Weather

[Arcturus]

To pass the time, I recently started a new game on Final Fantasy XII, a personal favorite. In my opinion, the quality of XII is excellent and the localization was the best of any Final Fantasy. It just had so many nice little details that meshed so well together, and I enjoyed that. So as I was playing, I thought about the influence of weather on gameplay. In XII, the accuracy of ranged weapons and the damage dealt by elemental attacks are directly affected by the current area's weather.

This may or may not have been brought up before, and I looked, so here goes nothing. I thought it would be an engaging combat dynamic if applied to XIV. Some players would disagree, of course, and would seem content at having beautiful, if not inconsequential visual effects. I think, however, that making weather more pivotal to battle would go along the sort of "realism" many players are pushing for. The weather could facilitate more interesting and at times more challenging PvE encounters.

So for example, a storm starts to brew somewhere in La Noscea and your party gets caught in it. In this stormy weather, ranged attacks, or physical attacks in general, are less accurate, whereas Aero spells gain a boost in damage. In a different scenario, imagine you are in Thanalan amidst a heat wave. The defenses of your party members are lowered, but Fire spells have increased potency. Or a sandstorm could occur resulting in blindness. In a downpour in the Black Shroud, evasion suffers a decrease, whereas Lightning magics are more destructive. In "perfectly clear" weather, perhaps players may experience some sort of buff.

We could even take a cue from Dodore, and encounter different monsters during different weather patterns. Abnormal weather could summon monsters that are noticeably more difficult to defeat than usual. During a stormy day in Coerthas, for example, high-level, aggressive wind elementals could appear amongst the regular hippogryphs. It wouldn't necessarily be an NM, but just something to take note and beware of as a fledgling adventurer. You could imagine someone thinking, "Oh there's a heat wave in this zone. I better be careful or I might run into some OP bombs."

In short, it's just a little idea about adding consequences to in-game weather that can affect gameplay, particularly with status ailments/buffs as well as the risk of encountering stronger monsters.

[Arcell]

I have no objections to this, as long as the associated debuff doesn't make it entirely impossible to do anything lol. I mean it should be noticeable but it shouldn't be severe to the point where people just say "Oh there's a sandstorm? Not doing anything in Thanalan then." Sure it's more "realistic" but it detracts from playing the game, which is bad.

The only other con I can really think of is that in dungeons it would be completely nullified, unless some sort of artificial weather was created via magic or magitech means.

[KiniRyris]

The only problem i have with this idea, if this had a real impact on fights, most parties will probably end up standing around waiting for a certain weather condition.

An example of this:
This idea was used in FFXI aswell, Sandstorms and such boosted ground attacks

Side note:
while i feel like 90% of the player base never even paid attention to it, certain fights were much harder during certain gamedays AND weather. such as Titan, you would never enter the battle during earth day because his attack were much more effective, so if u were having any trouble with this fight you either simply waited till the next game day (about an hour rl time) or if u really needed help u had to wait for windsday (wednesdaylol!) which made his attack weaker.
Make of this as you will, does it really add to the experience? I feel like it doesn't add much, but some people really like that immersion that seems to keep coming up.

Side note II:
game day/weather also effected crafting, like crafting with fire crystals during a heat wave boosted chance of success. Again, thats cool and all, but should they really make u travel to the desert everytime u wanna make something out of a fire crystal? lol

[Arcturus]

@Arcell, you brought up good points. And I agree, I think any changes should be within reason, designed to add diversity but not radically affect or take away from gameplay. If consequential weather effects were present in ARR, I imagine it along the lines of players being presented with moderately altered conditions or caveats, and even reasonable bonuses. I think it would help to add a degree of depth and variety to battle, and in the long run people may be less likely to feel that fighting throughout the game world is uniform and monotonous.

@Kini Since the most significant battles (as well as dungeons) are instanced, I don't think random weather changes would apply to them. It would probably always be a controlled environment. Though, like your earthday-Titan example, the conditions present during a specific game day is another thing entirely... I'm not all too familiar with XI but those points sound really interesting. Were the weather patterns based on the game days? I hadn't even considered how crafting would be affected, lol. And yeah, I agree with what you said, that the important question to ask is if it adds to the overall experience. If the development team had the motivation and resources to design and implement it at the same level of quality they've been performing, I really think it would add a characteristic sense of "FF-ness."

[Totorixiii]

I'm all for weather effect just like FFXI such as Rain, Storm, Clear, Sunny, etc while adding graphic touch such as if it's Windy in the desert we can see sand particles flying in the air as an example.

But weather effecting the player via status that might be a bad thing cause if not done right people will complain about it.

So Graphically yes, but game play mechanic wise I wouldn't want it. Just my thought.

[stanleyyoung]

I wouldn't mind SE adding weather, it's just one of those thing that will put the game over top. Most ppl would overlook it but their are a few of us that will take notice of it since the little things do matter and can be a factor in a game success, take for example the grass in 2.0 how many have said something about it probably enough for SE to take action. Plus if SE has geomancer on their minds weather effects could really be big in the game not just for crafting etc.

[Elexia]

. I'm not all too familiar with XI but those points sound really interesting. Were the weather patterns based on the game days? "

It's affected by day (slightly) and seasons (linked to real world seasons, basically when its winter months irl, it'll have the possibility of snowing in zones that normally doesn't have snow, like Rolanberry and Batallia Downs). Basically the day and weather added/took away bonuses to the respective element and it's weakness, so if you're in a severe thunderstorm all thunder magic was boosted, which is what made SCH as well pretty valuable as it could control the weather around a specific character ontop of adding stats with it.

The only time weather got in the way in XI is in the snow zones where you had blinding blizzards that made it hard to see lol.

[Arcturus]

Thanks! That sounds very intricate.

[HamHam]

I love Blizzard like weather I wish my ps3 could play ps2 games I have FFXII but can't play it anymore since my ps2 gave up ; ;