Anyone else feel night isn't dark enough?

[Broadside]

So I was watching TB's night time video on night ops, and while the lighting is impressive, I feel like it could be ramped up just a little bit. Take a look at these screens.

http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h116/Whiteguy321/PS2night1.png
The ambient and direct lighting coming from the base superstructure is very impressive, however in the room where the player is standing there is still quite a bit of visibility despite no direct light source around. It's one thing to see out into a lit area, it's another to have an unlit area be completely visible.

http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h116/Whiteguy321/PS2night2.png
This screen shows the effect that PS2 uses to simulate darkness, in that it has a very hazy blue filter that is meant to obscure draw distances rather than act as true darkness. It's a nice effect, but at the end of the day we can still see everyone plain as day from huge distances despite it being "night time". Flash lights and IR optics aren't really necessary when you can spot out every cactus in the desert from a 50m tower.

http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h116/Whiteguy321/PS2night3.png
In this screen, you can see the sky isn't black like a night normally is, but rather a very light dusky blue. Again, not much is hidden in the darkness, as there isn't really any darkness to begin with.

Now, the next screen is what I really want night to look like. It's black. It has high contrast. It has shadows in alleys that aren't in direct lighting. You need all the flash lights and night optics you can get because...well...it's actually dark.
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h116/Whiteguy321/deusexnight.png

Now, I'm not sure if the devs could actually change the lighting, as that is a huge part of the game, but am I the only one who really doesn't think the night is actually dark?

[wraithverge]

tbs night ops vid is in the open with a full moon, watch the e3 streams and see how dark it gets when inside teh base with the walls blocking the moons.

[Luieburger]

Be careful what you wish for.

http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=5674

Edit: Also this --> http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=13467

[Kayos]

It's pretty dark in some of the E3 videos

[The Kush]

It could always get darker. I would like having to reply on night vision and flashlights

[Dagron]

I'll have an opinion on that when i'm in beta (hopefully). ;)


With this i definitely agree:
I would like having to rely on night vision and flashlights

[QuantumMechanic]

lol, when I saw this thread title I immediately thought of DayZ as well.

Night time can indeed be overdone.

Edit: I have played this game at night time. It's fun for maybe 5 seconds then ceases to be fun. I only play at daytime now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N-aWnOHagI

[Hamma]

Night time is plenty dark :)

[TheApoc]

i agree in the e3 videos it got plenty dark

[Russ]

If it gets darken then it means you HAVE to have NV scopes, which are unlocked at later in character development. So basically it creates a situation where Older players have a huge advantage over someone who just hopped in. It has been stated many times it will never happen.

Plus that picture of they city (rl) it taken probably a half mile away where as the other in game are fractions of that. Also eye adjust to light, cameras do... but not as well, the list goes on. So i wouldnt hold that comparison too much to heart.

[JustSaya]

From the videos I have seen, night can get pretty dark in the shadows. If you have a sky with 2 moons that are full... a planet on top of that.. with stars all over you will get a lot of ambient light reflecting off every surface in the area.

The reason that city scape you posted looked so dark(besides camera settings) was because of the light pollution. Things around you can seem darker because your eyes have adjusted to the light in front of you.

From what I have seen, the light/dark in this game is nearly the best I have ever seen. In the videos you can see how if you are sitting in a bright area and your enemy is sitting in the shadows.. they have a solid advantage over you (Other than that darn name plate).

Im sure it could be a little darker for "realism" sake, but that would not be fun. Any modern force would just pop on some NV and get to the fighting. This way we can play without making everything have a green tone :-p

[Greeniegriz]

I think its fine. No one wants a Dayz night.

Off topic: isnt dayz so fun?!

Cheers,

GG

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

[Zation]

IMO nighttime needs to have an impact on gamplay, other then just making the bases look cool etc. That said this is very much a wait and see in beta thing for me :)

[RSphil]

in the e3 vid at one pint they are away from the base and lets just you need a light to see anything. it gets dark. very dark. they have even said many times in the vids it gets darker then you see as you have the light from the base and the moon ect. i think it will be dark enough for us all to sneak around and do a few stealth kills

[SixShooter]

From what I can tell, it does get pretty dark. Pretty much all of the night footage we have seen takes place in a pretty well lit base and with shortened day/night cycles. I think that once we see fighting happening more out in the open areas that we'll see a prettty big difference.

[lMABl]

I think the current night is perfect.

[Otleaz]

Making it any darker than you see in the TB videos just gives an advantage to gamma abusers. I hope the darkness you saw in the E3 videos was just because of the poor video quality.

[Froglicker]

Im just hoping they make it so that the NV isn't OP and that flashlights are actually useful. For example I hope that:

1) Thermal Vision has a limited range and can be countered with things like thermal cloaking or something.
2) Nightvision has greater range but could be temporarily blinded by flashlights and are more visually vulnerable to flashbangs(if they implemented, not sure).
3) Flashlights have both a wide and narrow beam options, and the light beam is only visible if there is ambient smoke/dust.

[Purple]

i think every so often a night should be like being in a minecrft cave without a light source.

[Furber]

The E3 stream videos look darker, Planetside 2 E3 Stream - Day 3 - (feat. Totalbiscuit and Margaret Krohn) - YouTube

[Dougnifico]

I agree. Night is pretty dark and is good enough. It would be cool if the introduced something like lunar cycles that can influence how dark the night is. Full moon could be pretty bright (especially on Esimir due to "snow light." Anyone whose live in the woods where it snows knows what I mean. Its like daytime with a dark sky. Weird as hell.). The new moon could be very very dark where you have low visibility without night vision. It would also allow you to do stuff like eclipses. Imagine taking a base and suddenly, solar eclipse. lol

[TAA]

lol, when I saw this thread title I immediately thought of DayZ as well.

Nit time can indeed be overdone.

Edit: I have played this game at night time. It's fun for maybe 5 seconds then ceases to be fun. I only play at daytime now.
]

I love the DayZ night. If the people in that video all had vehicles with headlights, flashlights on their weapons, flares and NV gear it wouldn't be a problem. The night would still be lit up with player-made light and tracer fire. That DayZ video is how I wish the darkest nights would be, but only very few night cycles should be this dark.

The videos I saw of PS2 were too bright, but bearable if that was the brightest it gets every few cycles. Right now I just hope they let us turn off the headlights on vehicles. The illumination they provide is worthless and they just provide big targets for the enemy to shoot at.


edit: The E3 video for Day 3 linked above with TotalBiscuit looks pretty good. I still think that headlights are good for nothing other than giving away your position though.

[Synapse]

It could always get darker. I would like having to reply on night vision and flashlights

This. Put my vote in for a dayZ style dark night.

[lolroflroflcake]

I love nights in DayZ they're perfect IMO, many people don't because you have to change your playstyle at night and people just suck at that or don't like change. I think it would be fun if night was that dark in Planetside especially because light sources and other methods of seeing in the dark are more readily available. It would add more variety to the game.

[Envenom]

Perhaps a touch darker, but I think they're pretty close to the mark on this one.

[LazyBonez]

IMO this subject best left for beta when people can see how night looks in full 1080p on there own monitors. The E3 steams did look quite dark to me though will be fun for Infiltrators :D

Still need to see how effective the headlights/flashlights will be in game too!

[Policenaut]

I want it to be dark enough to where launching an organized night ops would give the attackers a serious advantage. Things like wearing black/dark color camo on soldiers and vehicles and everyone using thermal scopes.

[Seagoon]

I think they are close to the mark as far as moonlit nights go, but if it is overcast or a new moon then yeah it should be much darker.

I wonder if flashlights will help find cloakers both day and night? It might cause them to cast a shadow, or you might be able to see the refraction of light better, depends on how good the lighting engine is i guess...

Also those headlights need to be much stronger, and some sort of really high power spotlight for tanks and AA vehicles or even maxes would be cool.

[Gonefshn]

I hope it doesn't get any darker. I don't want to play in literal darkness.

[kertvon]

TB's vid definitely isn't full dark. There was some footage I saw from the E3 gameplay where it was DARK. Maybe not quite like DayZ, although I have never played it, but dark none the less. Do keep in mind that most of the combat we have seen is centered around the bases which have very sufficient light and the radiance from the buildings will actually beam on the environment thanks to forgelight. I want to peep some mid field night combat where there is less ambient lighting.

[Papscal]

With bright glowing ammo being fired from every weapon how dark do ya need it?

[noxious]

Make it too dark and people just turn up their gamma/brightness so that they can see anyway. When this happens the people that try to play the game without making the adjustment are at a disadvantage, while the people that do make the adjustment have an advantage but have to suffer with inferior visual quality.

Nobody wins when a game featuring night cycles is too dark.

[maddoggg]

The night is as dark as it should be in my opinion.
It's dark enought to change the pace and make you use different tactics,but if it's any darker than this than night vision would be an absolute must have.

[Dreamcast]

I used to think like you then I saw the E3 video.


it got pretty damn dark, i couldn't even see the gun.....but it was only for like 3 minutes since time was sped up.

[vasito]

Be careful what you wish for.

http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=5674

Edit: Also this --> http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=13467

Yes because in Planetside 2 you are a lone survivor in the wildness. There are absolutely no tracer fire from 2000 ppl no giant facilities that emit lights and no vehicles and spaceships......

[Otleaz]

Yes because in Planetside 2 you are a lone survivor in the wildness. There are absolutely no tracer fire from 2000 ppl no giant facilities that emit lights and no vehicles and spaceships......

Sounds like my kind of game!

[n2q0_matrix]

I would like it darker too. If I can see beyond 20 to 30 feet, it is too illuminated. We have dusk and dawn as our semi-illuminated phases, so if we add a REAL DARK midnight, we have all bases covered, all experiences covered.

It will be fun and challenging. Fun because it is challenging. Vehicles have lights, courtyards have lights....so don't worry.

Actually being able to sit in a shadow and not be seen....fantastic!! IF we can do that.

IMHO

[Durandal]

Actually being able to sit in a shadow and not be seen....fantastic!! IF we can do that.

IMHO

Yeah, except that in E3 build, as with all FPS games, when you are near an enemy their giant red name will give them away before they are even seen

[Pancake]

Just dark enough to make flashlights and night vision useful.

[Flaropri]

I think the lighting is fine considering the relative lack weather. I also noticed, and I could be somewhat mistaken, that Day 1 E3 seemed brighter out-doors than Day 2, I think that had a lot to do with cloud coverage. Likewise there will be some days that are darker because of clouds and future weather effects.

I'll need to see it personally though, before I come to full conclusion, as other aspects are important to consider (brightness settings on a given system both in-game and via external monitor/GPU settings, etc.)

[GreatMazinkaise]

It's plenty dark... too dark inside the one base we've seen thus far.

[I SandRock]

The night is dark and full of terrors...


Sorry had to do it.

[xnorb]

Just bring the brightness slider down and everybody is happy :)

I wouldn't like pitch blacks.

[Arovien]

Nighttime is dark enough.

[AnamNantom]

I'll be there. In the dark. Creeping through your base.

[Joe]

I think it was on TB's stream that i saw it get really dark it was darker then them pics, also i wonder if it will be really dark like Dayz where there are no bases with lights :D

[Otleaz]

I think it was on TB's stream that i saw it get really dark it was darker then them pics, also i wonder if it will be really dark like Dayz where there are no bases with lights :D

Those pictures are from TBs night video if that is what you mean. If you mean the E3 videos, they were being streamed through 3 computers so it is expected to be much lower quality than it is.

Night in this game is just going to be day with a dark blue haze over it.

[BillyBob]

If there's anything that probably could be tweaked in detail before launch, it's this.

Exactly how dark the nights will get at their darkest, is probably something that Beta will help sort out.

While I like the idea of the nights being really dark (motivating the use of various equipment etc), I'll wait to make any calls on this until I've (hopefully) experienced it myself in Beta.

/BB

[ChipMHazard]

Well if you make it really, really dark then players will simply up their brightness.:p

[The noob]

Well if you make it really, really dark then players will simply up their brightness.:p

Well, there have been suggestions of using Splinter Cell's system in regards to shadows and darkness. Simply raising the brightness would simply make the darkness and shadows grey instead of black, but otherwise change nothing. That might be a fix if people raising their brightness at night gets out of hand.

[Otleaz]

Well, there have been suggestions of using Splinter Cell's system in regards to shadows and darkness. Simply raising the brightness would simply make the darkness and shadows grey instead of black, but otherwise change nothing. That might be a fix if people raising their brightness at night gets out of hand.

That only works for pitch black scenarios.

[wasdie]

Didn't TBS even say that the night he was seeing wasn't as dark as some of the continents are going to get?

[The Degenatron]

The main thing to remember is that this is an easy tweak for the devs. They can literally change 1 number and it sets to night-time ambient light level. I believe I remember Higby saying that they were going to be tweaking this during the beta for the best balance possible. They have also said that they do want it to be dark at night.

It's this kind of over reaction that causes the trickle of ingame footage at leaked imaged to dry up.

[CutterJohn]

The idea of a war with this level of technology where night vision is not omnipresent is just silly.

Since night vision would be issued to everyone and everything, night itself loses meaning.

Which, in the end, means.. Why bother with making night, then brightening everything up with a green screen shader? Just makes the game look bad.

Soo.. Go bright nights!


Plus, as others have pointed out, people will pump their card settings anyway, and everyone else will too, if they want to not be disadvantaged. I guarantee the game will not be as dark as that DayZ night time, because they have actual shareholders to worry about, whereas Rocket does not, and can make things painful. So the game will be playable at night without NV. And then people will crank their gamma/brightness/contrast to make things visible, and night time is, once again, rendered moot.


Some things you simply cannot do effectively in video games.