the_fox_Rox

I think we would be missing an opportunity to include weather in new missions and zone revamps. What if in revamping a zone weather was made a key element?

Take Boomtown for instance. What if the lawlessness of that zone finally causes the war walls that have protected it from the weather for so long allowing the buildings to burn freely to fail. Now the zone is exposed to bitter winters and driving rains. In the cover of this concentrated weather the 5th have all but ousted the remaining Council and begun building a new fortified base of operations.

You could apply a similar set of story blocks to any number of the hazard zones, crey's folly, 'eden', striga just about all the pvp zones. Even more secure zones like kingsrow and PI.

There are lots of zones that could be revamped to make use of weather effects to dramatic effects. A little time a little effort. I'm sure that paragon studios implementation would be drool worthy enough to inspire a demand for the effects in all zones.

You don't think they could have just left it "normal" and it would still be a haunted zombie filled wasteland?

So if they dialed back the rain effect fog so that you could see, you'd be ok with it? I'm pretty sure the devs can handle a little visibility balancing.

Just because it doesn't suite your taste in a couple of other games doesn't mean that it will still fail to meet your expectations. Out of curiosity what would make these elements more interesting and less anoying to you?

I'd still like to see the devs try this out in a couple missions and see how people feel about them, I think if a lot of people got to experience it they could make a well informed decision about whether or not to include it in a more significant manner.

I don't disagree with WW here, but her reasoning I don't really find all that sound. What is a "compelling gameplay reason?"

Is setting the mood enough? There are plenty of missions that could benefit from weather in that regard.

Does it have to be a specific locale? Do we have to travel to the to the south pole to warrant a snowstorm? Do we need to travel to London to warrant a drizzle?

What was the compelling gameplay reason to make the fog in DA? Why not anywhere else?

I don't think that weather will necessarily warrant a massive graphics requirement. Consider a rain shower. In the real world your ability to see rain falling is quite low, beyond 2-3 feet all you see is an increasing level of greyness. I think we already have a zone that is quite grey...Dark Astoria. Assume we ignore that first 2-3 feet in our rendering. All we have left is greyness and the sound of water falling. There are some other effects that would be needed to help sell the fog of rain sound. Things like ripples in water, dripping from rooves, squishy splashing sounding footsteps. I doubt this would be much more demanding on a video card than DA. Since your greyness is going to be obscuring anything beyond a certain range You could say that beyond that limit you no longer need to render the environment as well, to balance the added "load" of ripples and drips.

That's a rainshower, could you simulate the effect for snow or a typhoon? Probably, but it might take more effort and inventivness from the team. For almost any weather effect i think you can ignore the fine details that bog down computers and focus on some of the broader detail with little fourishes to sell the overall effect. I'd like to see them try, make a mission or two as testbeds and give it a whirl. I opened with a quote from WW and I'll finish with one from the same article.

Take this risk.

Then you can move up to the COH mitten, then the SWG mitten, then if you are feeling really bold mickey mouse gloves! lol