Guild Wars 2

Why doesn’t the day/night cycle in the game actually sync with day/night for the American servers. It’s weird logging in on a morning and it being night, or logging in at night and it being day outside. I think it would be nice to see the day/night cycle with the actual day…it getting brighter as morning disappears into the evening and when night comes around it gets darker.

If the actual cycle reflected more accurately the time we would actually know when it’s morning or afternoon or evening. Instead, the cycles feel like they change on a whim and is more of a “light” and “dark” cycle than a day/night cycle.

Because it would be a major bummer for everyone who can only play during night / day time. And just why on earth would this suggested function only work on Americans servers – or be syncronized to them?

A six hour cycle would be much more appropriate.

Who says the night/day cycle of Tyria is the same as earth? @iFocus has it right. It has to be more frequent in order for players to experience both night and day IMO.

This day/night more visible in-game has been suggested many times and ignored by the devs in the same amount

I didn’t mean that it should only be Americanized, just that the American servers would function with the American time-zones and the European servers have their own time-zones.

I guess I can understand for people who can only play night be able to experience night, but do those people really enjoy the day/night cycle (rather light/dark cycle) anyways? Seems like the day/night cycle can’t really be appreciated as it stands when it’s light one minute then dark the next without any real inclination of it being a day/night cycle (as in morning, afternoon, evening, night) which real-time experience would achieve.

Night time is not dark enough in my experience.

There’s no point having a synchronised day/night cycle reflecting server time when there’s no synchronisation between day and night states between zones to begin with!

I can’t be the only one left puzzled walking out of Divinity’s Reach in broad daylight straight into a midnight Queensdale.

It doesn’t need to be synchronized to the specific hour. I think you’re missing the point I’m making about morning/afternoon/evening/night that should be reflected instead of a random light, dark, light, dark that occurs I don’t even know how often.

It’s not about sever time reflecting each hour, that would be crazy. I just mean the phases of the day that we experience roughly the same time…no matter what time zone you live in.

This is an absurd idea. I can’t think of a single MMO that has ever matched real time. It’s more interesting for the game to cycle day/night in short cycles so if you play during the daytime, you can still experience night and vice versa.

Preference aside, I see no real improvement to gameplay based on this suggestion.

Actually, WoW did it.

My previous response can be applied to yours as well. I don’t see “day/night” actually being truly enjoyed as a day/night cycle because it’s not an accurate representation of day/night. You log on and it’s “light” but is it morning? afternoon? evening? I understand it’s a preference thing, but that’s just my representation of it. It’s more of a light/dark cycle than day/night. I really enjoy it in other MMO’s and wish it could be brought to GW2.

Why do you associate time in real life with the time in a fantasy game? The world has it’s own clock that is entirely independent of Earth time. As far as I know, they aren’t on Earth or even a planet in our solar system. For all we know Tyria rotates 360 degrees every 1 hour of Earth time.

This has always bothered me too. I would like night to feel like night and day to feel like day.

An option (i.e. you can still choose the default setting) of making in-game time/weather reflects the real situation can be interesting and nice for players who love immersion. The only problem is those night/day time sigils. People probably would use it for the bonus instead of immersion. lol

Tyria’s rotational duration is not the same as Earth’s. In-game the whole day/night cycle takes like 2 hours though…at that rate people would be spinning off the planet. It could be a bit longer. But definitely not synched to Earth.

Lore aside, I work 8-5 Mon-Fri & wouldn’t want to only get to play in the daytime on weekends.

Also, Signet of Midnight would be heavily affected, making it standard for players like me who play primarily in the evening/late at night.

I wouldn’t like it. I normally play at night time and this would make me be always playing at night in game. And I’m not the only one. Most people play in the evening or at night after they get off work, eat, do household chores, take care of kids, etc…. This would have them rarely seeing daytime ingame. I doubt few would like it.

And as others have said, this is another planet with its own period of rotation which is HIGHLY unlikely to match Earth’s or your particular spot on the planet.

I like the idea of making day & night cycles shorter and MORE obvious. I hardly ever notice when it is “night time”.

Night could be a little darker, but making the cycle in real time is absurd, for me, I would never play the game in the day then since I only ever get to play at night, and without some sort of time augmenting facility to make day happen now, like sleeping/waiting does in the Elder Scrolls games, it would be very depressing.

The other obvious problem with this is if it’s synced to server time, then it would be out of sync for players on the East coast vs. the West coast and in a shared environment like this you can’t sync to local time since because some countries are so large that it would literally be night for some and day for others, which can’t work. There is 4.5 hours time difference between East and West coast Canada and they will all be hitting the same North American servers. Also who gets to decide how long day/night is? Where I live, nights (dark) in mid winter are ~16-18 hours long, where in mid summer days (Light) are that long.

So the only feasible solution is what they’ve done…make it preset and arbitrary for everyone. Ideally, the cycles also should not happen in intervals divisible in to 24 hours so the day/night cycles don’t happen at the same times every day. So a 5 hour cycle, or even something like 3.5 or 4.5 hours, just to make the cycle happen at different times. I’ve never paid that much attention to see if this is the case.

No. World of Warcraft did this, and because of my work schedule, I only ever saw night time. It was a world of eternal depressing darkness.

That being said, night should be much darker. Think the forest in the snow fractal. That feels SO like night time, they should use that everywhere. Its very well done. It would lead to a lot of neat content too. Think of walking around in the dark carrying a torch and suddenly a wraith is stalking you. Scary!

Then, as people say, a standardized rotation per server. I’m thinking even shorter than 5 hours though. Why? Because then you can do things with day and night. Have certain mobs that only come out at night, or certain harvests change at night. Certain events, like seiging a centaur camp under the cover of darkness, etc etc. Make it something like 1 hour day, 40 min night. That would be long enough.

The average player plays about 2 hours. The cycle is made with that in mind.

A cycle that matches real life would mean some people would always be stuck at day and Night Sigils would be useless for them except inside in ‘always night’ instances.

I can get behind the idea of making “night time” much darker than it is. It’s one of the drawbacks that I feel this game has. Lotro had monsters that only appeared at night, quests that could only be completed or turned in at night, and a totally different atmosphere during evening/night/early morning/afternoon transitions.
Another totally vain reason I’d like to see a darker “night time” is that I play a Sylvari pretty often and it’s annoying that even at night when she’s glowing I can’t always tell. She doesn’t have to look like a lightning bug, but some contrast between her skin glow and surrounding background would be nice. Often my only clue that it’s night is that the tips of her hair are brighter.

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Oh and this is the day/night cycle, according to the GW2Wiki ArenaNet FAQ:
Are they going to include a day/night cycle?
Yes. The cycle will be faster than real time. Events and monster spawning will change based on the time of day. Centaurs might attack a camp at dawn, and ghosts haunting an ancient battlefield might only be visible at night. Currently, the cycle lasts 2 hours with 80 minutes of day and 40 minutes of night, but this is subject to change before release.

coffeeisyum.5297:

Actually, WoW did it.

My previous response can be applied to yours as well. I don’t see “day/night” actually being truly enjoyed as a day/night cycle because it’s not an accurate representation of day/night. You log on and it’s “light” but is it morning? afternoon? evening? I understand it’s a preference thing, but that’s just my representation of it. It’s more of a light/dark cycle than day/night. I really enjoy it in other MMO’s and wish it could be brought to GW2.

I played WoW for 2 years and I had no idea that it had a day night cycle, thought it was always day light in azeroth. Played that game for 2 years wishing it had a day night cycle.

Carize.8532:

~~~~~
Oh and this is the day/night cycle, according to the GW2Wiki ArenaNet FAQ:
Are they going to include a day/night cycle?
Yes. The cycle will be faster than real time. Events and monster spawning will change based on the time of day. Centaurs might attack a camp at dawn, and ghosts haunting an ancient battlefield might only be visible at night. Currently, the cycle lasts 2 hours with 80 minutes of day and 40 minutes of night, but this is subject to change before release.

Except Half that stuff didn’t even make it in.. The ghosts haunting an ancient battlefield may only be visible at night? If that were the case Orr would be deadly beyond belief at night and not near as dreadful during the day. Instead.. Orr is as it is.. at ANY time ingame..

While I agree with wanting a 24 Hour cycle too, I also understand the downside of it (for other people).
A solution for that could be that they could include an OPTION, for those who wish a 24 Hour cycle (the events, Sigils and what not will keep working according to the default cycle).
It’s just an immersion killer if you role play at night and then after like 40 minutes the night is over… It has, indeed, made me log off many times because it’s a huge immersion killer to me.

To the people who think Tyria has not the same length of day that our Earth has: check the “Mouvelian Calendar”. That’s the time system the Humans on Tyria use to measure days / weeks/ months / years. It has four seasons, with 90 days per season and an added 5 days (which is believed to be during “Winters Day”) to make it 365 days for a year. That means a Tyria Day is in truth exactly as long as a day on Earth.

So again, I think an option for a visual 24 Hour cycle would please everyone (because it’s an OPTION). It works like that in Second Life, too; to point out an example.

It won’t happen.

Simply because there’s Sigil of Night (10% damage during night) and people who can only play during specific times of day. Basically, people who could play during the night hours would have one rune to rule them all, whereas the polar opposite would have one more rune to add to the pile of useless ones.

A solution for that could be that they could include an OPTION, for those who wish a 24 Hour cycle (the events, Sigils and what not will keep working according to the default cycle).

Not going to happen, simply because it would either require some pretty heavy locking or it would be too easy to abuse. After all, if it’s just a toggle option, then I could potentially use it to manipulate Sigil of the Night. If it’s not a toggle option, then it’s going to be locked either to my account or that character. And let’s be honest, you should never be forced to make a gameplay-altering choice at account creation. And tying it to a character could literally make or break a character, which is also a bad design choice.