Environment & Weather Systems Overhaul Concept

nastuug · June 2015

rb2001 wrote: »

These changes are strongly desired.

You shall not be ridiculed for the necropost as this is definitely a much needed overhaul.

idk · June 2015

The current system is just fine. No need for anything like this when there is a huge list of items of much greater significance and benefit.

lsneakl · June 2015

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

The current system is just fine. No need for anything like this when there is a huge list of items of much greater significance and benefit.

Thought process of the OP though is that this would pay for itself through the crown store. The only thing I dont care for is the 5 hour day/5 hour night but I would give that up for a working calendar. Not sure if anyone ever played animal crossing but always liked the fact that the game was based on the real calendar with events and weather.

MAOofDC · June 2015

Something I would add to you post is the need for the constellation to be put back into the night sky. I loved looking at the night sky in TES V:Skyrim and picking out the Lord or the Lover. You could find them because those particular stars were Very bright when compared to the back ground stars. Also I have a question why do the moons rise in the west and set in the east?

Gidorick · June 2015

You're right @MAOofDC! I actually asked about the constellations at one point and didn't really get any response. I was wondering if they existed in ESO. What are your thoughts about what purpose they could serve in the game, if any?

I actually really love how ESO Uses the 3 Guardian Constellations with the 9 Charge Constellations in the Champion System.

I would actually like it if, in conjunction with the Following the Calendar part of this concept, ZOS made it so that players could choose a birthsign that had an impact on gameplay and stats.

Below are the months, in order of the year, their associated constellation and their benefits in Morrowind & Oblivion.

Morning Star: The Ritual
Grants the Mara's Gift power once a day as a powerful Restore Health spell. The Blessed Word can turn the undead.
Sun's Dawn: The Lover
Gives the Lover's Kiss power. Can be used once a day to paralyze an opponent for 10 seconds at the cost of 120 points of Fatigue.
First Seed: The Lord
Gives the Blood of the North lesser power to regenerate up to 90 points of Health. However, you also gain the Trollkin curse, a permanent 25% Weakness to Fire.
Rain's Hand: The Mage
Confers a permanent bonus of 50 points to your Magicka.
Second Seed: The Shadow
Grants the Moonshadow power once a day to become Invisible for 60 seconds.
Mid Year: The Steed
Grants a bonus of 20 to a player's Speed attribute.
Sun's Height: The Apprentice
Confers a 100-point bonus to a player's Magicka attribute, but also gives a 100% Weakness to Magic.
Last Seed: The Warrior
Grants a bonus of 10 points to the Strength and Endurance attributes.
Heartfire: The Lady
Confers bonuses of 10 points to Willpower and Endurance attributes.
Frost Fall: The Tower
Grants the Tower Key power, which allows opening a door or container of "Average" lock level or less once a day. Also grants The Tower Warden power, which reflects five points of damage for 120 seconds once a day.
Sun's Dusk: The Atronach
Does not allow a player to regain Magicka through resting, but instead confers a 50% Spell Absorption to recharge your Magicka. The base Magicka is also increased by 150 points.
Evening Star: The Thief
Grants a 10-point bonus to Agility, Speed, and Luck attributes.

I think most of these could be directly to ESO. Some would require my sub-attributes concept from my Level 50-80: VR Replacement New-ish Concept thread.

Additionally, dependent on their chosen Birthsign, a player could receive:

10% stackable XP bonus during their in-game birth month.
50% XP bonus on their in-game birthday.
20% additional enlightenment whenever they are earning a CP that could possibly be applied to their birthsign.

There's also the constellation The Serpent that gives the Serpent spell to cause a slow but potent poison on touch, while simultaneously curing yourself and dispelling magic from yourself. Casting this spell costs 100 points of Fatigue. I'm not sure how that can be worked in in such a way that would make it meaningful and not overused by players.

OH...and Argonians born under the birthsign of The Shadow MUST have some sort of perk in the Dark Brotherhood.

MAOofDC · June 2015

@Gridorick The constellation in the night sky would be a great start. As far them having a purpose, it would be great but I do think it would be unfeasible at this time. The Devs have a lot on their plate.

Gidorick · June 2015

MAOofDC wrote: »

@Gridorick The constellation in the night sky would be a great start. As far them having a purpose, it would be great but I do think it would be unfeasible at this time. The Devs have a lot on their plate.

Oh yea. I realize that. I post a LOT of concepts and ideas. I don't realistically expect them to be implemented any time soon. It's more like...

"Hey guys! Wouldn't it be cool if..."

Winchester1306 · June 2015

Gidorick wrote: »

ESO is easily one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever played. The aesthetics of Tamriel are spot on and ZOS has created a world that I want to spend my time in. I have yet to visit all the corner of all the lands of the zones that have been opened in Tamriel. Many of the decisions that were made regarding the design of the world couldn’t have been better, many seem curious, others seem outright wrong. Following is a list of enhancements that would remedy some of environmental quirks.

Contents:
Dynamic Weather Enhancements

Night Enhancements

Day/Night Length Adjustment

Following the Calendar

The Main Problem

TL/DNR: Synchronized Dynamic Weather that increases view distance by receding fog in nice weather. Darker, more dangerous, more immersive nights. Change day and night to 10 hour days so that 1 Tamriel year can equal 5 Earth months. Implement holidays so holiday items can be added to the Crown Store to pay for this, and other, updates.

Dynamic Weather Enhancements

The weather in Tamriel is wonderful. I equally love to experience storms and bright sunny days. There are, however, a few issues.
Synchronization of Weather: The weather for one player really should be the weather for all players in the zone. Gone should be the days of playing in a group and one member is experiencing a thunderstorm and another is experiencing a bright and sunny day. Having this simple enhancement would open the game up for some game-changing mechanics such as…

Time and Weather Dependent Fog: While fog in Tamriel seemed to serve as a means to compensate for technical limitations, I have had my eyes opened by the ESO Launcher/SweetFX programs. Having no fog in the world changes the scope and feel of ESO’s Tamriel in an amazingly positive way. Alik’r desert without fog is gorgeous.

However, not having fog has allowed me to appreciate the fog as a tool for creating environmental tone. Fog really needs to be used to enhance ESO, not just blur out the distance.
If it is a sunny and bright day, the world should have very little/very distant fog or no fog at all

If it is storming and raining, the world should have heavier/dense fog.

Night storms should produce denser fog than day storms.

If a storm arose during the night, the fog should remain through dawn, creating foggy mornings.

Overcast shouldn’t necessarily produce fog, but it should be possible.

A fog slider should be added for players to increase the maximum distance the fog will retreat. This will allow players who experience performance hits to decrease the fog distance to improve performance. For these players, the closest fog distance will be the same as all other players but, as the fog recedes, their fog would recede more slowly than those that have their fog distance set to maximum.

I made an independent thread about this HERE.

Night Enhancements
To be honest, I had planned to have a section for Day Enhancements but I truly feel the day environments are just about perfect in Tamriel. The appearance of the sun, the movement of the shadows, and the skybox are all wonderfully designed and constructed. There is nothing I could imagine that would make the days of Tamriel better than they are. Well, except for fog removal, as mentioned above.

Opposed to day, night in Tamriel actually leaves quite a bit to be desired. There are a few enhancements that should be made to make the night play significantly different than the day in Tamriel.
Darker nights: First and foremost, Tamriel needs darker nights, depending on the cloud cover.
The current night brightness should be the setting for bright nights with clear sparkling skies.

The darkest the night should be a stormy night with completely covered skies.

Darkness should vary naturally from the brightness night to the darkest night, dependent on cloud cover.

While it would make sense for the brightness of the night to be effected by the phases of Masser and Secunda, I think it would be too much to ask to have both weather and moon-phase to impact the brightness of the night.

More dangerous night wilderness: To go along with darker nights, each and every citizen of Tamriel should experience more dangerous nights. Certain beasts, such as wolves, should be more abundant at night and there should be some night-specific creatures such as ghosts. This could be a way to introduce zone wide (or at least area wide) creatures.

Imagine a ghost that appears at night on the shores of Greenshade, we don’t know where, but legend has the ghost walking along the shore. The player can attack the ghost and kill it every night if they wish but then there are books and clues along the shore that gives the player clues as to what happened to the ghost and how to go about laying its soul to rest.

Towns shut down at night: With the justice system, it would amazing to have NPCs that go home and go to bed. Players, if they so desire, could break into homes and burgle homes and merchant carts throughout the night. To make up for the lack of NPCs in town there could be a heavier guard presence at night. There should be a couple of 24 hour merchants available, such as the Bartender, Outlaw Den’s merchants, Traveling Merchants, and Guild Merchants.

There was a thread that included these types of concepts from @Neizir that can be found HERE.

Two moon reflection: The fact that there is only one moon reflecting on the surface of the water when there are two moons seems like a gross oversight in the environmental design of ESO, especially considering the careful attention paid to the majority of the rest of the environment.

I made an independent thread about this HERE.

Day/Night Length Adjustment

The total amount of time it should take for one day/night cycle on Nirn should 10 of our hours. this would mean every Earth-day=2.4 Nirn-days. More on why later.

While the difference in length between the day and the night in ESO isn’t exactly unrealistic, ESO includes mechanics for Werewolf and Vampires that could involve more interesting night elements and, when considering the above suggestions for night enhancements, night should offer a completely different level of gameplay.

There are two options of enhancing the day/night cycle.
Equal Day/Night Lengths: Adjust the length of day and night to be the same length of time, giving equal time for creatures of the day and creatures of the night. This would offer an even “fair for everyone” approach to the length of the day and night.

Variable Day/Night Lengths: Dynamically adjust the length of the day and night to change over time. At one point the day is longer, then the day and night equals out, then the night is longer than the day. This would also be “fair for everyone” but over a long period of time.

I personally prefer the Variable Day/Night length concept as it would make it so players that have bonuses at night would have a period of time that they have an advantage and a period of time they have a disadvantage. Using this concept, the maximum difference between day and night should be 2 hours. This would allow the maximum different of a 10 hour day to be 4 hours day/ 6 hours night on one end and 6 hours day/4 hours night on the other.

Following the Calendar

Using a 10 hour Tamrielic day we arrive at a 365 day Tamriel year clocking in at just about 5 months. If this were the case, in 10 years we would have 24 Tamriel years pass. This isn’t an unrealistic amount of time to have passed in an MMO’s ‘lifespan’. If ESO turns out to be wildly successful and lasts for 20 years, only 48 years would have passed on Tamriel. Being that ESO takes place in 2E 582 and Tiber Septim wasn’t born until 2E 828, there are over 250 years of the Faction War that can be fought. If each of those years takes 5 months we have 104 earth years before “lore” becomes an issue. Lol.

Within each 5 month year we would see a complete day/night cycle, taking approximately 5 weeks to shift between a Solstice and an Equinox.
Summer Solstice (6 hours day/4 hours night)

Fall Equinox (5 hours day/5 hours night)

Winter Solstice (4 hours day/6 hours night)

Spring Equinox (5 hours day/5 hours night)

ZOS could decide to have every nirn-day shift in length just a tiny bit (about 1.43 minutes) to be as realistic as possible, or just have the day-light extend/constrict by 24 minutes every week. Either way, the end result would be the same: a variable, dynamic day/night cycle.

Additionally, we could finally have exact day/month of each Tamrielic day in ESO. We could know that the current day is Middas, Second Seed the 14th. Why would THIS be helpful? Well, aside from guild event scheduling and the creation of ESO clocks, it would allow ZOS to incorporate the Tamrelic holidays that so many players are longing for, but in a realistic way that has absolutely no adherence to the Gregorian calendar.

For the 10 hours that is Morning Star the 12th, the people of the Alik’r Desert could offer prayers to Stendaar. Shops could be closed in observance of the holiday and NPCs could be seen praying at the temple and all Redguard players could get a buff on that day.

For the 10 hours that is Frostfall the 13th, also known as the Witches Festival, the Mage’s Guild could offer a ½ off sale, as is tradition. Also, as is tradition, the night of Frostfall the 13th should be filled with an unusual amount of summoned creatures.

Certain festivals could last longer than the day they are on. Just as in our world, people in Tamriel like to Celebrate their favorite holidays for more than just the one day. They could celebrate a holiday an entire week (about 3 days) or even a whole month (about 12 days)! Festivals could be regionalized and they could include sales, contests, and player items could all be part of the festivities. If a player misses their favorite holiday, that’s ok… it’s coming back around in 5 months.
The Main Problem
The main issue with all of these enhancements is quite simply how to pay for the man-hours it would take to make these enhancements? These enhancements would have to lead directly to items that could be purchasable in the Crown Store such as Torch Bundles, Lanterns, and Lantern Oil.

By following the Calendar, ZOS would open up multiple monthly events that could have their own specific Crown Store items. These items could be offered for the one specific month that houses the holiday and not be offered again until the holiday comes around again. These holiday items could be added to regularly and would offer a ‘limited time offer’ dynamic to the Crown Store.

The only aspect of this suggestion that couldn’t be directly monetized is the Dynamic Weather Enhancements. I couldn't come up with a Crown Store item that would be beneficial to the player in different weather conditions as weather is a purely aesthetic mechanic and has no direct impact on gameplay.

Making these changes to ESO would dramatically increase immersion of each and every play session.

Thoughts?

All of this is pure perfection, and would make TESOTU an even more amazing game! Especially the part about towns shutting down at night and shops closing up and NPC's going to sleep. It has worked like this in every major TES game before TESOTU, and this tradition should continue. When it rains, no NPC's should be walking outside either, save one or two, as they have always done as well. All of this will add to immersion, and make the game world feel alive - especially with the festivals and celebrations. Also, I would like to see more bandits patrol the roads at night or even during the day. Especially remote roads, they should be higher level and quite difficult to take down (like a city guard) and demand a chunk of your money should you encounter them.

Please Zenimax, implement all of the changes suggested by @Gidorick - TESOTU will be much better for it!

Gidorick · January 2016

Winchester1306 wrote: »

Gidorick wrote: »

ESO is easily one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever played. The aesthetics of Tamriel are spot on and ZOS has created a world that I want to spend my time in. I have yet to visit all the corner of all the lands of the zones that have been opened in Tamriel. Many of the decisions that were made regarding the design of the world couldn’t have been better, many seem curious, others seem outright wrong. Following is a list of enhancements that would remedy some of environmental quirks.

Contents:
Dynamic Weather Enhancements

Night Enhancements

Day/Night Length Adjustment

Following the Calendar

The Main Problem

TL/DNR: Synchronized Dynamic Weather that increases view distance by receding fog in nice weather. Darker, more dangerous, more immersive nights. Change day and night to 10 hour days so that 1 Tamriel year can equal 5 Earth months. Implement holidays so holiday items can be added to the Crown Store to pay for this, and other, updates.

Dynamic Weather Enhancements

The weather in Tamriel is wonderful. I equally love to experience storms and bright sunny days. There are, however, a few issues.
Synchronization of Weather: The weather for one player really should be the weather for all players in the zone. Gone should be the days of playing in a group and one member is experiencing a thunderstorm and another is experiencing a bright and sunny day. Having this simple enhancement would open the game up for some game-changing mechanics such as…

Time and Weather Dependent Fog: While fog in Tamriel seemed to serve as a means to compensate for technical limitations, I have had my eyes opened by the ESO Launcher/SweetFX programs. Having no fog in the world changes the scope and feel of ESO’s Tamriel in an amazingly positive way. Alik’r desert without fog is gorgeous.

However, not having fog has allowed me to appreciate the fog as a tool for creating environmental tone. Fog really needs to be used to enhance ESO, not just blur out the distance.
If it is a sunny and bright day, the world should have very little/very distant fog or no fog at all

If it is storming and raining, the world should have heavier/dense fog.

Night storms should produce denser fog than day storms.

If a storm arose during the night, the fog should remain through dawn, creating foggy mornings.

Overcast shouldn’t necessarily produce fog, but it should be possible.

A fog slider should be added for players to increase the maximum distance the fog will retreat. This will allow players who experience performance hits to decrease the fog distance to improve performance. For these players, the closest fog distance will be the same as all other players but, as the fog recedes, their fog would recede more slowly than those that have their fog distance set to maximum.

I made an independent thread about this HERE.

Night Enhancements
To be honest, I had planned to have a section for Day Enhancements but I truly feel the day environments are just about perfect in Tamriel. The appearance of the sun, the movement of the shadows, and the skybox are all wonderfully designed and constructed. There is nothing I could imagine that would make the days of Tamriel better than they are. Well, except for fog removal, as mentioned above.

Opposed to day, night in Tamriel actually leaves quite a bit to be desired. There are a few enhancements that should be made to make the night play significantly different than the day in Tamriel.
Darker nights: First and foremost, Tamriel needs darker nights, depending on the cloud cover.
The current night brightness should be the setting for bright nights with clear sparkling skies.

The darkest the night should be a stormy night with completely covered skies.

Darkness should vary naturally from the brightness night to the darkest night, dependent on cloud cover.

While it would make sense for the brightness of the night to be effected by the phases of Masser and Secunda, I think it would be too much to ask to have both weather and moon-phase to impact the brightness of the night.

More dangerous night wilderness: To go along with darker nights, each and every citizen of Tamriel should experience more dangerous nights. Certain beasts, such as wolves, should be more abundant at night and there should be some night-specific creatures such as ghosts. This could be a way to introduce zone wide (or at least area wide) creatures.

Imagine a ghost that appears at night on the shores of Greenshade, we don’t know where, but legend has the ghost walking along the shore. The player can attack the ghost and kill it every night if they wish but then there are books and clues along the shore that gives the player clues as to what happened to the ghost and how to go about laying its soul to rest.

Towns shut down at night: With the justice system, it would amazing to have NPCs that go home and go to bed. Players, if they so desire, could break into homes and burgle homes and merchant carts throughout the night. To make up for the lack of NPCs in town there could be a heavier guard presence at night. There should be a couple of 24 hour merchants available, such as the Bartender, Outlaw Den’s merchants, Traveling Merchants, and Guild Merchants.

There was a thread that included these types of concepts from @Neizir that can be found HERE.

Two moon reflection: The fact that there is only one moon reflecting on the surface of the water when there are two moons seems like a gross oversight in the environmental design of ESO, especially considering the careful attention paid to the majority of the rest of the environment.

I made an independent thread about this HERE.

Day/Night Length Adjustment

The total amount of time it should take for one day/night cycle on Nirn should 10 of our hours. this would mean every Earth-day=2.4 Nirn-days. More on why later.

While the difference in length between the day and the night in ESO isn’t exactly unrealistic, ESO includes mechanics for Werewolf and Vampires that could involve more interesting night elements and, when considering the above suggestions for night enhancements, night should offer a completely different level of gameplay.

There are two options of enhancing the day/night cycle.
Equal Day/Night Lengths: Adjust the length of day and night to be the same length of time, giving equal time for creatures of the day and creatures of the night. This would offer an even “fair for everyone” approach to the length of the day and night.

Variable Day/Night Lengths: Dynamically adjust the length of the day and night to change over time. At one point the day is longer, then the day and night equals out, then the night is longer than the day. This would also be “fair for everyone” but over a long period of time.

I personally prefer the Variable Day/Night length concept as it would make it so players that have bonuses at night would have a period of time that they have an advantage and a period of time they have a disadvantage. Using this concept, the maximum difference between day and night should be 2 hours. This would allow the maximum different of a 10 hour day to be 4 hours day/ 6 hours night on one end and 6 hours day/4 hours night on the other.

Following the Calendar

Using a 10 hour Tamrielic day we arrive at a 365 day Tamriel year clocking in at just about 5 months. If this were the case, in 10 years we would have 24 Tamriel years pass. This isn’t an unrealistic amount of time to have passed in an MMO’s ‘lifespan’. If ESO turns out to be wildly successful and lasts for 20 years, only 48 years would have passed on Tamriel. Being that ESO takes place in 2E 582 and Tiber Septim wasn’t born until 2E 828, there are over 250 years of the Faction War that can be fought. If each of those years takes 5 months we have 104 earth years before “lore” becomes an issue. Lol.

Within each 5 month year we would see a complete day/night cycle, taking approximately 5 weeks to shift between a Solstice and an Equinox.
Summer Solstice (6 hours day/4 hours night)

Fall Equinox (5 hours day/5 hours night)

Winter Solstice (4 hours day/6 hours night)

Spring Equinox (5 hours day/5 hours night)

ZOS could decide to have every nirn-day shift in length just a tiny bit (about 1.43 minutes) to be as realistic as possible, or just have the day-light extend/constrict by 24 minutes every week. Either way, the end result would be the same: a variable, dynamic day/night cycle.

Additionally, we could finally have exact day/month of each Tamrielic day in ESO. We could know that the current day is Middas, Second Seed the 14th. Why would THIS be helpful? Well, aside from guild event scheduling and the creation of ESO clocks, it would allow ZOS to incorporate the Tamrelic holidays that so many players are longing for, but in a realistic way that has absolutely no adherence to the Gregorian calendar.

For the 10 hours that is Morning Star the 12th, the people of the Alik’r Desert could offer prayers to Stendaar. Shops could be closed in observance of the holiday and NPCs could be seen praying at the temple and all Redguard players could get a buff on that day.

For the 10 hours that is Frostfall the 13th, also known as the Witches Festival, the Mage’s Guild could offer a ½ off sale, as is tradition. Also, as is tradition, the night of Frostfall the 13th should be filled with an unusual amount of summoned creatures.

Certain festivals could last longer than the day they are on. Just as in our world, people in Tamriel like to Celebrate their favorite holidays for more than just the one day. They could celebrate a holiday an entire week (about 3 days) or even a whole month (about 12 days)! Festivals could be regionalized and they could include sales, contests, and player items could all be part of the festivities. If a player misses their favorite holiday, that’s ok… it’s coming back around in 5 months.
The Main Problem
The main issue with all of these enhancements is quite simply how to pay for the man-hours it would take to make these enhancements? These enhancements would have to lead directly to items that could be purchasable in the Crown Store such as Torch Bundles, Lanterns, and Lantern Oil.

By following the Calendar, ZOS would open up multiple monthly events that could have their own specific Crown Store items. These items could be offered for the one specific month that houses the holiday and not be offered again until the holiday comes around again. These holiday items could be added to regularly and would offer a ‘limited time offer’ dynamic to the Crown Store.

The only aspect of this suggestion that couldn’t be directly monetized is the Dynamic Weather Enhancements. I couldn't come up with a Crown Store item that would be beneficial to the player in different weather conditions as weather is a purely aesthetic mechanic and has no direct impact on gameplay.

Making these changes to ESO would dramatically increase immersion of each and every play session.

Thoughts?

All of this is pure perfection, and would make TESOTU an even more amazing game! Especially the part about towns shutting down at night and shops closing up and NPC's going to sleep. It has worked like this in every major TES game before TESOTU, and this tradition should continue. When it rains, no NPC's should be walking outside either, save one or two, as they have always done as well. All of this will add to immersion, and make the game world feel alive - especially with the festivals and celebrations. Also, I would like to see more bandits patrol the roads at night or even during the day. Especially remote roads, they should be higher level and quite difficult to take down (like a city guard) and demand a chunk of your money should you encounter them.

Please Zenimax, implement all of the changes suggested by @Gidorick - TESOTU will be much better for it!

I love the idea of having contextual reactions for NPCs depending on the weather. That would be so awesome to have towns shut down because of rain, similar to how they should shut down at night!

Rune_Relic · January 2016

First Planting - 7th First Seed (7th March)

On the 7th of First Seed every year, the people of Tamriel celebrate First Planting, symbolically sowing the seeds for the autumn harvest. It is a festival of fresh beginnings, both for the crops and for the men and women of the celebrated city. Neighbors are reconciled in their disputes, resolutions are formed, bad habits dropped, the diseased cured. The clerics at the temples run a free clinic all day long to cure people of poisoning, different diseases, paralyzation, and the other banes found in the world of Tamriel.

Moon Festival - 8th Sun's Dusk (8th November)

On the 8th of Suns Dusk, the Bretons of Glenumbra Moors hold the Moon Festival, a joyous holiday in honor of Secunda, goddess of the moon. Although the goddess has no active worshippers, the traditional celebration has continued through the ages as a time of feasting and merriment.

Chil'a - 21th Evening Star (21st December)

Chil'a, the blessing of the new year in the barony of Kairou, is both a sacred day and a festival. The archpriest and the baroness each consecrate the ashes of the old year in solemn ceremony, then street parades, balls, and tournaments conclude the event.

New Life Festival - 25th Evening Star (25th December)

The New Life festival comes a few days early in Wayrest with Saturalia, traditionally held on the 25th of Evening Star. Originally a holiday for a long forgotten god of debauchery, it has become a time of gift giving, parties, and parading. Visitors are encouraged to participate.

...
Most of the time, whenever you start a new game in Arena and go straight to the status window, the date would be Tirdas, 1st of Morning Star, 3E 389, 12:00 midnight. Except not always. Sometimes, the game would start on 1st of Hearthfire, 3E 389 instead, 12:00 noon. If there is a rule as to when exactly this happens, I haven't figured it out yet. Anyway, if the 1st of Morning Star is Tirdas, there is no conceivable way the 1st of Hearthfire of the same year would be Tirdas as well, because the number of days between Mor 1 and Hea 1 is not divisible by 7 (it's 240 days, by the way). Because of that, it's impossible to draw a nice week-by-week calendar for the Tamrielic year.

http://www.imperial-library.info/content/calendar-tamriel

Arena = 12 x 30 day months
ESO = Modern calendar 365 day.

Modern.
From this we can say solstice happens December 21s.
We can also see reference to sowing in March and autumn harvest
So this says to me the tamrielic "seasons" are cannon/Lore and thus differing day/night cycles.

Arena.
We see a 12x30 day month year.
With new year starting at the last day of evening star and the 1st day of morning star.
We also see a 2nd new year 2/3 of the year later implying a calendar divided into 3 parts.
So was the solstice originally the 1st of morning star and not the 21st of evening star ? (Arena time)

This appears to tally with the ancient Egyptian calendar before and after the birth of the gods.
With 12x30 day lunar months and 3 seasons until the birth of the gods over 5 days.
Known as the Epagomenal days that were inserted "at the end of the year"
The problem was Egyptians also used the Sothic calendar to start the new year on the heliacal rising of Sirius.
So the civil and Sothic calendars drifted.
In fact the Sothic year of 365.25 days sits back in the middle between the star year and the solar year to follow the law of three
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_calendar
http://www.endlesssearch.co.uk/philo_lawof3.htm

Now tally that with the serpent that drifts from constellation to constellation.
That implies to me we are talking about the pole stars of draco and the pole pointing toward different constellation.
So do the other 12 constellation tally with our constellations like the months do?

EDIT: added some interesting lunar info...
http://www.imperial-library.info/content/phases-moon
So Masser and Secunda lock together every 120 days or 1/3rd year which tallies with Arena.
Perhaps March 21s / July 21st / Nov 21st..or March 8th / July 8th / Nov 8th

Surgee · April 2016

Funny how most devs don't realize how important proper weather effects and real nights are. If ESO would have anything close to what fallout 4 has in terms of weather, immersion would go through the roof. Adding very dark nights and dark caves, as OP suggested, where light sources are actually useful, would not only make us, ESO fans happy, but also boost the sales. Yep. There are THOUSANDS of people who bought Black Desert just because they loved the immersive weather system and really dark nights. Make the world more alive!

OP, beautiful post.

Sengra · September 2016

Necroing this old thread because it's still a great idea. Especially weather should be synchronized for all, I just don't see the logic behind the current system.

tspecherb14_ESO · September 2016

I had no idea the weather was different for each player

altemriel · September 2016

Gidorick wrote: »

ESO is easily one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever played. The aesthetics of Tamriel are spot on and ZOS has created a world that I want to spend my time in. I have yet to visit all the corner of all the lands of the zones that have been opened in Tamriel. Many of the decisions that were made regarding the design of the world couldn’t have been better, many seem curious, others seem outright wrong. Following is a list of enhancements that would remedy some of environmental quirks.

Contents:
Dynamic Weather Enhancements

Night Enhancements

Day/Night Length Adjustment

Following the Calendar

The Main Problem

TL/DNR: Synchronized Dynamic Weather that increases view distance by receding fog in nice weather. Darker, more dangerous, more immersive nights. Change day and night to 10 hour days so that 1 Tamriel year can equal 5 Earth months. Implement holidays so holiday items can be added to the Crown Store to pay for this, and other, updates.

Dynamic Weather Enhancements

The weather in Tamriel is wonderful. I equally love to experience storms and bright sunny days. There are, however, a few issues.
Synchronization of Weather: The weather for one player really should be the weather for all players in the zone. Gone should be the days of playing in a group and one member is experiencing a thunderstorm and another is experiencing a bright and sunny day. Having this simple enhancement would open the game up for some game-changing mechanics such as…

Time and Weather Dependent Fog: While fog in Tamriel seemed to serve as a means to compensate for technical limitations, I have had my eyes opened by the ESO Launcher/SweetFX programs. Having no fog in the world changes the scope and feel of ESO’s Tamriel in an amazingly positive way. Alik’r desert without fog is gorgeous.

However, not having fog has allowed me to appreciate the fog as a tool for creating environmental tone. Fog really needs to be used to enhance ESO, not just blur out the distance.
If it is a sunny and bright day, the world should have very little/very distant fog or no fog at all

If it is storming and raining, the world should have heavier/dense fog.

Night storms should produce denser fog than day storms.

If a storm arose during the night, the fog should remain through dawn, creating foggy mornings.

Overcast shouldn’t necessarily produce fog, but it should be possible.

A fog slider should be added for players to increase the maximum distance the fog will retreat. This will allow players who experience performance hits to decrease the fog distance to improve performance. For these players, the closest fog distance will be the same as all other players but, as the fog recedes, their fog would recede more slowly than those that have their fog distance set to maximum.

I made an independent thread about this HERE.

Night Enhancements
To be honest, I had planned to have a section for Day Enhancements but I truly feel the day environments are just about perfect in Tamriel. The appearance of the sun, the movement of the shadows, and the skybox are all wonderfully designed and constructed. There is nothing I could imagine that would make the days of Tamriel better than they are. Well, except for fog removal, as mentioned above.

Opposed to day, night in Tamriel actually leaves quite a bit to be desired. There are a few enhancements that should be made to make the night play significantly different than the day in Tamriel.
Darker nights: First and foremost, Tamriel needs darker nights, depending on the cloud cover.
The current night brightness should be the setting for bright nights with clear sparkling skies.

The darkest the night should be a stormy night with completely covered skies.

Darkness should vary naturally from the brightness night to the darkest night, dependent on cloud cover.

While it would make sense for the brightness of the night to be effected by the phases of Masser and Secunda, I think it would be too much to ask to have both weather and moon-phase to impact the brightness of the night.

More dangerous night wilderness: To go along with darker nights, each and every citizen of Tamriel should experience more dangerous nights. Certain beasts, such as wolves, should be more abundant at night and there should be some night-specific creatures such as ghosts. This could be a way to introduce zone wide (or at least area wide) creatures.

Imagine a ghost that appears at night on the shores of Greenshade, we don’t know where, but legend has the ghost walking along the shore. The player can attack the ghost and kill it every night if they wish but then there are books and clues along the shore that gives the player clues as to what happened to the ghost and how to go about laying its soul to rest.

Towns shut down at night: With the justice system, it would amazing to have NPCs that go home and go to bed. Players, if they so desire, could break into homes and burgle homes and merchant carts throughout the night. To make up for the lack of NPCs in town there could be a heavier guard presence at night. There should be a couple of 24 hour merchants available, such as the Bartender, Outlaw Den’s merchants, Traveling Merchants, and Guild Merchants.

There was a thread that included these types of concepts from @Neizir that can be found HERE.

Two moon reflection: The fact that there is only one moon reflecting on the surface of the water when there are two moons seems like a gross oversight in the environmental design of ESO, especially considering the careful attention paid to the majority of the rest of the environment.

I made an independent thread about this HERE.

Day/Night Length Adjustment

The total amount of time it should take for one day/night cycle on Nirn should 10 of our hours. this would mean every Earth-day=2.4 Nirn-days. More on why later.

While the difference in length between the day and the night in ESO isn’t exactly unrealistic, ESO includes mechanics for Werewolf and Vampires that could involve more interesting night elements and, when considering the above suggestions for night enhancements, night should offer a completely different level of gameplay.

There are two options of enhancing the day/night cycle.
Equal Day/Night Lengths: Adjust the length of day and night to be the same length of time, giving equal time for creatures of the day and creatures of the night. This would offer an even “fair for everyone” approach to the length of the day and night.

Variable Day/Night Lengths: Dynamically adjust the length of the day and night to change over time. At one point the day is longer, then the day and night equals out, then the night is longer than the day. This would also be “fair for everyone” but over a long period of time.

I personally prefer the Variable Day/Night length concept as it would make it so players that have bonuses at night would have a period of time that they have an advantage and a period of time they have a disadvantage. Using this concept, the maximum difference between day and night should be 2 hours. This would allow the maximum different of a 10 hour day to be 4 hours day/ 6 hours night on one end and 6 hours day/4 hours night on the other.

Following the Calendar

Using a 10 hour Tamrielic day we arrive at a 365 day Tamriel year clocking in at just about 5 months. If this were the case, in 10 years we would have 24 Tamriel years pass. This isn’t an unrealistic amount of time to have passed in an MMO’s ‘lifespan’. If ESO turns out to be wildly successful and lasts for 20 years, only 48 years would have passed on Tamriel. Being that ESO takes place in 2E 582 and Tiber Septim wasn’t born until 2E 828, there are over 250 years of the Faction War that can be fought. If each of those years takes 5 months we have 104 earth years before “lore” becomes an issue. Lol.

Within each 5 month year we would see a complete day/night cycle, taking approximately 5 weeks to shift between a Solstice and an Equinox.
Summer Solstice (6 hours day/4 hours night)

Fall Equinox (5 hours day/5 hours night)

Winter Solstice (4 hours day/6 hours night)

Spring Equinox (5 hours day/5 hours night)

ZOS could decide to have every nirn-day shift in length just a tiny bit (about 1.43 minutes) to be as realistic as possible, or just have the day-light extend/constrict by 24 minutes every week. Either way, the end result would be the same: a variable, dynamic day/night cycle.

Additionally, we could finally have exact day/month of each Tamrielic day in ESO. We could know that the current day is Middas, Second Seed the 14th. Why would THIS be helpful? Well, aside from guild event scheduling and the creation of ESO clocks, it would allow ZOS to incorporate the Tamrelic holidays that so many players are longing for, but in a realistic way that has absolutely no adherence to the Gregorian calendar.

For the 10 hours that is Morning Star the 12th, the people of the Alik’r Desert could offer prayers to Stendaar. Shops could be closed in observance of the holiday and NPCs could be seen praying at the temple and all Redguard players could get a buff on that day.

For the 10 hours that is Frostfall the 13th, also known as the Witches Festival, the Mage’s Guild could offer a ½ off sale, as is tradition. Also, as is tradition, the night of Frostfall the 13th should be filled with an unusual amount of summoned creatures.

Certain festivals could last longer than the day they are on. Just as in our world, people in Tamriel like to Celebrate their favorite holidays for more than just the one day. They could celebrate a holiday an entire week (about 3 days) or even a whole month (about 12 days)! Festivals could be regionalized and they could include sales, contests, and player items could all be part of the festivities. If a player misses their favorite holiday, that’s ok… it’s coming back around in 5 months.

The Main Problem
The main issue with all of these enhancements is quite simply how to pay for the man-hours it would take to make these enhancements? These enhancements would have to lead directly to items that could be purchasable in the Crown Store such as Torch Bundles, Lanterns, and Lantern Oil.

By following the Calendar, ZOS would open up multiple monthly events that could have their own specific Crown Store items. These items could be offered for the one specific month that houses the holiday and not be offered again until the holiday comes around again. These holiday items could be added to regularly and would offer a ‘limited time offer’ dynamic to the Crown Store.

The only aspect of this suggestion that couldn’t be directly monetized is the Dynamic Weather Enhancements. I couldn't come up with a Crown Store item that would be beneficial to the player in different weather conditions as weather is a purely aesthetic mechanic and has no direct impact on gameplay.

Making these changes to ESO would dramatically increase immersion of each and every play session.

Thoughts?

yes please!!! all of this!!!!

@ZOS_RichLambert

Environment &amp; Weather Systems Overhaul Concept

Environment & Weather Systems Overhaul Concept