Throne and Liberty Environment Day Night Weather — TL

Weather and environment have visual effects to augment the sense of reality. They breathe and live together with the players, like organic things themselves. This living world is all about adapting to the environment, and to the players who manage to do so, a diverse array of options become available.

Depending on changes in the setting, terrain may feel different, and ecosystems may also undergo transformations. Intriguing events can occur due to these changes. According to the natural law of TL, such events will happen consistently with a certain likelihood. Players who understand this law can transform the environment.

Predictable things such as the day and night cycles, allow players to plan ahead. Unpredictable things, like turbulent weather and gusts of wind, require players to respond and adapt.

The environment is an essential part of creating small but impactful changes which imbue the world with a feeling of vitality and colorful ways to play.

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How to change the environment?

There is a high-level user skill that can change the wind direction at will. It is the highest level skill that can be possessed by one person per server. In addition, there are skills that greatly change the environment, such as changing the climate or inducing a solar eclipse.

Q. Do those skills have a big impact on the battle situation?

Ahn Jong-ok PD: It will have a very big impact.

Q. It must be very difficult to raise a character with that skill.

Ahn Jong-ok PD: It is not a skill that can be acquired by ‘growing up’ a character. have to get it

Q. If it's 'Capture', it's probably not a skill that all guilds can have, and it's like a means to trigger a skirmish.

Ahn Jong-ok PD: That's right. Depending on which group has what high skill, the strategy (between the parties) also differs.

Han Gu-min, Narrative Director: Of course, these skills have a cooldown, so the timing of use is also important. There is no guarantee that (the operation using the skill) will succeed at once, so you have to be more careful when using it. Along with the use of skills, a situation in which users move at the same time by matching the sum is created.

Open World & Environment

There is a big focus on the 3D topography of Throne and Liberty and traversal using transformations and grappling. And weather changing the environment, player skills, etc.

• The game’s world is the central focus and starting point for players. Its borderless design allows for seamless connection and interaction with other players. The developers used a dungeon as an example, featuring a separate entrance and main area with multiple floors and compartments that are all connected. Players can move between floors and assist or hinder others while exploring the dungeon.
• NCSoft have united the game’s world into a single zone to emphasize the central aspect of MMOs: player interaction. By starting the game together, players can create shared histories and memories as they journey through the game and experience it together. This is the developers’ vision for the game.
• The game’s weather and environment are designed to enhance the sense of realism, and players must adapt to the changing environment in order to take advantage of various opportunities. The terrain and ecosystems can change based on shifts in the environment, leading to interesting events.
• The day and night cycles and predictable events allow players to plan ahead, while unpredictable events like weather changes require quick adaptation. The environment plays a key role in adding a sense of life and variety to the game world.
• The Environment aspect relates to the 3D topography and using grappling, gliding, etc. to traverse these areas. It also refers to the day/night cycles and the weather and the effect this has on the game.
• Environmental changes create multiple variables within the field. The dagger's poison skill changes for a long time during the day and high damage at night...The Lightning Chain skill also has a different effect in wet conditions.There is also a passive skill that increases projectiles when the wind speed and direction are right.
• Some monsters and bosses change their patterns and drop items depending on the environment.
• A special skill that can only be cast twice a day and allows the player to change the environment for 10 minutes.
• It is also possible to block the bypass waterway by raining down, or temporarily put it into a night state with the Eclipse skill.

Day/Night Cycles

• Day lasts for 4 hours, Night lasts for 1 hour.
• Day | Night can affect player abilities. Example of day/night affecting player spells: “One player skill that changes with the environment is the dagger skill, Ghost Step, with increases movement speed at night, and Dagger Venom’s blood poison effect changes depending on whether it is day or night”.
• Day | Night can affect boss/monster strength and their drop tables.
• Day | Night can affect what type of mobs spawn.
• There is an eclipse spell that only certain player(s) will have that can change the day to night.
• Some players can use skills that affect the day/night cycles or the weather. These skills have very long cooldowns, and are only available to players that are leading various daily leaderboards.
• The weather or day/night change by the players lasts 10 minutes, and can only be used twice daily by the player who ranks first in a specific ranking on a daily basis.

Weather

During the director preview we observed a few dynamic weather events which will effect the world we play in, most notably:  Rain, Storms, Drought, Wind, and Moon cycles.

The ratio of sunny and rainy weather is 4:1 and once the weather changes it is maintained for 30 minutes.

• 30 minutes of rain…2 hours of sun???

RAIN

• Rain can affect certain skills, monster abilities, drop tables, and spawn tables.
• Last 30 minutes
• Sunny is a 4:1 ratio to rainy
• Rain and other forms of weather can affect the environment by filling areas and not allowing passage by the players.  Example given was rain filling up a sewer passage to the castle that players can use as an alternate assault path when it is sunny.  This means the few players that have the ability to change the weather to rain could change it to rain for 30 minutes and block that passage.
• Example given for a player spell that is affected by the rain is the lightning spell will bounce to multiple targets in the rain, but only hits one target when it is sunny

WIND

• Wind can affect certain skills, monster abilities, drop tables, and spawn tables
• The developers stated that wind is difficult to express visually, whereas rain and other weather is easier
• Example of a player ability that is affected by the wind is projectiles traveling further.  There used to be more effects but they toned it down to just projectile distance increasing

• Gliding distance also increases when the wind is out of the right direction with enough strength.  This could be enough to allow players to glide over castle walls.
• There is a high level skill that only one person per server can have that can change the wind direction.

Some players can use skills that affect the day/night cycles or the weather.  These skills have very long cooldowns, and are only available to players that are leading various daily leaderboards.  

• The weather or day/night change by the players lasts 10 minutes, and can only be used twice daily by the player who ranks first in a specific ranking on a daily basis

Environmental change and MMO, will there be dissonance?

Q. It is interesting to have a system where the field situation dynamically changes according to the environment change. However, it is actually a difficult feature to apply to MMOs. A single-player game would be preferable in terms of providing a variety of experiences, but in multiplayer, various balance issues may arise. No one likes a situation where victory or defeat is determined by external factors. This means that there can be complaints like, “I lost the fight I was winning because it suddenly rained.”

Ahn Jong-ok PD: That's right. The system was originally thought of as a main feature and was an element that was brought to the fore. However, because of the problem you mentioned, I reduced it because I did not want the influence to be too great. Then, this time, there was no presence at all. So I had a lot of trouble trying to strike a balance between them.

In conclusion, the factors that directly affect the battle were reduced as much as possible. Let's take the effect of wind on ranged attack skills as an example. Originally, several parts such as attack power and range were different. However, in consideration of balance, only the range change was left in the end.

Instead, I paid attention to have more impact on parts other than combat. At night, I focused on making the environment feel like it was changing by making new monsters appear. There are also changes on the social side. In <TL>, there is a concept of ‘bad deeds’ that accumulate when PK is performed, but when PK is performed at night, this does not accumulate.

In addition, due to environmental changes, the method of using topography is also diversified. For example, when it rains, puddles fill up at an exaggerated rate. Through this, you can use a new strategy to swim across a place you couldn't cross before. In this way, instead of being openly influenced by one side in battle, it was coordinated so that an indirect influence occurred.

Lee Mun-seop, general manager of planning: It is related not only to combat, but also to individual gameplay patterns. If you are a user who plays the game efficiently, you will want to see the maximum effect within the given time. In order to do that, it is a structure that needs to find a suitable environment. Even if you play for an hour, you can increase the maximum efficiency by finding a hunting ground that suits the environment.

However, not doing so is not a big loss. Each device isn't very powerful, so even if you make the most of the environment change, you won't have an absolute advantage. Even if you play while ignoring the environmental change, there is no big gap.

Even in the boss fight content, you can play according to your personal preference. Some bosses get stronger when it rains. However, depending on the weather, the type of reward is different, and usually the stronger the reward, the better the reward. Users whose goal is to defeat the boss itself can catch it regardless of the weather, and if they need an item that drops when it rains, they can catch it then. It is user choice.

If necessary, you can ask a player who has the aforementioned weather change skill. Through weather changes, roads to dungeons that were not originally accessible may be opened. In this way, the environment change skill also plays a role in creating a bond between users. The skill holders feel proud of their influence in the group, and the stress of playing is reduced for those who receive help because the weather is not always fixed. I think we have created a structure that can help each other.

Han Gu-min, Narrative Director: Environmental change factors are more useful than you think. For example, a boss uses an AoE skill when a group of players rushes in. At this time, if your character's defense is a bit lacking, you have to play while watching the pattern, but sometimes it can be overpowering.

In this case, if you consider the wind direction, you can find a good spot where you can easily get out of the range of the wide range, making it easier to attack. Knowing this is part of the skill.

Travel / Transportation

Fast travel appears to be limited.  There seems to be an emphasis on players using transformation skills to travel faster instead of mounts.  Players can transform into a wolf for faster land travel speed.  A shark for faster aquatic speed.  And a bird for faster air travel/gliding. 

• Grappling to reach higher areas has been seen in multiple gameplay trailers.
• There was one potential “teleportation” stone seen in the first gameplay trailer.  
• There is a “flying island” that is called Gigantrithe that appears and allows players to reach places that otherwise are not accessible.  This island appears every few hours and exists for 30 minutes.

It seems that you paid a lot of attention to making the game contextually well-organized, providing more immersive in-game experiences. Please introduce other differentiated content of < Throne and Liberty >.

Jong-ok Ahn   In  < Throne and Liberty >, environmental factors such as time of the day and weather conditions including rain and wind keep changing. Although you might not be able to recognize this when you just start out the game, it has more implications than you think.

For example, the direction and strength of the wind affect the archery shooting range. If you practice lightning-type magic when it rains, it affects a wider range of enemies unlike the way it affects a single enemy in a sunny day. Terrain is influenced by environmental factors, as well. For example, you can infiltrate the castle in diverse routes in a siege warfare including the underground sewer and it could be filled with too much water and become unavailable if it rains heavily.

Conversely, players can affect the environment. They can change the environment in their favor by causing a solar eclipse or rainstorm if required conditions are met.