Goblin Squad Member
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What is a "Polar Vortex"?
tl;dr: "The plunging temperatures result from the polar vortex, an anti-clockwise pool of cold, dense air."
How could it affect The River Kingdoms?
- Freezing temperatures that are life-threatening; exacerbated by wind-chill factors
- Severe disruption and stop to traffic; including blocking of roads
- Crop failure; livestock in danger
- Snow and ice and blizzard conditions requiring specialist equipment to go outside and piles of logs to keep warm.
What does one look like using a weather isobar temperature map?
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Polar vortexes are natures way of telling you to burn more witches
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Goblin Squad Member
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...and here in Norway the same (?) global pattern gives us an extremely mild but completely miserable winter with just rain, rain, rain. No snow, no ice, no sunshine, no moonlight, no polar lights. 15 centigrades warmer than normal but the darkest winter I can remember. While that's much better than extreme cold, we join you in the hope for normal weather.
In Golarion, I'd expect it can't happen in the same way because Avistan is a fairly narrow continent so any vortex reaching down to River kingdoms would extend out to the ocean.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...and here in Norway the same (?) global pattern gives us an extremely mild but completely miserable winter with just rain, rain, rain. No snow, no ice, no sunshine, no moonlight, no polar lights. 15 centigrades warmer than normal but the darkest winter I can remember. While that's much better than extreme cold, we join you in the hope for normal weather.
In Golarion, I'd expect it can't happen in the same way because Avistan is a fairly narrow continent so any vortex reaching down to River kingdoms would extend out to the ocean.
Every single one of my Scandinavian friends have been complaining about the complete lack of snow so far. Now they know how us British people feel! The weather is never terrible, it's just always dark and kind of damp.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Did the devs say anything yet about weather effects and a day/night cycle? Blinding snowstorms , foggy woods ,that sort of thing.
It's old, but I can't imagine the desire has changed much.
Everyone playing Pathfinder Online should have the experience of some time in daylight and some time at night, regardless of where you're physically located and what time you regularly play. So there will be a day/night change every three real-time hours in the game.
[Edit] I don't recall much official discussion of weather effects.
Did the devs say anything yet about weather effects and a day/night cycle? Blinding snowstorms , foggy woods ,that sort of thing.
They already said what the day/night cycle would be, I think it was 4-1, or 3-1 something like that. If you go watch the last video, they show the difference between day/night. It's not a meaningful one.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Don't read too much into how meaningful day and night are visually at this point. Or even mechanically. It is still VERY early on in development. (Of course, as a tabletop fan I would find meaningful mechanics more interesting such as creatures with Light Blindness or weaknesses to the Sun - further down the development line of course).
Don't read too much into how meaningful day and night are visually at this point. Or even mechanically. It is still VERY early on in development. (Of course, as a tabletop fan I would find meaningful mechanics more interesting such as creatures with Light Blindness or weaknesses to the Sun - further down the development line of course).
I'm not looking for mechanics, I just loved the way this was handled back in the early DAoC days.
At night time, it was really dark, and you couldn't see too far ahead of you at night, but you could vaguely see far away, without a torch on, it was just very hard to do.
So, you had one of the most meaningful choices I ever remember in any MMO at night (though you might find that surprising). You either kept your torch on, and could see as well as you could in the daytime, but only about 15 feet around you, and everything outside that radius was nearly pitch-black, AND if you had your torch on, your character shined brightly, and people (enemies in PvP included) could see you from MUCH further away.
If you left it off, you were much harder to see at night, and you could see further, but, everything you saw was a lot darker than it was in the daytime, though, still not as dark as it'd be if you had a torch on and we're looking outside of that torch-radius. It was the perfect blend of realism, and having to make a very meaningful choice.
I remember in large groups at night, there would always be that one person who had their torch on, and everyone had to like "DUDE, NO TORCHES, SHUT THAT THING OFF...". Good times.
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Goblin Squad Member
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How did they avoid monitor Gamma work-arounds? I know a number of games that have tried that in the past, granted usually single-player, that was completely dismantled by setting a really high brightness/gamma.
Don't get me wrong, the Torch trade-off is a huge element of low-level play in the tabletop. Though spellcasting and enchanted items quickly make that trade-off a thing of the past in just a few levels of play.
How did they avoid monitor Gamma work-arounds? I know a number of games that have tried that in the past, granted usually single-player, that was completely dismantled by setting a really high brightness/gamma.
Don't get me wrong, the Torch trade-off is a huge element of low-level play in the tabletop. Though spellcasting and enchanted items quickly make that trade-off a thing of the past in just a few levels of play.
I honestly don't know how they handled that, but whatever it worked, whatever they did.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I raised the thread in part because it's topical. But also, I'm enamored of the idea of snow/blizzards blocking off traffic and isolating pockets of the game world - as well as - turning the whole place into a Winter wonderland... full of freezing death and a Winter Economy of survival!
On the points raised:
1. Day/Night will be atmospheric not actual.
2. But that allows contextual integration with other systems even if not substantial.
3. It will be asynchronous so RW time will be out-of-phase with IG time so daily playing times will cycle (eg moon/tide) over a period of time.
=
Similarly, Weather/Climate/Seasons could apply same principles albeit graphically turn the world white maybe one day (Crowdforging dependent also):
1. Travel/traffic block on roads and land and rivers
2. Winter economy; growing seasons; war campaign seasons etc eg Spring!
3. Clothing requirements to prevent freezing to death etc.
4. random: Eg caught in a blizzard wipes out a party environmental hostility.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Magically influenced weather obviously allows for all kinds of extreme conditions.
I'd love to see 'winter escalations' with yetis and white dragons where the entire hex gets a modifier (reduced movement, fire spells weaker, cold damage dot, etc), and where the arctic conditions spread to adjacent hexes unless stopped.
(I would not love to see santa as the final boss of the winter escalation cycle, though).
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Goblin Squad Member
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This beach on Lake Michigan was full of ice-balls!
Perhaps a case of RL imitating Art?