Allow changing of time of day in franchise/challenge

In beta we could change weather and time of day. Now we can't in franchise mode.

I can understand the argument about not being able to change the weather, because it's part of the challenge (although a system whereby it only changes for a short while then cycles back to what it's supposed to be would be good), but I can't understand at all why we can't change the time of day.

This makes getting good screenshots so much more difficult. Pausing during that perfect moment and realising the sun is right there casting that awful lens glare over everything really ruins things. Being able to nudge the sun out of the way, or see how a scene looks at sunset, or how lights look at night when you're building, is all stuff we should be able to do and has no impact on the challenge of the gameplay.

If you can't reinstate changing the weather in franchise, please consider reinstating being able to change the time of day. I'm surprised how much this has disappointed me. I take screenshots as a form of therapy almost, and was really excited to be able to combine my love of that with the fun I had in franchise mode during the beta (I put in 101 hours!). I hope this is possible again.
 
At least turning daylight on when you are paused and building stuff would help. It is just impossible to build in the darkness of night, so I had to set my opening times to daytime only. But that way I don't get to see what my zoo looks like at night unless I switch back and forth.
 
In my opinion, being able to change day-night time, weather, etc in challenge mode would kind of defeat the purpose of dealing with those conditions and it would feel too sandboxy. But! as others have stated in your zoo manu you can "disable" night time by only having your zoo be open at daytime. Thus, as soon as it starts to get late the game will jump to the next day and you avoid night time all together :)
 
I can't see how being able to change the time of day in any way ruins the challenge of franchise mode. If you're building a habitat, sometimes it's really difficult to see what you're doing because of where the sun is positioned. Being able to change the time by a few hours moves the sun so you can see properly again. Having to build in the dark or in shadow isn't part of the challenge of franchise, it's just annoying.
 
Well all my complaining has come back to bite me because now the time of day isn't changing for me at all. As in, not even during its natural cycle. Time passes, but the sun never moves. It's permanent daylight...
 
Okay, it's a bit long-winded, but the best way I've found of getting time of day control so far is to select any structure and click on Blueprint, then on New Blueprint, and when you get the option to take a screenshot of it you can alter the time of day. If you leave it ticked it'll stay at that time forever more (well, time will pass in the game but the sun will stay at whatever position you put it at).

You can use this to play in permanent daylight if you want, or to change the lighting for screenshots.

To go back to the regular light cycle just go back into a new blueprint again and untick the time. You don't have to actually save any blueprints during this process, you can back out of the blueprint menu once you've set the time.

So, considering I've just played several in-game years in perpetual daylight and nothing broke, it really doesn't make sense to me that the regular time of day control (as exists in sandbox) isn't implemented properly. I hope Frontier consider putting it back in again.
 
Hi again! :)

Interesting work around! Did you by the way try to set your zoo opening hours from, say, 5 am to 6 pm in the zoo menu?
 
I will second the ability to change the time of the day in all modes please. I don't like the night mode - I find it very very difficult to see anything.
 
Like Miken said above, I thought this function is in the game already. I play franchise mode during perpetual daylight using the opening hours in the zoo tab / the zoo entrance.
 
Hi again! :)

Interesting work around! Did you by the way try to set your zoo opening hours from, say, 5 am to 6 pm in the zoo menu?

That can modify the daylight hours but time still cycles, it doesn't give you the precise control like by using the proper time slider in sandbox. Using the blueprint time slider is the closest way to do the same, and allowing you to stay fixed at that specific time if you want too. Might as well just have them re-enable it officially in franchise/challenge tbh.
 
Like Miken said above, I thought this function is in the game already. I play franchise mode during perpetual daylight using the opening hours in the zoo tab / the zoo entrance.

Yeah, for me it's not just about being able to play in daylight, but rather being able to manipulate the lighting on the fly for screenshots. It's awkward and imprecise using the opening hours for this, there's more control doing it with the blueprint camera, as it works in exactly the same way as the proper time of day slider in sandbox mode, but adds another layer of menu hopping to get there.
 
you can change the day/night cycle, go onto your zoo tab near where you change your ticket prices, above that is the slider for Zoo opening times, this doesn't effect your guests, all it does is change the day/night cycle to your prefered hours, so i have set mine to be mostly daylight for the visuals :)
 
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