So there are new weather effects. Nice and I’m sure a lot of work went into them and I appreciate the effort in bringing nicer more interesting and varied environments. Unfortunately it seems we are now destined to live in constant rainfall. While weather effects are good they get annoying very quickly if overused and unfortunately that suddenly seems to be the case. The constant background hiss from rain sounds, thunder, limited visibility when trying to explore and locate resources is wearing very thin already. I’m not sure if you increased the frequency of weather events of if they were always this frequent however it seems that it is non stop now and is quickly becoming a reason not to play.
Please please please please dial back the weather frequency dramatically. Maybe about to a tenth or less Or at the very least allow us to turn down the graphical impact and set the volume of weather effects separate from other, more useful, noises.
There is a reason that disabling the weather effects in other games is a very common mod type.
It’s unfortunate that weather systems went in so much later. It’s supposed to be a big part of a planet’s ambient feel. Some planets are just stormy, some are calmer. Specific biomes have specific weather events more or less frequently than others. It’s a little too late for people to choose their home biome now that SFX and VFX have finally been introduced to the weather systems.
Does thunder come with lightning strikes now too? Or is it just ambient sound effects. I remember seeing a really cool vid of how lightning would light the entire world at night near a strike, was really quite striking… no pun intended.
Don’t get me wrong. I think the weather has a place and I like it. It’s just too full on an experience at the moment and players need to be able to control it from a playability point of view. Consider the following possible scenarios:
I want to listen to my own music but the constant rain noise is impacting my enjoyment of it.
I want to watch a Twitch stream or Youtube vid while playing but the noise is impacting it.
I want to voice chat with friends playing the game but my mic keeps picking up the rain noise making this impossible and/or the rain noise is making it hard to hear my friends.
I want to stream the game on Twitch etc or make Youtube videos. I can’t because the rain noise interferes with my viewers being able to hear my voice, background music etc.
I want to stream the game but the additional graphical entropy that the rain animation adds is causing the video to artefact badly and I can’t do anything about it for bandwidth or encoding hardware reasons.
I am auditory or visually impaired and the weather makes it hard for me to see and/or hear the important parts of the game.
I’ve been playing for an hour and the constant noise is giving me a headache.
I’ve got a low end system and the additional graphical load for weather has forced me to turn down settings even further than before.
From my programmer mindset turning down the frequency should be a quick hit, which could be introduced easily while eventually adding additional config options is possible but would need more effort and testing.
Tana VII used to have some rain and that was okay, it would last for a game a day, maybe part of another day and stop. You could occasionally see some lightening, but not often and the sound of rain was slight, even on other planets you knew it was there but it wasn’t distracting.
Now, it is a pain in the butt. Always seems to happen when a game adds weather. Too much, last nonstop for days, lightening so bright it is for a second if feels like someone flipped the lights on in a dark room and the sounds are louder, so when my son says something I can barely hear him and he doesn’t like to wear his headset so you has the mic on but it lays on his desk.
I have hearing loss, poor vision, so the new weather bothers me. The stupid blinding light makes it hard to see when you are looking in that direction, you can’t see what is front of you and can get hit by one of the critters but can’t see it. Never did like it when a game adds weather, it seems to be more bother than it is worth.
Besides, I get enough rain where I live,
Consider the developers all live in the UK. They probably don’t even notice constant rain, it’s just a way of life for them. I doubt they’d remove it from the game, it would give them an uneasy feeling that something’s wrong while playtesting.
Takes me back to when Beckon was a fresh planet, and we had like 3 days of solid rain. People were starting to think it just rained all the time on Beckon, lol
reporting from Phemonirum’s channel 8, news at 6 with Rumplypigskin
That is all…
Edit: I like the rain, it’s only rained a couple times in Phem though, Everytime I go anywhere else is pouring. I should just learn my lesson and never leave Phemonirum.
lightning strike from time to time would add a lot of depth 
