I've been having tons of problems with the night ever since tone mapping got "improved" in the beta patch. It's pretty ridiculous now. The sky is bright as the fires of hell, but everything below it doesn't even have a texture, it's just paint-bucket-filled black. I can see the silhouette of the tips of trees against the sky and that's it. Everything on the ground is just pure black. No outlines, silhouettes, nothing. Just black. Everyone says to just use flares or chemlights, etc, but they don't work nearly as well anymore. The flares just have a circle of light, that's smaller now than it was before, and outside that circle it's pure black again. I really think the people telling me to use flares and stuff have never played on a recent beta patch. I did mess around with a flashlight for a while. The flashlights work very well. However it seems my character who can run miles with pounds upon pounds of equipment, fix up his own bullet wound, and fire weapons with pinpoint accuracy, does not have the competence required to point a flashlight forward while running. And then there's the added fact that flashlights aggro zombies. I don't understand the people who can apparently get around fine at night. There's no way you've been playing on the recent beta patches. Something needs to be done and if making it slightly brighter isn't an option, I think the flashlights can be tweaked a little to work very well.