[MUD-Dev] DESIGN: Why do people like weather in MMORPGs?

[Mike Rozak]

Thanks to everyone's feedback. I've added night & weather to my queue of
tasks.


Damion Schubert wrote:

> As a general rule, players love the concept of day/night cycles,
> but hate them in practice.  As mentioned previously, it's not
> really fun to not be able to see well, and oftentimes even if
> you're carrying a torch, your home computer may be set up in a
> location of the home where glare limits your visibility.  It takes
> a talented art director to make art that works in all light
> scenarios.  Also, don't underestimate how much people hate the
> idea of being forced to carry torches - this is especially true if
> they are usually two-handed weapon wielders.

Actually, I'm inclined to do both of these, for the following
reasons:

  1) Not being able to see well makes things spooky, especially in
  dungeons or wandering around the wilderness. To me, mood is
  important. (See http://www.mxac.com.au/m3d/gallery.htm for some
  interior night scenes.) NOTE: I won't be doing the standard cheap
  MMORPG graphics; my renderings are photometrically accurate, so if
  you're carrying a torch, it will illuminate the area around the
  character very realistically. I'll adjust the exposure to account
  for the character's eyes dialating, although some races might
  dialate more than others. (Some nocturnal races might also be
  color blind.)

  2) If a character has to carry a torch vs. carrying a shield or a
  2-handed sword, they have to make choices which involve
  tradeoffs. Either they can forgoe the shield, or they can get
  magic sunglasses of night vision, or something. (The magic glasses
  of night vision might make everything appear green though.)

Personally, I get annoyed with MMORPGs and CRPGs that let players
carry 50 tons of treasure and run around in full platemail in a
desert. Part of the challenge of exploration (I'm biased here) is
deciding what you need to take, and what gets left behind.

> Weather is more of a mixed bag.  In most games, people love
> weather - it's a cheap and easy thing to do which makes you feel
> like you're part of a virtual world.  Players like to see change
> in their virtual world, and changes which don't inconvenience them
> personally are all the better.  The only game where weather has
> gone over like a lead balloon has been my own, Shadowbane - this
> is because in a PvP game, framerate is king, and as such, everyone
> in the game turned off the feature as soon as we put it in.

I'm not drawing images real time, so I can afford the better
quality.

Mike Rozak
http://www.mxac.com.au
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