PLEASE reverse the NEW "Client Side Personal Night Light"

[0.64 Freerider 261]

UPDATE #1 01/30/2020: After some testing of the 1.07 update that went online today, I can say that the night is very dark now. The "Cleint Side Personal Night Light" is at this point almost non-existent [estimated range about ~1m]. You cannot see the other end of a room without a light source, which is critical to hiding at night. Great job by the devs in this regard, virtually rolling back the change and adjusting the lighting configuration to be even sharper, instead of fully catering to a more casual and clueless group of players. There is still the option to have a "bright night" as you can see, which I have not personally looked at, but I'm sure will please those who want to enjoy a nighttime setting without the "hardcoreness" that comes with it naturally.

 

Hello everybody, Dear Devs,

 

Love you continuing the underpromies/overdeliver approach, fantastic patch so far!! What bums me out is the newly added "personal night light", in case you guys missed it, here is a quote from the patch notes:

Quote

• Added: Client side personal night light (environment is subtly illuminated from camera at night to save players from becoming completely blind without a light source)

Of course I get where this is coming from. You don't want people, especially new players become completely disoriented, but DayZ always was and is today meant to be a hardcore survival game and players spawn with a torch, which I believe lasts around 15-20 minutes. This should be enough. Also, as @Derleth and others have confirmed, the moonlight isn't functional or perhaps even existent at the moment. Since the "Personal Night Light" has in no way be labeled as "placeholder", I'm going to take it at face value.

 

Now here is my problem with this new artificial personal light and that is that every building you enter now shimmers in this blue light and you can see everything that's inside, which makes flashlights basically obsolete to be used for looting purposes.

I think we can all agree that it is always exciting when you enter a town in the night and you see some building in the distance where a flashlight is shining through the windows, showing you that there is someone there and you can try and sneak up on them.

As for sneaking you used to be able to hide in bushes and people would walk right by you as they could just not see you unless they used a light source. They now fixed the breath being completely visible at night time which could give your position away:

Quote

• Tweaked: Slightly darkened breath vapour particle to avoid glowing at night

But that doesn't have much impact now unfortunately. This is a casualization that hurts night time gameplay and the lighting design that was put a lot of effort into. I hope you can see my points and here are some screenshots to underline those:

EDIT: Perhaps a compromise would be to disable it at least for when you are inside Structures. But that would still leave the problem of sneaking up on people.

In the following clip you can see how trees and bushes appear to be glowing, provided by @Derleth:

Edited January 29, 2020 by 0.64 Freerider

[TheLukeTheory 0]

Personally, I haven't seen it in action (aside from your screenshots), but I'm on the fence. To be fair, I also don't know how dark night is currently in DayZ. I know that for a while, it was brightened unnecessarily, which would make me think such a feature is pointless. Slightly off topic, but I really was not a huge fan of the 'static' to prevent people from boosting gamma.

[Weyland Yutani (DayZ) 1159]

All they have to do is add street lights like they did on day 1 of SA. Each town had a street light and it looked great! Obviously more is the plan.

Make a maintenance system for power grids so the its an apocalypse purists don't drown in their own tears.

 

Edited March 26, 2019 by Weyland Yutani (DayZ)

[amadieus 315]

Agree with especially the interior lightning. The darkness of the interior was pretty good during 1.01, please get this back. It is waaaay to bright inside houses now!

[Sqeezorz 839]

What you see, others see differently, why? Please read the post in the link.

https://forums.dayz.com/topic/243265-night-time-is-unfairly-darker-for-some-players-vs-others/?do=findComment&comment=2426502

[Guy Smiley 534]

1 hour ago, Sqeezorz said:

What you see, others see differently, why? Please read the post in the link.

https://forums.dayz.com/topic/243265-night-time-is-unfairly-darker-for-some-players-vs-others/?do=findComment&comment=2426502

Simple solution.  All the devs have to do is grab a few high end monitors, crank the gamma on the monitor and adjust the game accordingly.  Those who have low end or very old monitors my have a little more difficult time but thems the breaks.  Assuming the devs aren't going to bend over and cater to the casual/console crowd, which sadly, looks like they are 

Edited March 26, 2019 by Guy Smiley

[RSF TheCapulet 45]

Leave it on regular 3rd person servers, lose it on veteran servers. 

[Uncle Zed 272]

Meh, I'll just keep using Artic Latitudes on my server so there's no pitch black, only twilight. 

[g4borg 74]

they should just tone it further, so it becomes similar to natural human dark vision.

it should be darker or even off in buildings.

it should be greyscale.

it should need a while to activate and be reset when you encounter a bright light

and of course it should not illuminate things completely.

perfectly fine however if they have a system like this.

[0.64 Freerider 261]

3 hours ago, g4borg said:

they should just tone it further, so it becomes similar to natural human dark vision.

it should be darker or even off in buildings.

it should be greyscale.

it should need a while to activate and be reset when you encounter a bright light

and of course it should not illuminate things completely.

perfectly fine however if they have a system like this.

@g4borg Well, as long as the problems that result from this artificial light remain, it doesn't matter to me how much they tone it down. Another problem is that you kind of lose feel for how visible you are from the outside, because inside everything is super bright and you can't tell if people who scope in from a distance would be able to see you. It's just not a good thing imo and like I said. It renders actual light sources pretty much obsolete.

[Deadboy (DayZ) 21]

I agree. This effect is best set to be very, very subtle, because we're not cats. And it robs the game of some of it's best atmosphere (indoors), at night.

[Derleth 1357]

This feature is an extremely poor attempt to appease the "NIGHT IS TOO DARK!!!" crowd. Instead of fixing the moon (which if you haven't noticed has not shed any light whatsoever since Beta, it is now just a flat texture on the skybox) they come up with this artificial magic "personal night light" nonsense. It has me triggered like nothing else previously in this game's development. I just can't believe they implemented such a fundamentally flawed and poorly conceived feature. It needs to go and it needs to go BEFORE this patch is pushed to stable.

I wrote a more detailed post in the Experimental patch thread:

 

Edited March 27, 2019 by Derleth

[0.64 Freerider 261]

2 hours ago, Derleth said:

This feature is an extremely poor attempt to appease the "NIGHT IS TOO DARK!!!" crowd. Instead of fixing the moon (which if you haven't noticed has not shed any light whatsoever since Beta, it is now just a flat texture on the skybox) they come up with this artificial magic "personal night light" nonsense. It has me triggered like nothing else previously in this game's development. I just can't believe they implemented such a fundamentally flawed and poorly conceived feature. It needs to go and it needs to go BEFORE this patch is pushed to stable.

I wrote a more detailed post in the Experimental patch thread:

 

Thank you, couldn't have put it better. Backed your post. You complement my point wonderfully by talking about moonlight as well. You put it perfectly in your post, I'll just quote you for the people here:

Quote

[...]Bring back moonlight. Make it interact with cloud cover so on a clear night with full moon you get something like the first screenshot below, and with thick cloud cover you get the total darkness on current stable. That is how it should be, I think most players can agree about that. "Personal night lights".... Pffft![...]

They probably have problems with getting the moonlight and the "gamma-hack-block" working at the same time.

[Pavlos Ge 6]

Guys I really don't know what your problem with night light is.It seems to be about PERFECT now.Before my screen was completely black like i switched my monitor off.You could literally do nothing with this than sit in a house and wait for the sunrise or logout and wait.Now u can see the basic figures of trees and houses in front you so you can AT LEAST find somewhere safe to settle for the night.Common you like staring at a switched off monitor ? Even with a light source it was almost impossible to make basic traveling in the game.I think they just found the perfect middle ground for people who want bright day-like night (which in my opinion is bad because it's no different than having daytime visibility) and those who want completely monitor-off like night.So this one is the best of both worlds imo.And don't tell me that you could see basic stuff with the old night because a) your monitor is problematic/bad with washed out colors  or  b) you set your monitor's gamma really high.I have a TN (which does not have the greatest blacks) calibrated for real life color reproduction (as close as it can be with a TN panel) and i couldnt see anything rather than a white dot in the middle of the screen.I can't imagine how this would be for people with VA or IPS panel which have more lifelike black colors...Just relax and enjoy, it doesn't make it less ''hardcore' being able to stare at your screen and see BASIC figures that makes you think 'oh my monitor is not turned off'. :)

[radamantyz 83]

 

Personally I think this is a temporary solution and the dev do not plan to make it permanent , what we need is a moonlight that really works, and nvg like the mod times.

[Derleth 1357]

2 hours ago, radamantyz said:

 

Personally I think this is a temporary solution and the dev do not plan to make it permanent , what we need is a moonlight that really works, and nvg like the mod times.

I hope you are right, I really hope so.

I uploaded a short video to illustrate just how bad it looks with the glowing trees (and breath fog, although that was supposedly fixed...).

 

 

[0.64 Freerider 261]

3 hours ago, Derleth said:

I hope you are right, I really hope so.

I uploaded a short video to illustrate just how bad it looks with the glowing trees (and breath fog, although that was supposedly fixed...).

 

 

Thank you, tried to do the same and linked to it in the post but yours illustrates it alot better, so I'm going to link to yours.

Edited March 27, 2019 by 0.64 Freerider

[repzaj1234 126]

What made night time so nice was that EVERYBODY had to use a light source. Everyone's on an even field. Playing at night with just this personal light is doable, but it is a HUGE pain in the ass to the eyes. What will happen is players who are heavily invested in their character's life would rather squint and just suck it up rather than risk using a light source and attract attention. If you go to high ground and look at a city on a high pop server, you'll see all the lights moving around. There's a lot of exposure that can lead to more interaction. With this, people will just be running around in the dark squinting at their monitor while killing interaction. Same thing with the gamma abuse before, they made all that progress of having everyone at an even field and they'll end up fucking it up if they keep this night light.

Imo, the main reason for this was so fresh spawns who spawn at night aren't shit out of luck once their flare runs out. A better "band-aid" for this would be to spawn with a chemlight instead AND have the ability to attach it to your clothing. Or hell fuck it, having them spawn with a flashlight with batteries would be a better "band aid" than this.

Edited March 28, 2019 by repzaj1234

[eno 1049]

28 minutes ago, repzaj1234 said:

What made night time so nice was that EVERYBODY had to use a light source. Everyone's on an even field. 

Yeah except that the “even playing field” for many was dumping the server and going to one that was daylight. 

Now they’ve gone to some lit aura around a person... probably too far to the left. Make a soft skill adjusted night vision- play more at night... see better at night. 

I can grow a beard in 5 minutes... let me see better in the dark if that’s how I play. This night light aura is childish spoon feeding to a very vocal group of malcontents... me included to a point but I found my own workaround so I don’t give a fuck. 

What I do care about is the fact that the game still doesn’t reward anyone for letting it play out. Soft skills are useless... nothing is actually worth anything. Maybe it’s on the 2019 roadmap they’ll figure out by 2020. 

Hindsight. 

[-Gews- 7443]

I'm not a fan of the inky black night, yes, it might be fun occasionally, but 99% of the time I have zero interest in wandering around with a flashlight only able to see a short distance. That type of gameplay is not what I play DayZ for. At all. And if I don't have any light? Bahaha. Forget it. And simply watch the servers empty as it turns black.

But "personal night light" is a terrible solution. Why keep introducing silly stuff? Just do the moon compromise like we had before.

This is a perfectly playable darkness under the old full moon, open field (also note how it's the original ARMA greyscale night, compare to the the crappy-looking, unrealistic saturated-colours night that replaced it). You could even go a lot darker and remain playing no problem.

And this is an unacceptable darkness:

But no personal night lights please.

So far the process has gone like so: too dark. Add full moon. Remove full moon. Too dark. Add... "personal night light"?

What a workaround!

 

[0.64 Freerider 261]

8 hours ago, repzaj1234 said:

What made night time so nice was that EVERYBODY had to use a light source. Everyone's on an even field. Playing at night with just this personal light is doable, but it is a HUGE pain in the ass to the eyes. What will happen is players who are heavily invested in their character's life would rather squint and just suck it up rather than risk using a light source and attract attention. If you go to high ground and look at a city on a high pop server, you'll see all the lights moving around. There's a lot of exposure that can lead to more interaction. With this, people will just be running around in the dark squinting at their monitor while killing interaction. Same thing with the gamma abuse before, they made all that progress of having everyone at an even field and they'll end up fucking it up if they keep this night light.

Imo, the main reason for this was so fresh spawns who spawn at night aren't shit out of luck once their flare runs out. A better "band-aid" for this would be to spawn with a chemlight instead AND have the ability to attach it to your clothing. Or hell fuck it, having them spawn with a flashlight with batteries would be a better "band aid" than this.

Couldn't agree more. Especially the things regarding interaction and an "even field". Well said, sir.

[0.64 Freerider 261]

11 hours ago, -Gews- said:

I'm not a fan of the inky black night, yes, it might be fun occasionally, but 99% of the time I have zero interest in wandering around with a flashlight only able to see a short distance. That type of gameplay is not what I play DayZ for. At all. And if I don't have any light? Bahaha. Forget it. And simply watch the servers empty as it turns black.

But "personal night light" is a terrible solution. Why keep introducing silly stuff? Just do the moon compromise like we had before.

This is a perfectly playable darkness under the old full moon, open field (also note how it's the original ARMA greyscale night, compare to the the crappy-looking, unrealistic saturated-colours night that replaced it). You could even go a lot darker and remain playing no problem.

And this is an unacceptable darkness:

But no personal night lights please.

So far the process has gone like so: too dark. Add full moon. Remove full moon. Too dark. Add... "personal night light"?

What a workaround!

 

Haha, wow that winchester is going bananas. QA anyone? Anyways, the ingame light sources are there to be used and once moonlight is back, the nighttime gameplay will probably appeal to alot more people. However inside buildings you should always NEED to use light sources and that is my biggest concern with the "Personal Night Light", as I've explained.

I for one always play on Private Hive Servers, as I cannot stand the concept of shared characters and the resulting issue being server hopping. I would be fine with nighttime being considerably shorter than daytime, as you would sleep most of the night IRL. Anyways that's up to the individual server owners and there is alot of freedom there.

[g4borg 74]

On 3/27/2019 at 12:23 PM, 0.64 Freerider said:

Well, as long as the problems that result from this artificial light remain, it doesn't matter to me how much they tone it down. Another problem is that you kind of lose feel for how visible you are from the outside, because inside everything is super bright and you can't tell if people who scope in from a distance would be able to see you. It's just not a good thing imo and like I said. It renders actual light sources pretty much obsolete.

i don't follow your argument. you complain about it making lights obsolete, about super brightness, and so on, and think toning it down would not help make it better. okay...

i understand, you want to know if you are visible or not, but truth be told, you would not be able to tell, because it depends on the others monitor, resolution, gamma, and how your movement affects you due to the background. so if i read you right, you actually bring up the argument, it could not be toned down, because you lose a personal advantage of telling how well you hide.which is fine, it's a valid argument. but i understand, why you therefore do not feel it can be toned. it's almost if you have two separate issues with the feature.

on the flipside, dark vision is a real ability of humans. if you turn lights off, your eyes will slowly turn off the color vision, and ramp up your black-and-white vision, which is highly movement sensitive, and very sensitive to light, so you will start to see even in star-light. you probably know, if you ever spent time outside of the light smog of modern civilization. which is how i built my argument. it should be greyscale, mainly outside, need time for adjustment, etc.

light sources will be rendered obsolete anyway as soon as there are NVGs, except the NVGs also shimmer green; with the current gameplay, nights are usually ignored, servers empty, and a light source is such a high risk, it is obsolete in any way.

Let me expand my initial proposal then:

• The feature should be toned down, greyscale, adapt slowly, and be more prominent outside than in a building, also for reasons of balance.
• You should be able to disable the feature personally in the options if you so whish. Might even be a server side flag option for the hardcore.
• It might be even fair to only have this feature from first-person perspective.

I also like the proposals about real moonlight, and maybe the ability to restore streetlights, albeit i would love that feature to be configurable. The original plan was to allow players to hook up a generator to restore lights in a particular town, I whish that back on the roadmap.

Edited March 29, 2019 by g4borg

[0.64 Freerider 261]

1 hour ago, g4borg said:

i don't follow your argument. you complain about it making lights obsolete, about super brightness, and so on, and think toning it down would not help make it better. okay...

- Yeah, I believe that if they toned it down to the point where you 1. won't be able to loot buildings unless using an actual light source. 2. won't see people as you walk by them, who sit on the side of a road in a bush, then you are at the point where it's basically OFF. In short: There is no amount of artificial light that would be low enough for me. Because if you hit those checks I mentioned above, you are left with zero artificial light.

i understand, you want to know if you are visible or not, but truth be told, you would not be able to tell, because it depends on the others monitor, resolution, gamma, and how your movement affects you due to the background. so if i read you right, you actually bring up the argument, it could not be toned down, because you lose a personal advantage of telling how well you hide.which is fine, it's a valid argument. but i understand, why you therefore do not feel it can be toned. it's almost if you have two separate issues with the feature.

- As answered above. If it's toned down, the issues remain. As far as I understand their grain feature, it doesn't matter what monitor you have. And since you argue that I "would not be able to tell, because it depends on the others monitor, resolution, gamma", well if that's true, then isn't that bad enough? Do we have to add yet another layer of confusion?

on the flipside, dark vision is a real ability of humans. if you turn lights off, your eyes will slowly turn off the color vision, and ramp up your black-and-white vision, which is highly movement sensitive, and very sensitive to light, so you will start to see even in star-light. you probably know, if you ever spent time outside of the light smog of modern civilization. which is how i built my argument. it should be greyscale, mainly outside, need time for adjustment, etc.

- I have sit on watch, hunting, with crystal clear sky and moonlight. It's still super hard to see, so I'm wondering if you have "ever spent time outside of the light smog of modern civilization"

light sources will be rendered obsolete anyway as soon as there are NVGs, except the NVGs also shimmer green; with the current gameplay, nights are usually ignored, servers empty, and a light source is such a high risk, it is obsolete in any way.

- There is an NVG in the game to my knowledge and it's rare and can only be found on helicopter dynamic spawns. There is also an NVG weapon optic. They don't make light sources obsolete in any way, as they are meant to be very rare. On Private Hive Server it is kind of difficult to ignore night.

Let me expand my initial proposal then:

• The feature should be toned down, greyscale, adapt slowly, and be more prominent outside than in a building, also for reasons of balance.

- Depending on how that turns out, I would be fine with it as a placeholder until proper moonlight is in.

• You should be able to disable the feature personally in the options if you so whish. Might even be a server side flag option for the hardcore.

- Why would I ever put myself at such a massive disadvantage, turning it off only client-side? That's like saying, "Hey you wanna play first person, come to our third person server and just switch the camera to 1pp."

• It might be even fair to only have this feature from first-person perspective.

I also like the proposals about real moonlight, and maybe the ability to restore streetlights, albeit i would love that feature to be configurable. The original plan was to allow players to hook up a generator to restore lights in a particular town, I whish that back on the roadmap.

- Totally agree with the streetlamp thing, sounds cool. Moonlight as well obviously.

 

Edited March 29, 2019 by 0.64 Freerider

[Black G-Sus 12]

The dynamic weather system should control illumination at nights. 

#MDGA ^^

Edited March 29, 2019 by Black G-Sus