five-minute timer is placed on the combatants in the Arena.  At the end of this timer, you and your party will enter the Arena.  Otherwise, the Arena will be in use without a timer at all.  If you or a member of your queued party leave the staging grounds during the timer, you are removed from the queue (as is the timer if you were the only queued party).

Multiple parties can ARENA QUEUE, and they will be allowed into the Arena in the order in which they queued.  If two or more parties are queued, the first party in automatically has a ten-minute time limit which is not modified by more people joining the queue.

Thoughts?

Eld

Pay the extra couple hundred gold and go to Delos?

Sybilla

Or you could talk to a culture aide in your city to modify the length of time you want to use the arena for. They can use this:

ARENA SETUP <arena> DURATION <15-60 minutes>
   - By default, the game will have a duration of 15 minutes.
     With this setting you can set it from 15 to 60 minutes.

which can probably suit most purposes.

Bukariin

Sybilla said:

Or you could talk to a culture aide in your city to modify the length of time you want to use the arena for. They can use this:

ARENA SETUP <arena> DURATION <15-60 minutes>
   - By default, the game will have a duration of 15 minutes.
     With this setting you can set it from 15 to 60 minutes.

which can probably suit most purposes.

But nobody sets it for 60 minutes because people don't want to have to potentially wait for an hour to get into the arena.  That's what the queuing part is for.

Sybilla

They can change it just as easily. If you know you're going to have a bunch of novices training announce you're running an hour long training program and have at it, and change the timing once you're done.

Sybilla

Can't edit thingies because time has passed, and posted those just before bedtime, so I just wanted to clarify that I'm not disagreeing with your idea at all, I think it's good and could have a lot of utility. I'm sorry if my text-tone might've come across as snarky!

Was suggesting work-arounds in the meantime.

Eld

Clearly I don't mind if I came across as snarky, but just to add something a little more constructive...
Personally, I'd rather not have no timeout be the default. Usually, if I'm sparring someone and neither of us can kill the other in the 10 or 15 minutes or whatever it is, I'd rather just call it a draw; if I don't want that behaviour, I'll go to Delos. That said, I don't see any problem with having more options for longer arena duels (though I don't really see the need). I could even live with a no default timeout as proposed here, as long as there's still the option to CHALLENGE <person> <timeout> or something similar.

Iocun

For testing purposes, a queue system as proposed would definitely be useful.

For normal spars, I wouldn't want it, as I like having a rough idea of how much time I have available to get to a win/loss/draw. A queued spar might often end at a very unexpected and disappointing moment, e.g. when you just finished feeling out your opponent and formulating a good strategy and are now starting to get more aggressive. When I don't want to time out in a spar (i.e. in combat spars), I always go to Delos anyways, whereas for a brief fun spar where the result doesn't matter so much, the normal arena timeout is usually fine enough.

I'd be all for the default to be kept as it is and a new extended spar option to be introduced: for an additional fee to the normal sparring cost, you can challenge someone to an extended spar. This spar always lasts at least the duration of a normal spar, but after that time is up, you don't get kicked out of the arena. Instead, from that point on, you simply get thrown out as soon as anyone else challenges somebody. Extended spars should be clearly shown as such in ES <arena>, of course.

Caladbolg

Iocun said:

For testing purposes, a queue system as proposed would definitely be useful.

For normal spars, I wouldn't want it, as I like having a rough idea of how much time I have available to get to a win/loss/draw. A queued spar might often end at a very unexpected and disappointing moment, e.g. when you just finished feeling out your opponent and formulating a good strategy and are now starting to get more aggressive. When I don't want to time out in a spar (i.e. in combat spars), I always go to Delos anyways, whereas for a brief fun spar where the result doesn't matter so much, the normal arena timeout is usually fine enough.

I'd be all for the default to be kept as it is and a new extended spar option to be introduced: for an additional fee to the normal sparring cost, you can challenge someone to an extended spar. This spar always lasts at least the duration of a normal spar, but after that time is up, you don't get kicked out of the arena. Instead, from that point on, you simply get thrown out as soon as anyone else challenges somebody. Extended spars should be clearly shown as such in ES <arena>, of course.

Problem with this though, is generally the people in your city respect you and there for will see you in an extended spar and be like let's just wait till there done or use delos arena.

On the other hand there's often times i've felt like the only way to kill certain classes (priest it's priest there's no other class in the game that should take this f'in long to kill)
is to willpower drain them down, and I know that I won't be able to drain willpower fast enough and secure a kill before the arena times out.

Also serpents, freaking dodgy people resetting limbs before I even hit them -_-

Bukariin

Also, the time limits that I proposed (5-minute timer once you enter the queue) are totally hypothetical.  I'd rather see anybody who enters the Arena get at least 10 to 15 minutes, if they've already been in there that long a 5-minute timer upon somebody entering the queue is reasonable.