ESO day/night cycle

YstradClud

Please keep your current day/night cycle. After 10 years of playing WoW in darkness at oceanic peak times it's very nice to be playing in broad daylight at 10pm AEST.

Nestor

The cycles are about 5 hours long, so they tend to shift slightly over time. IIRC, you have 1.5 Hours of Darkness and 3.5 Hours of Light during the cycle. So, your more likely to have Light than Dark in the game. So, at 10 PM Local Time to you, you will see a few times when you log in at Night, Game Time. A few days later, you will be back in daylight at your 10PM Login.

Officially, the stated cycle is 6 hours, but it is closer to 5 in actual practice. Since dawn and dusk are fairly bright, there is more time during "daylight" than "nightlight", which is why you only have 1.5 hours of darkness in the cycle. Which is not all that dark in the game in most zones.

The only thing that I think is tied specifically to a day night cycle is the Purple Trophy Fish in Orsinium. Werewolf and Vampire NPCs for the purposes of bites were tied to Day/Night cycles at one point, but I am not sure if that is still the same now.

Danikat

I didn't realise any games actually matched their day/night cycle to real life. I've seen players suggest it for various games (either tied to your local time or to the server's time zone) but I didn't know there were games where it happened.

Personally I think a shorter cycle works well, as does one which doesn't divide evenly into 24 hours, so there's not fixed times of the day when it's dark or light in game. It means everyone gets to see both regularly, no matter what time they're usually online.

Nestor wrote: »

The only thing that I think is tied specifically to a day night cycle is the Purple Trophy Fish in Orsinium. Werewolf and Vampire NPCs for the purposes of bites were tied to Day/Night cycles at one point, but I am not sure if that is still the same now.

I'm fairly certain the vampire and werewolf NPCs who can infect players still only appear at night, but they're no longer tied to the in-game cycle of the moons. I've seen werewolves when the moons were waning and vampires when they were half-full, among other things.

Vevvev

Nestor wrote: »

The only thing that I think is tied specifically to a day night cycle is the Purple Trophy Fish in Orsinium. Werewolf and Vampire NPCs for the purposes of bites were tied to Day/Night cycles at one point, but I am not sure if that is still the same now.

The vampire and werewolf NPCs in Reaper's March, The Rift, and Bangkorai are still tied to the day/night cycle. Player based vampirisim used to be buffed by the night allowing you to enter sneak faster, but after Greymoor the devs made that buff universal and unaffected by the day/night cycle.

validifyedneb18_ESO

I like this approach. Anything from about 4 to even 20 hour cycles that see you play in different ingame times over king periods of time irl.

Tieing to real world time is a gimmick that people used to do because it was new cutting edge game design to have it syced with whats outside your window. In reality its not very exciting, playing in the dark all the time.

Feric51

I wish the night cycle was longer because I love to do my farming runs at night and let my Keen Eye light up the landscape making the nodes so much easier to find. Especially beneficial for finding clams along the Summerset coast.

FYI I'm on console before someone points out there's addons that would help farming.

Anotherone773

Nestor wrote: »

The cycles are about 5 hours long, so they tend to shift slightly over time. IIRC, you have 1.5 Hours of Darkness and 3.5 Hours of Light during the cycle. So, your more likely to have Light than Dark in the game. So, at 10 PM Local Time to you, you will see a few times when you log in at Night, Game Time. A few days later, you will be back in daylight at your 10PM Login.

Officially, the stated cycle is 6 hours, but it is closer to 5 in actual practice. Since dawn and dusk are fairly bright, there is more time during "daylight" than "nightlight", which is why you only have 1.5 hours of darkness in the cycle. Which is not all that dark in the game in most zones.

The only thing that I think is tied specifically to a day night cycle is the Purple Trophy Fish in Orsinium. Werewolf and Vampire NPCs for the purposes of bites were tied to Day/Night cycles at one point, but I am not sure if that is still the same now.

I heard from someone else who tracked the cycles while they were doing something for moon phases or something that the cycle is 5 hr 48 minutes from dawn to dawn. 4 hours of this daylight and the rest is night.

It also varies from server to server. It wont be daylight on PC NA and PC EU at the same exact time. This is because the cycle starts over every time the server is rebooted. If the EU server is down an extra 2 minutes then the cycle will be 2 minutes off NA until the next down time.

Mik195

Feric51 wrote: »

I wish the night cycle was longer because I love to do my farming runs at night and let my Keen Eye light up the landscape making the nodes so much easier to find. Especially beneficial for finding clams along the Summerset coast.

FYI I'm on console before someone points out there's addons that would help farming.

I agree on nodes, but finding treasure maps on console is definitely annoying in the dark. We really need a skill point to make treasure map locations glow on console.

Klad

First off who in the hell from Zenimax said anything about altering the day/night cycle??

in any event...

The cycle as it is, and the ineffectiveness of nocturnal creatures is just lame. I understand that many achievement/Daily Tramps, want the shortest night time possible, because they falsely believe that they can complete said faster..which is nonsense.

I'm not going to die on this hill because there is so much more that needs attention...Like wouldn't it be neat if we have choices that matter? or how about a end game that wasn't Unreal Tournament with swords? Honestly ESO has huge competition upcoming from MMO's, that want to make their game something other than a completion/achievement vending machine with zero soul.

I hope they get the chance and ESO doesn't go the way of Asheron's Call.

YstradClud

Klad wrote: »

First off who in the hell from Zenimax said anything about altering the day/night cycle??

in any event...

The cycle as it is, and the ineffectiveness of nocturnal creatures is just lame. I understand that many achievement/Daily Tramps, want the shortest night time possible, because they falsely believe that they can complete said faster..which is nonsense.

No one said anything about altering the cycle I am just posting to thank them for the current cycle. Go and read the WoW forums and you will see the capped thread about the day/night cycle with over 10k views.

kargen27

Mik195 wrote: »

Feric51 wrote: »

I wish the night cycle was longer because I love to do my farming runs at night and let my Keen Eye light up the landscape making the nodes so much easier to find. Especially beneficial for finding clams along the Summerset coast.

FYI I'm on console before someone points out there's addons that would help farming.

I agree on nodes, but finding treasure maps on console is definitely annoying in the dark. We really need a skill point to make treasure map locations glow on console.

Does the antiquity skill that sends out blue slivers of light on treasure chests do the same thing for treasure map locations? If not maybe it should.

Sylvermynx

kargen27 wrote: »

Mik195 wrote: »

Feric51 wrote: »

I wish the night cycle was longer because I love to do my farming runs at night and let my Keen Eye light up the landscape making the nodes so much easier to find. Especially beneficial for finding clams along the Summerset coast.

FYI I'm on console before someone points out there's addons that would help farming.

I agree on nodes, but finding treasure maps on console is definitely annoying in the dark. We really need a skill point to make treasure map locations glow on console.

Does the antiquity skill that sends out blue slivers of light on treasure chests do the same thing for treasure map locations? If not maybe it should.

Not AFAIK. It's limited to chests I believe;.

Faiza

kargen27 wrote: »

Mik195 wrote: »

Feric51 wrote: »

I wish the night cycle was longer because I love to do my farming runs at night and let my Keen Eye light up the landscape making the nodes so much easier to find. Especially beneficial for finding clams along the Summerset coast.

FYI I'm on console before someone points out there's addons that would help farming.

I agree on nodes, but finding treasure maps on console is definitely annoying in the dark. We really need a skill point to make treasure map locations glow on console.

Does the antiquity skill that sends out blue slivers of light on treasure chests do the same thing for treasure map locations? If not maybe it should.

Nope, it does not

Faiza

YstradClud wrote: »

Klad wrote: »

First off who in the hell from Zenimax said anything about altering the day/night cycle??

in any event...

The cycle as it is, and the ineffectiveness of nocturnal creatures is just lame. I understand that many achievement/Daily Tramps, want the shortest night time possible, because they falsely believe that they can complete said faster..which is nonsense.

No one said anything about altering the cycle I am just posting to thank them for the current cycle. Go and read the WoW forums and you will see the capped thread about the day/night cycle with over 10k views.

I haven't read the WoW forums since the whole McForging drama. I still think about that post sometimes and burst out laughing.

Thank you for giving me another reason to be grateful not only for ESO, but that I left WoW forever.

Mik195

Faiza wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

Mik195 wrote: »

Feric51 wrote: »

I wish the night cycle was longer because I love to do my farming runs at night and let my Keen Eye light up the landscape making the nodes so much easier to find. Especially beneficial for finding clams along the Summerset coast.

FYI I'm on console before someone points out there's addons that would help farming.

I agree on nodes, but finding treasure maps on console is definitely annoying in the dark. We really need a skill point to make treasure map locations glow on console.

Does the antiquity skill that sends out blue slivers of light on treasure chests do the same thing for treasure map locations? If not maybe it should.

Nope, it does not

And, yes, it should. Maybe in 2021 we'll get a surprise and they'll add it.

tomofhyrule

https://esoclock.uesp.net/ (PCNA)

This keeps pretty good 'game time,' so if you're interested in screenshots you can check it out. The day is artificially lengthened - it's starts getting dark after 21:00 and starts getting light around 04:00, and the cycle is around 5 and a half hours long, but it makes it nice if you're trying to do something at a certain time.

I know sometimes it's nice to go farming at night if you have the Keen Eye passives, and of course during the day otherwise.

amapola76

I will admit that years ago I enjoyed the synced schedule in WoW, mostly because I often played in the early morning, and there was something very special about exploring that world as the sun was rising.

I don't really have strong feelings about it either way now. But ESO's way of doing things seems to work fairly well.

Dirtybyrd

I totally disagree

The game is so beautiful day & night, But at night is when you can really enjoy the true beauty of it all at it's most. Look from the housing prospect of the game. If you go outside of your home at night and have the pretty flowers that are lit up and certain other lights it is amazing. (Picture of proof)

To bring this to a close I just wished we had a longer night time

Happy New Year!

Nestor

Anotherone773 wrote: »

Nestor wrote: »

The cycles are about 5 hours long, so they tend to shift slightly over time. IIRC, you have 1.5 Hours of Darkness and 3.5 Hours of Light during the cycle. So, your more likely to have Light than Dark in the game. So, at 10 PM Local Time to you, you will see a few times when you log in at Night, Game Time. A few days later, you will be back in daylight at your 10PM Login.

Officially, the stated cycle is 6 hours, but it is closer to 5 in actual practice. Since dawn and dusk are fairly bright, there is more time during "daylight" than "nightlight", which is why you only have 1.5 hours of darkness in the cycle. Which is not all that dark in the game in most zones.

The only thing that I think is tied specifically to a day night cycle is the Purple Trophy Fish in Orsinium. Werewolf and Vampire NPCs for the purposes of bites were tied to Day/Night cycles at one point, but I am not sure if that is still the same now.

I heard from someone else who tracked the cycles while they were doing something for moon phases or something that the cycle is 5 hr 48 minutes from dawn to dawn. 4 hours of this daylight and the rest is night.

It also varies from server to server. It wont be daylight on PC NA and PC EU at the same exact time. This is because the cycle starts over every time the server is rebooted. If the EU server is down an extra 2 minutes then the cycle will be 2 minutes off NA until the next down time.

It may be closer to the 5.8 Hours you state, although it does not seem that way in practice. For a couple of years, I always logged in at 6PM local time, and it dark and light varied through the week. I do remember back when I was playing several hours a night, that diurnal cycle seemed quicker than the 5.8 hours.

Anyway, if you play on PC, this will show you the exact game time, and real world time

https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info2536-Clock-TamrielStandardTime.html#info

MaisonNaevius

This cycle ... How many times have I got annoyed with ... The cycle is cuted between rain / snow.

For my wikis, it is important that the sun is high ... So full day. No bad weather, no sunrise / sunset.

Sylvermynx

@Faiza - TST is broken (just the date part) right now. No telling how much longer it will work at all - the mod author hasn't been around for a long time. So far no one else has got a clue how to fix it. Someone posted on the comments for the mod that InfoPanel also displays game time and real time.

I haven't changed over to InfoPanel so far - because I love the TST look.

YstradClud

Dirtybyrd wrote: »

The game is so beautiful day & night, But at night is when you can really enjoy the true beauty of it all at it's most.

Each to their own. Personally I just prefer playing the game in the full light of the day. I admit the night in some zones isn't really that drab though.