With the Weather system "undergoing revision", I figured I should start a topic.

Without analyzing the current story arc, or asking for a deadline or any of that, what is everybody hoping comes out of the new weather system?

Here are a couple of hopes from my end.

Druids (and to a lesser extent, mages) will have some control over the weather in an area. Maybe one or two utility powers or something.
Weather Hazards are added in extreme times--Lightning Strikes, occasional hurricanes, floods, fires, droughts.
Clothing becomes important--don't dress warmly in a cold area, suffer (or dress too warmly in a desert).
Elder Gods get to really mess with the weather as part of their god powers--piss of an Elder, maybe the whole city or commune suffers from a weather attack. (And maybe ascendents with Supernumary powers).
We get snowballs back.

I would like the Aeromancers to be able to manipulate (or have some sort of involvement in) the weather, at least for the Hallifax local area.

Considering the relative distance between locations of extremely differing climates, something like this is only going to be a pain, unless it's limited to purely flavour/aesthetic effects. Carrying around 10 sets of clothes just to walk from one end of the world to another is very nothx.

Especially considering how e.g. robes and armour seem to work in terms of clothing values, though I haven't actually taken a look at how much other stuff you need on top of them.

I sent some of my ideas on that to Elostian, so fingers crossed!

I would like to see real weather in cities and forests, e.g., not always sunny/cloudy like it used to be, but also not always rainy, like it ended up. And temperatures that actually change with the seasons. I don't care about any of the other fancy stuff.

We still have snowballs.

Frankly, I think the only times weather should be noticeable in the game are when someone specifically makes it so for that moment. That could be a guild or artifact effect (aeromancer skills, nature rain, etc.) or part of an event (where it's there because it's important to the plot). But passive weather that has any real effect is inevitably going to be just another source of annoyance. About the only purpose it serves is for the extortion-artifact -- add something deliberately annoying to the game, then sell an artifact that makes you immune to it, as a way of driving credit sales. I hardly want to see the game add even more of those. So we should only have weather when it's significant to the plot.

Like... weathersight from Discernment?

The weather should sometimes do damage based on how underdressed you are.

O_o

no really...

Ok, what I would expect from a weather system is to... create weather patterns based on modifiable variables.

Winter is probably the easiest example, there should be drops in temperature across the basin, some zones should experience snow, if not a blizzard, during the season. I want to see water freezing over, where appropriate, sure not every zone in the basin would experience these effects and unfortunately this would require some going over previous zones and setting averages to cause the right weather patterns.


If we factor in winds we could experience effects such as certain herbs replanting themselves (plants in room > x with correct wind variables cause them to spread to appropriate adjacent rooms). Lakes drying out, random flooding, there are many things that could happen when the weather is pushed to its extremes but these are in the domain of the druids (maybe some mages).

The herb thing might be a bit much, but worth throwing in. Depending on how this is handled it could make for interesting and dynamic zones, it would be amazing if it became possible to create a flood plain that... actually flooded with heavy seasonal rains. No need for fiddling with clothing, but weather has an effect...

I don't really like requiring different sets of clothing, especially since that will make having to constantly defend a hot area give you a malus to wearing your full armour/robes.

Weather hazards are alright, but no fire please. Nothing that does area effects either, please.

I do however like the idea of a few utility skills that effect weather, at least on a local and limited basis. I'd like to limit the actual harm any of this could do, so making this run into weather hazard range would be problematic. Also, having other gods being able to mess with your territory seems like a big nono to me.

I'd just really like to see druids no longer blown out of trees by weather effects. I'm with Lendren on this, the weather system doesn't need to be this huge mechanism that takes up a lot of time and attention on the part of the player base. It also doesn't need to be as massively complicated as the last system apparently was, because it won't get the notice a complex system like that really deserves. I'm all for a cool system that lets us mess with the weather to a limited extent and isn't just a random generator (not like I could see Lusty ever making that sort of system), but it doesn't exactly need to calculate weather fronts and the like.

What i'd like to see is seasonal/monthly averages for the weather variables where the weather should ideally work it's way towards hovering around them fluctuating up and down so that some weather effects might only last for a few days spread out over the season while others persist.

1) Combat
What about naked tattoo monks? Having fluctuating weather cause arbitrary maluses to certain classes (warriors for being overdressed, tattoo monks for being underdressed) is just illogical and obnoxious. It's like the fullmoon/newmoon thing between shadowdancers and moondancers taken to the next level.

2) Purpose
The old weather system was taken down because it was buggy and badly coded that prevented fixes (blizzard in earth. forever.) but other than the bugs, it served its purpose: add a bit of atmosphere and that's it. Since the system is being overhauled, we can ask for shiny new things, but the main purpose should be kept firmly in mind. It's cool to see a lightning once in a while start a forest fire. But when you talk about seasonal, like having random fires for 3 RL days with 9 day breaks inbetween kind of thing, it gets lame very quickly. Every week you have to gear yourself up for statues blown up, run around putting out fires etc?

3) Improvements
I think what is probably the best compromise is for people to be able to change the weather, where appropriate, for minor, cosmetic effects. Aeromancers, druids have a natural, logical link to weather. Find some link for a guild for each org, so that everyone can have a hand at playing with it, and make the effect something you wouldn't mind seeing often, but which doesn't do anything beyond bringing a twitch of a smile to the player's face, and you've got yourself a system that can be rated AAA. People who want to can go around playing with it forever and ever and it won't annoy anyone but the tightest of asses, and it'll provide occasional entertainment for everyone else who uses it more moderately. People who simply want to opt out of the system can close one eye and ignore it exists without losing anything significant from their gameplay. Who wins? Everyone.

With the amount of grief the Aeromancers get every time the weather twitches, I have to say no to this. We finally get the cool thing that RP says we've had all along, and everyone else gets it too? Maybe really, really minor things tied to each city's element would make sense, but certainly not the kind of stuff I have in mind.

I do agree that any near continual, negative, and unavoidable effects from the weather would get old fast.

I can see aquas with some form of rain dance and pyros having an opposing version, druids have the raw fury of nature going for them and always have.

Thematically I could see druids as a bit brute-forcey in their manipulations of the weather where Aeros are a bit more fine control (Aeros perhaps working against nature, where the druids have nature working with them but the spirits just sort of make it work so you may get unexpected fluctuations.). That being said, where would all of this go? Just more abilities into the primaries of the relevant guilds?

Much of it depends on the system, most should allow for aquas to summon up rain (pushing variables to appropriate values or just setting a raining flag), similarly pyros can revert that (punching the variables away from rainyday variables, removing rain flag)

The only org that I can't find at least something for is Magnagora.

Rainbows. This is Lusternia.

More strange phenomena, but very rare, and more visual/decorative than intrusive and harmful. Mudslides, tidal surges, dust storms.

Neat thoughts.

Regarding clothing, I more or less thought of it being important in the same way as food is important. Right now, it more or less is primarily used for combat purposes (robes and proofing). Maybe there's a slow drain on Endurance (not health) if you are over/under dressed for a specific area or situation, nothing major, but like eating and sleeping you need to pay attention to it. (Same special situational effects as well--novices aren't obligated right away, Level 80+ can shrug off temperature changes).

I don't think that Aeromancers should have "more to do" with the weather than the other orgs. Quite frankly, I figured both communes and their druids would have more control over the weather (seasons, the fact that they have closer ties to the first world, etc.) than the mage guilds. And I definitely don't think just one community should have more power than the others--water is just as important as air for weather effects, for instance--and I think the weather is the combination of all 4 elements (although earth may seem a little hard to mix with the others). Whatever is decided, I think weather should be the province of the druids and mages.

Endurance draining is a valid and very effective (if only against a subset of players who engage in combat) strategy, so having weather (and clothing) affect endurance in any capacity except absolutely negligible is also unreasonable. There are afflictions that amplify endurance loss by a factor of 20, so a "minor" drain can become debilitating very quickly.

If you want clothing to interact with weather in any way, you must divorce the entire clothing system from combat. Take robes, armour and tattoos and make them into a seperate realm altogether. Make it so that you can wear any combination of clothes you want alongside any kind of robe/armour/tattoo without either affecting the other. In the current incarnation, where wearing robes and armour automatically excludes you from wearing other, normal, clothes, making an arbitrary, atmospheric system interact with it is unreasonable.

Keep weather as purely cosmetic, or at the most, slightly amusing/positive. Avoid any kind of negative effect. Otherwise, you'll have to closely monitor everything that it affects and tweak it to prevent snowballing effects and to maintain the status quo.

Also, I really can't care less about not tying other orgs to weather control or whatever, really. If you want it aeromancer exclusive, I certainly won't be camping with a pitchfork outside your door, as long as the admin agree.

A few other quick thoughts...

Regarding "negative effects", I doubt they'll be completely absent, as we have skills in environment to offset weather effects--it's more likely they'll add a few more.

It's probably likely environmental effects will be added but not controllable by the players, that's probably what will happen. I can see environmental hazards making a few things like plots more exciting--imagine village influencing during a blizzard or thunderstorm.

Demesnes are more or less "weather control" for attack purposes. If they did add general area weather effects as either utility or combat, I suggest they'd be minor things, or perhaps be "summonable but uncontrollable"--you want to summon a tornado, go ahead, but it will not be under your control and while it might help you defend the Serenwilde, it might also fly to your nexus.

I certainly don't think one single org should have more weather abilities than the others. I can't really tell from the lore, but weather seems to be either controlled by nature or a mix of the elemental planes coming together (based on past events and lore). The only reason I thought of the communes is that I think they are closer to nature (and the weather) than the city orgs. I definately wouldn't want it to be something only a single org ever got to dominate.

Just gonna comment on this. That's a big part of the Aeromancer background. We're supposed to have a 'weather control machine' and various weather stations all over the place. The weather in Hallifax is meticulous controlled at the very least. Not that I object to other orgs being able to do stuff with weather, but it's supported in Aero rp moreso, imo.

Negative effects:
I don't support anything that requires changing clothes. Primary reason is for novices. Also important is the disparity between clothing necessary between classes, from tattoo monks to fullplate warriors (which take balance to put on and remove).

I'm not sure what effects would be interesting and fun, though.

My two sovereigns.

If the players are given things to affect the weather in any way, I'd prefer something that's for aesthetic value and nothing that actually effects people. Nothing that requires someone to learn a skill to not be affected by it.