How long should one full day/night cycle be in EverQuest Next?

I really like the idea of EQN being setup with multiple ways of completing a quest when it is dependent upon a day night cycle. But if it's not then there is always some other quest/crafting/exping that can be done during the wait. And if the quest isn't worth the wait then players will move on

I'm okay with a cycle that matches 24/7 time exactly. This has never bothered me when it's been implemented. Not seeing certain times of day has never bothered me either, even if it meant I didn't see content tied to a certain time of day.

With a long day night cycle and hopefully a little darker etc, let's have touches too

Have you ever been forced to play during the night only because of your work schedule? It may not bother you but playing in a dark night only, all of the time is no fun. A cycle with matches an exact day also leads content being the same around the clock and developers eventually or almost immediately making nights almost as bright (see WoW) as day time. So it may not bother you but it tends to lead to a world hardly being believable. Blizzard uses the 24-hour cycle in WoW and it was never even used for anything or I at least fail to see where it was used for anything, even holiday events last far longer than they do in real life. Maybe for crafting? Big whoop. I don't find that more important than a believable world. I think the true reason why Blizzard uses that cycle is because they didn't want to create different content for day and night.

My lifestyle makes me wish for a full 24 hour cycle. I basically want to live in the game, not real life. I don't want to be remembered of reality anymore than I have to. I want the least amount of confusion. I want the least amount of stress. When I log on in the morning, and play throughout the day, I would like to know what time of day it is; that, it's starting to get late or that most people are probably asleep, just by looking at the environment I play in. I don't want another UI element cluttering up my screen, and I don't want to step away from my game, open up the curtains, and look outside my window to keep track of that. And an alien time cycle is very confusing, unless I spend a lot of energy doing research and guesswork on what the time might be. I don't know when the time will change, I don't like vague estimation, and I don't want to rip my consciousness from the game to calculate when the time will change. If there's a quest that I have to do at night, then I want to do it at night in real life. Simple. Easy. I don't want to A.) Estimate and calculate per estimations, or B.) Wait for God knows how long. Why would the game want to rip my consciousness out of the game to think about other stuff like that anyway, to make me consume more energy, to stress. I don't want to pay attention to reality, I don't want to pay attention to time, especially not alien time, why do I have to keep track of all these things, of all these little details, these nuisances. Of course, I realize, that the majority of players are not like me; they go to school, or work, they eat dinner with the people close to them, etc, they catch up on their favorite TV-series between gaming, they don't feel stressed out by time because they are always abiding by it. Me, I don't do any of that. I wake up, play, eat while playing, go to sleep, wake up, play, and so on. My time schedule is "It's time to go to sleep because I'm tired," not "It's time to go to sleep because time says so." I like it that way. I don't get out, and I don't want to get out.

And yeah, I LOVE sunrises and sunsets, even in games, but I don't want you to ruin that by making it happen how many times a day, 12 times a day? It's like anyone who is not used to seeing our giant mountains in Norway, they all go "Oh, that's amazing, that terrain is so pretty" blah blah blah, but I've seen it a million times before so I don't care. I mean, I grew up here, there's nothing special about it. That sunrise and sunset in-game is going to be insignificant in a few days after launch. It won't be a sight to behold anymore because it's a sight quite visible to behold twice every two hours. But yeah, I mean, the casual gamer who only plays two hours a day, good for him, great for him, thank god for him, let's focus more on him and his happy life, let's improve his life even more. It's people like him who is in the vastest of majority these days, and that's where the money is at.

Yes. That would be why I said that it's never bothered me. I wouldn't know if it would bother me, or not, if I'd never experienced it.

I would like a much longer day night cycle say 6 hours of each. Too short and it becomes pointless flipping back and forwards between day and night multiple times in a single session is too fast. Particularly if the time of day is going to effect play how can I enjoy a creepy night time monster mash through a swamp or a dark forrest if it's going to be day in only a few minutes.

Wombat

How long is a single session?

It's hyperbole to think that a night cycle will be a few minutes. With the estimated two hour day/night cycle it gives you almost an hour of monster mashing through the swamp at night, and depending on when you log on it could be as much as three hours into your play session before you begin your second night on the server.

With a heavy forest canopy the zone designer could probably make an area feel dark and gloomy 24/7, and I'm hoping they're able to do that to bring back the feel of Kithcor Forest and other EQ areas which felt dark and gloomy even in the middle of the day.

And did you experience this in any MMO with true darkness for many continuous days?

If you flip back and forth between day and night a couple of times if a cycle is two hours long you play an awful lot per play session. With six hour nights you can't have true darkness without pissing off a lot of gamers who are forced to play in the dark of night every single day. At least with a smaller cycle most can witness it all but I prefer a staggered cycle which allows for slightly longer cycles but not remotely near your twelve hours. I have seen what long cycles do to an MMO and it usually means there are no actual nights.

Isn't wanting to be able to experience both every time you log on (hence wanting a short day) the same thing?

BTW, Zaxzia, I hope they include Cabbits now.

True darkness was one of the more interesting things about the original Everquest, having to use light sources another. Having that system on a 24/7 equivalent day/night cycle where darkness actually matters is something I've been urging developers to go for, for years. One of the worst things about WoW is that its nights aren't dark at all. A true travesty.

I always feel like the days are too short and night lasts too long but I am an explore I like to be able to see what im looking at, if this means turning up the gamma on my monitor in the dark areas of the game then I do it.

A thought occurred to me while I was reading would it be possible to have certain races that had Infravision like the Vah Shir, Dark elfs, or UltraVision like the Frogloks be useable again.

If so then having a long night cycle wouldn't be so bad.

Over all my vote would be 3 hour day/night cycle I understand that a lot of people my only log on at a certain day night cycle but don't people wake up an go to bed during a certain day/night cycle any how

Haven't you ever heard of the children of Goldshire? Creepy as all hell, fantastic easter egg and addition. And a number of NPC interactions or spawnings only happened at certain times of the day, normally by the hour or at set intervals of the day, with some rare or elite rare mobs only spawning at certain times of the day (at least they used to when i was playing vanilla). And really, the times were why Blizzard stacked them in such a way, so that you could choose the best time for you. If you are playing with friends or family, they'd play on your server or vice versa, depending on your preferences (personally, I tried to plan to play around sunset, always hitting up booty bay to catch the view when i could). Even guilds set up based on a time schedule given by members (remember sunday night raids, always a blast, then saturday BG and duel tourneys). So blizzard did make content for night and day, and they probably used the 24 hour schedule to match up with holidays and the seasons to correlate with IRL events to keep the mood and atmosphere of that season or event. As much as we knock it, there was method to their madness.

They should be long enough so you don't need to rush to another location to get a couple night quests done before it turns to day again. That will get annoying specially if the night quest is hard to finish. Between 2-3 hours for day and again for night would seem like enough time to enjoy the moment and get quests done like most said.

I'd like if they could make NPC act differently depending on night or day, i don't really care how long the cycle would take as long as they do this, for instance let's say we have a wolf-like creature that at day would be rather lazy, not really strong and sleepy, while at night would be ferocious with an atk/speed buff or things like that so that some quests may seem impossible at night/day but would actually have a trick to make them easy, that way people would have to use their brains !

My preference would be for the day/night cycle to be similar to what currently exists or slightly longer, but not significantly longer especially if there is content tied to certain times of day (i.e., a quest that can only be completed at night).

When I think about the length of the day/night cycle I ask myself what types and quantities of experiences and/or activities should be tied to day or night and then figure out how long those activities should last. Just to arbitrarily assign a length of time to a day or night without considering what can take place during those phases immediately places barriers to really making the world an engaging place.

There are different types of nighttime as well. Norrath had a moon so we might see phases of the moon. That affects the overall brightness of night with a full moon providing some illumination to a new moon offering no light and the darkness being pitch black.

What effects would daytime give us compared to nighttime? If factions exist ala EQ1, your standings are noticed further away during the day. Nighttime would reduce that detection radius severely. I'd say that shop keepers would have better prices during the day than at night but bar/tavern shops would be the opposite.

So for me as I want the daytime world to be quite different in as many aspects as possible from the nighttime world the more contiguous time I can spend in each of them the better.

The few times I played wow I didn't even notice that there was a day night cycle, lol so sad

The night should be playable without additional light sources, but there should be torches built in like in eq1 so give the night that extra something. Could have an extra slot for a light sources. But maybe only few races should have he racal ability to see at nigh, but event then it shouldn't be all that much better then standard vision, it may be a little be removed from the lore.. But in the end these are just ideas for the developers. I think the lighting would also make the game that much cooler looking.

I couldn't resist it and voted 72 minutes for one simple and sometimes ugly reminder of old...Kithicor! It was tedious spamming yourself with the /time command while waiting for daytime to arrive because no porters were available to get you close enough to High hold keep, leaving you with that "suicide run" at level 30-ish when the zone was full of Rogue epic raid mobs (no game has ever made me hold my breath and pray as back then), so I can't imagine a similar dilemma with a 4-6 hour wait tacked on .