So I have had this on my mind for a while and wanted to ask the community their opinion, and although many great posts have been made about seasons I haven’t seen any bring up season cycle length (to my knowledge, I apologize if it has been discussed).
I as many others are excited to see the additions of seasons to add to the survival aspect of the game and the general atmosphere it will add to the game. This is something we haven’t seen in online multiplayer pvp survival games (to my knowledge), and I think it will make U2 stand out from the rest.
I think community servers can change seasons times or just lock certain seasons if they want. But I want to bring up how many in game days will a season last for Official Vanilla. I guess it will be better when we have an idea of how long an in game day will last so I will make two options, one for 30 min days and the other for 1 hour long days.
How long each season will last.
2 Days (30 min day)
3 Days (30 min day)
4 Days (30 min day)
5 Days (30 min day)
6 Days (30 min day)
2 Days (1 hour day)
3 Days (1 hour day)
4 Days (1 hour day)
5 Days (1 hour day)
6 Days (1 hour day)
0voters
I think it is important to consider that if a season is too long players may always log on and never see a season change depending on their schedule. As well if it is too short, a player will not get to really experience a season because it will be over to quickly, feeling rushed.
As well with added survival features, seasons and weather will have an affect on our characters as well as our outdoor plants.
I think it is safe to say as well that something like winter probably won’t be like a Yukon blizzard 24/7. But rather a blanket of snow and general temperature drops, with occasional blizzards and snow storms. So if a player logs in on a server that just started winter, it probably won’t be as harsh as Yukon, but this is something to think about.
My idea on this issue is to not use something like a simple 30 minutes or 60 minutes for each day.
Using a 28 minute day and a 14 minute night (42 minutes total) for example, one day IRL will correspond with the passing of at least 34 days in-game, and when you return it will not be at the same point in the day cycle. This is one way to ensure that if you can only play for a limited time each day, you’ll have a chance to experience each season.
My preference for seasons would be to have them somewhat infrequent and combine them with at the very least, a 30 minute day cycle. The exact minutes of daylight could vary according to season and the time until the next one arrives.
I have a different wish, because while this seems fine for single player, for servers I’d rather have one season be about 1-3 irl 24 hour days mainly because being able to sit through winter, spring, summer and autumn seems very fast, and since servers run pretty much 24/7 now, this to me seems like a good time frame.
My main reason for this assumption is because there would be room for each season to be impactful and not just visual.
Winter should be a hard season to slog through, challenging to get food and other supplies.
Spring should be pretty with everything blooming, grass being very green. Easy season
Summer should be hot, gearing up with everything on you and all the time SHOULD have an effect on your character.
Autumn should be wet, puddles everywhere, a wet state could maybe be in place? Perhaps you could hide somewhat in the leaves that trees leave?
Got off topic, getting on tracks now I want seasons to be ACTUALLY LONG, not insanely long like an irl week but, for a server, make it so that if I go to sleep, and wake up the next day, the season doesn’t change from winter to summer.
If these seasons are going to be a thing, they might as well be for 6 in-game days or upwards.
Anything else would feel like it’s a sped-up montage of the game’s seasonal changes, in my opinion, it doesn’t sit right.
“Hey, it’s snowing! Go farm some wood for your base and when you come back, it’ll be the peak of summer!”
I don’t think it makes sense for an unturned season to last only an hour, think with me what is the sense of making stocks for survival if you just stay AFK hiding somewhere with food and water ?, for me at least 3 to 4 hours.
But we must also consider that the change for a season will also be slow, from winter to spring it should be possible to observe slowly the snow melting and the grass becoming visible every day, so we must consider the duration of the seasons will also include the transition period from one season to another?
The length of days should eventually be configurable from game to game and from server to server. If someone wants to have realistic seasons and days in their server, I think that should be the case. If someone wants seasons to last five minutes and days last for 2 minutes and 30 seconds let them do it.
I’d like to see how players in a server adapt to three real month long periods of winter. I’m honestly curious on how players would adapt to such an environment.
Do what rimworld did, and have each season lasting a single month
or
Do what zomboid did, have a real 364 year and have real seasons based off of real seasons
I don’t see seasons lasting just a few days being good for the gameplay
Right, y’all realise he implemented a full solar system right? So it’s not like you can choose when the seasons start lol. It’ll happen like real life, so not after like 6 days.
a bit late but i think season change should occur every 34 hours (irl hours) . it would be nice logging off and then logging back in to a different season