Weather Altars

The problem: Weather has really cool mechanics, but it's very random. All-advancement speedruns, which last several hours, often end as "thunderless" runs because the runner doesn't want to wait however many hours it takes for it to start thundering. Weather should be a natural, random mechanic, but some player control would be nice.

The complications: Weather is a global event affecting all players. Suggestions often run into one of two problems: 1. It would allow any player to change the weather on their own, which has bad consequences for multiplayer gameplay. 2. It gets around the first problem by suggesting that the weather is only changed in a certain area... which would require a whole redesign of the weather system.

The solution: We need a mechanic which gives the player some control over weather, without giving a single player the ability to control weather for everyone. The bed already does this with a different global event, the day-night cycle. I propose drawing inspiration from the bed for three new blocks: the Sunny Altar, the Rain Altar, and the Thunder Altar. The player could sit in these like cushions. If more than half of the players in the overworld are sitting in one type of altar, the weather would change to that weather for a few minutes. They should probably be two blocks like beds, otherwise they might look weirdly small. They should also be expensive, involving at least one late-game resource, so that weather is still fully random in the early game.