I wanted to start a post about nighttime in particular... For rules of this post, please stick to nighttime only, and what you would like to see that makes it scary or dangerous.
For some of us, we remember EQ in its early stages and how dark nighttime was without a light source. Light stones were a necessity! How about Kithikor Forrest at night!!?
I would like to see special creatures that only spawn at night. Werewolves (maybe only when full moon is out), vampire type creatures, wraiths or ghost-like.. It would be really cool to make nighttime special and bring in any other elements that make it scarier.
I would also like to see it very dark... to the point where you have to find a light source of some kind or it would be really difficult to find your way around. Maybe torches only burn for so long, you have to plan your resources correctly. Nothing like a good sense of fear or helplessness if you forget to plan properly.
What else do you all think? Agree or disagree?
Agreed! I really liked how FFXI did their nighttime stuff ... I remember Banshees coming out at night and wiping groups because they were 10-20 levels higher than anything else in the area. I would definitely like to see some gameplay elements that are exclusive to nighttime, just like I would for random weather events like storms/blizzards/heat waves, etc. Special baddies, environmental effects ... all that and more, yes please.
All these things you mentioned are great and i hope we have them! I would also like any ambiant sound effects to change to suit night time. Maybe some howling at the moon wolves, night time insects etc. Definitely want night to be freaky, and by the look of it they are really looking to cater to this by how dark they are making it!
Looking forward to reading some great suggestions from people here!
Lol, I miss Kithicor at night... It was so bad there was a raid guild named after it.
But anytime we think night we think scary crap is supposed to happen. I mean creatures coming out of nowhere and all that fun stuff. It should be a given that undead spawn, but also maybe raid targets that only spawn at night, and you have to kill it before morning because he retreats.
Dragons could do something like that, hell let's combine it and do undead dragons lol.
Werewolves, big arse spiders and all the sorts, the usual night time hunters should all come out. And because it's dark if you don't have a light source or night vision then you should pretty much be screwed, and even light sources should only do maybe 10-20m worth of light.
Hopefully they do that in some caves too tho. Like if you don't have light it's pitch black...
But yeah I loved the idea of Kithicor. And the night stuff, just make it difficult. You know... Like, Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
Dubah said:Werewolves, big arse spiders and all the sorts, the usual night time hunters should all come out. And because it's dark if you don't have a light source or night vision then you should pretty much be screwed, and even light sources should only do maybe 10-20m worth of light.
Hokanu said:I would also like any ambiant sound effects to change to suit night time. Maybe some howling at the moon wolves, night time insects etc.
Pyye said:....
I would also like to see it very dark... to the point where you have to find a light source of some kind or it would be really difficult to find your way around. Maybe torches only burn for so long, you have to plan your resources correctly. Nothing like a good sense of fear or helplessness if you forget to plan properly.
What else do you all think? Agree or disagree?
Go a step further with this and have the depth of darkness relate to a lunar cycle. Full Moon, adequate light for the average adventurer. New Moon, very dark, light source a necessity.
Fulton said:Go a step further with this and have the depth of darkness relate to a lunar cycle. Full Moon, adequate light for the average adventurer. New Moon, very dark, light source a necessity.
This would be very neat, but I feel could be hard to figure out based off how often the Day/night rotated. I'd like to think the day/night would be like a 6 hour rotation of 5 hours day, 1 hour night. So could be hard to keep up with which cycle the moon was on, but still like the idea.
Well i would even go a step further and add in lightning strikes and weather Engine to it.
but i would not make it so black, pitch black that players will just simply change the monitor gamma to avoid the nighttime.
It will just annoy players, honestly if it is so dark. This is a MMO not a zombie sandbox.
Sometimes the dark is just too dark, conan exiles has the dark you maybe thinking. It is annoying to be honest.
Oooh! Interesting topic!
I would say some areas should scare the ever-loving crap out of you, some areas should be garden-variety dangerous while others should be the same as it is in the daytime, only dark. If I remember correctly, Kithicor was cursed because of the Bloody Kithicor battle that happened centuries before "we" populated the world, and that's why it stood out as such a dangerous place. If all zones were like that at nighttime, it would lose all meaning, especially when it comes to lore. (It's almost like the reverse of "everyone receives a medal.") I can also see where other zones may have more dangerous nocturnal (not undead) creatures come out. That would be pretty cool. And then as you get closer to civilization, there would just tend to be less dangerous creatures because of activity and light from these towns and cities. (That also acts as a functional situation, where there's a bit of a buffer around newbie areas ... then again, there were home cities that boardered Kithicor ... hmmm ....)
I agree with Lghtngfan about the uniqueness of it. If Kithicor forest had an adjacent zone that was effectively Kithicor forest 2, then it wouldn't be scary. They should definitely build scary zones like this in the passageways between popular locations so that players will need to brave the dangers in order to travel. Having day/night variation in all/most zones is some nice icing on the mmo cake, but having fearsome zones that scare folks should not be overdone.
As far as how dark to make it, I'm not a huge fan of darkness that can be adjusted with gamma. I don't know what the unity engine can do in this regard, but IF they want to include darkness then I would like to see something new. Perhaps active blurring of "dark" areas 20+ feet away. Maybe actually making all "dark" areas 20+ feet away from the player be pure black. I just know from experiences in other games that folks just have a night and day gamma setting to negate darkness. I don't think there's any one great solution, but I would be interested to see a new approach to this.
I'm heartily sick to death of zombies and skeletons. Okay, fine, some around graveyards or something. You can't watch even a TV series all the way through without bleeping zombies or skeletons. They are an essential, apparently.
How about something left over from the revenant wars? Beasts used once as war beasts now loosed upon the land and terrified of the light.
What about creatures like cats with reflective eyes that hunt at dusk or dawn? What about owls?
Simians who adjusted to caves until the locals disturbed them.
How about newbie bats... at night, not all day long.
Maybe brigands that hide and people stop to use their campsite... that was a carefully laid trap.
Demon infestations at certain Moon cycles.
What about trees that awaken in the first light of dawn. That first safe at night becomes a place of terror at first light...
What of dens of day creatures who, in day are peaceful but if you awaken them at night will tear your face right off. (I've met some of these. They are called coffee addicts...)
I love the ideas about day/night effecting the creatures that are out and about. I'd love to see scenarios in which you planned your travels to coincide with the sun so to avoid the really nasty stuff that comes out at night. At least until you were strong enough to travel with a higher degree of confidence during the more dangerous hours.
I agree with the notion that nightime should be different. The night should be a lot more dangerous than the day time. Put in some baddies who only spawn at night and are a little tougher than daytime baddies. Kithacor forest was a superb example of day/night differences. I am not, however, in favor of making night so dark that you cannpt see anything as some people are suggesting. Make it more realistic like in real life. Cut down on how far you can see etc without a light source. But not completely dark. There is moonlight and some starlight that can factor in. If you want to make it dark as hell than shouldn't all the dungeons be black. If you make the night time torches limited to a time period maybe they should work that way in dungeons also.
THE NIGHT IS DARK AND FULL OF TERRORS
I love nights - They should be dangerous and you should be definitely scared, not only by the reduced visabilty, but also by a different sound and the monsters - ahhh yes the mosntersssss...
Bad ugly monsters, only seen by night, hiding behin corners, waiting for you in bushes. Reflecting your light in there eyes, or was it just a glow-worm you saw there???
Mobs should have more HP and harder to kill, but give more exp and rewards.
To fight the darkness, there should be a variety of possibilities to choose from: Torches, glowing items, glowing pets (like fire pets or so) and of course some single target and group spells that enhance night vision (greenish, or any other colour) and last but not least, let the character glow itself.
Setting a camp fire, could scare most of the mobs away and the tank could savely pull to there...
Just my thoughts ;)
I like the moon phases idea mentioned earlier,
and to put a twist to the undead at night: Have the predators like lions/pumas/wizzlepops in desert areas all take to shade during the heat of the day- like 11am to 4pm making the dangerous time 6am to 11am and 4pm to 9pm and in order to traverse in tthe heat of the day between 11am to 4pm, you need to be heat acclimated.
Amris said:I'm heartily sick to death of zombies and skeletons. Okay, fine, some around graveyards or something. You can't watch even a TV series all the way through without bleeping zombies or skeletons. They are an essential, apparently.
How about something left over from the revenant wars? Beasts used once as war beasts now loosed upon the land and terrified of the light.
What about creatures like cats with reflective eyes that hunt at dusk or dawn? What about owls?
Simians who adjusted to caves until the locals disturbed them.
How about newbie bats... at night, not all day long.
Maybe brigands that hide and people stop to use their campsite... that was a carefully laid trap.
Demon infestations at certain Moon cycles.
What about trees that awaken in the first light of dawn. That first safe at night becomes a place of terror at first light...
What of dens of day creatures who, in day are peaceful but if you awaken them at night will tear your face right off. (I've met some of these. They are called coffee addicts...)
Very well thought out ideas!
I LOVE the idea of having a day and night cycle in Terminus. Instead of writing a 3 page novel though I'm just gonna try and do a TL;DR version with bullet points ;D.
- Have nighttime affect ALL of Terminus. MOST areas it has a subtle effect on it. And a very few areas it has a dramatic effect. As some have mentioned if at nighttime every zone is Kithicor Forest then Kithicor Forest is no longer memorable.
- Certain mobs are daytime only mobs and are scared to come out at night. These mobs could be weaker mobs or maybe more appropriate to solo.
- Certain mobs are nighttime only mobs that do not come out during the daytime (or rarely come out) and are more difficult and possibly more suited for group content.
- Again, most areas at nighttime would only be slightly more challenging but more challenging nonetheless.
- The areas that are MUCH more challenging at night are because of the more difficult mobs, possibly an increase in mobs, but also because of the area itself and its geography. A dense forest during the day has sunlight peaking through the treetops and it's not so bad but at night even a full moon can not pierce through the dense shrubbery and the forest becomes a haven for evil doers. A castle ruins may become VERY tricky to navigate at night because of all the broken down castle bits and the rubble laying around and what not.
- Not only can nighttime make areas more challenging but it can also introduce a nice situation; whether to do a dungeon crawl or to camp the spot and pull mobs back to the camp. That castle ruins during the day might be a great place to do a dungeon crawl because the visibility is much clearer and the mobs are less powerful and less frequent...and less chance of training everything. But at night it may be a wise choice to set up a camp fire and have a puller pull mobs back to the group at camp. This way the players can sit around the camp fire and gain benefit from its light without having to worry about lighting every inch of the group going down eveyr inch of the mazelike ruins through the dark. Nighttime is a great way to make a single area have different choices in how you approach the mobs in that zone.
- Finally, I'd like to see lengthy day/night cycles. The devs stated that 2 hours should be a decent amount of time to feel like you have accomplished something in game. I feel like 2-3 hours will be the norm for a lot of people. So I'd love to see 3 hour day cycles and 3 hour night cycles. Make them long. I think it would be cool to come home from work (which a lot of people come home at the same time, or have the same schedule/shift every day) and know that from 5-8pm real time that it will be daylight in the game and that from 8-11pm will be nighttime. This way players can plan accordingly. A lot of players will just play whenever they can but their are plenty who, if like me, will create a schedule to play during. Get home from work and get some chores done and some daily rituals and then either play somewhere inside of those hours or outside. Maybe some quests can only be done during the day or night. Having lengthy cycles could permit this type of questing. It would be hard to do a quest when nighttime comes by every hour.
Ainadak said:As far as how dark to make it, I'm not a huge fan of darkness that can be adjusted with gamma. I don't know what the unity engine can do in this regard, but IF they want to include darkness then I would like to see something new. Perhaps active blurring of "dark" areas 20+ feet away. Maybe actually making all "dark" areas 20+ feet away from the player be pure black. I just know from experiences in other games that folks just have a night and day gamma setting to negate darkness. I don't think there's any one great solution, but I would be interested to see a new approach to this.
I 2nd this. Being a LONG time Ghost Recon Siege player and playing on a championship team I have seen a lot of hacks and one of them was that players would just turn up the brightness/gamma during a night map. Shooters are a lot different than an MMORPG so I think they are limited in what they can do (the shooters) but I think Ainadak is on to something. I think an MMO might have some options they could use in order to avoid someone simply adjusting their brightness or gamma while keeping the integrity of the game intact. All the while keeping the darkness fun and interesting and engaging.
I think how dark it will be should be dependent on the beautiful moons that we have seen in several screenshots! On nights with no moon, those are the trickiest and scariest of all... But in actuality, 1/4 moons should not be quite as dark but still challening. So at full moon nights, it should be dark but have a soft glow like it would be.
We have not even talked about how players may be able to manipulate the dark night.
What about a Summoner that can conjure up a ball of sparks and cast it out ahead into the darkness. The spark ball bounces ahead, greatly illuminating the dark, allowing players to head down a path. They could keep throwing sparks to lead the way.
What about a Cleric, because they are so pure, perhaps a spell that illuminates their very being, one of the brightest light radiance in the game.
What about a Wizard the sends forward their illuminating eye off into the distance, revealing anything that may be lurking.
Fun stuff...
Great subject.
I agree with most eveything posted except that this doesn't have to happen in every zone, every night.
East commons day or night was the same and I was ok with that. Kith Forest is everyone's go to for scary nights because it was awesome. I loved hearing a moan of something undead.
This is another way to make sure zones don't get abandoned. Kith was what, Lev 8-12 in day time, lev 35-49 (grouped) at night time? Great way to keep high level people near low level people. (and to keep them coming back to 'noobie' areas.) It also boosted social interaction when a Lev 10 druid was begging for someone to go drag his corpse to the zone line for a ress.
The "key" to these scary areas is that you "can" go around them, but it's really not fun to do so. Druids could go thru 20 zones and an hour long travel time to get to EC, or, go thru Kith at night.... Of course the MAIN KEY to these scary areas was the Death Penalty. Death in EQ meant that you could lose your level, and you took a massive EXPs hit AND had to do a Naked corpse run. If Pantheon doesn't have that Harsh penalty, scary forests will just be an inconvenience.
One game I thought has an incredible night look was Firefall. Although this was a futuristic game, you had to use a flashlight in the dark forest, or you couldn't see more than 10 foot in front of you. You could see glowing eyes here and there, but you had no idea what those eyes belonged to.
Pyye said:I wanted to start a post about nighttime in particular... For rules of this post, please stick to nighttime only, and what you would like to see that makes it scary or dangerous.
For some of us, we remember EQ in its early stages and how dark nighttime was without a light source. Light stones were a necessity! How about Kithikor Forrest at night!!?
I would like to see special creatures that only spawn at night. Werewolves (maybe only when full moon is out), vampire type creatures, wraiths or ghost-like.. It would be really cool to make nighttime special and bring in any other elements that make it scarier.
I would also like to see it very dark... to the point where you have to find a light source of some kind or it would be really difficult to find your way around. Maybe torches only burn for so long, you have to plan your resources correctly. Nothing like a good sense of fear or helplessness if you forget to plan properly.
What else do you all think? Agree or disagree?
I want to be frightened again..like Kithicor Forest at night. I want to hear a boss monster yell out "Canadina..time to die* *Ssummon!!!* I remember guiding a Barbarian at night near the Chess board..down the path toward Greater Faydark, he had night blindness, I had a greater lightstone that made me glow as I ran down the path ahead of him. That's the kind of immersion I want again. :) Zombies, skeles that laugh, ghouls, festering zombies, diseased rats...vampire bats. Those kind of mobs just add to the atmosphere. /agree
@Kilsin
Take off your moderator hat for a second, as a player...
What are some of your personal preferences regarding this post topic?
Naim said:One game I thought has an incredible night look was Firefall. Although this was a futuristic game, you had to use a flashlight in the dark forest, or you couldn't see more than 10 foot in front of you. You could see glowing eyes here and there, but you had no idea what those eyes belonged to.
"Dying light" had a terrifying night time.. and things got really nasty at night time in that game. The sounds of the creatures, how fast they could kill you and not being sure where they were coming from would just send my heart dangerously into overdrive!