Night time gameplay

[Pokerguy12 218]

What are the current problems with gameplay at night and what can be improved? Share your views and stories on this topic.

Edit:

My opinion is that NVG's are too rare and the only tool that gives you even a tiny chance of survival at night.

Without a pair you're pretty much stumbling around in pitch dark with a beam of light that tells everyone within an enormous radius 'hey look at me i cant see you but you can see me' why not take a shot at the pretty light?

Also the kilometer wide view distance at night the NVG's allow is nothing short of completely unrealistic, while the flashlight essentially makes your a slow moving target for everyone to see.

NVG's are too rare and hardcore players who are the only ones who will have a pair are have an extremely unfair game-brekaing advantage over players without them, not to also mention the skill difference, this explains why so many players avoid night time servers and choose to play on 24/7 day time ones. Immersion breaking but necessary in order to survive

A small suggestion: give the flashlight the function to be attached on any weapon and increase luminescence ALOT. Reduce the NVG view range at night. Street lamps on roads and towns.

Edited June 2, 2013 by Pokerguy10

[fanzypantz 2]

Its cool and realistic, maybe NVG's could be harder to find. Flares and chemlight or flashlights make it so you can see in the dark. How else would you normally? Try carving out cat eyes and transplant them!

[aussiebobby 82]

Apart from not being able to see without NVGs?

Lighting a chemlight or roadflare is like giving an ESP hack to other players as they can see you across the map

[Sensemann 145]

That's an easy one. Today's kids are not man enough and are afraid of the dark.

Solution: Full moon nights that make the night become daylight bright again :o

[Saethkept 134]

Problem: you enkindle a light source, you become a target.

Solution: find night vision goggles.

Problem: It's too dark without turning on a light, which makes you a target.

Cheap Solution: Turn up brightness and Gamma (I don't endorse this one)

Problem: Night vision goggles are too hard to find.

Solution: You have not played long enough; keep searching, have faith.

Problem: You are trying to ride your old bicycle to Gorka from your camp on the coast. It's pitch black and raining like biblical times ten. You keep bumping your head into trees.

Solution: You don't need one.

Why?: If you've got the backbone to attempt that, you never needed a light source in the first place.

[BarryManalow 1]

If only Arma could simulate the `` night eye``.

But true enough if its waxing moon and overcast. You can up your gamma all you want it wont help a bit:D Need a light soure for that.

[terrorizer33 131]

Problem: nighttime is too dark, cant see f all..

solution: go to bed, you've probably been playing way too long

[leviski 2152]

I wish nighttime was more playable

I mean flares even though useful still do not provide enough lighting

I wish we could get flood lighs or something to light up a town

[Hello moto 70]

Problem: people can't handle playing in the dark.

Solution: people should just play in the dark.

Nothing like double tapping the torch button to see your next spot, then creeping over to it, quick listen for zombies and repeat until you're where ever you planned to be. If more people played on night time I would only play exclusively on night time.

[RJTurneR 112]

I wish nighttime was more playable

I mean flares even though useful still do not provide enough lighting

I wish we could get flood lighs or something to light up a town

Flares provide realistic amount of light. 85-90% of other games, you play a mission or a multiplayer map at night.. But its not really night time, its just spruced up with other effects (See BF3 for example).

Night time on DayZ is as good as it gets, those who don't like it should stop playing. The servers that make it 24/7 daytime are horrible IMHO. Whats the point in removing a main element of a game.. Infact, no, removing something that actually happens IRL every night!

I love playing night time, even if I can't see anything, its immersive and realistic. If your in the country side at night time in real life, with no moon light or artificial light, you won't be able to see much. Thats how it is in DayZ, and that is how it should be, and should stay.

Not to mention when the server starts to get dark, a whole new challenge opens up. People start to take more risks, looting high risk areas for the hope of a big reward, weighing that against the fact that they shouldnt be seen.

The reason DayZ turned into a cluster of KoS players, is because majority of servers removed night time. I can see people struggling to play the standalone, because its challenges are too much and unlike the mod, they most likely can't change anything.

[homeslice1986 9]

Night time is where I've had some of my best experiences on DayZ, without NVGs I should add. Learn to embrace the darkness, and how to use flares and chemlights correctly.

[papriCZka 6]

Night is your friend. B)

[geoffdeath 43]

Was playing on a server last night with a group of players taking on NPC and zeds.

Had nvg but had brought the wrong main gun type so played without them.

Sure it was harder but was still a lot of fun and a more intense game.

Had squads of NPC loaded up in vehicles hunting us which was much more intense without the use of nvg.

[dajeroen 11]

The solution is pretty simple: full moon nights.

[p4triot 207]

What are the current problems with gameplay at night and what can be improved?

Edit:

My opinion is that NVG's are too rare and the only tool that gives you even a tiny chance of survival at night.

Without a pair you're pretty much stumbling around in pitch dark with a beam of light that tells everyone within an enormous radius 'hey look at me i cant see you but you can see me' why not take a shot?

Also the kilometer wide view distance at night the NVG's allow is nothing short of completely unrealistic, while the flashlight essentially makes your a slow moving target for everyone to see.

NVG's are too rare and hardcore players who are the only ones who will have a pair are have an extremely unfair game-brekaing advantage over players without them.

A small suggestion: give the flashlight the function to be attached on any weapon and increase luminescence ALOT. Reduce the NVG view range at night. Street lamps on roads and towns.

First of all:

- FUCK the street lamps on roads and towns. I have no better way to state this.

Regarding the rest of your ideas.

I like them. Just one thought, NVG range its fine. If it gets lowered, hope its just a little. What I would do is add batteries (and the staff already said they will) and set the duration to about 2hours or so (depending on how rare are the NVG to find, and the batteries). If I had a NVG which I can only use for about 2 hours, I would only do that on extreme situations (like being shot or smth); rest of the time while traveling I will use my flashlight, which, ofc, has to be able to use with my weapons. And also being able to point straight forward while running and even sprinting

As it is now, seems like my character is retarded. While running the flashlight now moves as if he doesn't had one. And he also doesn't know how to do this simple action.

But hey, I can shoot from 1.5km with a simple zeroing!

Edited May 30, 2013 by p4triot

[Fonebook 126]

I find that night time play is some of the best. But everyone is afraid of the dark and finding servers that run normal night time AND are populated is rare. Many times while playing at night I turn on the in-game music to get that spooky feeling back from when I started playing that I have seen so many people talk about how much they miss.

Yes, chemlights and flares make you a target, but who said you had to use the stupidly? The light radius on a chemlight is pretty short, so you can throw those without alerting people that aren't in the immediate area. Its actually somewhat crazy in that you can't see the chemlights at all until you cross the radius and then they light up instantly like a camera flash. If you are going to carry a light source, chemlight is the way to go. Carrying flares is really dangerous, but you can use them in other ways. When I am going to loot an area at night, I usually throw flares in many directions around the area. That way whoever sees my flares will have a larger area to search for me. Also, many times I will throw flares at places as I leave them to draw people away from me while I loot elsewhere w/ a chemlight.

Night-time play is some of the best play, I mean really dark where you can't see anything. No moon. In fact I have had so much fun playing in the dark that if they said tomorrow that they were removing NVGs from the game, I wouldn't mind. It seems that most players demand daylight or they won't play at all. This is easy to see when server populations die off when the sun goes down. Even though the nighttime is the easiest time to avoid zeds.

In conclusion, why the hell are so many people scared of the dark?

[bfisher 561]

The best way to fix all the "problems" of night time play is to have a day/night cycle of 2-4 hours like every single other game out there. The way it is now, people either play when it's light out or they shut down and find another server. If you only had to put up with the pitch black for a couple of hours, people would be more inclined to use flares, flashlights, chemlights and whatnot to keep playing. it would lend itself to more tactical thinking. Like if you don't have NV goggles, you best find a place to lay low for an hour until it gets light out. Or maybe you want to wait until dark to sneak into Cherno.

[wooly-back-jack 294]

I recently installed the powerplants addon to my server which adds some light to towns at night, I haven't got around to being on the server at the right time to see it yet though lol (other players on server say its working)

[Jonsse 69]

The problem with nighttime is that it's a game. In real life circumstances you would not wander around woods and towns in complete darkness, you would find a place to sleep, or wait out the night. But in a game you're supposed to play, and having the game pitch black just means that you can't play right now. That's not very fun. It's counter intuitive regarding game design.

Taking real life as a comparison; human eyes get used to the dark pretty quickly. It's nowhere near as good as some animals like cats see, but you can make out shapes and get proper depth perception. So even on a cloudy night with no lightpollution from city lights you're able to see something, not much, but something. So adjusting gamma and brightness is not cheating because there is no function in the game to emulate true vision in the dark. Or a function to facilitate nighttime gameplay. We have to make our own.

And because it's a game, the darkness affects zombies hardly at all. If zombies saw as much as you, they would not be able to distinguish you from other zombies even if they bumped in to you while walking. So in a lot of ways, nighttime gameplay is very broken. It has great atmosphere, but in regards to gameplay it just doesn't work. It's clearly designed for singleplayer.

[RJTurneR 112]

Majority of the post above I have to disagree with.

You can not say real life circumstances, why? Because no one in the world has lived through or lives in a zombie apocalypse. You can't say what you would do if one would occur as well, no one knows what they would do in any situation like that until such an event occurs.

But lets say if one did occur though. DayZ is based on surviving. This includes finding supplies, equipment, and other things in order to acheive this. It also includes the chance of finding other people, whom you do not know if they will kill you or let you live. So taking that into account, I'd say looking at it from a logical point of view, that looting and such during the night is much safer than day time, especially as you say that zombies can not tell you apart from human or zombie during the night, which we also wouldn't know becuse.. Guess what? We don't live in a world full of zombies. Watching The Walking Dead does not count...

Moving and entering high risk areas during the day, leaves you open to being killed by other people, or zombies. So night time is pretty safe if you look at it that way.

And is this a game, I would think it would be pretty difficult to put into the game a way of your eyes adapting to the night time. I'm no game designer.. But I just imagine it being something difficult to pull off. And adjusting your gamma and brightness is a poor excuse in that regard, it's an exploit of the game, because you have to look at the fact that there are players that play the game for the immersivness and the experience, and then the players that don't pay much mind to such things and do whatever they can to assit themselves, the gamma exploit being one of them. It ruins the experience of the mod for those who play it legit and properly. And don't say "Well why don't they just do it as well..", because that just ignores my point.

Nightime is fine. ArmA is based on realism and DayZ is a mod of it, so if there was any fault you want to point the finger at the ArmA engine. But seeming as ArmA is based on realism, and DayZ is a mod and soon to be based on a updated engine, then night time will remain in the game no matter how many people complain and whine about it.

One thing I will agree with is shorter day/night time, purely because the amount of people that play the game across the world. Something like 6 hour day/night would work well, then it gives everyone a chance to experience both day and night.

Maybe the solution is for people to play DayZ with their light on in a room.. If their that scared.

Edited May 31, 2013 by RJTurneR

[Trizzo 632]

The NVG depth/fov is way to generous, especially in third person. NVG should be FPV only...but as for rarity in game care to mention the last time you found or saw gen 4 night vision goggles IRL?

And night time is not as bad as you think. Try it. Try chem lights. Avoid open areas. Only real worry is a DMR. Night time is a good time to play for safe moving, looting and ironiclly looking for NVG in high yield areas. Night time combat light by flare is fun to.

[fanzypantz 2]

I agree with most of the post here, but one thing I would see gone is the ability to change ur gamma and brightness that high. I mean for some hours in a night it completely takes away the need for NVG's and even in pitch black u can see something. But making the night more realistic and NVG's really rare, because they actually are kinda rare. You dont see a full military squad in NVG's all the time. And leftover NVG's would also be rather hard to find. Maybe there could be like 50 or so NVG's on a server at all times. Counting those in use, if they just get stacked away for a while they could get deleted and respawned somewhere.

But my main concern is that everyone or most people change their gamma at night.

[Fonebook 126]

Changing the clock away from a 24 hour cycle is the absolute last thing that should be done. Yes, playing at night is hard, it should be. In some ways it makes sense that the servers are less populated because in the game, just as in real life, most people fear the darkness. I think many of the players asking for changes to the game in this thread have not learned how to play at night. Also, the OP said NVGs are the only tool that give you a slim chance of survival ... ? That is crazy talk, your wits are what determine your survival, not your equipment. Equipment can aid a player in surviving the world but the mass between their ears is what really wins or losses the day. Yes the night time is scary and difficult, but if you don't feel comfortable playing in it, then don't. It is always daytime somewhere in the world.

[sobieski12 835]

Night time game-play in a nutshell.

* High Gamma

* High Brightness

* Very High HDR

^

This is what I'd say about 90% of DayZ player-base uses, yet never admit it.

* The other 10% try to find NVGs or try to use both flares and flashlights... lol. Might as-well mark yourself on the map while your at it.

[Jonsse 69]

There seems to be a misunderstanding to what it's like to play during the night without gamma/brightness adjustment. Chemlights, the flashlight and flares enable you to see something during the night, but they make you a huge target of opportunity, even to zombies. Without them there is no gameplay, not during the dark nights. That's the problem, it means that when the server is dark, no-one that does not have NVG's can play. You have to turn Gamma and brightness way up just to see a well 2 meters in front of you. And because you can fix the vision hindrance externally, playing without it means you're at a huge disadvantage. That does not encourage people to play, and that is never a good feature.

What's wrong with NVG's is that they're not goggles, they're darkness removal filters? The NVG's should provide vision similar to binoculars, just without zoom. They should not just remove darkness and tint everything green. And they should not work in 3rd person view. It goes against the reason why games like Arma2 have third person mode, for spacial awareness. Something that can not be simulated on a computer screen in first person. When you're wearing night vision goggles you should have no spacial awareness. They have low field of view, just like binoculars. All this stems from Arma2 being a single player game. The NVG's are designed to be too powerful of an advantage for multiplayer.