The problem with NPC schedules

I miss hanging out with the NPCs in the Blue Boar Tavern in Britain, Sosaria...

Spoiler

every day around 6pm, you can expect a crowd to drink and make merry.

 

One of the games I really enjoyed was Fable. In that game they had a few things you could play / bet. There was a game called archstone or something and it was fun as heck to whiddle away the time. I wish there was something like a mini game in this game to beable to have risk reward as well as a time waster in the bars

 

Yeah, that’s the one aspect of the schedules I am actually missing. You could come across a vendor or NPC you had not met yet, and speak with them.

 

The days are so short, however, that they would only be there for a few minutes before leaving again. One of the reasons I was pushing for a 144-minute "day". (EQ used a 72-min day, and it's difficult to get a specific hour; plus, hours wouldn't ALWAYS fall at the top of the hour.)

 

If we had a card or dice game it would be nice to be able to play it among players as well as NPC's. This would kill two birds with one stone, people wondering what to do at night as well as between UT grind fests.

 

NPC schedules are a great idea. But they work best in games where you can advance time. Outside of that, you will want to have a good bunch of night time traders and such. Just having everyone head to bed with no nighttime NPCs doesn't really work.

 

I agree we need some balance here - either there are equivalent merchants available at night, or, there is something else "to do" at night (bar, tavern has night-only-available sidequest, certain npcs only spawn at night, beds give an extra bonus to TBD rest buff (aka "make inns relevant"), some goods sell for less, others sell for more, any kind of opportunity to make nighttime relevant...).

In terms of "equivalent merchant," lets say you want to get some seeds from Ann Almond on the Aerie docks (great example here, cuz this is mad frustrating for us Bay of Storms folk), but its dusk, so Ann is going to bed for a very long time, and wont even speak to you when shes still at her stand (presumably packing up? thats what i pretend).

then I notice the clock IRL and see that ill have wifey aggro in perhaps 15 mins, so I give up on whatever my plans were and log off.

it would be cooler if, perhaps some shady character came strolling along the Aerie docks at night (or the bar, or the shanty-town part of town, etc), and that character sold all kinds of things that become unavailable after dusk. seeds, certain crafting supplies, recipes, whatever - at a high price. perhaps the avatar is a bit put off at these scandalous prices, but the scalawag offers an alternative - a quest to do some slight moral dilemma kind of thing (this is a shady character, after all), but after completing it, you get normal "daytime" prices. maybe he wants you to spy on the king, or steal from a different vendor that is sleeping, or frame another sleeping person for something, or whatever.

in any event, give us something to do at night besides sit around and wait for it to be daytime, kthx

(NPC schedules are a good start! lets iterate!)