I feel like the day and night cycle in EQ1 was too short.
I think it would be nice if we got about 3 hours real time of day and then about 3 hours of night.
This makes the darkest night something you have to deal with because it lasts for a while.
While I'm on this subject I think it would be cool if Summoners could make a globe of light that could be shot out in a straight line to illuminate the surroundings.
How long would your perfect cycle last ?
Thanks in advance,
Kiz~
I think in general a complete day cycle should be based around the average play session. 2 to 3 hours max. As posted above you want players to be able to complete any actions that might require timing. Also, it is important that day/night cycles be offset from real time so people are not longing in to the same game time session after session. There are lots of number crunchers who can figure out optimal timiming so day/night cycles rotate through real time weeks or months. I will leave that up to smarter people than I.
Whatever it is, make sure it IS NOT an even factor of 12, because if it is, most folks will get stuck in the exact same day/night cycle during their normal playtimes. I say something like 4 hours, 17 minutes = 1 full day on Terminus, and if you really want immersion, add in perihelion/aphelion for a proper elliptical orbit of Terminus around it's sun. That way, you sometimes have nights for 3 hours and day for 1, and then the reverse.
I'd agree that having the timing not be a factor of 12 is critical. Getting stuck in the same day/night cycle would be annoying after a time. I think that before one can say how long or short a cycle should last one needs to decide what should happen during a cycle. What things should happen at night that would not happen during the day? What needs to be accomplished only at night? Or only during the day? Build the cycle around the longest activity then pad the duration a bit.
42 mins.
Long enough to do things during a certain cycle, short enough to experience 1 or more during a play session, and the cycle would offset slightly everyday until it repeats every 7 days.
This shows where the first day/night cycle would start in each Real World Day. (17+ cycles per real day)
NOTE: This would be offset even more by server restarts.
DAY 1) 12/2/2015 12:00:00 AM DAY 12/2/2015 12:42:00 AM NIGHT
DAY 2) 12/3/2015 12:30:00 AM NIGHT 12/3/2015 1:12:00 AM DAY
DAY 3) 12/4/2015 12:18:00 AM NIGHT 12/4/2015 1:00:00 AM DAY
DAY 4) 12/5/2015 12:06:00 AM NIGHT 12/5/2015 12:48:00 AM DAY
DAY 5) 12/6/2015 12:36:00 AM DAY 12/6/2015 1:18:00 AM NIGHT
DAY 6) 12/7/2015 12:24:00 AM DAY 12/7/2015 1:06:00 AM NIGHT
DAY 7) 12/8/2015 12:12:00 AM DAY 12/8/2015 12:54:00 AM NIGHT
DAY 8) 12/9/2015 12:00:00 AM DAY 12/9/2015 12:42:00 AM NIGHT
4 hours for a complete cycle (2 hours of day, 2 hours of night, plus following of some sort of helion cycle) would be interesting. You would have the equinoxes where you do get 2 hours of day/night, but then you could have the solstices, where you may have 3 hours of day 1 hour of night and vice versa. Then you just have to line up the days between them to get a proper cycle (depending on the orbital period of Terminus around its star), and voila, a living breathing day/night cycle. Would be interesting if there were a moon (or multiple moons) which also followed a lunar cycle. Some nights you'd have a full moon(s), so it would be brighter than normal, other nights would be new moon(s), so it'd be darker than normal.
I'd like to see a day and night a little longer than EQ. A little over an hour of night. I'd also like to see a very recognizeable dusk and dawn during that time so its not all pitch black the entire time.
I think its also very important to see everything in the world changing according to the day and night cycle (as well as seasons). I'd like to see shopkeepers close down and go to the inns, the tarvern, or their homes. I'd like to see different guards at night than you see during the day. Basically everything. When I think "living breathing world", these are the kinds of things that bring us closer to that ideal.
I would like to see it vary with the seasons. Winter = longer nights. Summer = longer days.
Make a game 24 hour cycle every 3.5 hours real time. If seasons are not a factor then 1.5 hour of darkness, 15 min dawn transition, 1.5 hours day, 15 min dusk transition.
This means the cycle will move every IRL day and your prescribed log-in time each evening won't necessarily always be night time in game, and with dawn and dusk transitions, the cycle will slightly favor light hours.
not sure on the duration but i really want night to matter (as i want all weather to matter). I would think depending on number of suns, zone geography, zone location as aligned to rotations some zones should have longer 'nights' and colder colds due to lack of sun - oh i would also want a variation in flora/fauna based on these sort of things.
i would not want night to be a one hour constant across all zones
edit: typo
A lot of great chat here folks I'm new but digging the community ideas. I agree it needs to be balanced and an odd time so that every night after work I don't log in at the exact same game time. Also taking the Moon(s) and seasons into account add a feel of immersion. Having NPCs react to the changes would be awesome. So it's a new moon in the dead of winter, the INNs are pact and theres opportunitys for new quests via NPC conversation because the town is isolated from a snow storm and theres little lighting outside. Devious mobs attack in the open streets and help cannot arrive until a thaw. Awesome stuff.
While a 24 hour cycle would be cool, it's just not something that works well unless the time of day is irrelevant to gameplay. I think something around 3-5 hours for the cycle works well. I would very much like to see the balance of day and night change according to seasons as well as having moon phases. It would add to immersion and present any number of possible events and gameplay effects that could be tied in.
I don't know how well it would work out, but more than one sun and/or moon on asynchronous schedules could be fun too. A second sun that only rises every 10 days for example.
Azotate said:I think in general a complete day cycle should be based around the average play session. 2 to 3 hours max. As posted above you want players to be able to complete any actions that might require timing. Also, it is important that day/night cycles be offset from real time so people are not longing in to the same game time session after session. There are lots of number crunchers who can figure out optimal timiming so day/night cycles rotate through real time weeks or months. I will leave that up to smarter people than I.
I agree - if the devs are setting a time span for a targeted play session, then it would make sense to have the day / night cycle accomodated during that play session in some form. You want players to be able to say "I play from 8:00pm to 11:00pm when I play" if they want to. With tha being the case, it would be bad for them not to be able to have day and night within that session... assuming there is content based on time of day.
Well EQ had a standard day/night cycle is 72 minutes (36 minutes for each half). I always thought that was to short, but I did appreciate it during my runs through Kithicor Forest during the night cycle. If I had to wait 2 or more hours to run through that zone I would of been really miffed, but if there were other worthwhile things to do during the wait it wouldn't be that bad then.
However, I think 2 hours may just be the sweet spot in the world of Terminus. I don't like the idea of a real 24hr clock that matches the real world; I prefer having Day/Night cycles happen regularly in my gaming sessions.
Rint