Quote: 

<span style="color:rgb(164,164,164);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Posted </span>10 April 2012 - 04:32 PM

<div style="margin:0px;color:rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Yikes, I log onto the forum for the first time in ages, and this is up for discussion again? 


First off, the sampling bias on this poll is probably horrendous. Do you think the players that log into Chaos for ten to thirty minutes for some quick fun or those that stay logged in all day are more likely to visit the forum? Even if the poll was placed in the zone and run by a bot, those frequenting the safe zones would be more likely to give input, I imagine. So, I hope no long term decisions will be made based on this poll. 


High bounty sitting in a nine hour safe zone serves absolutely no attraction to bounty hunt. In fact, it'd discourage me from hunting someone not in a safe zone if I thought they would take advantage of a sit-for-hours tactic. I always did enjoy the forty-five minute safe zones as they gave time to run out, and get more beer or a bite to eat while keeping your freq (although twenty to thirty minutes would have worked fine for me). Anything longer than that is ridiculous. As for Cool Dad's hour and a half vote, my experience is that your bounty seems to be saved for a couple of hours usually as long as you time out in a safe zone. 


Also, the difference between forty-five minute and nine hour safe zones is huge in terms of play in my opinion. In a forty-five minute safe zone, a player has to keep the game in the back of their mind or they're going to time out. If you're a player drooling over the bounty in a safe zone, you can be pretty sure that a player in a forty-five minute safe zone has an intention of playing in the next few hours, or they would have logged out to save the hassle of resetting the timer every forty-five minutes. You have no such indication from a player in a nine hour safe zone.


I voted for fifteen minutes as it seems to be the only reasonable option under consideration at the moment, and although not my favorite, it really is the most balanced safe zone time of the bunch. It allows exactly what the safe zones were intended for: a bathroom break, a stretch, a talk on the phone, or a beer from the fridge. Right now, the poll seems to be twelve votes for some sort of reasonable time, thirteen votes for nine hours. Considering the likely bias, I'd say the nine hours safe zones should be nixed. </div>