Talk:Weather System/@comment-35828242-20180812074107/@comment-33648385-20180821002015

Increase the game experience? Have you seen or been told in detail what open seas are during a rain, nevermind an actual storm which is not just common, but brutal and chaotic. Nothing like the more mild dry land storms, especially in city/rural areas where most of it's windforce is dramatically decreased due to structures/natural terrain/obscurities in general. Yeah, well, when you're in the sea/ocean, since nothing can actually stop those winds, it gets quite rough. You've seen it in the movies, perhaps a little overdramatized but no less a scary and dangerous situation to find yourself in. And that's just about drowning or being crushed by the waves. Though in truth if it was a real planet, it would be like Kamino from Star Wars. Constantly storms and hurricanes, because there would be no obstruction to the very same winds we have on our own planet. Do you have any idea how strong even the "gentle" breeze is if it could travel across the globe unhindered? We're lucky to have mountains and different depth to our dry land regions, it somewhat softens the winds. If earth was like a marble, flat and perfectly round or at least, with very little discrepancy upon its' surface? You'd find it difficult to fucking hold your ground to not be blown away. There's a reason why when you get to a high spot that's above obstructing objects and landmarks the wind feels a lot stronger. But I threw this into a whole meteorology rant. TL ; DR - objects like mountains, different dry land height and man made structures prevent winds from reaching ludicrous speeds. 4546B is a planet without said obstructions.

Now imagine if they also made the water behave realistically according to the weather - you'd not see a reaper leviathan even if it was infront of your nose underwater. Above water it'd be just an absolute nightmare. So you'd basically be forced to wait out the storms. And if it were to follow realistic logic - those storms would probably almost never end. For reasons mentioned above, a water planet with an atmosphere will be a nonstop turbulent sight.

Weather was scrapped because it would essentially make subnautica quite a different game from what it is now. Would it be a positive change? I mean, it's subjective - it'd be more realistic for sure - it'd follow the rules of physical cosmology and planetology and some people might find positives in that. For me it wouldn't. Sure, it can be a dumbed down, fantasy-like system where it's just the occassional storm, but that's just extra development work for basically adding surface-level environmental detail - for a game that's 90% underwater. Since if they made it to actually affect it like a real body of water, a storm would basically make the currents impossible to fight against, thus almost destroying progression, so we'd have to assume they'd scrap the underwater dynamics. And we're back at my first point - what's the point of a system that affects a part of the game you literally see for only 1/10th of your time playing the game.And don't bullshit me, alright, I study computer science - programming rain and environmental details like that is so much work and fine-tuning and rigorous Q&A testing for months on end it's literally not worth and will not add anything significant to your game.

The problem is they're 2 extremes - one is have it affect the underwater gameplay and thus risking to ruin the experience or at the very least make it far less appealing than it is, or to make it so you might not even know it exists if you time it right, which would be an insult to the designers, programmers and testers who pour their hard work into a system like that.

EDIT - When it comes to the expansion, I think it's far more plausible with the hailstorms and cold climate. Realism works only in certain areas, and only in certain scenarios. We play games to have fun and experience new things or impossible things, not to play another variant of life just from a virtual perspective. There ARE games based on that and even they don't go full realism because that would not only be boring, but it'd undermine some games' entire plot.