No.

I love it when people say "It can't be hard". You have any idea what goes into making it like that? Clearly not. Just because another game does it does not make it easy. It has to be planned that way from the start. Shadows are baked into the textures in this game, and while I haven't played lotro, I bet they are not baked in that game. This is a time consuming process and would require a huge effort to change.

For some reason when I'm on planets late at night, the planet gets darker...

I have no idea if it does get darker the later you're on, or if it is just my eyes needing some sleep

For some reason when I'm on planets late at night, the planet gets darker...

 

I have no idea if it does get darker the later you're on, or if it is just my eyes needing some sleep

Some places on planets are deliberatly darker. And sleep depravation helps

Are you kiddin'?!?

Such great features as seen in some of the early mmo's of the era, like swg or everquest or wow etc youll never see again....

Slowly i get a picture what they did with that tens or probably hundreds of millions dollar to develop this game,

they scrolled them dollars, weed in' and smoke em'. Others were seen as toilet paper rolls for the steamy pile of sh... over there at the dev team tagged to the development of space combat! Sandbox elements to give players something to do beside the dull boarding of an hated space station and one actu....cough... operation since april, well screw that, we just do it like wow-makers did, they are milkin' the cashcow and every child can go to a college of choice, put it all a bit spacey and everything will work for our stupid stockholders, errr wrong.

And now, 90% of the dev team probably had been gone, you cant expect anything else then cashmilking a ****store with pointless stuff like pets and mounts and ponies, nais

I agree. It's the first thing I'd like BW to change. Well, I'd like them to give us the ability to hide companion's helms first. And fix the glowy companion lightsaber issue too. But those are more bugs than "changes".

My main is now at level 48. I have several alts ranging from 10 to 30ish, and I'm wondering what to play next after I get to 50, but I'm finding myself to be less than excited about it. Honestly, I'm starting to lose a little of the affection I've had for this game because of the lighting & lack of weather & day/night cycles. If the worlds themselves were more fun to be in, I'd be much more willing to play them over and over again, just to run around and look at cool stuff like in LOTRO.

I know this game is a theme park and not a sandbox, but if the theme park was more visually stimulating & fun to run around in, I'd spend more time there, even if I'm riding the same rides over and over again.

No.

 

I love it when people say "It can't be hard". You have any idea what goes into making it like that? Clearly not. Just because another game does it does not make it easy. It has to be planned that way from the start. Shadows are baked into the textures in this game, and while I haven't played lotro, I bet they are not baked in that game. This is a time consuming process and would require a huge effort to change.

"Shadows baked into the textures" is a nice way of putting it. For performance sake this game does not render proper light and shade. Thanks to the inferior game engine. So just about all the lighting and shadows in the environment is faked. You wont find a single silhouette anywhere.

It would have made sense to have day/night cycles, but for some reason they opted out of putting them in. There is probably a decent reason, in addition to engine limitations - for example, you cannot be outside on Hoth at night according to the films. On the other hand, it would have made the planets more engaging and visually appealing. Taris would have been really spooky at night. In addition, it may have allowed for having different questing missions available at night, a sort of alternate side quest leveling path.

I wouldn't expect any changes on this going forward. We can hope for improvements and additions to TOR, but, until their finances turn around, the game is what it is. If you were EA, would you sink more money into something so expensive to begin with that basically flopped, according to expectations, especially when your company isn't doing well?

I wish George Lucas would pour some money into further development for TOR. He can certainly afford to, and, if the game were more fully realized, they could potentially make a ton of money in the cash shop and pull in many more subscribed players off of the renewed interest. Hire experienced MMO developers, give them the resources they need to add more depth to the game, and watch the product grow.

Star Wars has generally been a very profitable gamble in the past. TOR still has a lot of potential, but someone has to pay for it. I'm not optimistic on the latter really happening, though.

No.

 

I love it when people say "It can't be hard". You have any idea what goes into making it like that? Clearly not. Just because another game does it does not make it easy. It has to be planned that way from the start. Shadows are baked into the textures in this game, and while I haven't played lotro, I bet they are not baked in that game. This is a time consuming process and would require a huge effort to change.

seireously it took bliz 2 years to add simple rain and snow in WoW and when they did add it it was a HUGE deal and the main part of a patch.

Now I would like to see them add it in new planets but not in the current ones.

It would have made sense to have day/night cycles, but for some reason they opted out of putting them in. There is probably a decent reason, in addition to engine limitations - for example, you cannot be outside on Hoth at night according to the films. On the other hand, it would have made the planets more engaging and visually appealing. Taris would have been really spooky at night..

Yeah, that could have been epic. Rakghouls could be nocturnal - you'd have to track them down (sleeping in caves?) during the day, but they'd be out in huge, swarming forces at night. Soloable with good planning during the day, but you'd better have a whole team with you if you want to go out at night. That would have been amazing...

And he who rose from the ashes of the ground said and I quote in his name

"there shallth be a day when doesth not stop and weather does not happen, all will be still. For an eternal supper will happen when Jeremiah rises from the ashes and stops all turning of time. He who is forbid to beith thy life in which we hold dear will die a death. There will no longer be the days when the sun rises nor sets, there will be a time of great sorrow, of great weeping, of great...chaos and those who will be fortunate enough to live through the torment of no longer time being an essence in this life of god which we hold dear will be survivors and keep living to survive. He who will call upon will be known as christ. Tis be now known as....THE LONGEST DAY."

I believe that could be a good cop out

Eh. Day/night is a cool thing that makes the world feel more dynamic, but it's also a nuisance. If you're one of the many people who work a normal 8-hour M-F week, or a student with a normal school week, you play in the evening and you see some day and some sunset and some night if you're up late enough, or you play on the weekend whenever and you get a nice bright day to run around in, and that's great, it adds variety and a sense of realism.

But if you work afternoons or third shift, unless you feel like dealing with the lag from rolling a server six time zones away, your entire gameplay experience is in the dark. It stops being fun pretty quickly. Especially if the game starts adding stuff that sounds neat, like "rakghouls come out at night," but actually just kills the experience for players who have no choice but to run an area at the non-ideal time.

Unless they desync the cycle from the server time and give Taris an eighteen-hour day and Alderaan a thirty-hour one, or whatever, but then you'd need some kind of in-game world clock or something. Stick a big dynamic signboard up in the Fleet cantina that tells you it's dawn on Hoth and lunchtime on Voss. Though I bet players still wouldn't care for the essentially unpredictable nature of it.

Simple question, any idea? Will the game always be as it is, and the weather, hour etc never change? Not being snarky, I just really wonder, if the devs ever adressed this, and what they said. It can't be hard, even lotro has day and night lol

The planets were all designed as a specific moment in time. No, the weather will not change. With all the OTHER issues in this game this is the least important thing I can possibly think of.

Shadows are baked into the textures in this game, and while I haven't played lotro, I bet they are not baked in that game. This is a time consuming process and would require a huge effort to change.

What an insanely horrible design decision to go with an engine that can't do lights and shadows properly in this day and age.

seireously it took bliz 2 years to add simple rain and snow in WoW and when they did add it it was a HUGE deal and the main part of a patch.

Just because Blizzard is inept doesn't mean it is hard. A lot of games ship with weather as a part of the game.

Eh. Day/night is a cool thing that makes the world feel more dynamic, but it's also a nuisance. If you're one of the many people who work a normal 8-hour M-F week, or a student with a normal school week, you play in the evening and you see some day and some sunset and some night if you're up late enough, or you play on the weekend whenever and you get a nice bright day to run around in, and that's great, it adds variety and a sense of realism.

I have never seen a game that ran realtime. I think the fastest was around 48mins is a full 24-hour cycle, while I believe the slowest was around 90mins for a 24-hour cycle. Having the day/time in realtime would be a horrible idea and I don't think anybody is suggesting that.

I think day/night/weather would be worth the amount of effort put in. It would breath fresh air into the planets.

Please expand on this feature would draw more people in and create more revenue for the game. Please also expand on how this could be implemented considering the class stories are a certain point in time.

Like the many other threads about this that have been going around for a long time, each planet is a moment in time.

The stories that take place on each world is in an X moment in "our" story. I honestly think we should have day/night cycles like most MMO's (SWG for example), but in a small way I understand why it's like the way it is.

Plus if we have night, how the hell are we going to be able to see in some regions of X planets? BW will need ot place a ton of lights, etc everywhere.

Like the many other threads about this that have been going around for a long time, each planet is a moment in time.

 

The stories that take place on each world is in an X moment in "our" story. I honestly think we should have day/night cycles like most MMO's (SWG for example), but in a small way I understand why it's like the way it is.

 

Plus if we have night, how the hell are we going to be able to see in some regions of X planets? BW will need ot place a ton of lights, etc everywhere.

Bioware forgot they were designing an MMO, where it's supposed to be about OUR story, not theirs.

In addition, it may have allowed for having different questing missions available at night, a sort of alternate side quest leveling path.

This to some degree. Perhaps for some people having weather or day/night cycles makes a game more engaging. For me, however, I see it as a waste of resources unless it has some profound impact in the world. I personally would rather time and resources be spent on making more playable content then making the sky go dark or putting little pixilated rain on the screen.

However, allowing for the weather to create an impact on the environment does have its drawbacks. Namely, it will restrict what you can do in the game at any particular time. Logging in to complete a quest that can only be done in the daytime? Sorry, come back in an hour or two when the sun rises and the NPCs/Mobs reach their daytime positions. What's that? You only have an hour to play today ... well I guess you are SOL then.

While having these things in game may make for a more "living, breathing world" I would much rather play in a world where what I do and how I do it is based on my time and method of playing, and not on some arbitrary code.

BJ

This to some degree. Perhaps for some people having weather or day/night cycles makes a game more engaging. For me, however, I see it as a waste of resources unless it has some profound impact in the world. I personally would rather time and resources be spent on making more playable content then making the sky go dark or putting little pixilated rain on the screen.

One of the criticisms about this game is how sterile it is, the worlds have no life. They look like the background paintings in the Original Trilogy, that is how lifeless they are. Day/Night cycles and rain would have helped add that life. Even in the movies you see different weather conditions, whether it is a drizzling rain or a downpour, a dust storm, or a blizzard. Even George understood that weather helps set a mood.

While having these things in game may make for a more "living, breathing world" I would much rather play in a world where what I do and how I do it is based on my time and method of playing, and not on some arbitrary code.

The only effect I have ever seen weather have in a game is setting the mood and visibility. It adds atmosphere (which this game severely lacks). Now day/night cycles could impact some quests, but EQ/EQ2 used a 2hr 24mins for a full 24hr cycle, which means 1 hour and 12 mins if you were completely off. I don't know if that would be a bad thing for trying to make such a sterile environment have some sort of life.