Why is the night cycle so short compared to the day?

ecru

From what I can tell, the ratio is about 4:1 day/night. I grabbed a clock addon and shortly after it got about as dark as it could get, I set the in-game time to midnight, thinking that was about correct. Unfortunately the moment it's completely dark, it starts to get light again, which is not only unrealistic but a little stupid IMO. After setting the clock to what I thought might be correctly midnight, the sunrise started just before 3am. Even a 2:1 ratio would be better/more realistic.

Do people hate when it's dark so much that it needs to be this short, and is this something that could ever change so it isn't light out pretty much all the time? The game looks nice at night, but it's hardly ever night if the sun is rising right after it sets.

Pheefs

Agreed! the day cycle is weird & it never really gets dark unless I mess with the settings.
We do have the two moons though, so maybe that's a factor.


& I think part of the issue is that the day cycle is fixed to an even number of hours and then we as players are often on around the same times of day...

I think if the day was an odd number of hours it would be better and the nights could be longer.

vyndral13preub18_ESO

Because the planet is shaped like an egg?

ThePrinceOfBargains

Night lasts pretty long for me. But I don’t think the in-game time is in line with the daylight for some reason. It seems to start getting lighter at odd times of the night.

Varana

The game may look nice at night but I find it annoying to play. I actually go into delves and dungeons at night so it doesn't matter and I can use the day hours for overland stuff.
So having a short night to appreciate the eye candy is fine but for running around, a longer day is perfect.

Ostacia

Night is better for farming the glowing things. And yes, I agree, the day/night cycle seems askew.

phairdon

Because the game is based around the summer season? Long days/short nights.

MLGProPlayer

Pheefs wrote: »

Agreed! the day cycle is weird & it never really gets dark unless I mess with the settings.
We do have the two moons though, so maybe that's a factor.

If you're on PC, you can use Reshade to create darker nights. I created my preset specifically for that.

MercTheMage

phairdon wrote: »

Because the game is based around the summer season? Long days/short nights.

I'm pretty sure that nights are NOT 4 times shorter in the summer...

phairdon

MercTheMage wrote: »

phairdon wrote: »

Because the game is based around the summer season? Long days/short nights.

I'm pretty sure that nights are NOT 4 times shorter in the summer...

In real world terms no. Seeing as this is a game where our characters can shoot fire out of sticks, anything is possible

Urza1234

phairdon wrote: »

MercTheMage wrote: »

phairdon wrote: »

Because the game is based around the summer season? Long days/short nights.

I'm pretty sure that nights are NOT 4 times shorter in the summer...

In real world terms no. Seeing as this is a game where our characters can shoot fire out of sticks, anything is possible

Right? It continually baffles me where people draw the line of plausibility in a fantasy setting.

Mgghool

Well actually it is possible and quiete simple. Continent if tamriel is at higher latitude, axis of rotation is tilted and precession is in sync with movement of Nirn around its star so axis of nirm rotation is pointing to the same imaginary point. I can imagine, that the other hemisphere is prety cold.

CyborgPlatypus

It's because if they were longer you could get stuck only playing at night.

starkerealm

MercTheMage wrote: »

phairdon wrote: »

Because the game is based around the summer season? Long days/short nights.

I'm pretty sure that nights are NOT 4 times shorter in the summer...

Depends where you live. In the summer I'm looking at six hour nights.

starkerealm

ecru wrote: »

After setting the clock to what I thought might be correctly midnight, the sunrise started just before 3am.

Use the lunar or solar position on your compass to identify the in game time. When the larger moon is dead north, that's midnight.

There may be some way to determine the exact time from the clockwork city's sky, but I haven't spent enough time staring at it to be certain.

You cannot tell time in Coldharbour. (Technically, it's probably possible, but the info is just not there to get precise info back.)

Also worth noting, Tamriel isn't large enough to have multiple time zones (as in, the continent itself just isn't that big), so zone to zone doesn't result in different times.

ecru

Mgghool wrote: »

Well actually it is possible and quiete simple. Continent if tamriel is at higher latitude, axis of rotation is tilted and precession is in sync with movement of Nirn around its star so axis of nirm rotation is pointing to the same imaginary point. I can imagine, that the other hemisphere is prety cold.

Yeah, that would make sense. The other hemisphere wouldn't be just cold though, it would be a barren wasteland that would make Antarctica look like a summer paradise. Heh.

starkerealm

ecru wrote: »

Mgghool wrote: »

Well actually it is possible and quiete simple. Continent if tamriel is at higher latitude, axis of rotation is tilted and precession is in sync with movement of Nirn around its star so axis of nirm rotation is pointing to the same imaginary point. I can imagine, that the other hemisphere is prety cold.

Yeah, that would make sense. The other hemisphere wouldn't be just cold though, it would be a barren wasteland that would make Antarctica look like a summer paradise. Heh.

Atmora is supposedly an uninhabitable frozen wasteland. The Nedic colonists fled to Tamriel when began to freeze over, eventually leading to the Nords, Bretons, and Imperials.

Dapper Dinosaur

I wish there was a setting (or even a quest with an ultra-powerful NPC or object for a quest reward) that allowed you to control the time of day, obviously for yourself only.

For those of us with light sensitivity or just a high preference for darkness, it would be a godsend to effectively banish that damn sunlight.

starkerealm

Dapper Dinosaur wrote: »

I wish there was a setting (or even a quest with an ultra-powerful NPC or object for a quest reward) that allowed you to control the time of day, obviously for yourself only.

For those of us with light sensitivity or just a high preference for darkness, it would be a godsend to effectively banish that damn sunlight.

Unfortunately, the day/night cycle does have gameplay effects (even if they're minor, and may not affect you directly.)

Dapper Dinosaur

starkerealm wrote: »

Dapper Dinosaur wrote: »

I wish there was a setting (or even a quest with an ultra-powerful NPC or object for a quest reward) that allowed you to control the time of day, obviously for yourself only.

For those of us with light sensitivity or just a high preference for darkness, it would be a godsend to effectively banish that damn sunlight.

Unfortunately, the day/night cycle does have gameplay effects (even if they're minor, and may not affect you directly.)

What effects would those be, aside from maybe vampire/werewolf spawns? At the very least, we could have some kind of quest to win an item that are effectively sunglasses, where you can use it as a memento to put the "night" filter over your screen without actually affecting what time it is. That would probably be the most practical solution.

starkerealm

Dapper Dinosaur wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Dapper Dinosaur wrote: »

I wish there was a setting (or even a quest with an ultra-powerful NPC or object for a quest reward) that allowed you to control the time of day, obviously for yourself only.

For those of us with light sensitivity or just a high preference for darkness, it would be a godsend to effectively banish that damn sunlight.

Unfortunately, the day/night cycle does have gameplay effects (even if they're minor, and may not affect you directly.)

What effects would those be, aside from maybe vampire/werewolf spawns?

Rank 9 and 10 vampires, who take the Nightstalker passive enter stealth faster at night. At least, in theory. I'll be honest, I've got this passive on a bunch of characters, but, I'm not sure it actually works. (The other part, full movement speed in stealth, does work, which is why I spend the skill points in the first place.)

Dapper Dinosaur

starkerealm wrote: »

Dapper Dinosaur wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Dapper Dinosaur wrote: »

I wish there was a setting (or even a quest with an ultra-powerful NPC or object for a quest reward) that allowed you to control the time of day, obviously for yourself only.

For those of us with light sensitivity or just a high preference for darkness, it would be a godsend to effectively banish that damn sunlight.

Unfortunately, the day/night cycle does have gameplay effects (even if they're minor, and may not affect you directly.)

What effects would those be, aside from maybe vampire/werewolf spawns?

Rank 9 and 10 vampires, who take the Nightstalker passive enter stealth faster at night. At least, in theory. I'll be honest, I've got this passive on a bunch of characters, but, I'm not sure it actually works. (The other part, full movement speed in stealth, does work, which is why I spend the skill points in the first place.)

This problem would be avoided by giving us access to a sunglasses-esque item that makes it LOOK like it's night when we use the memento, and using it again (or dismissing the effect out of the character window) would remove the effect and show you what time of day it actually is.

I don't know how it would be explained, but an item to do the opposite (for those who do not want it to be so dark at night) would be fine too. Again, just the appearance of day/night on your screen, not actually changing it.

starkerealm

Dapper Dinosaur wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Dapper Dinosaur wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Dapper Dinosaur wrote: »

I wish there was a setting (or even a quest with an ultra-powerful NPC or object for a quest reward) that allowed you to control the time of day, obviously for yourself only.

For those of us with light sensitivity or just a high preference for darkness, it would be a godsend to effectively banish that damn sunlight.

Unfortunately, the day/night cycle does have gameplay effects (even if they're minor, and may not affect you directly.)

What effects would those be, aside from maybe vampire/werewolf spawns?

Rank 9 and 10 vampires, who take the Nightstalker passive enter stealth faster at night. At least, in theory. I'll be honest, I've got this passive on a bunch of characters, but, I'm not sure it actually works. (The other part, full movement speed in stealth, does work, which is why I spend the skill points in the first place.)

This problem would be avoided by giving us access to a sunglasses-esque item that makes it LOOK like it's night when we use the memento, and using it again (or dismissing the effect out of the character window) would remove the effect and show you what time of day it actually is.

I don't know how it would be explained, but an item to do the opposite (for those who do not want it to be so dark at night) would be fine too. Again, just the appearance of day/night on your screen, not actually changing it.

To be fair, it may be possible to rig up an addon that changes the gamma or brightness, to your liking at a keybind, so you could activate and deactivate it at will. Not an option if you're on consoles, though. I'd think in those cases, the distance between the user and screen would alleviate most issues.

ecru

Dapper Dinosaur wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Dapper Dinosaur wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Dapper Dinosaur wrote: »

I wish there was a setting (or even a quest with an ultra-powerful NPC or object for a quest reward) that allowed you to control the time of day, obviously for yourself only.

For those of us with light sensitivity or just a high preference for darkness, it would be a godsend to effectively banish that damn sunlight.

Unfortunately, the day/night cycle does have gameplay effects (even if they're minor, and may not affect you directly.)

What effects would those be, aside from maybe vampire/werewolf spawns?

Rank 9 and 10 vampires, who take the Nightstalker passive enter stealth faster at night. At least, in theory. I'll be honest, I've got this passive on a bunch of characters, but, I'm not sure it actually works. (The other part, full movement speed in stealth, does work, which is why I spend the skill points in the first place.)

This problem would be avoided by giving us access to a sunglasses-esque item that makes it LOOK like it's night when we use the memento, and using it again (or dismissing the effect out of the character window) would remove the effect and show you what time of day it actually is.

I don't know how it would be explained, but an item to do the opposite (for those who do not want it to be so dark at night) would be fine too. Again, just the appearance of day/night on your screen, not actually changing it.

This would make me extremely happy, and I'd even pay a looooot of crowns for it. I'm generally really sensitive to light and if I had my way, it would be night pretty much all the time.

ZiRM

Blame Alaska?

Ragnork

MercTheMage wrote: »

phairdon wrote: »

Because the game is based around the summer season? Long days/short nights.

I'm pretty sure that nights are NOT 4 times shorter in the summer...

Where I live we have "night" from circa 11pm until circa 2am in summer... but in winter sun up circa 08.30 and down circa 3pm.

Dapper Dinosaur

I'd think in those cases, the distance between the user and screen would alleviate most issues.

This is what someone who does not understand light sensitivity says. Blaming the user for sitting too close their screen, as if we're too dumb to think of that ourselves and space ourselves out properly.

When you go outside without sunglasses and then feel your eyes hurting, do you hear me blaming you for going too close to the sun?

Fun fact, that old myth saying you ruin your eyes by being in the dark all the time is completely incorrect. When people ruined their eyes by being "in the dark", it was actually due to them staring at a bright screen. Bright light actually puts significantly more strain on your eyes than darkness ever could, which is intensified by light sensitivity. My eye doctor said the best possible scenario for reading a book is with a dim light, not a bright one.

I actually have a pair of GUNNER glasses that I have to wear sometimes when I'm browsing webpages (mostly news articles and forums) that have white backgrounds. I don't want to turn my screen brightness down any lower or I would start not being able to see some things. That's what light sensitivity is like.

M_Volsung

Dapper Dinosaur wrote: »

I'd think in those cases, the distance between the user and screen would alleviate most issues.

This is what someone who does not understand light sensitivity says. Blaming the user for sitting too close their screen, as if we're too dumb to think of that ourselves and space ourselves out properly.

When you go outside without sunglasses and then feel your eyes hurting, do you hear me blaming you for going too close to the sun?

Fun fact, that old myth saying you ruin your eyes by being in the dark all the time is completely incorrect. When people ruined their eyes by being "in the dark", it was actually due to them staring at a bright screen. Bright light actually puts significantly more strain on your eyes than darkness ever could, which is intensified by light sensitivity. My eye doctor said the best possible scenario for reading a book is with a dim light, not a bright one.

I actually have a pair of GUNNER glasses that I have to wear sometimes when I'm browsing webpages (mostly news articles and forums) that have white backgrounds. I don't want to turn my screen brightness down any lower or I would start not being able to see some things. That's what light sensitivity is like.

Most people tend to not stare directly at the sun...

Dapper Dinosaur

The sun is not the only source of bright colors in the daytime. In the end, of course it's the actual source, but once the light hits all of the objects and terrain around you, everything becomes pretty bright. There is actually a condition called snow-blindness in the poles because the white snow reflects the sunlight so harshly that anyone out there without special goggles literally can be permanently blinded by it.

Don't play semantics with me if that's all you can contribute.

laksikus

Anti nightcap mechanic

Verbal_Earthworm

its because the moons are smaller than the sun