Immersion Improvements

A few suggestions to improve the game.

Add a global day and night cycle.
- with environment effects/penalties

Add semi-random weather effects to zones.
- with environment effects/penalties

A global day and night cycle would help to create a better sense of adventure.

People would hang around town trying to get a party together. chatting until morning. (or some would just log off, and wait for morning to come around again, which would help ease server loads)

They want to try to head out by 7:30 am gametime because they don't want to get stuck out there at night in the middle of their quest.

BECAUSE....... its hard to see, and there are things that go *bump* in the night.

For those quests that do go into the night, better settle down, and prepare to fend off anything that does come *bumping*

Maybe even give a skill to make a campfire that last's until morning, and fends off the things that lurk just beyond the shadows.

Anyone know a good campfire horror story?

If your traversing in a dungeon(xpansion hopefully)
They're usually pitch black.

Make some skills that allow your party to offset certain extraordinary environmental conditons.

I'll stop here, and let the community continue on what could come of this.

P.S. if it is possible,
I'd like to see what people think the realtime:gametime ratio should be.

Don't see this being implemented in this chapter of the game. All the skys are static and would require a major design overhaul.

But I would like this feature to be included via a streamline update via and expansion pack.

weather creates whole heeps of its own trouble...

remember morrowind? if it was bucketing it down, fine, but woe betide the daft bugger that got caught outside in a major Blight Storm, specialy if they had too namy permanant enchantments *rolls eyes*

it would lag like son-of-a-specky ^^ i know, cause i got caught out in one fighting a vamp with about 8 perma enchants running and it was like the matrix, befor they did the film ^^ only i couldnt move fast ether *grr*

but some special areas that had different weather, maybe, if it didnt cause to much lag

*would you want to be stuck in slow-mo for ages while it threw it down or hailstoned? snow, i can deal with, i love it in games, but rain can be a pain and storms, naw*

I thought of this, day/night cycle would be cool, just not that it affects gameplay, and random wheater, I would also like to see that. One thing I just thought of. In kryta it's like here when it's summer, and usually it's mist from evening to morning, that would be cool to see in Kryta. Shiverpeak mountains? If snowing the snow on the ground adds up, but you don't walk on the snow you plow right through it, and no, it wouldn't be particles that add up on the ground, it would rise constantly while it snowed.

I wouldn't mind seeing anything like this in chapter 3, although it's a lot of programming for some small details.

*as your group is doing Thunder Head Keep*
ok you guys, it's getting dark, lets all top here and make a campfire......... anyone got some marshmallows?

i don't see this ever being implemented. If it did i would hope Game Time and Real World Time would be diffrent, as some people can only play at night, and so on.

Don't like the night and day idea because I play in low light conditions due to the chandelier in the former dining room turned to Guild Wars playing room

This would be very nice, but I doubt it will be implimented. In fact, some missions only take place at night and it works. Riverside Provice for example just wouldn't be right during the day.

Besides, if you introduce day and night cycles that throws off the sense of time. You travel by boat to some strange new land and because of a fixed day/night cycle it clearly only took you 3 seconds.

It would be interesting to see many places in a different time cycle or weather though. What's the desert like at night?

It would also offer some interesting mechanics. When I played EverQuest they had all sorts of spells that had nothing to do with combat, but were a lot of fun. Things like Ultravision, Scope Vision, and the like. If you introduce new environmental factors, you can introduce interesting new spells as well. Perhaps some ele spells or ranger skills can get a boost when used in certain weather.

But like I said, I doubt it will happen, exciting as the proposition may be. It is just too much work.

only problem with 'fun' skills is that we only have 8 slots, but it would be nice for exploring

But isn't Day and Night idea being around for long time now?

Day and Night only in exploration area and town (not in mission), and with different monster groups and/or NPC "spawn" in differnt time. Differnt Time related quests and scrippted events. About a 1:5 real-time to game-time ratio, that is independed from the real-time.

The biggest problem is that most people don't care about immersion or role playing. If you set a camp, they'd probably quit group.

No no no no no. Sorry, but if you've ever played Star Wars Galaxies, you'd know that this is a very bad idea. In concept it sounds really good, but in reality, it holds up parties and makes people reluctant to "move out".

I like the idea of some parts of the world having a day night cycle, over half an hour or so for 12 hours, that would work. However a server-wide cycle would ruin the game.

Second skillbar of 8 skills for random BS that we don't need. lol

Press: Fun skill button (Shift+Alt+ F maybe) --> Show/Hide "fun" skillbar.

Only allow useless skills in there. That will solve it.

*Cough* Firestorm *Cough*
*Cough* Meteor Storm *Cough*
*Cough* Elementalist *Cough*