During day time, everything is relatively peaceful in "safe" zones. As long as you are paying attention, and not adventuring out alone in profitable hunting locations, you will most likely be just fine. Most things you need to do can be done around NPC and player camps where there are many people at any given time. Most of these locations will be "protected" by difficult NPCs and hopefully good aligned players. Even hunting mobs is less dangerous, because, my idea is that there will be very few roaming monsters during the day. If you enter their camp that is one thing, but as you're exploring, you won't run into too many monsters or dangerous animals. Also, the majority of NPC bounty hunters will hunt during the day, so you will likely never see a player opposite the alignment of the region.
At night, the monsters come out, and most the bounty hunters go to sleep. It will be easier to hide and sneak at night, maybe even +50%, which can protect you, but most of the time it will protect the PKs. Somehow, skills should raise faster and rewards should be much higher, but the risks could be even higher. I realize that it doesn't make a lot of sense for the rewards to be higher at night, since, if you go searching at night for flowers in real life, you will not have as much success. But, this is a game, and I feel it is a good approach.
Night will last up to 4 hours within a 24 hour period (numbers would probably to change). And I know what you're thinking, "But it would suck to log in only to find it is night time if you just want to relax." Well, I agree, and I have thought about this quite a bit. My solution is simple, the player chooses when it is day and when it is night. There will essentially be two instances of the world, with a few things shared between. A player will only be able to switch to night mode one time in each real life day, and can only be in for 4 hours each day.
I really like the idea but, already, we run into a few complications.
- Q: If I chop down a tree at day time, will it grow back before night, or will it still be chopped down when I go to night mode? If the latter, what happens if a player chops down a tree at night, and I'm in day mode? Do I see the tree fall even though nobody is there to chop it down?
A: Well, I don't really have a good answer for this. Part of me says it is okay that they are not shared between modes, but another part of me says they should just regrow twice per day. I am pretty sure UO's trees spawn in more often than that anyway. - Q: Won't this turn into the Felucca and Trammel of UO? Why wouldn't everyone just stay in day mode?
A: Well, I would really like for that not to be the case. There are a few things different with this system that may contribute to a different result. 1) Land ownership is shared between modes. 2) Rewards (loot drops) are higher at night. 3) Monsters don't really spawn during the day, so fighters will essentially be required to go to night mode at least every once and a while. 4) Caves and dungeons will not be affected by modes, it will always be "night" mode in them. 5) Probably the biggest: You can still get PK'ed during the day, particularly by covert blue PKs (you'd be their first murder). You can especially get pick-pocketed.
Well, that is all for tonight. I am still in favor of night mode, but the first issue is still getting to me. Perhaps it is enough to simply make dungeons and caves be the night mode. Of course I'd still have a night cycle, and maybe it could still be more dangerous at night without having the two instances of the world. It needs to be designed quite a bit more, and I need some feedback from other people.
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