Possible Day and Night Cycles?

Unnn...environmental changes would DEFINETELY makes GvG a WHOLE LOT more interesting!

Night/day effects necro abbilitys, rainy/clouded/snowy effects elementals, shadow/sun effects warrior/ranger missing on atacks, and so on....foggy would deffinately help a LOT assasins ^^

OOOO well, even thought the idea is GREAT I don´t see it getting implemented so soon, maybe by chapter 19 ^^

But we can dream....

Later.

That would be awesome! I want weather effects and night/day cycle NOW!!

Unfortunately bonuses or penalties based on rendered visual effects will never come to GW because they can be hacked easily without being detected.

A couple of things to concider with time cycles...

They could impliment a client side time setting, where it takes the system clock into account and applies tod accordingly. Although, that would impose a limit on parties where multiple time zones were affected and would most likely default to the party leaders time zone.

An IGT (in-game time system) running on rapid cycle (every 4 hours or less) becomes annoying after awhile, IMO, but i suppose it could be done fairly easily. Since right now there is no benefit (tatically) to time changes in game, it would be completely aesthetic. GW is completely instanced, so time changes and weather changes are only ever applicable per-zone/mission, taking place along a narrow timeline. If they do impliment time changes, I'd like to see an affect or tactical change, such as viewing distance limitations, an increase or decreased aggro circle, to hit ratio decrease/increase, movement rate changes, etc... And thats REALLY asking ALOT! Otherwise, it would be pretty pointless.

I think that the altered path/questing order offered in Nightfall is going to be a much more substantial change to game play over the time change options. They have made it sound as though the enviroment overall will be more affected by peoples choices in path for quests and mission. For now that will be ALOT more then what people are currently used to, throw in weather change affects and/or time cycle uninstanced affects and you're going to have a ton of really confused players.

Well no day/night cycle for Nightfall then confirmed there.

I think this would be a really good addition for future, and also the weather cycle would just rock!

It would totally change the PvE experience (for the better imho) - just imagine, one day you're out and about maybe fighting a bunch of thugs in Cantha... then it starts raining... then it gets dark... lightning... can't see things too well... would make things very interesting If you add foggy days/nights into the mix as well!

Anyone who's played Oblivion will know all about that day/night + weather mixes.

There's technical reasons why Prophecies and Factions can't have day/night cycles: the light and shadows in the world (except for players) are static pre-rendered lightmaps.

You could change the ambient light, but then you'd have a night with shafts of sunlight through the trees, and shadows on the ground. Given GW's fairly realistic graphics, that'd look weird.

One could possibly get around that by having a really big & bright moon in the same spot as the daytime sun, but I don't think it'd be possible to make the transition from day to night smooth.

A more advanced lighting model could be used in Nightfall, but would raise system requirements a lot (to Oblivion level - and even oblivion uses pre-rendered shadows to cut down on calculations). Not sure users would necessarily love that.

Other MMO's can get around this since they use even simpler lighting schemes (e.g. WoW uses simple omnidirectional lighting and no shadows), so all you need to do is change the amount of ambient light.

Basically I think GW's graphics are too good to take the easy way out, but not advanced enough to do things the hard way.

Then again, maybe ANet can surprise me. They have in the past.

Having a day and night cycle might not make it more realistic, but it sure would be fun!

the devs can do whatever with day/night and ill be fine with it IF


IF


IF

IF


they update the sky resolution!!!! The only thing my new graphics card didnt change was the sky!! Even without day and night, id still like to see a sky that doesnt look like it was rendered by a collegiate freshman :P


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thinking about ith tho... how often u look at the sky