every server is dark

[Statik (DayZ) 2695]

Holy shit. My comment got a popular tag.

[hogscraper 328]

For guys talking about man up and play at night it has nothing to do with not wanting to play at night. It has to do with only being able to play at night. I have had to make up my own day/night cycle by hopping between regular servers and 24/7 daylight servers. I was off work today, logged in at 10:30am (GMT-6) and the server was light. Twenty minutes later the server restarted and it was dark when it came back. I started hopping from one to another and everyone I came across in the USA was pitch black before noon. I've come across a few west coast servers that seemed to go through sunrise about an hour before I go to bed during the week.

 

I've always wondered why so many losers mock people wanting to check out the map in the light. Its personal preference that shouldn't even register on another person's radar. I thought the hate against it was weird when my bandit friend made it clear today. He was insisting we play on night servers this morning and I asked why he was so eager to only play in the dark. He says "Its easier to get kills in the dark. You don't have to hunt your prey. You don't have to carefully stalk them or worry about them even seeing you. Its like having that suit from Crysis. All you have to do is hide in a dark corner and wait for the flashlights. And holy shit are there a lot of flashlights." 

[Morrighan 15]

Where to begin? 

 

1. This idea that the came should be convenient or work to your schedule is borderline ridiculous. "I don't get home from work/school/cavorting with my mistress until X and I don't get to play in daylight and that's not fair." While I could go on the whole "life's not fair" tirade, I won't. But how is it fair to the people who have more manageable schedules that enjoy the current time-frame that they should have their immersion otherwise broken for your benefit? What makes your desire to play in daylight more important than someone else's desire to have immersive experience? Majority rule?

 

2. 24/7 Daylight shouldn't be an option. Why? Well, for one: It would make a good chunk of the items/loot in the game absolutely fucking pointless. "Oh hey I got a head-lamp.... On this server that has fifteen seconds of night." You could argue to change the lootspawn for servers with 24/7 day, but then with the tweaked tables it becomes easier to obtain certain items where a flashlight or a set of batteries might have spawned. Giving people who do their looting on 24/7 day servers an unwarranted advantage against those who have to manage both daytime resources and nighttime resources.

 

3. Raising your gamma "so you can see at night" is cheating. Hands down. It's giving you an advantage over people who are otherwise playing the game fairly. By definition, that's cheating. And in doing so you breed an environment where everyone is casually cheating the game with the excuse that "everyone is doing it." It's admittedly something that can't be regulated or stopped, but please don't try and justify it as something other than cheating.

 

4. Long-time players of the mod not wanting the status-quo to be changed because of newcomers are both a blessing and a curse. They can be detrimental to progress in some areas because of their clinging to old mechanics/decisions that may not be for the best. But on the other side of that coin, they can also be the element that reminds a developer where the "heart" of their game lies. I stated this to say that: DayZ is not intended to be easy, convenient, or hell even fun sometimes. It's a very love-it or hate-it experience and there will always be some resistance in the community (especially those of us who have been here a long time) towards change, especially when that change is seen as something that's purely for convenience or "easy-mode" as some might say.

 

1. People who have a day job should not be restricted from experiencing all aspects of the game because of some ludicrous demand for your preferred daytime set up. Is someone forcing you onto daytime servers, kicking and screaming? Did they chain you to your desk, tape your eyes open, glue your hand to your mouse and force you to play on daylight servers? No? Then WHY are you trying to force others who ARE bound by a job--shocking! Employment!--but would still like to play with ALL of the features of the game that they bought?

 

2. I don't use lamps or headlights even when I have them at night, because they're as good as screaming my position to the world. The fact that there's a shovel in the game doesn't obligate me to dig trenches; the fact that there are flashlights doesn't mean I have to use them. Again, you're attempting to dictate to everyone else how they must play. No one's trying to do that to you. If you like night, go to a night server. If you don't, don't go there. You can't force people to play a set-up they don't like. They will just leave.

 

3. I don't care if gamma settings are cheating. People's monitor configurations differ, and I know that firsthand because I used to design gaming environments and what looked bright on my screen was sometimes almost unplayably dim on other people's. It's a big world. There are a lot of monitors out there. You cut out gamma and brightness and you cut out whole swaths of people. More, and this may shock you, I'm not in DayZ for any kind of horror. I don't like horror, and I'm not scared by DayZ in any case. I'm in it for the survival aspects, and for crafting, gathering, exploration. So making it night for hours on end doesn't increase my immersion, it just gets in the way of the things I like most to do. Not everyone likes the same things you like or plays for the same reasons. But again--no one's forcing you to play something you don't like.

 

4. No one's demanding easy mode! They want to play the game during the day AND the night! I don't get how this keeps getting missed. It is NOT an unreasonable request to ask to be able to participate in ALL available aspects of the game, ESPECIALLY when primetime gaming is in the evening after work for the vast majority of civilization. How does THEIR getting to play on a day server ruin YOUR immersion? Don't go in that day server in the evening, then. Pick a different server.

 

As far as the difficulty level...I've said it before and I'll say it again. All the nifty detailed stuff is no good if only the expert players survive to find it. If the devs hide things so well no one finds it, then what's the point in creating it? If daytime is only accessible to a subsection of the DayZ population, why make it? All of these dictatorial pronouncements about the "spirit of the game" and accusations of "easy mode" are just elitism. Because not everyone has played as much as you, new people join all the time, and if you DON'T vary the experience levels and difficulty levels in your game, then you have a stagnant game where the number of people playing it is perpetually decreasing. What about people who've never played DayZ before? If their introduction to it is hours and hours of pitch-black night, repeated starvation and dying of thirst, zombie mauling, and running around unable to find any loot because they don't know what's available or where to find it and can't see in the dark, how long do you REALLY think they're going to stay? The success of this game long-term is dependent on constantly gaining new players. If the "spirit of DayZ" as interpreted by you is to tell those people to sod off and quit ruining your immersion, then there will eventually be no game.

[Inception. 9443]

Holy shit. My comment got a popular tag.

 

On-topic please.

[Twinsen72 0]

I've sorta decided to only play daytime servers. 

 

Reason 1: The first day, it was pitch black starting at 14:00 local and continued night time for 18 hours after that.  Nah. 

 

Reason 2: I can only play at night, because during the day I'm out doing stuff because IT IS DAY.

[blitz 64]

Pffft, I wish my server was dark, It's a EU server and it is daytime now, on the server. I have played on it on different times through the day IRL and it is never dark.

[DoctorNick 0]

the us east, west and central servers have been all day for me...

[octarine 60]

11 hours played so far all at night. daytime servers are pings in the high 100's and 200's so it basically unplayable. The first 8 hours were fun but now its just getting monotonous and boring.

[hawaiianess 8]

Look for the general east-coast or west-coast servers, not specific states. I have found that almost every single one of them are daylight. Look for general areas in the server name not specific states or places.

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[Funkmaster Rick 373]

As a note, it's winter. Those who are complaining about daylight cycles being less than 12 hours need to learn how seasons work. =p

[warmonger917 26]

What other game will have you taking fire, chambering 1 round of ammo, killing the attacker before 5 minutes later settling down in the gaslight reading "the hound of the baskervilles".

Without the claustrophobic night of Dayz it would seem like half the experience was taken away for me.

[Papanowel (DayZ) 34]

As a note, it's winter. Those who are complaining about daylight cycles being less than 12 hours need to learn how seasons work. =p

 

Depends where you live ;)

Edited December 22, 2013 by Papanowel

[Dr. Goner 661]

Ok, at first I was taking this "it's always dark wahhhh wahhhh" crowd lightly but now I'm getting pissed. If you want to play some easy game DO NOT BUY DAYZ. This game is supposed to be hard. That's what makes it great. It's this crowd that ruined the mod an I'm afraid their whiny asses are already starting to be heard in standalone. Please, it's a day night cycle. Playing at night in my opinion is a DayZ right of passage. You will never truly understand how amazing this game is until you've struggled in the dark.

[HellSnake 26]

No i won't be happy with this kind of crap, how can this called be realistic if the day/night cycle have to skip this much time? This 3 hour cycle means that the time has to progress 8 times faster! Movement of sun, moon and stars would be nearly more scary than the zombies^^. Also it's unrealistic that the night is always shorter than the day.

 

I keep on to the idea that day/night-Cycle only should be slightly reduced to shift the border between day and night on the server after every real day (so everyone can experience day AND night). Also i don't like to have servers with different timezones, because this will benefit server hoppers too much in my oppinion.

The game needs a globalized time to prevent server hoppers, that's for sure. But I think that in that case, the daytime cycle needs to be shortened, so people can enjoy a full day and night in one session, and not be stuck in permanent day or night everytime they play because they can only play at the same time everyday.

Please note that I said I neither want to be stuck at only night, nor day. So don't call me a noob that's afraid of the dark. I LOVE NIGHT TIME (Insert Bane joke here).

Maybe a time cycle ranging from 6 to 12 hours long would be a good middle ground, with varying night/day duration ratio depending on the season, to keep it authentic.

 

This way, everyone will be able to enjoy/suffer every phase of the day, without being stuck in one.

 

Midnight                              Noon                             Midnight

      |-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|

      0                  6                  12                18                24

 

This is the current time cycle. The way it is right now, people can server hop to get permanent daylight and making the game easier for them. But if the devs make a global time lock, say, GMT time, then someone that can only play from 18:00 to 24:00 in the same timezone will only play at night. Ever. The most daylight they will get is a little dusk. Exactly the opposite will happen to someone that lives in the opposite side of the world. Not exactly a fair solution.

 

   

Midnight         Noon         Midnight          Noon         Midnight

      |-------------|-------------|-------------|-------------|

      0                  6                  12                18                24

With something like this 12 hour cycle, the same person will play from noon to midnight. Or midnight to noon if he lives in the opposite side of the world, and the only thing that allows them to skip the night is logging off until it dawns.

I think it's a fair and still authentic way to deal with this problem. Please don't give me the inmersion bullshit, because nothing is less inmersive than being disconnected from a server and then connecting to another, just to see it is in a completely different time zone. And I don't think anyone can notice the difference between 24 and 6/8 hour cycles without a watch in hand. You won't notice the movement of the sun anyway, it's too slow.

 

EDIT: ok, those "timebars" are messed up when the post is published... but you all understand them anyway :D

EDIT 2: Fixed!

Edited December 22, 2013 by HellSnake

[jbrodjeski@yahoo.com 16]

Why is the day and night cycle on a 24 hour cycle like real life?  Or is it turned off currently?

 

Most people play the game at the same time everyday, after work, or on the weekend.  They should experience a day night cycle in game that is on around a 1 hour timer.  That way we have a chance to experience surviving at night, making a campfire, keeping warm etc.

[Zyryanoff 227]

Pick the right server.

[overdosed (DayZ) 77]

First of all I LOVE games with actual dark nights or games that incorporate darkness as a part of the gameplay. Ive spend hundreds of hours playing fallout 3 using mods for darker nights and interiors coupled with nvg mods, and the metro games  are in my top 5 favourite game series.

 

So im all up for dark nights, but currently nights in dayz are too dark. There should be a balance between too dark and and not dark enough. For me this means that its dark enough to facilitate the need for flashlights in buildings and its dark enough so that nvgs would give you a real advantage. This means that there must be ambient lighting constantly no matter if the moon is up or not and that players should be able to see atleast the outlines of their character and items on the ground at all times unless in a windowless building. 

 

Having the gamma slider though kinda destroys any improvements that are done to night time as ppl would aways opt for the best visibility. Theres no real fix for that except reducing how far the slider goes and somehow restricting gamma and brightness to be handled only by the game and inturn making monitor or gpu settings useless. Though i have no idea if thats even possible. 

[kichilron 8550]

There's a thread about it. It's 15 pages long. You will get all your answers there, I suppose.

 

http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/154122-every-server-is-dark/

[kevsta545 451]

No reason to double post my friend!

[twinturbonet (DayZ) 294]

Yea, the slider is free to move because users have different monitors.  Unfortunately, I don't think there is much they can do about that.

[twinturbonet (DayZ) 294]

Yea, I've found several night servers and several day servers.  However, I have yet to find a server where I've seen the sun go down and come up in one sitting.  IF the cycle is turned on, they definitely have it set for the longest days ever (or nights). 

[frosti 2165]

This is night for me with normal gamma and normal clouds:

 

 

This is night for me with cranked up gamma and normal clouds:

 

And this is the same night after disabling clouds and cranking up gamma:

 

[enforcer1975 1111]

but currently nights in dayz are too dark

 

What do you expect night to be? Some kind of fake hollywood night with night lights flying around so the audience can actually see the characters running around instead of a black movie screen??

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkness

 

 

Brightness and gamma 1.0 and my monitor shows true black...i can't imagine people with "grey=black" monitors to have problems with night.

Edited December 26, 2013 by Enforcer

[overdosed (DayZ) 77]

Yea, the slider is free to move because users have different monitors.  Unfortunately, I don't think there is much they can do about that.

 

Yes thats true but currently in dayz you can increase your gamma and brightness double over what you can in most other games.

 

 

What do you expect night to be? Some kind of fake hollywood night with night lights flying around so the audience can actually see the characters running around instead of a black movie screen??

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkness

 

 

Brightness and gamma 1.0 and my monitor shows true black...i can't imagine people with "grey=black" monitors to have problems with night.

 

Uhm I see youre a fan of looking at a black screen being able to only distinguish the silhouettes of trees and buildings against the night sky, which btw is FILLED with stars and even if the moon was down youd have much better visibility. And I dont know if youve noticed but when the moon goes down even with both gamma and brightness maxed all you see is pitch black except again the silhouettes of things against the sky, which again is FILLED with stars. Dunno if youve ever been outside of a city, but yeah in a clear night even without the moon and no light polution you can see much better than this...

[OrLoK 16182]

First of all I LOVE games with actual dark nights or games that incorporate darkness as a part of the gameplay. Ive spend hundreds of hours playing fallout 3 using mods for darker nights and interiors coupled with nvg mods, and the metro games  are in my top 5 favourite game series.

 

So im all up for dark nights, but currently nights in dayz are too dark. There should be a balance between too dark and and not dark enough. For me this means that its dark enough to facilitate the need for flashlights in buildings and its dark enough so that nvgs would give you a real advantage. This means that there must be ambient lighting constantly no matter if the moon is up or not and that players should be able to see atleast the outlines of their character and items on the ground at all times unless in a windowless building. 

 

Having the gamma slider though kinda destroys any improvements that are done to night time as ppl would aways opt for the best visibility. Theres no real fix for that except reducing how far the slider goes and somehow restricting gamma and brightness to be handled only by the game and inturn making monitor or gpu settings useless. Though i have no idea if thats even possible. 

merging