Days, Nights, and seasons

ArchivedUser

So after digging around a bit I'm excited to discover that they will have days and nights, as well as seasons, hooray!

One thing I dread though is a system similar as in ESO, where the days and nights don't align with the real world days and nights, meaning that while roleplaying I'm pondering how to greet people. (Oh, the graphics show it's day! When did it become daylight? How many hours are we into this cycle, is it close to night yet? Do I bid them a good morning or good afternoon?)

Worse, the way my immersion dies as I try to convince myself it's night in the game while the birds are whistling outside I'm closing all the curtains in an effort from keeping the bright sun out as much as possible. And I do understand some people might not have immediate access to the quests that take place during the day if they arrive home late at night unless there is a system like this in place. Still though, if you do have limited time having it on a 12 hours cycle or 6 hour cycle instead of a 24 hour one might not save you either.

Much rather I would see nightfall at around 21:00 in the evening, close enough to our own. It would not break the immersion, offer a nice amount of predictability and it would be easy to plan around. Let's say you get home somewhere between five and seven in the evening, you still have a respectable two to four hours of ingame daylight left. And if there is something you really want to do at night, you could still have a reasonable amount of time after dark, if sunset is around 21:00.

Same goes for the seasons really, aligning with the real world would add to immersion in my opinion and would make seasonal events just so much better.

For some people this might be an incredibly unimportant detail, but I've noticed it had a much larger impact than I anticipated when I switched from WoW to ESO for about a year.

I'm wondering, have the devs made an announcement about the duration of the cycles yet? And what would you prefer yourself?

ArchivedUser

From the Ashes Wiki:

There is a day/night cycle in Ashes of Creation.[21]

• Different monsters will spawn at different times.[22]
• NPCs and mobs may be awake at different times of the day.[21]
• Different emissive effects may be more prevalent on night creatures.[21]

Fifteen minutes may be one hour in game time.[23]

Since there are different things happening/to do at day or night, I sadly can't see the idea with the 9pm sunset working. It would work for a majority of people with normal 9 to 5 jobs. But there are still players in different timezones or with different working hours, it would be a no go for them to only experience days or only nights.

Considering this I prefer the 15min = 1h ingame approach.

Still it's a nice idea to think about

Oh and we have to keep in mind, that all those things may be subject to change, depending on how testing turns out

ArchivedUser

It doesn't matter what kind of system you invent to make it "more accessible" to everyone, there will always be a group of people that miss out on a regular basis.

You say "come home at 5-7" as if that is the general consensus when server timezones exist that fuck that up already. There are huge groups of people starting to work at that time, huge groups of people already in bed since they start in the middle of the night.

People that work in a shiftloop might have access to your time one week and miss out for the next 3.
It's just one of those things you can never get right. The moment you make it "better" for some, you make it worse for others. That's just how it is.

ArchivedUser

@Hackerson Thanks for the clarification. 

@Grisu I had imagined there would be different servers for latency reasons in different timezones, though it would be fun to all play on one server. And I agree, there will always be people that miss out on regular bases, whether it's a 24 hour loop or a 6 hour loop.

I've already stated my preference, mostly for immersion and roleplay sake.

Going to hate having to throw disclaimer whenever I agree to meet someone tomorrow in character. (So, should I say, in three days from now?)

Perhaps we could have a moon with a rotation that matches a real world day as means to an in character excuse? Tomorrow will mean 3-6 hours from now, next moon will mean tomorrow.

I wonder how the time will affect the seasons? With an hour lasting fifteen real world minutes that would mean we would get all the seasons in one real world season as well?

Ah well, food for thought! But thanks for the replies!

ArchivedUser

Raeven said:

I wonder how the time will affect the seasons? With an hour lasting fifteen real world minutes that would mean we would get all the seasons in one real world season as well?

So far they planned for every season to last a week, so in a realtime month you experience a full year in Ashes. There will also be magical seasons and various factors changing in the world depending on the current season.

ArchivedUser

Problem with that is, you get home from work in the evening, so never see ashes in the daylight.

So my perspective is the only way I know I can see all parts of the days is for the AoC time to be out of sync with real time.

The difference is when static, I never get to see part of the day. When assymetric I do. And those whose time is more flexible get to see all of the day regardless.

ArchivedUser

@Hackerson I probably should PM you with my questions rather than post them on the forums. Thanks for the quick answer, and that sounds pretty nifty!

@Rune_Relic Yeah.. Drat. (Been there done that sort of thing)

Even though it's still not my own preference, the 15 minute hour thing working out for others makes me feel a lot more comfortable with it!

ArchivedUser

Raeven said:

@Hackerson I probably should PM you with my questions rather than post them on the forums. Thanks for the quick answer, and that sounds pretty nifty!

:'D feel free to message me anytime

ArchivedUser

<going grandpa gamer again>

I remember EQ1 Butcherblock at night, no torch. My poor dwarf paladin had to sit in one spot for 45 minutes waiting for the 'sun' to come up. It wasn't 'dark', it was black and no amount of monitor gamma adjustments would cheat help. Then there was Kithicor Forest; nice and pleasant during the day but at night, undead came out to play and the zone level jumped from 10~20s to 40s.. At least it felt that way. haha.. Ohh and same blackness. Now add in corpse runs and corpse decay. Good times. hah.

ArchivedUser

@Shoklen

Awww yes. The good ol days of EQ where natural selection played a part for all those without night vision haha. 

As for TC question, the day and night cycle, it won't be real time, it'll be in game time. How long that last I'm not sure. You can't do real time because of time zones and people playing around the world. As for seasons I believe they said we will have a rotation of 4 seasons every month. 1 week will be summer, the next fall, then the next week winter followed by spring. But certain works events can trigger longer seasons, like a frost dragon causing longer winters 

ArchivedUser

Yes there are different servers for different regions, but there won't be a server for every time zone. Being in europe nearly every game as a 1 hour difference to local time since most servers are gmt tuned and there are further away once too. 2-3 hours is common. That's all I am saying.

I prefere it too for immersion that's why I think a 24 hour circle is the best in every way. From a gameplay perspective hmm depends on what those day night cycles really offer. Just because there are different monsters active doesn't mean it's something you will need access too.
It could all just be, once again, flavour. Who knows, we certainly don't.

ArchivedUser

Shoklen said:

<going grandpa gamer again>

I remember EQ1 Butcherblock at night, no torch. My poor dwarf paladin had to sit in one spot for 45 minutes waiting for the 'sun' to come up. It wasn't 'dark', it was black and no amount of monitor gamma adjustments would cheat help. Then there was Kithicor Forest; nice and pleasant during the day but at night, undead came out to play and the zone level jumped from 10~20s to 40s.. At least it felt that way. haha.. Ohh and same blackness. Now add in corpse runs and corpse decay. Good times. hah.

Imagine if the only way to make anything out was to set off sonar arrows....for brief snapshots.

ArchivedUser

Rune_Relic said:

Shoklen said:

<going grandpa gamer again>

I remember EQ1 Butcherblock at night, no torch. My poor dwarf paladin had to sit in one spot for 45 minutes waiting for the 'sun' to come up. It wasn't 'dark', it was black and no amount of monitor gamma adjustments would cheat help. Then there was Kithicor Forest; nice and pleasant during the day but at night, undead came out to play and the zone level jumped from 10~20s to 40s.. At least it felt that way. haha.. Ohh and same blackness. Now add in corpse runs and corpse decay. Good times. hah.

Imagine if the only way to make anything out was to set off sonar arrows....for brief snapshots.

That would be pretty cool, kind of like a horror feel..

I thought I heard about the military developing something along the lines.. The glasses projected ultrasonic sounds which reflected off the environment and objects and a processor would convert the bounced sound into real time video. In monochromatic color of course.. Pretty cool stuff.

ArchivedUser

You do realize not everyone has daytime and nighttime at the same time?  It would depend on what is the alpha time zone which might not fit your time zone if it was 24 hour cycle.  Also seasons, down under (below the equator) their winter is our summer; so that would not fit either.  I'm all for 45min-1hr day cycles and for seasons lasting at least 2 weeks if not a month with special holiday seasons thrown into the mix.

ArchivedUser

I don't want there to be more than 1 night per day because I plan to play 8 hours a day. If 15=1 hour it's nighttime every 3 hours. (I think) 45=1 hour sounds better to me. I also want seasons to be at least 2 months apart. If it's a new season every week there's no point to stocking up on winter items or not being able to cross a frozen river. I don't need instant gratification where it's day and night and all four seasons all in one day. 

I think they said there might be a fifth season called Magic Season, but maybe they were joking.

ArchivedUser

in-game rules! we should greet with ingame time to increase immersion :P not only that but because we have a wide range of timezones in the eu it gets confusing but if we were to use the ingame time then the greetings will be global!

ArchivedUser

Lets not forget to add Day Light Savings Time that only some nodes will recognize.

ArchivedUser

I will say that the game should have 'in-game universal time'.

There are some games, where its daylight on one client, night time on another client, raining and dull on another client and clear sunny skies on another....all at the exact same time. ie cycles and weather are client side.

ArchivedUser

T-Elf said:

You do realize not everyone has daytime and nighttime at the same time?

I LOLed when I read this. Some people do even know what day it is. But this is true, in some part of the world is night time.

ArchivedUser

Rune_Relic said:

I will say that the game should have 'in-game universal time'.

There are some games, where its daylight on one client, night time on another client, raining and dull on another client and clear sunny skies on another....all at the exact same time. ie cycles and weather are client side.

@Rune_Relic Yes! The mismatching weather is the absolute worst! (Same goes for anything that breaks consistency, emotes included) I definitely hope that sort of thing remains decided server side. (Well, emotes aren't registered, but at least stored until the character does something else)

ArchivedUser

The dead come mostly at night. Mostly ^^

ArchivedUser

I have never seen an online game with non universal time/weather : o

Sounds horrible.

ArchivedUser

I would like to voice an idea I found in YT comments under video about seasons.
The idea is that seasons although great idea, ought to be longer than 1 week.

Quote: "Honestly i find that a week is too short a time for a season to last, a month would sound more practical plus since the seasons affect the world then more reason to lengthen the time so people can adjust to the new season while giving ample time to do whatever new season brings to the table."

I fully support this idea as one week is really fast cycle to go through and one month is quite a nice time to have a lot of economy changes in game. For example there would be big shortage on certain flowers only growing in summer increasing the further we would be in the cycle. This would have not happened (or just on a small scale) if there was summer every month.

Ofcourse it would mean there would be ONLY 3 summers per RL year and not 12. That is a huge change but one to concider. Compromis of 2weeks/season (at least) could be on the table.

Note that if the seasons are as short as one week players could ignore certain game aspects of the season as their favorite season is just around the corner.