In FO3 I routinely used "set timescale to 15". I believe that normal is 30 (can anyone confirm?).

Sometimes if I am going to be just looking around a town or area in Skyrim, I manually bring it down to 4 or so, but because so many of the game mechanics depend on time cycles, I have always found 15 to be a better choice in general.

Anyone else mess with this?

R

Actually it seems Bethesda decided to go for a 1:20 timescale this time around by default which I think is pretty okay

So does that mean that to return to the normal setting in Skyrim I would use "set timescale to 20"?

R

The problem now is that time won't stop when you are having a conversation, unlike previous games.
So if you like to listen to all the conversations without skipping any of them it'll take probably half a day in game if there are several quest NPCs to talk to.
I got up at 7am and want to do a quest(didn't want to bother the jarl when he's sleeping). I talked to the Jarl of Whiterun for the quest and listened to all his dialogues, after that I talked to his housecarl, steward and wizard for more information. Then I realized it's late afternoon already and I haven't even left Whiterun. That's quite stupid I think.

If time stops when you are having a conversation then I think 1:20 is fine. But now I tweaked it to 1:10 and found it more believable.

Messing around with the time scale can and will cause issues regarding specific NPC schedules, which in turn can and will increase the odds of crashes and "stuck" schedules (NPCs won't complete their schedules, will stop moving, won't engage in scripted conversations, etc.). I'm not 100% sure of it, of course, but I do presume that the time scale ratio was determined first, and then every single schedules that exists in the game was added and made with that specific time scale in mind. The schedules don't all "adapt" well (some do, some don't) do a modified time scale. In other words, do it at your own risk.

You might be lucky enough to never actually see schedule mishaps happen in front of you if you do change the time scale, but believe me, they do happen. I know that enough for having made a modification myself for Fallout 3, for which I had to change the time scale, which is when I noticed what kind of effects (neutral or negative) it can have in the game's world. And Skyrim uses the same engine, it behaves the same way as Fallout 3 did with schedules. I'll be able to fully confirm this myself when the Creation Kit is finally released.

As far as I know NPC schedules are based on the current time. The time scale ratio is not determined first.
In Oblivion changing the timescale only affects three side quests in an unpatched game. And all are fixed with the unofficial oblivion patch. I doubt changing the timescale will have much negative effect in skyrim.

That means you are making the game super looooooooong. The respawn times are already ridiculous long.

I don't only because it messes with the NPC schedules, making some quests fudge up.

Might not be an issue in Skyrim, but I'm not taking my chances.

I always turn it down to closer to 1:1, but then I also install darker night mods and actually sleep at night if my character is not some sort of thief or rogue like a normal person would.

I routinely slowed both oblivion and Bethesda's fallout down to 8-10 and never had any problems. When my char is at home decorating, it's all the way down to timescale = 1

If some quest comes out with a time consideration, I would leave it as is, but I haven't found any of those yet no matter how urgent the npc acts.

It's not the timing of the quest, it is the schedule of the NPC. If an NPC should be at position X at Y time, and you change the timescale down to 1:1, they won't be at the right place at the right time. It really makes dealing with merchants a pain, because even if they are at the store, sometimes they will not offer services even during normal business hours because, to them, it's not the right time :/