Day and Night Cycle - thanks ZOS!

Seraphayel

I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you ZOS for giving us proper day and night cycles.

The game is so much more immersive when you see the sun go down or when you see the beautiful dawn. Questing in the night is awesome and gives you a little bit of anxiety and precariousness. I am playing different during nights, I try to be more careful and to adapt to the darkness. I think I never did this in any other game.

Thank you for giving us dark nights, the immersion is so much better with it.

Well done!

Gargath

Yes, just would be cool to have an addon to darken the night even more to few meters visibility. Like Skyrim mods, so the hand torches and bugs in jars have some love too and running at night in hostile territory would be even more immersive .

Surgee

Did something change? for me it feels exactly as it was before. The only thing I've noticed that is different is HDR support which darkens the whole game by default.
I would invest in Zenimax just to see them do a proper night where it's really dark and we'd have to use some kind of lamp to make it through the night. How I would love to see dungeons getting this dark...the immersion!
Just look at the night in Dragons Dogma http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll238/GabrielK2000/Dragons Dogma/June 15 2012/DragonsDogmaScreenshot_5.jpg
Now that's amazing!

tinythinker

Surgee wrote: »

Did something change? for me it feels exactly as it was before. The only thing I've noticed that is different is HDR support which darkens the whole game by default.
I would invest in Zenimax just to see them do a proper night where it's really dark and we'd have to use some kind of lamp to make it through the night. How I would love to see dungeons getting this dark...the immersion!
Just look at the night in Dragons Dogma http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll238/GabrielK2000/Dragons Dogma/June 15 2012/DragonsDogmaScreenshot_5.jpg
Now that's amazing!

Yeah, there have been suggestions put forward but no traction so far. Closest thing so far is Mazzatan.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/170536/immersive-darkness-concept/p1
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/257138/new-expanded-environments-for-content-design

Seraphayel

On Xbox One the night is pretty dark. You always can reduce brightness. Believe me, when you decrease it a night is really dark. You can't see most enemies anymore lol.

Surgee

Seraphayel wrote: »

On Xbox One the night is pretty dark. You always can reduce brightness. Believe me, when you decrease it a night is really dark. You can't see most enemies anymore lol.

Yea I play on xbox as well but I think it's related to the HDR. The whole game became much darker (even in the day time) the moment ZOS enabled HDR.

I think the usual reason why devs don't make real nights in MMO is that they are afraid people (the nerd ones, that just care about numbers and teabagging others) will complain that they can't go farm at night blah blah blah.
However, another MMO, Black Desert pulled off nights very well and players are loving it. In fact, a lot of people who originally bought BD did it because of the weather system and day and night cycle (the rest of the game is pretty shallow). I wish devs would understand how important these things are. Nothing else immerses me more into the game than a really dark stormy night.

@tinythinker
Some post show exactly what I was talking about. The nerdy side of the community which doesn't really care about immersion and The Elder Scrolls universe as we know it from other instalments of the game will never let it happen. If it would be up to them, they'd remove the nights completely and all the textures and objects that obscure the view between them and another player that they're about to gank.

danno8

OP must be coming from SWTOR? No day/night cycle in that game was a great disappointment for me.

Abeille

danno8 wrote: »

OP must be coming from SWTOR? No day/night cycle in that game was a great disappointment for me.

Strangely enough, since I know it isn't THAT important to most people, it was the dealbreaker for me.

Followed its development for years, then we learnt there would be no day/night cycle. I still remember when they said it. Sigh...

Taleof2Cities

Gargath wrote: »

Yes, just would be cool to have an addon to darken the night even more to few meters visibility. Like Skyrim mods, so the hand torches and bugs in jars have some love too and running at night in hostile territory would be even more immersive .

I agree Skyrim night mods were pretty cool ... though the decreased visibility might not work in PvP. Imagine trying to run a scroll in that kind of environment.

At any rate, here is a panoramic picture of a lone Whiterun guard (with mods) that I took.

AlwaysOnFire

The day/night cycle is actually really funny for me because I play almost exclusively with one other person a time zone away from me. So they'll tell me "Hey, it's day" or "hey, it's night" or "hey, it's raining" and it'll take like half an hour for the weather or day to catch up with me. I don't know why this is, because I assumed that the day and night cycles depended on server time, not local time. So why don't I match up with someone an hour off with me?

Dawnblade

I love weather, dynamic environments and day / night cycles in game - static environments are very boring (I played SWTOR and it was a huge let down not seeing even basic day / night cycles).

That said - while I'd be all for more options (some of which already exist) to let players darken the nights, I for one do not want pitch black areas.

For me true darkness fails in a game I have to interact with by using a visual display device - all it does is leave me squinting at the monitor and ending up getting a headache from eye strain while turning up the gamma and white washing everything.

Oh and to the person using the word 'nerds' to describe anyone who doesn't want super dark can't see anything but a black screen nights no matter the individual settings, that is priceless coming from someone playing an Elder Scroll game and talking about immersion.

danno8

Dawnblade wrote: »

I love weather, dynamic environments and day / night cycles in game - static environments are very boring (I played SWTOR and it was a huge let down not seeing even basic day / night cycles).

That said - while I'd be all for more options (some of which already exist) to let players darken the nights, I for one do not want pitch black areas.

For me true darkness fails in a game I have to interact with by using a visual display device - all it does is leave me squinting at the monitor and ending up getting a headache from eye strain while turning up the gamma and white washing everything.

Oh and to the person using the word 'nerds' to describe anyone who doesn't want super dark can't see anything but a black screen nights no matter the individual settings, that is priceless coming from someone playing an Elder Scroll game and talking about immersion.

Yes I agree with this. I think the picture posted above is awesome. Truly atmospheric and really gives the sense of danger at nighttime.

However, I also think it fails in terms of gameplay. It really gets too dark to do, well, anything. And it also doesn't help that your enemies are never affected by the dark either. So while you can't see them, they have no problem seeing you.

The kind of immersion that dark nights can create really needs to be baked into the game by developers, or else it falls flat in the gameplay department.

Taleof2Cities

danno8 wrote: »

However, I also think it fails in terms of gameplay. It really gets too dark to do, well, anything. And it also doesn't help that your enemies are never affected by the dark either. So while you can't see them, they have no problem seeing you.

It is possible to reduce the detection radius on NPCs and monsters, too, at night ... so they have the same problem.

Other monsters, such as senche leopards, would naturally not suffer that sort of penalty.

In terms of gameplay, there is already more in the game than you might think: Torches and magelight spells come in handy along with the Meridia's light collectible. The moons, Masser and Secunda, could offer some extra lighting at night ... depending on their phase in combination with the current weather visibility.

Totally doable, I think, in a dynamic nighttime setting. PvP is where I think this idea could be detrimental.

JamieAubrey

TBH I dont think I've ever even seen night time in this game and if I have I'm too busy fighting people to notice

ArchMikem

Perhaps if the Night actually made an impact on gameplay then ESO on the whole would be much different than it is.

Nights are darker, harder to see what's around you, Mobs become more dangerous, and the majority of Quest Givers actually go indoors for the night so they become unavailable until morning. This would force players to find shelter within Cities, take up rooms in the Inn for the night, actually mingle in the Tavern till morning with other players, relegate all their crafting and other in-town chores for the late hours, or boldly decide to brave the lands at night in order to get a head start to their next questing location.

Leogon

I really like the synced day/night cycles, too bad they didn't feel like doing the same thing with the sunny/rainy cycles.

Me: "It's raining, I like it."



Friend: "Huh?"

Artemiisia

Gargath wrote: »

Yes, just would be cool to have an addon to darken the night even more to few meters visibility. Like Skyrim mods, so the hand torches and bugs in jars have some love too and running at night in hostile territory would be even more immersive .

my monitor has a game mode feature that makes the game colors more strong for lack of better word, I love it when I remember to turn it on

Thealteregoroman

Wait wait....I play on PS4 NA.......So if I play at night the game will be at night? Is there something in game where you can tell the forecast or something? Is it synced with your time zone?

Seraphayel

I don't think so, @Thealteregoroman . But I recognized that it's mostly night when I turn on my console in the evening. Don't know why. I read that the cycle is 6 hours so four Tamriel days are one day in reality.

And all of you saying the night doesn't matter... I think it does. For me it's a very different experience and it's pretty dark. Haven't you set brightness too high? For me the night is pretty dark (XOne).