(Mods, apologies for putting in Gameplay and Features just now, didn't notice there was a separate Suggestions sub-forum. Please leave this here as it's a serious suggestion! Thanks!)
While participating in an ongoing thread re. the "dog/significant other on fire" problem wrt mission timers, it occurred to me that rather than have:-
1) Manual pause (abominable no-no), or
2) Auto-pause on game exit (preferable, but perhaps not preferred by the developers for the emergent gameplay functions);
why not have:
3) the game switch to a "super-timer" (on some given multiplier) while out of the game?
That way, there would still be some penalty if you had to exit the game and go douse your dog, but it would be much more forgiving of rl problems in general, and you'd still have incentive to come back to the game as soon as possible (i.e. there would still be some degree of gaming urgency).
And of course, it would solve the problem of people being out of game for a while and the data from completion or otherwise of their missions never getting back into the game (which is what would face the devs with an auto-pause on exit type of system). The mission could still fail if you leave it too long being out of the game.
Of course this leaves endless room for internet argument as to what the multiplier should be. My suggestion would be to have it quite relaxed for newbies, and then tighten up as you become more of a vet. By the time you're a vet, you should have a good idea of what to pick and when, so you need less elbow room. This also leaves less elbow room for vets to "game" the system. The newbie, on the other hand, needs some more leeway for asynchronicity - and also, the devs have to alienate newbies as little as possible.
While participating in an ongoing thread re. the "dog/significant other on fire" problem wrt mission timers, it occurred to me that rather than have:-
1) Manual pause (abominable no-no), or
2) Auto-pause on game exit (preferable, but perhaps not preferred by the developers for the emergent gameplay functions);
why not have:
3) the game switch to a "super-timer" (on some given multiplier) while out of the game?
That way, there would still be some penalty if you had to exit the game and go douse your dog, but it would be much more forgiving of rl problems in general, and you'd still have incentive to come back to the game as soon as possible (i.e. there would still be some degree of gaming urgency).
And of course, it would solve the problem of people being out of game for a while and the data from completion or otherwise of their missions never getting back into the game (which is what would face the devs with an auto-pause on exit type of system). The mission could still fail if you leave it too long being out of the game.
Of course this leaves endless room for internet argument as to what the multiplier should be. My suggestion would be to have it quite relaxed for newbies, and then tighten up as you become more of a vet. By the time you're a vet, you should have a good idea of what to pick and when, so you need less elbow room. This also leaves less elbow room for vets to "game" the system. The newbie, on the other hand, needs some more leeway for asynchronicity - and also, the devs have to alienate newbies as little as possible.
