Seasons

chrisgan1

A discussion on the seasonal changes within the world. Length of each season, regional differences, economic and social impact etc.

AidanKD

It might be wise to open up a discussion with some of your own discussion and interpretation. Right now you have shot out a lot of topics without any sort of direction and I don't know what you want us to do

Incidentally, we did have an old stickied thread about seasons, maybe search it and contribute there?

chrisgan1

I think that the seasons should last at least 3 weeks but no longer than 5 weeks. I think that this would create enough of a lasting impact so that players have to actually adapt to the changes instead of just potentially playing the game less for a week because it’s winter and it’s harder to gather materials and meet personal and group goals.

Another issue this may link in with is geographically favourable nodes ie nodes that are in the centre of the map with coastal access and strong resources. I think seasonal changes could be one way to combat this. For example, during each season there could be more extreme effects that occur within random nodes across the world. These could provide positive or negative bonuses. Going back to the centrally located port node which would be a strong location and likely very popular amongst players, perhaps in the winter if this node was selected via RNG there are more extreme weather effects making both trade and gathering even more difficult in that area for the season perhaps due to the port being damaged or seas being too rough. My point is that this could potentially be used to prevent a select number of nodes holding a monopoly over resources and population due to a favourable location. Would be great to hear any ideas as I find this quite an interesting topic area with lots of potential?

Voxtrium

@chrisgan1 Some resources will be season dependent which if balanced properly should give many nodes value regardless of placement. Season length is something I want to experience before I put down a number but if I was going to lick my thumb and say a number I'd go with 2 weeks. That way resources dependent on the season diminish significantly before coming back into the rotation.

Scarbeus

Seasons should be monthly in my opinion, with December being a winter one for the sake of appearance. This gives players a good amount of time to collect all the resources they need for that season without being too short, but giving enough time for it to be considered risky that they might lose storages to sieges.

TheWandered

What about something like this? Behold! 1 full month for each season. 3 full rotations of seasons per 1 year of irl time. So 3 years pass in-game to 1 of ours. Could also do just 1 season per month starting with spring in January and it would end up with winter in December and resets perfectly back to spring in January.

LordPax

I think one of the best ideas I've seen on this matter is that certain regions are affected more or less by each "season".

Like, a desert shouldn't snow because it's 'winter'. Coastal regions could be mildly warm year round - this could make for fun player driven social content. Like, during the 2-3 weeks it's winter, players will migrate to warmer climate areas. On the same note, maybe a specific crop or resource only spawns in the ice, and you'll have to climb to the top of a mountain to find ice in non-winter seasons.

TheWandered

LordPax wrote: »

I think one of the best ideas I've seen on this matter is that certain regions are affected more or less by each "season".

Like, a desert shouldn't snow because it's 'winter'. Coastal regions could be mildly warm year round - this could make for fun player driven social content. Like, during the 2-3 weeks it's winter, players will migrate to warmer climate areas. On the same note, maybe a specific crop or resource only spawns in the ice, and you'll have to climb to the top of a mountain to find ice in non-winter seasons.

But in the real world it does snow in the Desert! haha and California/Oregon/Washington get down to freezing. All of these biomes Can experience different seasons. Even Alaska gets up into the 90's during the summer!