Seasons in zones?

[Breladine]

While a neat concept, earth only has seasons because of its wobble. Most planets do not hav e a wobble, and thus no seasons. Maybe Eorzea doesn't have a wobble. It's not a foreign concept to not have seasons, venus is the only other planet we know of to wobble iirc.

http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreduc...t_Seasons.html

Every planet in our solar system has seasons. But the seasons that occur on other planets are extremely different from the traditional spring, summer, fall and winter that we experience here on Earth.

So the Seasons on other planets are existent, just different.

[Ruisu]

Seasons would be a neat way to influence new mobs and enemies during said seasons. Similarly to how Final Fantasy XII handled the Giza plains. Though the quests in said area would have to be fairly dynamic if seasons change midway through your quest, or something. I can see that as being an inconvenience. On the other hand, it encourages you to explore this area while you wait for the previous season to return.

[TimonLoon]

Now this is a suggestion that I can get behind.

I would just like to add... Also depending on the season/weather certain mobs will spawn. You won't see plant mobs out in the Black Shroud during the winter instead you'll see wolves.

[Punainen]

I'd love to see seasons! Maybe they should last like 1 month real time. That seems reasonable to me. That or reflect real life seasonal times.

[Anakhu]

we did have a winter in the cities once, would be cool if the entire enviroment changed with the seasons. But whats to say the eorza seasons are like earth seasons. A winter may come only every 4 years, with a short spring/thaw into a long summer,and instead of fall you get crazy dusty wind who knows.. but having any type of seasonal change would be cool

[indira]

this would be nice, BUT knowing SE they made the game in a way where making color changes to the textures impossible and they would have to rebuild the whole games textures & shaders from scratch.

[nasomi]

http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreduc...t_Seasons.html



So the Seasons on other planets are existent, just different.

ok, technically seasons, but a 3 degree tilt won't really cause a noticeable change, only something that can be written down. Similarly 87 degrees is only 3 degrees off 90, so marginal at best. You can still expect roughly the same weather year round with these conditions. Earth, mars, venus, andjsaturn have a tilt that would cause something noticeable, at about 25 degrees.

In the context of seasons, i wouldn't call them actual seasons. merely seasons technically speaking, not practically speaking.

[Loony_BoB]

Definitely real-time. It would be much more meaningful, like October-November is fall. Problem is that game-time would have to match or it wouldn't make sense

I would say 1-2 months per season would be better. People in different countries experience different seasons after all!

I would love this idea. Even more props to the devs if they can be creative with their seasons rather than simply following Earth's seasons. Have seasons by the element... water season (rainy, perhaps new ponds and lakes appear), lightning season (stormy, possibility in some areas to get randomly hit by lightning), earth season (immense growth for trees, similar to spring I guess - great weather for mining? xD), wind season (sandstorms, tumbleweeds etc), fire season (sun sun sun!).

[Orophin]

Seasons would be a neat way to influence new mobs and enemies during said seasons. Similarly to how Final Fantasy XII handled the Giza plains. Though the quests in said area would have to be fairly dynamic if seasons change midway through your quest, or something. I can see that as being an inconvenience. On the other hand, it encourages you to explore this area while you wait for the previous season to return.

This would be neat. As it works now, it's roughly one real hour per game day, so it'd take about 15 real days to cycle through a whole year. Some may argue that the world might change at too rapid of a pace though since seasons will last roughly 4 real life days.

Being that the turnaround is so quick though, you could put in quests that rely on it being a certain seasonal period. It can also stimulate the economy by certain drops being related only to monsters that appear during certain seasons, so you have to do some planning if you need a certain item. (I'm NOT however asking for 4 day pop NM/HNM with drops that are required for character growth. Only drops from regular monsters) As Ruisu pointed out this might be viewed as inconvenient, but I think it's a cool concept.

this would be nice, BUT knowing SE they made the game in a way where making color changes to the textures impossible and they would have to rebuild the whole games textures & shaders from scratch.

Actually, with their new color ID system for equipment, they should be able to apply this to their texture too you'd think.

[Breladine]

In the context of seasons, i wouldn't call them actual seasons.

You wouldn't call them seasons but that doesn't change the fact that they are seasons -- they just aren't Earth's seasons (which is different from them not being seasons at all).

ok, technically seasons, but a 3 degree tilt won't really cause a noticeable change, only something that can be written down.

Venus, which has your "3 degree tilt", is actually covered by an atmosphere that is so thick the temperature is "blanketed" in at a very steady degree (700+).

The problem with your theory is that your comparing uninhabitable worlds with a habitable one. Yes the degree of tilt to each planet varies (you mentioned in your first post that "most" planets don't have a tilt, which is entirely unfactual, most planets do have a tilt and again the tilt being "different" from our own does not mean it doesn't exist at all), but all of these planets also have varying other factors that prevent the seasons from being the same as a habitable planet: Too far from the sun and you're cold all the time, too close and you're burning up, an elliptical orbit vs. a circular one, too much atmosphere, too little atmosphere, etc.. etc.. and etc.

In FFXIV we're talking a habitable world that is obviously close enough to its own central star and in such an orbit that it remains habitable all year round. This means whatever tilt did exist and whatever variations in the orbit did exist (which would be logical since nature very rarely creates perfect circles and perfect alignments) would impact it enough to be noticeable on the planet, since it would slightly throw off that "perfect habitable zone" into a colder season, a warmer season, or a strange-weather-type season.

This is just based on simple logic.

That's all I'm going to say on this as I've gone too far already in over-analyzing this stuff.. as fun as it is.

TL;DR: SEASONS. A good idea.