From a pure game design point of view the night IS to dark. Horror as a concept is much more effective when it hints rather than shows. In game play terms this is why Monster Closests (like Doom 3) are not good horror but the hinted evil in Silent Hill is. In survival horror there are several "horrible" concepts, solitude, scarcity, no hope of actually seeing a better day, and the basic animalistic brutish behavior of humanity when the social fabric has been obliterated. To me DayZ is probably one of the best survival horror games ever made, and certain tweaks will make it even better. Mark my words, they will be compelled to either shorten the day/night cycle greatly or simply reduce the darkness significantly when this thing reachs general availability. You can already see that people activly seek out the servers where daylight is present, because when everything else is considered, daylight DayZ is simply a better game than nighttime DayZ. Im sure some will say, well look all the servers are full now 24/7, and thats true but thats a function of scarcity of play spots not because people like playing in the dark. If you really look you can see that the night time servers are not the server of choice for people but rather the choice you make if you want to play but no other server is avaiable. Which should scream out to a game designer that you have a design problem with your game. As someone said earlier for a new player especially, darkness does make the game pretty much unplayable. Cheers, -Gooney
