WW's reasoning for no weather. Disagree!

Weather would be awesome in COH. Imagine a raging thunderstorm, then a storm troller starts his/her powers!

I for one would welcome weather! It would greatly add to the immersion! I would enjoy it's subtle and ubiquitous feel added of the game world. The game looks spiffy and wonderful and feels plastic and fake. I say make this pretend world we all enjoy and spend time being good, evil, and now indifferent have the emotional impact of an alternate dimension not that of a plastic play thing picked up at the five and dime for the amusement of a five year old.

For those who have less modern GUP's or who dislike the effects it is easy enough to add an option to disable weather on your computer.

Of course should I have to choose to have the weather right away or, say, 20 bright shiny new tiles for each set I would have to go for the new map pieces first. I have, however, wanted weather since before issue one. I loved the first time I journeyed into DA and found the dark and scary fog within.

But where do you stop, once weather comes in. I now want Natural Disasters. I want my hurricanes, tornado, earthquakes, tsunami, Blizzards (well maybe not that one ), volcanoes, floods!!!!

Wait a second, we have a volcanoe, and a zone destroyed by an earthquake. What do you say now DEVS.....what do you say now.

Seriously, I want to jumb into the middle of a tornado and invert it like Superman did in Superman 3....so epic.

I'm actually fine with her comment, but I should also disclose I live in Rhode Island in RL.

To truly capture RI winters, you would want all of PC looking exactly like that X-mas zone, which would be a pain in the but to play in, it would maybe be popular at first, but I should also add, winter weather here CAN start as early as Oct and your not safe from it until April or so, so the winter effects would get old real quick as it does with RL New Englanders, ( with WW being Canadian I'm sure she understands this, and is perhaps a factor why she is in CA), While it does rain here, you don't actually see a lot of Thunder Storms here, not like when I lived in Atlanta. I know people here, who would be freaked out by the amount of thunder and lightning you see elsewhere.

And just to add something else on a related subject, RI in real life is to huge degree a City-State, that is you have Providence and much if the rest of the state, as well as parts of MA are its subburbs, with only Newport maybe qualifying as a seperate community MAYBE.
My point is, Paragon City would have to be some sort of alternate Providence which started off in a slightly different part of the state.

And god forbid, with the Dev's sense of humor, they would maybe duplicate the Winter of '78 in PC as a special event for a week or so( incidently to truly capture winter effects, there would also need to be a global slow debuff going on as well)

Turns out I did misrepresent WWs statement a bit, as Noble pointed out. It was unintentional, wasn't trying to put words in her mouth. I'll edit the original post to be more accurate. Typing from 2 day old memory fail.

Glad this topic sparked good conversation, though! One thing I'd be absolutely against would be weather having a beneficial or detrimental effect on powers.

I find the lack of variable weather snaps me out of the game as much as the fact my character can't lie down, or can only eat donuts and hot dogs.

ie not at all.

I can think of plenty of things that would be a better use of dev time than weather.

(To say nothing of the immersion break it would cause to Storm Summoners to not be bale to influence it...)

I don't care about the weather. I don't even notice if it is day or night in Paragon City.

And I would really hate for weather to affect my powers.

I think a weather system would be neat--though in no way should it be a priority over anything currently in the works.

I loved the very 1st winter event, except for all the people who WL PLed. But with all the water areas turned to ice, it was fun fighting on that.

I agree that weather would add a lot to immersion. It would also contribute to the mood of potential missions. Want to give a mission in the AE that extra gloomy "oomph" to imply something tragic is coming? Rainstorm. Want to create a sense of bleak emptiness? Snow scattered on the ground. Bam.

BUT, I want to call out people who ascribe war witch's response to "laziness". I get so sick of people saying "laziness" is any motivation for game developers to not do anything. Game devs that produce products have to work REALLY HARD to be competitive. You want an example of a team being lazy, look at the devs of Duke Nukem Forever, or the original team that was supposed to develop STO. Devs that produce games put in 50+ hours in a week pretty commonly. They may not feel -your- pet idea is worth the time spent, but calling them lazy is just disrespectful and rude.

And adding another idea to the OP's list: Incarnates with weather control could actually -change the weather- in instances. (obviously this would be too much trouble in city zones, but in instances, it could be seriously cool.)

The only time I have seen weather effects used effectively in an MMO was in a jungle setting, with a tropical downpour, in a short burst, and it goes back to being sunny again. Something that happens so infrequently, but when it does occur you DO notice it.

And I have to applaud to the poster that mentioned they don't notice the changing of night and day in game. If weather was to be put in CoX ,and it happened frequently, I wouldn't notice it except when I am trying to create a back story, which ironically may limit what setting I can put them in due to weather (eg snowy).

you're just arguing about synoptics now

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Rain -
TBA

Snow -
Stay Tuned

Fog -
TBA

Effects of Weather -
Stay Tuned (Winter)

Effects of Weather -
TBA

I23-I24?

Stop with arguing.

As has been pointed out upthread, WW's reasoning doesn't jibe with what is coming in issue 19 in the first mission of the incarnate arc. Weather effects ARE there and do a great deal to create an impressive and exciting ambiance.

Dynamic zone weather it may not be, but it does demonstrate how effective purely aesthetic environmental effects can be. And to echo even more posters thus far, we've already had significant resources spent on purely aesthetic environmental effects including UM's reflections and water effects as well as the introduction of physX particles to the game allowing us to blow mail, leaves, trash and debris about. NONE of these major features have any bearing on how your character performs. But they are indeed cool to look at.