Open world cycle-token system

[kaelbloodelf]

I've been thinking of a way to make players feel like the game respects their time more in regards to the plains of eidolon day/night cycle (and any other open world cycle but the other 2 aren't as big of an issue since they are significantly shorter/have fewer valuable rewards to speak of). My suggestion would be a token system to replace the day/night cycle. You can acquire one token every [number] minutes and you can't acquire one if you already have one, or if you used one and it's still night time from it. The idea would be you trade these tokens and trigger the more valuable cycle for the next [number] of minutes it would normally last. In the case of plains of eidolons: that way you can log in, acquire your token, use the token for some tridolon captures, or narmer bounties, night would expire and you would have to wait the remaining [full cycle - valuable cycle minutes] (in PoE's case 150-50 = 100 minutes) before you could acquire another token and trigger night time once again. These tokens can have limited duration of the total cycle like argons as a safety measure against abuse cases. This would allow players to not feel constrained by the game's schedule if they wish to engage with content in a different order. The token could be used in 5 minute cycles (so all players that use a token between 13:06 and 13:09 would wait until 13:10 until the token takes effect and is consumed) to help with matchmaking and syncing players to let them play with their friends or in premade groups. This would of course remove the regular cycles as to not allow for permanent valuable cycles, and would require some form of tutorialization to make sure players understand it, but I feel it would reduce quite a bit of animosity towards the day/night cycle and offer the player more freedom for when they engage with the content, while not requiring a nerf to the rewards since the amount of time they can engage with it still remains the same, just less constricting.

[Pakaku]

An easy patch would be to just force the map to start at night when picking Eidolon missions. Maybe force day hours when non-Eidolon missions are picked.