Current Weather System Discussion

[TF2006]

I saw somebody shirtless while it was 10 degrees celcius in-game, and this is the reply I got:



According to the said admin, if it is storming or snowing it means it is cold, if it is sunny it is not cold. I wonder why do we even include the temperature?

[Matthew]

The current IG weather is too cold and doesn't really fit the Cali aesthetic of the map. The rain is way too common and it's consistently way too cold. Definitely needs to be adjusted.

[np]

On 12/8/2020 at 9:58 PM, celestialrage said:

LA also isnt in GMT time...

it really doesn't matter. we're not roleplaying in LA - we're rping in san andreas. in san andreas it rains!

This kind of argument is weird to me. Sure, we aren't a one for one recreation of L.A. and L.A. politics, but we are in a setting that directly bases nearly everything about itself off of L.A. I think that the weather system should more or less reflect that, and currently there are some oddities with it that make it somewhat difficult to believe we are in an L.A.-esque setting, in my opinion.

 

Also, that time thing is more of an issue as to where the server is located, except that's not at all a problematic thing, and in fact enhances certain types of roleplay.

[SaintBatemanofWallStreet]

So I said this in the discord during the great snow debate of 2020, and I'll repeat it here.

 

Our current weather system over all doesn't fit the area. And I'm not saying that we have to be LA. In fact, I'm in the camp of we shouldn't be LA. However, it's undeniable that we are in a tropical or even subtropical geographic area. Here's something to think about. Palm trees. They're expensive and while they're generally pretty tough and can withstand a freeze or three, they don't do well in prolonged cold weather. They generally like to grow in 70F and up. And in the winter when it's below that, they don't grow. Our summers are below 70F on average. So why would the city spend so much money putting in trees that would inevitably die off every year or two because of the cold? They wouldn't.

 

The argument can be made it could be colder up on the northern third of the map. And I agree it could be for a sense of change. But right now? This cold all the time, and cool summers just doesn't fit with the locale and it should be looked into for a change.

 

And it doesn't matter the time zone the server is sat in. We don't have to go off of a constant real life location. Weather trends can easily be looked into and we could have our own weather range. Hell you could even put us in a place where we might even get a tropical storm making landfall if you wanted to. (Not saying we should, but we could)

[Exploits]

Really I just want forecasts to be variable but predictable. It's slightly annoying to roll out from home on my motorcycle and then turn around five minutes later because of a torrential downpour, since it sort of begs the question as to why my character wouldn't have been able to see/know that a storm was coming. It was at its most awkward when I role-played trying to set up a motorcycle ride with my character's friend and then reasonably cancelled out the plans five minutes later when a massive cracking thunderstorm rolled in for an hour. Right now it's up to players to interpret whether 'Cloudy' means 'finished raining' or 'about to rain', or ask somebody OoCly, because asking ICly "Has it rained?" is incredibly awkward when everything would be very visibly and obviously wet.

 

I don't really care about emulating L.A. weather to a T or even in any respectable fashion: I would even love a month of snow in-game just to mix things up, see new styles on people and all the other ways that role-play changes in response, big and small. I'm only flustered by the lack of information our current system gives players to work with when it comes to role-playing around weather.

 

The only thing we really need to know as players is when weather is or was not at norm. We always assume as a baseline that the weather is warm and sunny. All we're lacking, for those interested at least, is a way to know if it's rained or when it'll rain with reliability so that we can role-play in or around it. If we cut down on the number of times it rains, but greatly extend how long it rains, then /weather could say "Rain expected in the next Xhrs" and "Rain expected to continue for Xhrs", for example, with usable accuracy. Rain slowly becomes more of an event rather than a happenstance this way, and you can role-play around it.

Edited December 10, 2020 by Exploits

[yerro]

22 minutes ago, Exploits said:

Really I just want forecasts to be variable but predictable. It's slightly annoying to roll out from home on my motorcycle and then turn around five minutes later because of a torrential downpour, since it sort of begs the question as to why my character wouldn't have been able to see/know that a storm was coming. It was at its most awkward when I role-played trying to set up a motorcycle ride with my character's friend and then reasonably cancelled out the plans five minutes later when a massive cracking thunderstorm rolled in for an hour. Right now it's up to players to interpret whether 'Cloudy' means 'finished raining' or 'about to rain', or ask somebody OoCly, because asking ICly "Has it rained?" is incredibly awkward when everything would be very visibly and obviously wet.

 

I don't really care about emulating L.A. weather to a T or even in any respectable fashion: I would even love a month of snow in-game just to mix things up, see new styles on people and all the other ways that role-play changes in response, big and small. I'm only flustered by the lack of information our current system gives players to work with when it comes to role-playing around weather.

 

The only thing we really need to know as players is when weather is or was not at norm. We always assume as a baseline that the weather is warm and sunny. All we're lacking, for those interested at least, is a way to know if it's rained or when it'll rain with reliability so that we can role-play in or around it. If we cut down on the number of times it rains, but greatly extend how long it rains, then /weather could say "Rain expected in the next Xhrs" and "Rain expected to continue for Xhrs", for example, with usable accuracy. Rain slowly becomes more of an event rather than a happenstance this way, and you can role-play around it.

I'm on board with the most.

 

As one of the loudest people involved speaking up against snow some 3 weeks ago, the two things that annoyed me the most was the way people dealt with and treated each other in the debate, and inconsistency.

 

This entire debate might be pointless unless we decide to have the continuity team tell us the setting we're in. I honestly wouldn't mind if we roleplayed San Andreas to be a bit farther north to allow it to have occasional snow, though I'd want it to be a gradual change or at least with a noticeable trend.

 

The reason I felt my immersion was broken is the character I'd actually created at that time was supposed to be a pale-skinned Brit coping to get used to a different climate, anyway.

 

Again, seems like it's best to just define the world / setting somewhere in the rules, so that everyone is on board with it when joining and creating their characters. And in that case, we could have entire weeks of snow instead of going back and forth from wildfires to downpours to snow.

[u10sil]

The fact that "Continuity Management" hasn't published any threads or information sections... not even with the basic continuity principles of the server - and that is leading us to argue here over whether or not we're LA? That's baffling.

 

Continuity management, can you step up to the plate and get a thread going? These questions always come up. And all the debates that spur off of them are pointless without even knowing what the fuck we are.

 

[SaintBatemanofWallStreet]

5 hours ago, yerro said:

Again, seems like it's best to just define the world / setting somewhere in the rules, so that everyone is on board with it when joining and creating their characters. And in that case, we could have entire weeks of snow instead of going back and forth from wildfires to downpours to snow.

This. We don't know where we are geographically located in the world, and frankly it's started to become an issue. And while we're on the topic of snow, and how that would coincide with wildfires? They don't. The majority of wildfires that happen are because it's super dry. Guess what snow is not? Super dry. Yes there is dry powder, I got it. But it melts eventually. If you want to have wildfire season, it's probably not snowing much where you live. If you want to have lots of snow, we don't really get wildfires too much.

 

32 minutes ago, u10sil said:

Continuity management, can you step up to the plate and get a thread going? These questions always come up. And all the debates that spur off of them are pointless without even knowing what the fuck we are.

 

Genuine question, and this is gonna sound like a troll. But I'm being 100% serious. Is continuity management an actual thing? I've never seen anything with it. And by the massive amounts of incontinuous events and pop up gangs who've all owned the same set of turf since the 80's, I'd say they should show themselves more often if they actually exist.

[u10sil]

3 minutes ago, SaintBatemanofWallStreet said:

Genuine question, and this is gonna sound like a troll. But I'm being 100% serious. Is continuity management an actual thing? 

I'd like to be proven wrong? But it sounds like a cushy admin position for people who don't do anything. Cause I've never seen them do anything either. That, or the people who are in it have too much other stuff on their plates and can't write a forum topic/provide information towards continuity info.

 

Unrelated, but I don't even know why continuity management needs to be a team. Continuity is established when someone establishes it with written information - then people adhere to that information. For a heavy server that's been around this long, to still have all these outstanding questions about what the hell we're supposed to roleplay? Kind of disappointing.

[Trupiano]

19 minutes ago, u10sil said:

I'd like to be proven wrong? But it sounds like a cushy admin position for people who don't do anything. Cause I've never seen them do anything either. That, or the people who are in it have too much other stuff on their plates and can't write a forum topic/provide information towards continuity info.

This.

 

If they are too busy or overworked? That's fine, just communicate that to the players. Maybe make a "Continuity Team and you" thread since that's the hot thing to do now. At least then we can condense a lot of these threads into one place.