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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Weather and NPCs
Burnzey
Member
I was requested by AoC YouTube comment to add this suggestion:
NPCs behaviour and animation are different depending on the season.
For example, a farmhand standing outside their shack may shiver in the rain or snow, or wipe their brow in the heat. They may also be scripted to seek shelter such as sit under a tree , huddle by a fire or stand under something like a patio
Further to this discussion, I personally think that weather should be a lot slower to change (monthly) instead of one week. This is to fully enjoy the diversity of each weather pattern, and the solstice in Winter and Summer offering unique holiday celebrations and events.
NPCs behaviour and animation are different depending on the season.
For example, a farmhand standing outside their shack may shiver in the rain or snow, or wipe their brow in the heat. They may also be scripted to seek shelter such as sit under a tree , huddle by a fire or stand under something like a patio
Further to this discussion, I personally think that weather should be a lot slower to change (monthly) instead of one week. This is to fully enjoy the diversity of each weather pattern, and the solstice in Winter and Summer offering unique holiday celebrations and events.
3
Comments
I wish we could see them change into Seasonal outfits as well.
(breakfast, lunch and dinner might be too much programming, but...)
Realism is nice and all, and I can't say I wouldn't appreciate it, but this also isn't Minecraft. You can't just 'set the server to skip to morning whenever one player sleeps so that they can interact with whatever villagers they like.
Tbh I think just changing animations to reflect the weather would be a nice touch on its own.
I don't think it's hard to program. Games have had this sort of thing for a long time, and while I haven't personally implemented any realtime equivalents, that would just be a mask on top of any other system. It's usually a decision made because someone doesn't WANT it to be that way because of the complaints they get. On the upside, that means that if Intrepid is willing to do it and not worry about that too much, or even just 'have NPCs move and change shifts', you might get to see it.
The issue is almost always 'synchronization' or NPC persistence in some way, I'd be really surprised if the code was hard, especially because it's one of those 'interesting' things where when it spawns a bug, that acts as its own weird, slightly annoying, immersion.
Maybe the blacksmith got sick.
Maybe blacksmith went for a swim before winter hit and got trapped under the ice. We might not have weapons, armour and horse shoes for a while, but he can watch in envy as we skate above him across the frozen lake.
Ice fishing, anyone?
The reason this works in Elder Scrolls games is because if the shop keeper you need to sell all the gear you have that has you over encumbered happens to be in bed when you get to town, you can literally just press a few buttons to wait 10 hours for him to be back at work.
The only way I can see a system like this working in an MMORPG is if NPC's all operate on shifts. At this point though, I don't see any real appeal to it.
I could see dialogue options and animations that are weather based.
- It would be nice to have certain animals seeking more shelter in the winter, though given we have animals changing in the seasons, i'd like to think that means they are also adapting to the season, so it might not be as necessary.
- I think that while immersion-wise little micro-animation changes are cool to add, it would definitely be something that should be patched in much later over more essential changes.
I think a month is too long, just because of the 3 month wait to go back to that season - that's a long time! I am pretty set on 2 weeks now but we will see how it plays out and they will 100% be doing testing on durations.
They wouldn't necessarily have to be NPCs with any real purpose, just random.
But then if you have certain NPCs acting about their life while others don't, then that would break immersion anyway.
The downside to this is that as the game launches, Verra is essentially unpopulated.
Why would these people even be there?
I'm confused by this.. Why would they be gone altogether?
But, I think the OP request is mostly for NPCs after they do appear (due to Node progression).
Now that being said, I hope beyond just seasons, continents will have different endemic resources to make pirating and naval caravans very important and impactful too. Having important/key coastal nodes with well defended routes is crucial, and the wind/ice would play important roles here too.