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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Season Variable and Time Mechanic Idea
novercalis
Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
I'd like to suggest an idea - for simplicity - let's us assume, Each Season last 1 month long for the purpose of this concept.
EDIT 7/17 - THIS POST ISNT ABOUT THE LENGTH OF SEASON - it just makes it easier to give examples to it. This idea can scale to any timeframe.
January = Spring
Feb = Summer
March = Fall
April = Winter
March 1st-28 is Fall
Fall - NPC Animals for the sake of this concept - spawns every 1 hour after being killed
Fall - Flower for gathering - spawns every hour
Those are the default numbers. Basically it has a potential to spawn 24 times in a single day.
Now for the potential interesting part
March 29th - It is still considered Fall - Winter is setting in but not officially winter. Just Snow fall particle is happening
Flower (or gatherables) and Animals (or NPC beasts/monsters) are beginning to hibernate, migrate, die off. Spawn-rate is now 1hr 30min, for a total of 16 spawns in a single day
Winter Animals & Gatherables are beginning to appear, very rarely - once every 6 hour after gathered or killed.
March 30th - It is still considered Fall - A little bit more snow - grass is starting to show very small snow buildup
Animals and Gatherables of that season is now spawning every 3 hours, for a total of 8 spawns
Winter Animals & Gatherables are beginning to appear, less frequently- once every 3 hour after gathered or killed.
March 31th - It is still considered Fall - A bit more snow is coming in now - grass has a bit more snow, tree are starting to show just a little bit of whiteness.
Animals and Gatherables are now spawning every 6 hours, for a total of 4 spawns. The last ones for the season.
Winter Animals & Gatherables are beginning to appear, a bit more common - once every 1hr 30min after gathered or killed.
April 1st - First Day of Winter - keep increasing until the 4th
Winter Animals & Gatherables are now spawning at default 1hr
April 2nd
April 3rd
April 4th - Everything should be covered in snow, as shown in the weather video
Now we can do fun mechanics / quest as well.
On the last 3 days of each season, there is an interaction between both seasons.
Maybe there is a quest that requires killing a Fall Bird and a Winter Bird and the blood needs to be fresh. Killing a Fall bird on March 28th and a Winter Bird on April 1st wont be acceptable, since the blood dried up or became unusable.
Now you can add a cooldown timer to ingredients and open much the game with more fun time mechanics. And play with the transitioning of seasons.
Maybe a special brew can be created with a fresh harvest picked of a fall and winter flower. The only time this can ever be done is between March 29th to March 31st.
Maybe a rare NPC / Boss / Animal only appears in those 3 days.
Idea #2
Make Seasons also variable & Unpredictable.
This may affect the first idea and completely make it irrelevant perhaps. So view this as a seperate concept, not a compound to the above idea.
If we were to do a gradual introduction of season, like the one stated above, assuming we are doing season = 1 month time length - to keep things fresh, there should be variables of how it comes into play.
Example:
year 1:
March - Fall
April = Winter
Winter transition on March 28 but is still considered fall
Winter starts April first but its not fully winter yet until April 3rd. Exactly the same stated above.
Year 2
March = Fall
April - Winter
It's been a very hot summer, unsually hot. Climate Change one may say.
No Winter transition in March.
April 1st = Winter officially for game mechanics, spawns etc - but still looks like fall
April 2nd - Still no snow
April 3rd - BOOM Winter comes roaring in and FAST. Now the players who are logged in that day may see what we all saw in the weather video - a very fast transition - JAWDROPPING experience to see the changes take places within 6 hours? maybe 1hr? maybe even less!
3rd example:
March 28 - it is still considered fall for game mechanics purposes - but a major winter stormed kicked in, in a spawn of 12 hours - everything is covered in snow - however IT IS NOT considered winter until April 1st - for the purpose of winter spawns / mechanics.
So this keeps the world feel real, alive with variables - you can make it feel very deep and do unique stuff in Idea #1, but if that isnt feasible, Idea #2 is a nice touch to play around with season changes.
So Basically, each year, seasons ma change sooner or later. Winter may come in fast one year, slower the next, or normal, VISUALLY SPEAKING.
EDIT 7/17 - THIS POST ISNT ABOUT THE LENGTH OF SEASON - it just makes it easier to give examples to it. This idea can scale to any timeframe.
January = Spring
Feb = Summer
March = Fall
April = Winter
March 1st-28 is Fall
Fall - NPC Animals for the sake of this concept - spawns every 1 hour after being killed
Fall - Flower for gathering - spawns every hour
Those are the default numbers. Basically it has a potential to spawn 24 times in a single day.
Now for the potential interesting part
March 29th - It is still considered Fall - Winter is setting in but not officially winter. Just Snow fall particle is happening
Flower (or gatherables) and Animals (or NPC beasts/monsters) are beginning to hibernate, migrate, die off. Spawn-rate is now 1hr 30min, for a total of 16 spawns in a single day
Winter Animals & Gatherables are beginning to appear, very rarely - once every 6 hour after gathered or killed.
March 30th - It is still considered Fall - A little bit more snow - grass is starting to show very small snow buildup
Animals and Gatherables of that season is now spawning every 3 hours, for a total of 8 spawns
Winter Animals & Gatherables are beginning to appear, less frequently- once every 3 hour after gathered or killed.
March 31th - It is still considered Fall - A bit more snow is coming in now - grass has a bit more snow, tree are starting to show just a little bit of whiteness.
Animals and Gatherables are now spawning every 6 hours, for a total of 4 spawns. The last ones for the season.
Winter Animals & Gatherables are beginning to appear, a bit more common - once every 1hr 30min after gathered or killed.
April 1st - First Day of Winter - keep increasing until the 4th
Winter Animals & Gatherables are now spawning at default 1hr
April 2nd
April 3rd
April 4th - Everything should be covered in snow, as shown in the weather video
Now we can do fun mechanics / quest as well.
On the last 3 days of each season, there is an interaction between both seasons.
Maybe there is a quest that requires killing a Fall Bird and a Winter Bird and the blood needs to be fresh. Killing a Fall bird on March 28th and a Winter Bird on April 1st wont be acceptable, since the blood dried up or became unusable.
Now you can add a cooldown timer to ingredients and open much the game with more fun time mechanics. And play with the transitioning of seasons.
Maybe a special brew can be created with a fresh harvest picked of a fall and winter flower. The only time this can ever be done is between March 29th to March 31st.
Maybe a rare NPC / Boss / Animal only appears in those 3 days.
Idea #2
Make Seasons also variable & Unpredictable.
This may affect the first idea and completely make it irrelevant perhaps. So view this as a seperate concept, not a compound to the above idea.
If we were to do a gradual introduction of season, like the one stated above, assuming we are doing season = 1 month time length - to keep things fresh, there should be variables of how it comes into play.
Example:
year 1:
March - Fall
April = Winter
Winter transition on March 28 but is still considered fall
Winter starts April first but its not fully winter yet until April 3rd. Exactly the same stated above.
Year 2
March = Fall
April - Winter
It's been a very hot summer, unsually hot. Climate Change one may say.
No Winter transition in March.
April 1st = Winter officially for game mechanics, spawns etc - but still looks like fall
April 2nd - Still no snow
April 3rd - BOOM Winter comes roaring in and FAST. Now the players who are logged in that day may see what we all saw in the weather video - a very fast transition - JAWDROPPING experience to see the changes take places within 6 hours? maybe 1hr? maybe even less!
3rd example:
March 28 - it is still considered fall for game mechanics purposes - but a major winter stormed kicked in, in a spawn of 12 hours - everything is covered in snow - however IT IS NOT considered winter until April 1st - for the purpose of winter spawns / mechanics.
So this keeps the world feel real, alive with variables - you can make it feel very deep and do unique stuff in Idea #1, but if that isnt feasible, Idea #2 is a nice touch to play around with season changes.
So Basically, each year, seasons ma change sooner or later. Winter may come in fast one year, slower the next, or normal, VISUALLY SPEAKING.
{UPK} United Player Killer - All your loot belongs to us.
0
Comments
#2: I think a consistent and gradual change between seasons during the final stage of a seasonal cycle would be more beneficial for players. It's a visual cue for players to prepare for the upcoming changes to content and resource availability. Not to mention seasons will directly affect farming and crop rotations.
I think the easiesy way to do this it with caravan travel speed.
A caravan traveling through the mountains in heavy snow should have a heavy slowdown penalty.
A caravan traveling through marshes in the rainy season, slowdown penalty.
Desert in the summer, during the day? Slowdown penalty.
But I wil admit, anything that brings more dynamic systems to AoC has my upvote.
I don't want to see 1on1 best practice guides. These kind of variables just make it a little less predictable. If a lot of features all have slight variables it adds up to a more dynamic experience.
I'd prefer to just test what's already planned before trying to fix a feature we know very little about.
Seasons lasting for a month or more can be very rewarding for people who, let's say, farmed a material that can only be found in that specific season and will make bank if they hold it for a little bit.
On the other hand it can be very annoying, if not game breaking, to desperately need a material that can no longer be found for at least another 2 or 3 months and is owned by only a handful of people or a mafia.
I am fond of the idea of having meaningful seasons and everything that comes with that like seasonal materials, seasonal monsters (and their loot) and more, but it needs to be balanced and well thought.
I know that it's said paths could be blocked from road conditions and what not, I like that. I hope weather will definitely make traveling more of a challenge.
Because the devs originally said that each season will be 1 week:
Steven 😇: @everyone 1.) Does the video seem too long? 2.) Each season will last a week in RL, so the zone changes during our scheduled downtime, then stays that season for the week. Each month in RL will effectively be a full seasonal rotation in the game. This is a rough draft of the video, so you may see a rocktree, and rough transitions. But it is all in-game footage.
Especially now that Steven is currently thinking somewhere between 1-2 weeks.
I’m curious what your buddy Neurotoxin would think.
Let me first go into saying that I whole heartedly agree with you that I want seasons to effect travel and trade routes a lot. I think the siege system is a huge part of why things like that will happen. I think the increased viability during different parts of the in game year will also matter.
But that ALSO happens to indirectly increase the percentage of the population that wants node citizenship and a freehold in choice nodes. Which means that farming viability and seasons will directly affect how frequently sieges happen and therefore also how frequency of travel on the server will occur.
This may have been an aspect of travel you may not have considered previously which is why I bring it to your attention. The length of seasons definitely has an effect on frequency of travel, but I think sieges will have a much stronger and longer term impact. IS will need to be careful with how long a season is relative to the amount of demand for sieges it puts on the over all system.
As for month long seasons... I tried to figure out a way to keep things short and not go too in depth into the full farming system I made a year ago that included crop rotations, weather, soil quality, seasonal climatic effects on yield and ripening, fertilizers, pests, the whole shebang. But to answer why 'a month isn't too long' unfortunately requires me to go into exactly all of those factors for the full answer to make sense... So I will not try to do that. Besides you said it was a personal preference and there is a much easier argument to make.
So let me ask you instead a different question all together. What if I told you, that if seasons were two weeks long that there is still top level farming profession niches available for people like you who prefer more frequent harvests that would only take about 3-5 days per harvest depending on how much you specialized in that exact crop and what you would need to rotate between each harvest to continue optimized profit and yield on said specialty crop? Is that an acceptable amount of time? Or do you want top level farming continent to have 48 hour harvests maximum?
If that is the case your fun is probably not best served by anything longer than 2 weeks. However if you are fine with 3-5 days per harvest for top end farming content, seasons could be 3-4 weeks and you would still be relatively well served in terms of itemization.
Additionally, what if you were just 'that master farmer who specialized in staple crops that even lowbies can farm' and just focused on high yield high throughput low value to get the daily harvests. Would you be ok with that type of upper level content? If so, 2-4 week seasons shouldn't impact your personal experience too much.
The over all argument for 3-4 week long seasons is that they would line up better with sieges and make them even more impactful in terms of movement, while 'demand' and 'weather events' would be the main factor in player movement otherwise. When seasons are 1 week short, weather events feel overwhelmingly impactful in a way that can ruin the entire seasons worth of crops and create much more erratic supply. While this is technically intended, a 2 week long season would still make crafting POSSIBLE just 'expensive', and players would have time to recover. The longer the season, the longer you can make the weather effects overall impact and the more of a 'community event we have to work together on to recover from' that can be.
Keep in mind I strongly prefer 2 or 3 week long seasons and think that 4 week is the upper limit so I'm not at all advocating that they SHOULD be 4 weeks. I just know that 2 week long seasons scale up acceptably well itemization wise to 3 or 4 weeks instead.
No matter the length of time they decide to go with, I'll adapt. Either way I won't be upset and will work with what we are given, I just like the idea of shorter (1-2 weeks sounds good even) seasons. Knowing that the weather can cause problems is what will make it fun to me. Again, just personal opinion. I'm excited to test it out in Alpha 2
No worries mate. I won't press you further. I just like getting data on my fellow farmer's preferences just in case I missed something in the model I had built or they had some insight into the gameplay loop I hadn't considered. Thanks for responding anyway.
the post isnt about time length - I just used a arbitary number for the sake of the concept idea.
I'm not even sure a day and half is all that great if we cut the proposed time in half to two weeks.
Like, if it's actually one week per season, you're basically saying these special quests should be allocated to every Saturday. Which would probably suck for people who can never play on Saturday.
So, again...
I'd prefer to just test what's already planned before trying to fix a feature we know very little about.
Transitions are already in the design, so... I'd like to experience those planned transitions, first.
Months have 30 and 31 days except Feb.
So March 1st can land on a Sat, first day of the new season. If I suggested 28 days flat, we would have a saturday issue as you suggested.
Two, everything I suggested can be scale. 1 month makes things easier for me to explain is all.
A 7 day transition can be done in 7 hours transition.
As far as I know... Verra Seasons last 1 week and really have very little to do with a real life month - other than the devs will have some Verra holidays that coincide with real life holidays.
I understand that a 7 hour transition is possible.
That means that there will be players missing out on the proposed special transitional items if they can't play during those 7 hours.
So, again...
I'd prefer to just test what's already planned before trying to fix a feature we know very little about.
Transitions are already in the design, so... I'd like to experience those planned transitions, first.
Let's see what they are actually offering - then we will know if it needs to be "more in depth and variable".