Fix the Sky Rant

Yeah I'm not really exaggerating that much about some events lasting 'seconds' either. The planets involved with these would be purple and orange which as they stand right now have orbital durations of 2 and 3 hours respectively. Which means that purple going from horizon to horizon over the course of 1 hour. So it travels 3 degrees every minute. During the night when visible.. it travels a 60 degree arch It passes slower moving objects pretty darn fast. Which means any alignments its involved in are equally fast.

Orange is nearly as bad.. if you're lucky enough to have a clear sky at night to watch it pass through the Tear.. which Orange and Tear both being Sacrifice would be a natural event.. it only takes a couple minutes.. every 3 hours. (Traveling a 40 degree arch in 20 minutes or 2 degrees a minute). So if you miss any such event.. you have to wait another 2 or 3 hours so you can miss it again.

For longer events my concern is how players are spread out over the world in different time zones. Take for example.. events involving White or Black.. whose orbits are 21 and 24 hours respectively. An alignment that only happens once a day and lasts less than an hour is going to missed by half the players.

In fact.. all the planetary orbits beyond the 2 and 3 hour orbits are 11+ hours (not including Daedelus).. while these events will be technically longer.. they're still only a very short period (And still occurring at noon).. but will be happening at odd hours for a lot of people. Imagine Valor/Red (12 hour orbit) crossing the Sword at 6am and 6pm.. Those times won't be improving much for a lot of people in the 1 week period the Sword is in the sky.

My belief here is that for in-game effects via astronomy to be meaningful, the effects have to be 1: predictable AND 2: accessible. I should be able to look up at the sky and think.. I see Valor is getting close to the sword.. I'd better get ready to do some adventuring/PvP.. it's going to be good hunting today/tomorrow.. Rather than.. I see Valor is getting close to the Sword.. and the event's over 2 minutes after you get to where you're going.. Epic fail on #2..

 

@Chris @DarkStarr

This is how the sky is in-game.. right now.. as of R25

This is an updated sim and I am confident in the numbers on all planets now. This is a 1 year simulation. As before up is "true north". I have a little map of Novia for reference.. everything should be more or less properly orientated in relation to Novia.



Note that ALL 3+ planet alignments happen at noon as do all alignments involving Daedelus which blocks their view entirely. As all planets pass true north at noon. I'm not making this up guys but I understand no dev has the time to sit and watch the guy for 20+ hours in-game. The only issue not seen here is I'm not simulating the 5 minute pause the sun does every day at noon.

 

Bowen, I need some clarification on something in your simulations. When you say "up is true north", do you mean the top of the screen in the video? Or, do you mean up as in straight above the center planet NB (which would be more in the center of the screen in the video)?

 

I just read this and had a thought.. Perhaps all the alignments happen at noon, so that we would all be able to take advantage of the '5 minute time freeze' you speak of that happens every day at noon. All we have to do is watch for which planets are approaching alignment, then when the sun is at noon, we have plenty of time, (not less than 2 minutes, or even seconds, but 5 minutes) knowing the planets are aligned during this period. That sounds pretty well planned to me.. or am I missing something?

 

Top of the screen. Just like the map is basically pointing north.

 

Planets are very difficult to see during the day.. which is 40 minutes long.. assuming a clear sky you'd have to witness the approaching alignment during the 20 minute window that is night time.. and then wait another 20 minutes after dusk for noon to occur.

2ndly. The planets themselves don't pause at noon.. they keep going.

3rdly. What's the point of having events in a 'beautiful sky' (telethon) if you can't see them?

 

Hmm, well I guess some of this might depend on how difficult they want it to be to achieve. If the best weapons and armor can only be crafted during these alignments, and the alignments only occur for less than 2 minutes at a time during difficult to observe (without a moondial) events, then hopefully they'll be pretty rare. If the alignments stay in effect for 24 real-life hours in a row when they come, we'll have literally tons of top-tier weapons and armor created on those days by our craftsmen. Maybe that's something they want to avoid?

 

It has always been a goal that a player's competiveness should not be defined by their gear and I highly doubt that the difference in power would be significant enough to make any real difference. So while your argument may be compelling, all player's really have to know is that an alignment happens at precisely the bottom of the hour, as all 3+ planet alignments do. Obscuring the event visually means nothing once the information is public knowledge. You would also have to apply that same argument to every single alignment event as they are equally as unobservable.

Also consider that in online play such brief event durations leave huge numbers of players out in the cold just because of where they live. Black for example.. has an orbital time of 24 hours.. events related to it will always occur at the same time of day.. every time. So huge sections of the player base will always be out of luck every time.

 

Which is bad design, regardless of whether its visible or not. Offset this by at least an hour so it will vary over time.

 

The same argument can be made to a lesser degree for all planets with an even hour orbit. Red has a 12 hour orbit.. for example.. If those events happen at say.. 3am and 3pm my time.. most players in my time zone are left hanging.. either being asleep or at work. And keeping track of slightly changing schedules where events only last a few minutes will be tedious.

 

You bring up great points, as always Bowen! ;D Thanks for letting me play devil's advocate here.. I'm really out of ideas for arguing against your suggestions. I definitely hope they make a pass over the sky system soon, and that these suggested changes (and the reasons for them) are looked at closely. Some good easy to follow bullet points of what needs to change, how it needs to change, and why, is precisely what I'd appreciate as a developer who's been provided this assignment, and I think you've accomplished this nicely.

Personally I would love to see most of the major alignments happening at night, but not at the same time every time (not always at midnight), and I do hope some of the planets, or the moon can 'eclipse' the sun, but that these events would be relatively rare.

About the sun freezing for five minutes at noon, I think that's quite odd.. I know of other games that have decided to slow down the sun's speed at sunrise and sunset, because these are the most beautiful times of day, when the lighting has warmer tones, and shadows make the game artistically more interesting to play.. freezing the sun at noon is a bit dry and boring.

Regarding my comment on the weapons and armor: I wasn't suggesting the 'best' should be OP in any way, just that they should be 'rare'. As the sky stands, they most likely would be rare, although you're right that having the alignments always happen at the top of the hour makes them a bit too predictable. But I still contest that the alignments shouldn't stay in effect for a whole day at a time. twenty minutes seems more interesting to me,which would be half a day, or one in-game night?

 

Ok I should clarify a bit.. the whole day events I was referring to are really constellation based events. Constellations, even now are at their apex for 26 hours, but planets passing through them (depending on the planet) are much, much faster. Even if the planets themselves are slowed to take 'years' instead of 'days' the actual alignments wouldn't last the entire day but they would be longer than a couple of minutes and if we wanted to get technical planets are never perfectly alignments for more than just a moment. It's a matter of how lenient you want to be in regards to their proximity with each other. If they want to trim the time down to 10-20 minutes that's fine.. but right now they don't have the flexibility.

I could see this happening but in order to do so the sun would have to be on a different orbital plan than Daedelus. You would still get 1 eclipse a week without changing Daedelue's orbital speed.. I'm not sure that's rare enough?

 

I want to add that we need real clouds in the sky. Clouds that look like clouds and not like mist floating by above us. More like this:

 

But but...

If we beg for a "start of time" to be shifted 180', and all alignments be exactly at midnight, and Daedalus change rotation plane so not to eclipse the other satellites?

It'd be a dumb thing to ask for?

 

I've been arguing for the 180' offset for awhile now. Changing up the orbital planes is a newer idea but I'd like to see it.

 

Just to confirm what I was saying earlier about event durations. I may have been slightly exaggerating when I said some events would be seconds long but not by much. I just clocked Purple passing Black at just shy of 1 minute.

 

I honestly don't think they have time for this anymore.

 

Given what we've seen so far.. I don't expect any changes any time soon.. BUT.. the thing is.. most fixes for the sky's many problems are not difficult. It only involves changing the orbital speeds/durations.. which basically amounts to changing numbers in a database or script. So long as they have those numbers figured out we could literally be talking about a 5 minute job.

 

Now how in the world did I possibly miss this???

Purple is 12 hours out of sync with the other planets. It actually crossed true north at midnight. Now this is the time I actually think it should BUT.. the issue in relation to the other planets currently is that it cannot participate in major alignments because of the 12 hour offset.. while other planets are aligning, Purple would be positioned on one of the horizons. I supposed they had to do this intentionally because otherwise we'd never see Purple at all! It would be crossing the sky exclusively during the day and passing behind New Britannia at night.

So the only events Purple can participate in are minor 2 planet alignments (lasting as little as 1 minute) and passing through the Chalice.

 

I will shortly be preparing a final 'full report' on the state of the sky. Complete with screenshots and videos.

The reason I keep making new posts on the subject is mainly because my data is becoming more accurate and more complete each time and I'd like a single thread to just have it all right from the start.

There has been some updated data that is pretty significant so if you haven't been following along.. look forward to some new stuff.. including an animated simulation of the current sky that includes actual dates.