Basically, Fate and Destiny CAN in fact be altered. Timelines can overlap, suppress and change current events in realtime. The past can be changed. Or, to make it more straightforward...
Time moves forward. Changes to the timeline in the past IMMEDIATELY affect the future. Changes in the future do not affect the present, and do not increase the chances of that particularly future coming about.
We know this because of the following pieces of evidence:
1. Arachnos apparently uses time travel technology to erase the genetic history of villains who they deem are out of control. You never hear about them. Guess why?
2. Recluse's Victory is a future in a constant state of flux, with Arachnos trying to figure out how to imprint their victory over the present. It hasn't worked as of it, and is unlikely to at any point in time.
3. When you bring back Recluse's head from the future, that future very notably does not happen.
4. Professor Echo hails from the same future, trying to change our past in order to change his future.
5. Ouroboros. That is all.
So, in the end, the general gist I get of time is that there is no such thing as destiny or fate. Time is only directly maleable in the past and present, the results of which determine the future. One cannot increase the chance of a future happening by altering or experimenting with the future. One can only control the future by controling the past and present. (Sound familiar? 
)
As for passage of time in game, I always viewed that as the interesting part of my characters' lives. Like a movie with all the boring parts (Them going to their hideout to sleep, eat, or go to the bathroom) cut out. The fast days and nights are just effects of the editing. It is entirely up to you though. There is no reference to that aspect, and I believe since it is supposed to take place on Earth and not some made up place that the days are supposed to be 24 hours long. I don't know about Cimerora or the others, but I'd bet it's the same. Maybe some Portal Corps worlds are different. You could certainly say so.
In the end, the developers left a lot ambiguous intentionally for us to decide.
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Well, despite frequently posting here in the RP section of the boards, I've never really done RP in the actual game itself basically because I find text chat between lots of participants very confusing (Maybe this is a little lingering autism from my childhood, I don't know.), I don't know if I can answer that for you.|
Originally Posted by mercykilling
The sun comes up again. Is -that- held as an ingame "day"? Or is it the amount of time you spend actually -on- a character??
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It does seem fake if you and your friends' toons are standing in Atlas, in game, during this long discussion planning a task force or something and several days pass. So I guess everyone just ignores it.
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Originally Posted by mercykilling
In places like Cimerora, Ouroboros, and those other worlds that Portal Corp sends you to....is there anything in canon that actually would refer to time passing differently there?
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But within each universe, even Ouroboros, time passes normally. The sun zips around the sky just as fast as it does in Paragon or the Rogue Isles.
I suppose of the devs wanted to really drive us insane, they could have a universe where everything happens backwards. People springing up out water splashes in swimming pools to land on diving boards and then climbing backwards down ladders to the return to the showers. Clouds of dust spontaneously springing back into unexploded bombs and that sort of thing.
Or perhaps a universe were the acausalness of quantum theory is visible on the macroscopic scale. Events happening with no cause or causes that have no events. The sun would jerk around in unpredictable and chaotic path in the sky with lots of gaps in its path where it ceased to exist suddenly and for no reason. Sometimes there'd be more than one Sun in the sky and all of them would be following insane and screwy paths. Bombs would suddenly unexplode or explode or duplicate or simply cease to exist altogether.
A universe where large objects followed quantum rules would be sort of like very, very, very bad lag and rubber banding only worse.
"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."
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Isn't that what lag is? Those pesky reality-tampering villains!! Darn them and their lag-inducing doooom!!
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Originally Posted by synthozoic
A universe where large objects followed quantum rules would be sort of like very, very, very bad lag and rubber banding only worse.
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Hello all. 39 month vet of CoX, and still enjoying every last minute of it. ^_^
My questions are as follows:
First....the flow of time in the game. I'd like to know the -generally accepted- way time passes. I know it's -my- game, and -I- decide what I RP....but I can at least ask for opinions.
From what I see....you can stand in one spot and watch the sun come up. Doesn't take too long for it to go down, and moonrise. That too shall pass. The sun comes up again. Is -that- held as an ingame "day"? Or is it the amount of time you spend actually -on- a character?
Second question is more one of canon. In places like Cimerora, Ouroboros, and those other worlds that Portal Corp sends you to....is there anything in canon that actually would refer to time passing differently there?
I thank everyone who responds to these questions in advance. Yes, even the snarky responses. :P