I have noticed that it is always clear skies and all, maybe it would be cool if it would rain, or get cloudy some times.
Not really noticably. Most of the poor performance is due to large concentration of objects/players rather than the ambient weather. I'm sure it would be possible to make a really low quality rain/weather as well, for those lower end rigs.
Is it night/day time for everyone at the same time? I've noticed a few times where I would respawn and all of a sudden it's day out when it was completely dark 10 seconds before...
Yup. I dont think they want to add anything in that would hinder performance until they really optimize their engine and the game.
I was going to come back at you with a quip about snow storms making tanks slide around and get stuck, then I remembered that wouldn't be any different from what we have already. Anyway, I would love rain storms, I'd also love more foliage and other things. Hossin is said to be full of foliage and plant life, I could imagine heavy rains would look really awesome on Hossin. It would add some awesome depth to infantry combat if severe weather made vehicle usage difficult due to greatly reduced visibility. It's true, I do get sick of the whole game just being slightly different terrains and day or night lighting effects. Weather would add a lot to the game.
SOE wants weather to matter and have some influence on the battlefield. Maybe not flooding, but reduced sighting ranges (forcefully bringing in the fog) and sloppy vehicle handling might be effects of a rain storm. Until then, however, I'd be happy with placebo cloudy skies and light rain showers. In beta, the day/night cycle was very gradual. Right now, we seem to be operating on "stages" in a day. It looks cheap as hell if you catch the jarring event of the shadows quickly reposition and the sun/moon changing position in the sky, but most people are too busy killing one another to really notice these brief moments. Maybe someday when SOE optimizes their engine far enough along they'll reintroduce the gradual cycle. Until then, shadows seem to crash my client at random, so all I get are varying shades and brightness levels of day and night.
I like the idea but a lot of people are right in that it would lower performance, and unfortunately it seems that a good percentage of players tend to make it a habit to run the most minimum spec that they can for a game, then complain when a upgrade becomes too much for their system.
