No day and night on each planet

[Cerion]

Man there's just something about people that don't want immersion in their MMORPG that pisses me off.

 

Somebody needs to RE-ESTABLISH a genre that focuses on immersion, realism, and depth of the game world. You know, like the MMORPG genre was designed to do before it got over run with the "I'm too weird to interact with people in RL so I'm an MMO'er now" crowd from battle.net.

 

The entire genre is dumbed down and artifical now because of some flavor of the month kids that got sucked in by WoW.

 

Prepare for your world-view to be shattered, lol. I'm none of what you describe. Not a WoWer (hate the game), not even heard of Battle.net.

 

Is there room for a genre you describe? Sure. Does it have to be this one? No. It might be the next one, or the one after that.

 

I also like immersion in my MMORPGS. That's why for SWTOR, in this game's case, I find the snap-shot world to be very immersive. Would snap-shot work everywhere? No.

 

Now having said that, I'm also looking forward to ArcheAge. You should check it out as it seems to fit the genre qualities you enjoy.

[Altyrell]

No, it's just an excuse. And an illogical one at that.

Their excuse is that they don't want to implement swimming unless there's content to demand it. But they won't implement content because there's no swimming in the game.

That is circular reasoning. And as such, is a fallacy.

 

However, why not have both of what you suggest?

For instance, why not :

1. First implement the swimming mechanics and bodies of water to swim in, populated with things one would expect to find in water (flora, fauna, perhaps some underwater caves with datacrons in them).
   
2. Later on (at the devs descretion), implement additional optional content that involves swimming.
   

By dealing with the mechanics first, thus splitting the work, the devs can then be sure to get the mechanics working properly PRIOR to implementing "full on content" at the same time. The way how the devs want to do it could end up causing them a lot of headaches.

 

Problems are easier to manage when they are split up into more manageable chunks.

 

The same goes for the introduction of any new feature or mechanic.

 

Actually, I don't believe they've stated that they won't add in swimming because there isn't any content. I could be wrong though, but I only know of them saying that when they do add it in, they actually want to have content built for & around swimming.

 

Regardless, my opinion on Swimming being added is the same for Night/Day Cycles being added. IF it were to ever get added, then I would want them to do it correctly. For N/D Cycles specifically, I would want it to be as if I was actually on the World and experiencing the Sunset(s) on said World and not have it be tied to that of Earth.

 

Cause if I wanted to see the Sunset be the same as it is on Earth, I would go to Alderaan/Coruscant or heck, I would just go outside and watch the Sunset. I would want not only for the scenery to be different, but the activity on the World that I was on to be different. Meaning, if it is Noon on Alderaan then I would want it to be NOON on Alderaan and experience all of the things that would happen at Noon on Alderaan, then when it becomes Midnight on Alderaan, I wouldn't want to be seeing the same stuff that would be going on at Noon on Alderaan, I would want to see everything that would happen during the Night time on Alderaan.

 

I would want to see "Light Sources" going across the (unreachable) walls of the various Houses. I would want to see the Sith Forces have different attack patterns or doing different stuff at Night then they would during the Day.

 

To that extent, I wouldn't mind if they made Time of the Day Specific Missions, so if it is Night Time on Nal Hutta, then I wouldn't mind if there was a Night Time Assault/Infiltration Mission to invade a Rival Hutt's Palace.

 

Then again, I actually wished that the Worlds would change as the story progressed.

 

 

I say that because Nem'ro dies at the hand of a Bounty Hunter as told during one of the Doc's (Jedi Knight's) Companion Quests and my Imperial Agent killed Fa'athra on Voss. So it makes me sad going to Nal Hutta and seeing Nem'ro's forces and Fa'athra's forces going at it as if neither died.

 

Now I know, they can't really do anything drastic such as moving 1 or 2 new Hutts into Fa'athra's or Nem'ro's respective Palaces, but it would still be nice

 

Edited March 23, 2012 by Altyrell

[Goretzu]

You don't have to like day/night in every game. I'm sure some would be fine without it. It's my opinion that SWTOR should have it, but my opinion is not necessarily right.

 

That being said, I wouldn't want day/night in, like, Starcraft or something. In my opinion with the type of game that SC is, it doesn't require that level of detail, whether or not you are a person who likes to be immersed in their game.

 

SWTOR works without the day/night cycle. It's already a fantasy world, so the lack of it is a reasonable suspension of disbelief. The game doesn't NEED it, but I would personally like to see it.

 

 

True, but we're not talking about every game, we're talking about MMORPGs.

 

Liking it in every MMORPG past and future except SWTOR is well..... strange, to say the least.

 

SWG had it, all the films had it, so there's no suspension of disbelief in regard to Star Wars...... just a suspension of time..... that apparently is only "ok" in SWTOR for some apparently inexplicable reason.

Edited March 23, 2012 by Goretzu

[Goretzu]

Now having said that, I'm also looking forward to ArcheAge. You should check it out as it seems to fit the genre qualities you enjoy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 23, 2012 by Goretzu

[Ramayana]

Nope, doesn't bother me at all. Then again, i spent a 6 month deployment Iceland where most of it was in the winter. Working the night shift, I had to set my alarm if i wanted to see the 2 hours a day that the sun was up.

 

Nobody cares about your awesome RL experience in Iceland. It doesn't make your answer any more credible. Just pointless e-peen waving.

 

Being in a perpetual, unchanging timezone is poor design and needs to be fixed at some point.

[mattgyver]

Nobody cares about your awesome RL experience in Iceland. It doesn't make your answer any more credible. Just pointless e-peen waving.

 

Being in a perpetual, unchanging timezone is poor design and needs to be fixed at some point.

 

Nobody speaks for anyone but themselves. Make your apathy singular

[Criosdh]

Prepare for your world-view to be shattered, lol. I'm none of what you describe. Not a WoWer (hate the game), not even heard of Battle.net.

 

Is there room for a genre you describe? Sure. Does it have to be this one? No. It might be the next one, or the one after that.

 

I also like immersion in my MMORPGS. That's why for SWTOR, in this game's case, I find the snap-shot world to be very immersive. Would snap-shot work everywhere? No.

 

Now having said that, I'm also looking forward to ArcheAge. You should check it out as it seems to fit the genre qualities you enjoy.

 

 

 

There already is a genre for what I described and it's called the MMORPG genre. It's just being slowly eroded by lazy ADHD kids.

 

You tried a Blizzard game and have never heard of battle.net? You've never heard of Diablo, Starcraft or Warcraft?

[kmontyw]

Night is a hit or miss effect in many games. I concur.

 

In EQ1, it was pitch-freaking-dark at one point. LOTRO does night pretty well -- feels like night without the game-hindering blackness.

 

EQ1 built that "pitch-freaking-dark" into the gameplay brilliantly. If you were human you couldn't see, so you needed an item/spell/ability to do so if you wanted to go there. Things made perfect gameplay sense in that that game. NOT having a day/night cycle is only ever a cheap tech/art solution. It's a shortcut, and a cheezy one. Whatever any of you say doesn't impact upon that reality. If BW *could* had done it, they would have. It wasn't an artistic choice for crying out loud. It was a production choice to make some things easier to build.

Edited March 24, 2012 by kmontyw

[DarthAcerbus]

I like to think that a world takes a day, in-game time, to complete, because face it, we're not seeing a super-huge area comparatively. You sleep on your ship between planets.

[krinaman]

Honestly, if I haven't read these threads complaining about night/day I would of never even noticed it didn't have cycles.

[Aramyth]

I can't stand it.

 

I can't stand seeing the skyboxes that are so static with a few dynamic clouds thrown on top. It's ugly. It's boring. It makes me feel disconnected from the game.

 

The player feeling connected to the game is a huge deal, it keeps people playing.

 

It needs to be changed ASAP. It's not cool to always have the same time of say on planets. Yuck.

[celebrei]

Immersion. Important it is. Day and Night cycles have we must. Give us a richer playing experience it will. But alas too late i think this is. More programming to implement is needed. Developers will not go that far i fear.

[JayceJa]

day night cycles would be pretty awesome, as well as random weather events such as rain, snow, sandstorms, etc.

 

they would all go a nice way towards immersion, however it doesnt BOTHER me that they arent implemented

[celebrei]

A welcome addition it would be. But unlikely the developers would heed.

[Goretzu]

EQ1 built that "pitch-freaking-dark" into the gameplay brilliantly. If you were human you couldn't see, so you needed an item/spell/ability to do so if you wanted to go there. Things made perfect gameplay sense in that that game. NOT having a day/night cycle is only ever a cheap tech/art solution. It's a shortcut, and a cheezy one. Whatever any of you say doesn't impact upon that reality. If BW *could* had done it, they would have. It wasn't an artistic choice for crying out loud. It was a production choice to make some things easier to build.

 

Yeah you have to wonder, it certain wouldn't bode well.

 

 

I can't stand it.

 

I can't stand seeing the skyboxes that are so static with a few dynamic clouds thrown on top. It's ugly. It's boring. It makes me feel disconnected from the game.

 

The player feeling connected to the game is a huge deal, it keeps people playing.

 

It needs to be changed ASAP. It's not cool to always have the same time of say on planets. Yuck.

 

 

There's a few that are nice looking (Ilum for example), but even with them if you spend any time actually looking at them they are just so static that they soon feel very dull and lifeless.

 

It's strange because I've often heard people talk about stars in MMORPGs before (Rift was the last one I heard people being wowed by it) and yet in a game like Star Wars, of all things, the skys are like posters stuck onto a giant ceiling.

 

In Ilum for example seeing the chuncks of ice shoot down in the atmosphere every now and again would add a lot an illusion of a dynamic world and as in most MMORPGs draw the eye away from the otherwise staticness of the world.

 

It's a small be effective trick.

Edited March 24, 2012 by Goretzu

[Aramyth]

That's what skyboxes are. I imagine in the Hero Engine you have the option to add one to your scene simply by attaching the image to the right drag and drop spot in the UI, meaning the only real work put into them was the artists work.

 

If you look at the sky's closely, for example on Tatoonie, there are clouds that move across the sky, but the suns are stuck forever in their position near the horizon because they are a static image plastered around the plane that is Tatoonie.

 

They look even more gross on planets like Hoth where you see the images of mountains plastered on the scene. Gross...

 

I remember reading somewhere that they decided to do this because then each planet would keep their iconic feel, WHICH is also very important to certain people, like iconic Mickey Mouse always looking like Mickey. What this means is that when you go to a place like Tatoonie they want you to feel like you're there during that iconic moment when Luke watched the suns set, but it sucks.

 

The planets environments, including the positioning of mobs and how a lot of them just stand still and stay off paths and the lack of weather effects, feel so static and so linear that I can only simply call them gross.

[Lord_Ravenhurst]

I can't stand it.

 

I can't stand seeing the skyboxes that are so static with a few dynamic clouds thrown on top. It's ugly. It's boring. It makes me feel disconnected from the game.

 

The player feeling connected to the game is a huge deal, it keeps people playing.

 

It needs to be changed ASAP. It's not cool to always have the same time of say on planets. Yuck.

 

So true...

Guess it's the god awful WoW invention of the theme park mmo concept, with boring NPCs, static feeling and a time frozen world with stationary birds and corridors to walk through, I'd prefered a more realistic approach too.

Edited March 24, 2012 by Lord_Ravenhurst

[Tarka]

That's what skyboxes are. I imagine in the Hero Engine you have the option to add one to your scene simply by attaching the image to the right drag and drop spot in the UI, meaning the only real work put into them was the artists work.

 

If you look at the sky's closely, for example on Tatoonie, there are clouds that move across the sky, but the suns are stuck forever in their position near the horizon because they are a static image plastered around the plane that is Tatoonie.

 

I'm not sure of the specifics but one thing I do know is that (according to the "Dynamic Sky" article on the HeroEngine Wikia) the day/night cycle settings are part of an environment "scheme" for a zone. Which can either be set as "static" (thus having a static time of day for each zone, like SWTOR has now) or dynamic, with a user preferred duration that can be set for the day/night cycle.

 

The question is of course, is whether (excuse the pun) or not the version of the HeroEngine used for SWTOR has the same capabilities. Given the devs previous answers (i.e. they never said it was impossible), we can only reach the logical conclusion that day/night cycles are indeed possible.

 

They look even more gross on planets like Hoth where you see the images of mountains plastered on the scene. Gross...

 

Don't forget the terrible "blizzard" effect that's on Hoth too when you climb large mountains. That's awful.

 

I remember reading somewhere that they decided to do this because then each planet would keep their iconic feel, WHICH is also very important to certain people, like iconic Mickey Mouse always looking like Mickey. What this means is that when you go to a place like Tatoonie they want you to feel like you're there during that iconic moment when Luke watched the suns set, but it sucks.

 

The planets environments, including the positioning of mobs and how a lot of them just stand still and stay off paths and the lack of weather effects, feel so static and so linear that I can only simply call them gross.

 

Indeed. It's ironic that their justification for a number of their design decisions (including using a "static" time of day) is to capture an iconic feeling, one that is perhaps reminiscent of the films. And yet the choice of "time of day" for Tatooine is such that the player never gets to experience an iconic moment similar to one of THE most infamous scenes in the films:

 

The Tatooine Sunset scene.

Edited March 24, 2012 by Tarka

[Tarka]

So true...

Guess it's the god awful WoW invention of the theme park mmo concept, with boring NPCs, static feeling and a time frozen world with stationary birds and corridors to walk through, I'd prefered a more realistic approach too.

 

It's ironic though that for all it's faults, even WoW manages to include a day/night cycle. Albeit a "real time" one. But as we know, day/night cycles don't have to be real time.

[vincent-]

It bothers me and it doesn't have to be based on the real time.

[DorkTrooper]

I guess I don't really gawk at the sky in-game much.

 

I don't tend to care for the night cycles in games. Some of them are not much better than turning down your screen brightness 50%. Depends on how it's done.

[Tarka]

I guess I don't really gawk at the sky in-game much.

 

I don't tend to care for the night cycles in games. Some of them are not much better than turning down your screen brightness 50%. Depends on how it's done.

 

Personally, I think it's cool to see when night time comes in games and you see light sources illuminating areas, whilst everything beyond the reach of the illumination is kept in shadows. Of course, visual indicators aren't the only things that help "set a scene". Like in the films, audio can play a big part too. A wolf howling in the distance, an owl hooting a little closer, perhaps there are sounds of people in a bar / tavern that the player passes by. These kind of things help to subtley change an environment whilst maintaining an atmosphere of a "world" that is being lived in.

 

And of course, when the sun rises the elements used to set the scene change accordingly, whilst still maintaining that feeling of a "lived in world".

 

At least, that's the sort of feeling I get

Edited March 24, 2012 by Tarka

[Nyla]

Personally, I think it's cool to see when night time comes in games and you see light sources illuminating areas, whilst everything beyond the reach of the illumination is kept in shadows. Throw in some night time sounds (the odd wolf howl, an owl hooting in the distance, perhaps some sounds of people in a bar / tavern). These kind of things help to subtley change an environment whilst maintaining an atmosphere of a "world" that is being lived in.

 

And when the sun rises, the ambience changes, but still the feeling of a "lived in world" still exists.

 

At least, that's the sort of feeling I get

 

You are clearly playing the wrong game.

[Tarka]

You are clearly playing the wrong game.

 

What makes you say that?

 

Let me be clear, what I just posted is what CAN and HAS been done in games to create a difference between day and nigh, whilst maintaining an "atmosphere".

 

Of course, such dynamic changes don't currently exist in TOR. But I believe they could.

Edited March 24, 2012 by Tarka

[Nyla]

What makes you say that?

 

Let me be clear, what I just posted is what CAN be done in games to create a difference between day and night.

 

Of course, such dynamic changes don't currently exist in TOR. But I believe they could.

 

Yes they could, the thing is they don't want to.

 

They don't want to make a realistic environment, they don't want to make some kind of simulation of living Star Wars planets.

 

They made design choices, taking a few characteristics from planets, characters, stories from the movies and based everything on that.

 

You linked the video of the sunset on Tatooine and called it iconic. Sure it is, but not for the light, the weather but because of the 2 suns. If you ask people about the planet Tattoine, they will say bright suns, heat, sand. And that's what Bioware chose.

 

The design of SWTOR was never to build a living universe but to extract themes from the movies and then connect many different little boxes which each contain a part of the Star Wars universe.