Aesthetic Clouds - Thoughts?

I know the devs said no to weather hazards and I agree but what about aesthetic clouds? Basically at a certain zoom you would see clouds, zoomed in you would not and of course they could be toggled for performance.

Supreme Commander mockups:



Earth:

What function do they serve other than getting in the way of what I can see?
(Which in and of itself is an environmental "hazard")

Aesthetics.

But they block my view of the battlefield. They're a Hazard.

Nanolathe: Explosions get in the way of sight, maybe you should disable them too?

I think the first picture up there looks good. Noticeable, but not jarring or blocking. And strategic icons should render on top of them too, so at a zoom high enough for the clouds to appear there wouldn't be any real difference in visability.

So long as they're very transparent it would add a little to the game I would think.

causeless, Depending on how Uber decides to render graphics client-side they may well be able to be disabled. And I'm betting quite a few people would do so if they could. You do know that many professional gamers turn graphical fidelity to its lowest possible settings to increase performance but also in part to reduce "pretty graphics" getting in the way, right?

I'm playing Devil's Advocate here but it's essentially a good position to take here.

Can you justify Uber spending time on making the Tech to render them and also the time making sure they're "balanced" in terms of opacity. How much visual value do they add for monetary and temporal investment?

My "Thoughts" are that there's better things to spend time and money on.

ephoscus said it right... it adds "a little" to the game. I'd prefer things that add "A lot" to the game myself.

I would like to have clouds aswell, but only if they render at quite a distance, so that the strat icons already show up.
Having the option to disable clouds is a given thing I guess.

But this is going to be a mod for sure if Uber won't add them.

Oh not the "add it as an option" thing again...
:evil:

Not add it as an option, but add the option to turn them off IF they were added.

Need I say more?
:|

Nanolathe,

I feel you are being rather belligerent with people because they are suggesting something that YOU dont want, but others do. This is a game, part of gaming is graphics. When you are gaming on a world, that you can zoom right out of into orbit, having clouds makes total sense. Not just aesthetically, but also in terms of planets themselves.

What part of me playing Devil's Advocate did you misunderstand?

Nope and not sure what your problems with options are.
Most games suffer from exactly that thing, too few options.
If you have a feature that is not 100% essential, then it's nice to have it tweakable.

I understood all of it, but you still sound like you are being belligerent rather than playing devils advocate.

You know, when a few dozen Sentient AI superminds start fighting the Forever War, possess the ability to pump metal from the earth and create a never ending stream of Kbots, Tanks and eventually engines to throw asteroids at each other, that link to "total sense" gets very blurry.

What do they ADD to the game in terms of bang for development buck?
Are you SURE you want Uber's time and money spent on clouds?

I dont know a lot about those things but i can imagine that something like this might get modded...

Perfectly reasonable, especially if it can be rendered client-side individually without having to bother the server, nor other players.

Then anyone can download it, have pretty clouds, and Uber need not spend a dime on developing it.

For sure and that might also be a better thing considering the points nanolathe mentioned. They shouldn't spend too much time on a subtile graphical feature like this.

Regardless, for me it would still be a nice-to-have.

this should be in general discussion.

also no