So what are your thoughts on time in the game? Now I dont mean real "time". I mean how time flows in game. How long should a day be? How long should a night be? How dark should it get? Is it more dangerous at night? Do you think there will paths that are lighted up? Should there be a moon cycle and if so does it effect the weather? How many moons do we have and suns?
90 minute nights and days. Night should generally be very dark (none of the basically daytime with a blue light tint nonsense) to the point people want torches or other light sources, sometimes but not always more dangerous depending on the zone. Some lit areas but likely not full paths unless right outside a large village/city.
It would be great if the day and night were relatively long in real world terms. Like 2 or more hours of real time for a full in-game day to pass (24 or however many in-game hours.) The relationship between real hours and Terminus hours shouldn't be too exact though so that if you're logging in at 5pm every day it's not always going to be night in Wild's End.
A real moons cycle would be awesome, and even better if the cycle of the two moons of Terminus affected the level of light at night. I think it should only get "full dark" when both moons are set or obscurred by clouds. It still surprises me sometimes how bright it can really be on a clear night with a full moon in the countryside. Who knows how difficult that would be, though, just a nice to have.
"Time zones" would also be an interesting add. It's a different time of day depending on where you are in Terminus. As would light levels being affected by where you are in the world and the season. IE if you're closer to a pole and it's winter, you get fewer hours of daytime, whereas if you're closer to the equater you get about the same year round.
I'd like to see a longish cycle, 2 hours maybe 3. I think the day and night should be the same length, it would seem weird to me if they weren't.
We've been told that night time will be significantly different from day in most places. My understanding is that it will be more dangerous, though that wouldn't necessarily mean every single place on the planet.
I'd love to see a moon or two overhead, though I'd be happy with stars that looked real.
I hope the only 100% total darkness (where you wonder if your monitor died) is in dungeons & caves.There should be no way to navigate there if you don't have your own source of light. Which should illuminate only a small area around you.
Outdoors, there should be some visibility,enough to stay on a path out in the open, though with much darker areas of shadow you can't see into (and that could be hiding mobs).
I don't know if it is possible, but I'd like it if darkness wasn't easy to ignore by just changing the brightness settings on your screen.
Iksar said:90 minute nights and days. Night should generally be very dark (none of the basically daytime with a blue light tint nonsense) to the point people want torches or other light sources, sometimes but not always more dangerous depending on the zone. Some lit areas but likely not full paths unless right outside a large village/city.
A 90 minute day and a 90 minute night are a good choice. Its long enough that you have a good amount of continguous time for things which can only be obtained, killed or otherwise earned, at night. It also means that travel will be impacted by a day/night cycle so long as night is actually dark and not just something which can be wholly negated by effing with your gamma settings.
Anything longer than 90 minutes for each cycle could mean that, for those who are limited to just 2 hour sessions, could be stuck in just one part of the day/night for their entire playtime. When the cycle is too short, it just loses all meaning.
BigBadAzz1 said:I'd say cycles of 6 real time hours. So, that the game synchronizes with real life and it gives people all around the world an incentive to look for certain mob spawns or quests they might be doing.
I think that might be unfair for people on a tight schedule. Someone working full time plus tending a family might only have a 2-4 hour period on weeknights to play. If that time was ALWAYS day (or night), they might rightly feel disappointed.
I think day/night needs to be out of sync with real time, just so everyone gets equal shares of both.
Moons equal tides in my mind. Has there ever been any mention of tides.
Talk about feature creep. :)
But it would be fun if every so often both moons align and a tide event happens. Exposing some items or causing the local flora or fauna to become active for just that event in some special way.
I like the 90 minute day, that's plenty of sunsets and rises.
Iksar said:90 minute nights and days. Night should generally be very dark (none of the basically daytime with a blue light tint nonsense) to the point people want torches or other light sources, sometimes but not always more dangerous depending on the zone. Some lit areas but likely not full paths unless right outside a large village/city.
Strongly agree here, that strikes a good balance and I agree night should actually be dark.
Jothany said:I think the day and night should be the same length, it would seem weird to me if they weren't.
The other day when we were discussing this in Discord we touched on the idea that the length of the daylight could be effected by the season.
We know that here on Earth during the Winter our Northern Hemisphere gets longer nights and shorter days, with some places in the far north getting almost no light at all as the sun never even goes above the horizon. Whereas in the Summer it is the opposite where the north gets much longer days and shorter nights.
Would be cool if in Terminus the seasons also effected how long the daylight hours were. Of course all of that depends on if Terminus has a Tilt on it's axis compared to it's sun.
On a similar but slightly different point. I've always thought it funny when in game holidays sync with our real life holidays. So if the game has a full day/night cycle every 1.5 hours then it has a full year (assuming 365 days in a year) every 22.8 days. This means there is about 16 game years for every one of our Real Earth years.
If the game only had a Harvest Festival like holiday when we do in Real life, then technically the game world is only celebrating this Holiday every 16 years.
Technically the Harvest Festival should happen once every 22.8 days.
As for my opinion on the Length of the Day/Night cycle... You need to factor in the Goal for players to be able to do 2-3 hour play sessions. This means the Day/Night cycle needs to be less than 3 hours so that the average player can expect to experience some time both Day and Night during his normal sessions. It also should not sync with whole hours so that it's not always the same part of the cycle at set hours of the day in Real world time. Like @Byproducts said: "if you're logging in at 5pm every day it's not always going to be night in Wild's End".
With 90 minute days this gives roughly 45 min of Daylight and Moonlight respectively; Of course this depends on if they take the Seasons idea discussed above. If you use 150 minute days (2.5 hours) this gives 75 min of Daylight and Moonlight. This would also mean that the average 2-3 hour play time goal means players would usually experience 1 full day per play session.
IMO:
Terminus is artificial, right? If 'natural' planets (like earth) have extremely long days and extremely short nights, it seems reasonable Terminus could too.
Some zones could be entirely and always night. Just like earth. :) Some could be entirely and always lit. I mean, EQ1 had this.. so.. it's not even a precedent.
If they had to be the same length, I would say shorter is better. something in the 60-90 minute range.
But my ideal? 90 min day, 45 min night.
Unless ultravision/night vision is going to be extremely cheap, easy and common, I have zero interest in playing half of my time ~blind. :)
Jothany said:BigBadAzz1 said:I'd say cycles of 6 real time hours. So, that the game synchronizes with real life and it gives people all around the world an incentive to look for certain mob spawns or quests they might be doing.
I think that might be unfair for people on a tight schedule. Someone working full time plus tending a family might only have a 2-4 hour period on weeknights to play. If that time was ALWAYS day (or night), they might rightly feel disappointed.
I think day/night needs to be out of sync with real time, just so everyone gets equal shares of both.
Very good point, bro!
I was actually meaning if it was every 6 hours rotation, thinking about it now. would make a twisty confusion with timers which I never really got to think of the expectation of it, but it's clearly now 6 hours would not b e a very timing for day respawns, but I think @Iksar mention on the first reply. <):) <3 >:)
BigBadAzz1 said:I was actually meaning if it was every 6 hours rotation, thinking about it now. would make a twisty confusion with timers which I never really got to think of the expectation of it, but it's clearly now 6 hours would not b e a very timing for day respawns, but I think @Iksar mentioned on the first reply. <):) <3 >:)
However long the night will be I have no desire to move around without being able to see for the sake of realism. Not in general. That doesn't mean that there shouldn't be areas like a certain forest in EQ where the darkness is part of the ambiance and danger but that would be an area I could choose to go to or choose not to go to. Please don't make me log off whenever the sun goes down because the whole *world* is like that.
Similarly please don't simply remove critical services and make me spend two hours real time just cooling my heels. Not in a game where it may take significant time to go anywhere else while I am waiting and more time to return. Few things are more frustrating than getting back from a successful adventure and finding that I cannot get rid of the heavy load of junk I acquired because the sun rose as I was entering the town and the pawnshop just closed for the day. Or I cannot cash in the quest I spent hours completing because the questgiver just left her shop for the evening. Or never even knowing that there was a quest because the two times I went through town it happened to be the time of day when the questgiver wasn't there. Or getting a nice quest with a good reward if I "kill a troll that only comes out between 1 and 4 AM" and it is now 405AM and I have not one blessed thing I can do in the area for the next two hours real time.
In other words I hate it when day/night cycles leave me with nothing to do for hours and my choice is to abandon the quest or the loot, log-off, or alt/tab and play solitaire or read a book. Yes I am oversimplifying (and in reality I would have other characters partly for times like this) but it is a real frustration. Note that I am discussing the game forcing me to do nothing for hours not e.g. 15 minutes. Yet a day/night cycle does need to be hours not minutes.
I am a firm yes on day and night cycle. Give me a living and breathing world. shorter cycle so it varies
The world has it own lore, magic and physics. Any thing less than a day and night cycle and the world is half baked, incomplete, done half-assed.
vjek said:IMO:
Terminus is artificial, right? If 'natural' planets (like earth) have extremely long days and extremely short nights, it seems reasonable Terminus could too.
Some zones could be entirely and always night. Just like earth. :) Some could be entirely and always lit. I mean, EQ1 had this.. so.. it's not even a precedent.
If your first statement implies that Terminus would have seasons and, as a result, the ratio of day:night could change as the seasons change..and I would support that. But, we're also talking about VR, a very small company that already has more on its plate than it can realistically handle to get this game out the door. Adding yet another thing to that pile isn't in this games' best interest. Let that come in for an expansion.
Luclin, in EQ1 had perma-dark (or perma-twilight anyway) because the moon was tidally locked so, yes, there is a precedence and if we ever traveled to another planet in Pantheon (where I'm sure we'll find some unnneeded player race based off some animal that nobody asked for) perhaps we can get Luclin, the Pantheon Version.
Raidil said:So what are your thoughts on time in the game? Now I dont mean real "time". I mean how time flows in game. How long should a day be? How long should a night be? How dark should it get? Is it more dangerous at night? Do you think there will paths that are lighted up? Should there be a moon cycle and if so does it effect the weather? How many moons do we have and suns?
Some (but not all) zones should have undead which only come out at night, along with a few regular nocturnal mobs. There should be a few places, however, where night is actually safer and you would be better off only traveling at night. In the real world, small things come out at night because the big, dangerous animals are asleep or can't see well. Of course, if we get real differences between day and night, the day / night cycle can't be too short or it will make the differences much less meaningful since it's over too quick or there's not enough time to really utilize it.
I would love to see some dangerous wilderness which is only safe to travel at night and even the use of a light source could draw in the dangerous daytime npcs that make day too dangerous to travel.
If we have a moon, whether it's up or not (or eclipsed), could vary the amount of night light, keeping it more intersting.
Counterfleche said:There should be a few places, however, where night is actually safer and you would be better off only traveling at night. In the real world, small things come out at night because the big, dangerous animals are asleep or can't see well.
I would love to see some dangerous wilderness which is only safe to travel at night and even the use of a light source could draw in the dangerous daytime npcs that make day too dangerous to travel.
That's a great idea. A place that's the exact opposite of what we expect. But only if we don't turn on a light!
Do it VR