Mission Timer

[Old Drifter]

So I'm not sure when this was changed but the mission timer no longer relates to IRL time but to time spent in-game, and I feel like this kinda ruined the balance. I normally don't enjoy timed challenges in any game but I felt like Icarus was doing it right. When you started a prospect you had to commit to it and that extract felt so good when you had just a few hours left that you had been playing for a few days. I see the 7 day timer on a mission and can't help but think, "who is spending anywhere near 168 hours in a single prospect?"

Am I wrong on this? Did I miss something? I'm playing every prospect on the toughest difficulty + hardcore and It just feels off. Like the mission times over 6 hours no longer make any sense.

[StellarSkys]

no 100% all the timers need to be less than 1/7th what they actually are. most prospects are doable in under 5 hours and yet we get well over 100. it removes the entire point of having a timer

[Pach]

When they converted from real life to in game timers they just kept the same timer lengths. It’s never been adjusted.

[Blake]

Timer? ♥♥♥♥. I was about to buy this after quick viewing a few vids...looks fun collecting and crafting. Timers though....no thanks Ilike to chill not get stressed

[Swato85]

Originally posted by SkyFall:

Timer? ♥♥♥♥. I was about to buy this after quick viewing a few vids...looks fun collecting and crafting. Timers though....no thanks Ilike to chill not get stressed

This is why open world was implemented. YOu can do all kinds of sh.. stuff without timer there.

Secondly the missions are actualy fun to do few, earn cash, then go back to your open world to do more sh.. stuff in new outfit or with new tools :-D.

BTW there is not a single game where link between a game and REAL world time makes sense. Such things are just for kids without responsibilities. Normal people will not adjust their real life to a game, it would be extremely stupid of them to bow to digits.

[Old Drifter]

Originally posted by Swato85:

Originally posted by SkyFall:

Timer? ♥♥♥♥. I was about to buy this after quick viewing a few vids...looks fun collecting and crafting. Timers though....no thanks Ilike to chill not get stressed

This is why open world was implemented. YOu can do all kinds of sh.. stuff without timer there.

Secondly the missions are actualy fun to do few, earn cash, then go back to your open world to do more sh.. stuff in new outfit or with new tools :-D.

BTW there is not a single game where link between a game and REAL world time makes sense. Such things are just for kids without responsibilities. Normal people will not adjust their real life to a game, it would be extremely stupid of them to bow to digits.

FYI, the original mechanic worked perfect for anyone with a full time job. All it required was working it in to your schedule and playing when you had the time. I never felt rushed. I felt motivated to finish in a timely manner.

[Queltis]

Originally posted by SkyFall:

Timer? ♥♥♥♥. I was about to buy this after quick viewing a few vids...looks fun collecting and crafting. Timers though....no thanks Ilike to chill not get stressed

There is an open world mode that does not involve any timers. It is a new feature, so under development, but it is available.

The missions aren't bad now either. Opinions to the contrary because "mah hardcore!", the move to having missions be based off of time spent in game instead of your RL clock was one of the best changes the developers made to Icarus.

[Overki11]

Everyone has their own opinion and the right to it so i don't think there's right or wrong here. But I basically quit playing the game after the first week until today because the timers are just a stress to me, and apparently to a lot of people based on the fact that they changed the way the operated. Some people enjoy that kind of motivation but the idea of losing so much of your progress just because life happened and you didn't get to log back in before the IRL timer expired made it not worth the bother of playing the game. I know they changed the timers a very long time ago, and I've come back mainly because I've run out of things to do in other games, but I wouldn't have come back at all if it were still the IRL timers.

[Swato85]

Originally posted by Overki11:

Everyone has their own opinion and the right to it so i don't think there's right or wrong here. But I basically quit playing the game after the first week until today because the timers are just a stress to me, and apparently to a lot of people based on the fact that they changed the way the operated. Some people enjoy that kind of motivation but the idea of losing so much of your progress just because life happened and you didn't get to log back in before the IRL timer expired made it not worth the bother of playing the game. I know they changed the timers a very long time ago, and I've come back mainly because I've run out of things to do in other games, but I wouldn't have come back at all if it were still the IRL timers.

Yep, classic rational approach.

[Old Drifter]

Originally posted by Overki11:

Everyone has their own opinion and the right to it so i don't think there's right or wrong here. But I basically quit playing the game after the first week until today because the timers are just a stress to me, and apparently to a lot of people based on the fact that they changed the way the operated. Some people enjoy that kind of motivation but the idea of losing so much of your progress just because life happened and you didn't get to log back in before the IRL timer expired made it not worth the bother of playing the game. I know they changed the timers a very long time ago, and I've come back mainly because I've run out of things to do in other games, but I wouldn't have come back at all if it were still the IRL timers.

I respect that, but they already took out the risk when they added "Insurance." It basically means you can't lose your character no matter what happens. So not only did they make timers meaningless through the fundamental mechanic change, they made them even more meaningless with Insurance. Its cool you came back to try it out though.

[william_es]

I think the game went off track with the timer thing anyways, pretty much in the design phase before it even launched.

If you look at some of the talents, such as the one that makes you run faster in the last 15 minutes of a mission, I get the feeling the whole game was meant to be played in missions that were measured in minutes, not hours and days. I have always had the feeling that the original gameplay loop was meant to be more run-n-gun, and the building was supposed to be something like fortnite. yes, something like fortnite. But from the way they described the "session" based survival, it sounded more like playing levels in a first person shooter game. In, out, repeat. Something you'd knock out a quick game on a lunch break.

But they added in all the basic resource grinding and building from just about every other sandbox survival game out there, which really slowed the pace down.

In the end result, the timers just made no sense. A small minority said they made the game unplayable for them (yes, there are people who only have time to play a game _1 hour_ a week), and the vast majority of the player base said the timers had NO EFFECT whatsoever on how they played.

Broken mechanic when the majority of people are saying it literally didn't affect them at all.

I guess the only way to make people happy is to bring back the realtime timer missions as an extra gamemode. But as soon as they offer more rewards for that type of mission, people will start whining again. The same way people go into hardcore missions, and then get upset they died, and start begging for rescue.

[Empathise]

Originally posted by Munnky:

Originally posted by Old Drifter:

I respect that, but they already took out the risk when they added "Insurance." It basically means you can't lose your character no matter what happens. So not only did they make timers meaningless through the fundamental mechanic change, they made them even more meaningless with Insurance. Its cool you came back to try it out though.

Agreed. The game lost it's identity.

Devs have catered A LOT to the whiners, but really the old timer was still a joke, 7 days and most missions could be done in 5 minutes to a few hours...

It was a really cool idea trying to link the game time to real time and I think there is something great about merging a game aspect and real life aspect, really cool ♥♥♥♥. I hope this thinking continues either in Icarus or other games.. I did read about a VR headset that kills the player in real life if you die in the game, electric shock to the forehead or something.. that might be taking it a bit far...

[Overki11]

Dysterra just came out in early access recently and if you play on the regular servers there's a real-time clock the sessions only stay up for a set period of time before it all resets and if you don't extract at the right time you lose your character. Dysterra does have it's own issues but reminds me a lot of icarus in several ways. Though it has a solo play option where it's just a play time timer and it's configurable. I'd say read through some of it's discussion boards though before you jump into it because like I said it's not all good, otherwise I'd probably be playing it more, but if you want that kind of time pressure it might be an option for you.

[StellarSkys]

i mean real time timers is quite frankly feels like dumb game design in almost every instance. want to make the game timers more strict? just make them shorter?

anyone setting down to play a real time session with a 5 day limit that can play for only 2 days a week for like 2 hours might feel a timer sure.

or you could just i dunno make the timer make the timer like 5 hours in total. that way a person sitting down for 8 hours and a person sitting down for 4 hours twice on other ends of the week, feels the timer the same?

no real game timer will ever feel stressful to me period. because i normally do longer play sessions. so because the timer is timed for people playing 3 times over a week the same amount i'm likely to play in a day, i have over like 3 times what their timer is now.

the entire mechanic falls apart and is pointless. i have a easy time, and the person spreading out their time has the same difficulty of time as if the timer was just short and based on play time. you could just make a like 6 hour timer in this case and we both feel the timer. but nope thats a galaxy brain idea.

but yeah half of icarus's problem feels like people would see a 7 day timer think oh hey lets build up a massive base, and drag out this timer and build t4 gear.

because every timer is like 50 times as long as it needs to be a large part of the player base overplayed the same missions, building the same stuff over and over as they spammed out high tier. so players got annoyed they had to keep rebuilding the same large bases and grinding out t4 over and over when its all self inflicted.

and all the devs needed to do was make any 7 day timer 12 hours, 5 days timers like 10 hours, so on and so forth, actually make the timer for a 8 hour mission maybe 10 or 9 hours. make a mission that takes 2 hours maybe 2 and half hour long timer. and most peoples complaints with icarus that i see would go away. but instead the people complained that they had to keep rebuilding these massive bases (when again its self inflicted) and asked for persistence instead and now the devs did that, instead of actually getting to the root of why people didn't like prospects in the first place, because critical thinking and trying to fix problems is apparently hard so lets just fall back and copy paste what everyone else does cause its easier.

[Blake]

Originally posted by StellarSkys:

and all the devs needed to do was...

..not put any silly timers in the game in the first place.

Put me off purchasing.

[StellarSkys]

Originally posted by SkyFall:

Originally posted by StellarSkys:

and all the devs needed to do was...

..not put any silly timers in the game in the first place.

Put me off purchasing.

Personally their focus on a copy paste open world mode makes me regret purchasing.

I enjoying a timed session base survival game and wish it went more into rougelite mechanics.