Daytime servers are always overloaded.

[FlowerChild 1]

Dont change a thing. I actually prefer to play in the night. I just turn up my gamma and brightness and bam!! I might as well be wearing NVG's. Do I use it to kill survivors? No. Do I use it to kill bandits? of course. Do I use it for looting? hell yes.

Its not that bad. If I ever need to clear a dark building I just pop a chemlight and search very quickly and extinguish the chem on my way out.

I see. So you like night-time because it provides you with the opportunity to tweak your settings to negate the lack of visibility and gain an unfair advantage over other players.

Yeah...that's definitely a great game-design argument for leaving things as is.

[Apoca (DayZ) 1]

I hate to inform you guys, but this is a hyper-realistic zombie modification for a hyper-realistic military simulator.

Get over it, please. The nights aren't that bad unless it's one of those rare occasions when the moon isn't out (which there is currently a bug where this happens more frequently than it should, I think).

Use flares or chem lights if the moon isn't enough for you. This is not World of Warcraft, you don't need the game to hold your hand. This is supposed to simulate a zombie apocalypse, and unfortunately that ALSO includes night being dangerous and hard to traverse.

I really see no need to change it, as some people prefer the 24-hour cycle (such as myself, and anyone else that enjoys the mod as Rocket envisions it). Specifically, the 'problem' that the OP gives is also the solution. Play on another server in a different region. Can't find one? Initiate the process of setting up another one. Just because you life in the US does not mean you cannot rent an EU server.

[Stinglock 1]

Daytime servers filled? Yeah, no doubt lots of people skipped the system requirements.

Requirements:

ArmA II: CO

DayZ Mod Files (Available on the downloads page)

Balls

[Jamesbiff 4]

Dont change a thing. I actually prefer to play in the night. I just turn up my gamma and brightness and bam!! I might as well be wearing NVG's. Do I use it to kill survivors? No. Do I use it to kill bandits? of course. Do I use it for looting? hell yes.

Its not that bad. If I ever need to clear a dark building I just pop a chemlight and search very quickly and extinguish the chem on my way out.

I see. So you like night-time because it provides you with the opportunity to tweak your settings to negate the lack of visibility and gain an unfair advantage over other players.

Yeah...that's definitely a great game-design argument for leaving things as is.

It cant be fixed either way, so regardless of how day night cycles work, people who do this are always going to have an advantage. Ive been killed in pitch black forests enough to guess that most people do this trick, doing it myself has severely decreased the amount of times im killed in the pitch black...or what appears to be pitch black.

[Bosk 0]

Daytime vs. Nighttime:

In real life i have wife, kid, work blablabla...

So i can only play between 21:00h and 24:00h

and if i want to play with a goog ping,

i am forced to play at a nighttime-server

always ;-(

So i can't see a sunrise, play at highnoon, enjoy the landscape,

the view range...

I like daytime more then nighttime (ingame) thats obvious, but the

game doesn't allow that. I hope this will change, because always play nighttime will stop me from playing dayz. Two of my friends quitet because of that...

I think 80% of the players play the game in the evening or at night

and 80% of the players like daytime more then nigthtime.

rocket mentioned that a shorter day-cycle will be different to implement.

i have another idea (i dont have expierence with programming/modding, so it can be complete bullshit):

is it possible "just" to add +12hours to the systime

(in the server-version of dayz) so if i play in the evening or at night

it is morning or afternoon in Dayz. If i play during the day i have nighttime

in Dayz.

Thats not the best solution, but i think the majority of the players will have more fun, the community will grow, and more arma-copies will be sold...

[trauma.au 14]

I would like to see a change here, I currently prefer night time but if I wasn't pushing my gamma up I'd prob get a bit tired of it, but I'd get tired of getting killed by bandits in the night much faster. The core issue really is the gamma/brightness stuff. If that can't be fixed then I'd say changing it so most of the game is played when exploiting that is not an advantage would get the best results.

[Jamesbiff 4]

I would like to see a change here' date=' I currently prefer night time but if I wasn't pushing my gamma up I'd prob get a bit tired of it, but I'd get tired of getting killed by bandits in the night much faster. The core issue really is the gamma/brightness stuff. If that can't be fixed then I'd say changing it so most of the game is played when exploiting that is not an advantage would get the best results.

[/quote']

Yeah, its a shame, the same manipulation of gamma/brightness has ruined a few other games too, namely ones that use some sort of semi-stealth (mainly planetside 1) where ramping up the gamma would reveal the location of cloaked players, to this day almost a decade or so after release, they havent managed to fix it, because its not an issue that can be fixed.

[KnightsCore 1]

I was once the same as most people and only played on daytime servers. Finally, one day my buddy forced me to join him on a server at which is was about midnight and I joined and it was absolutely pitch black.

I remember when I logged out, I was on a dirt path that ran parallel to elektro. So, I crawled along this path for probably about 15 minutes until I hit a paved road and I opened my map to see that this road would lead me to Pusta (and out of the hellhole that is elektro and cherno at night) and into the countryside to meet my buddy at Mogilevka. I wandered for some time until I stumbled upon a building or two and struck upon some blue chemlights and that is when my whole life changed.

Strike that chemlight and pick it up and suddenly the world is opened up JUST ENOUGH for you in the night. It turned the game into walking with my eyes closed into Chronicles of Riddick: Pitch Black and I felt like a mother truckin' badass. There is just something about that intensity of the night and listening to the groans and moans of zombies as you stealtily creep through a village comforted only by the small radius of light your chemlight provides.

I finally meet my buddy in Mogilevka and we end up scavenging Mogilevka, Vishnoye, Novy Sobor, Stary Sobor, and the airfield in the next 5 hours until the sun starts to come up at about 6am.

Logged on the following afternoon to find that, instead of dreading the impending dusk, I embraced...no, looked forward to it.

tl;dr Rocket put this mechanic in here for a reason and I, as well as so many others, stand behind him and the whole dev team and lend our support. Give it a real chance and you might just change your mind.

[SteamTrout 18]

I think 12 hour or even 8 hour day cycle is the best. On weekdays I play at EU nights. Due to the fact that you can see absolutely nothing and for some reason there is never a moon out it is just not fun. I mean I do enjoy playing at night once in a while (in fact on weekends I play on EU as to experience that). However always playing at night is extremely limiting.

I mean speaking from realism standpoint you probably wouldn't want to wander in pitch black during zombie apocalypse. You will find a safe heaven to set up camp and wait the night out. Or use it to quickly advance through the countryside. However it is impossible in current implementation since I cannot wait the night out at all.

The ability to play through the whole day cycle would be awesome IMO since it will add some tactical choices (loot the city before the night comes or wait for nightfall to raid Cherno) which are simply impossible now.

tl;dr I enjoy night time. I don't enjoy playing ONLY at night time.

[DaPessimist 1]

Although I'm not a fan of nightime, the point isn't really about day/night time. The point of the thread is that it's obvious the 'average' player prefers daytime, and because of this, all daytime servers are constantly overloaded.

You are not going to convince the majority to play at night. They will continue to log on to only daytime servers, and thus, daytime servers will forever be overloaded. This problem will only increase as more and more people play the game.

Also, it's completely logical that someone new to the game would want to play during the day. Trying to learn to play Arma/DayZ in the dark is an incredibly steep learning curve.

[FlowerChild 1]

You are not going to convince the majority to play at night. They will continue to log on to only daytime servers' date=' and thus, daytime servers will forever be overloaded. This problem will only increase as more and more people play the game.

[/quote']

Yup, exactly. This thread was about the imbalanced server load caused by the day/night cycle, not the validity of night time play.

[OmarFW 0]

Both the day and night have awesome and different gameplay, but the day time is without a doubt more popular and causing unbalanced server population.

Night time could stay exactly the way it is if it were just made shorter. Like others have said, the realistic day night cycles are not a form of realism I care to have in a game.

I like to stay up till 2am usually playing games. With the current setup, if I were to play Day Z everyday on my normal schedule, I only get about an hour of sunlight before the night comes on. Then it's night for the rest of the night. I shouldn't be forced to play a game at a certain time of the day just to be able to play it in the daylight on servers where my ping doesn't suck.

I don't hate the nighttime, but you DO have to play with gamma up to see anything since there aren't enough light sources in the game to play without it. Overall it's just not how I would prefer to play the game most of the time.

Compressing the day night cycles to even half the time they are now would be great. It's not like we're asking for the moon to be rocketing across the sky like it's f***ing minecraft. Just the option to play in the daytime on a local server even if it might not be daytime in rl at the time.

Players who hate night probably wouldn't hate it so much then and they wouldn't be driven onto other servers causing massive regular shifts of server population from US to EU back and forth every day.

Whatever the case, the current system is causing problems and things need to change.

[Mukea 0]

I don't see the problem with having it as real time. Me and my friends played last night for about 4 hours in pitch black, but we still managed to find each other, raid towns and fend off bandits. It feels like a completely different game at night time, becomes like 5 times as creepy and I like that. If you wanna play in the daytime then keep doing what your doing. 12 hour cycles would still work I guess, but anything shorter would ruin it for sure. Maybe just set up a few short cycle servers specifically for these people who can't handle the night ;-)

[TheHappyPeanut 10]

Its a technical issue' date=' time needs to be sync'd to the database. There may be a way to code out of it but it's alot of work.

[/quote']

In order for night time to be less of a problem, you're going to have to make it easier to play at night. No one should have to adjust their gamma to be able to see at night. I imagine it's also disheartening to new players... spawn in for the first time at night and you can't see anything; then you find out that you don't even have a valuable light source so you go crawling around looking for a flashlight that rarely spawns.

[stinkytaco 1]

Well, i offered $500 for a DEV to fix this, but someone decided that the developers do not need the $500, and locked my offer.

Now I had to hire a 3rd party person to attempt it. If I am not breaking any rules, I will release the open version as soon as it is ready for you guys.

I am the owner and operator of the KOS-FORTRESS servers. I am hoping to get a un-modifyed DAYZ server up and running before the weekend.

Once I get my hands on the MOD, I may switch all 12 of them over. So, keep your eyes peeled. I will start switching them as fast as the fill up.

(please excuse my bad English, I am not always an American)

[DaPessimist 1]

You are not going to convince the majority to play at night. They will continue to log on to only daytime servers' date=' and thus, daytime servers will forever be overloaded. This problem will only increase as more and more people play the game.

[/quote']

Yup, exactly. This thread was about the imbalanced server load caused by the day/night cycle, not the validity of night time play.

Indeed.

[DaPessimist 1]

So I joined two West Coast servers today that were both Nighttime, despite it being 1pm. Have some servers found a way to invert the day/night cycle? It seems so.

[Atkins (DayZ) 4]

Just change the time of the year to mid-summer (some tree textures need to be changed after that). I think now it is more like late fall and sun goes down pretty early.

1 to 3 hours of pitch black is enough.

[i wub pugs 16]

I would just like to have the chance to see dusk or dawn which are really beautiful times in ArmA. Noon and Midnight get really boring.

I log in around 6pm PDT so I might get like 2 hours of game time (on a PDT server) before it's dark and it's always raining so no, I'm not seeing dusk.

If I can't get on a PDT server guess what............. Hello Darkness My Old Friend

It gets old, so I am in favor of the 12 hour cycle.

[CalUKGR 4]

I would like it if the devs allowed servers to set their own in-game time-of-day, regardless of geographical location, that way players could choose from a range of servers offering dawn/day/dusk/night time play. I never play DayZ at night, so it means I'm pretty limited as to when I can play as the overseas servers currently in daytime are either over subscribed or kick me off for having a high ping.

It would nice if here in the UK there were a few servers able to retain daylight settings, regardless of the actual time... I'm sure they would be VERY popular servers.

[guitarxe 6]

To pitch in my opinion, I absolutely love the night time in this game. What I don't like, though, is that by the time I come home from work, and am ready to play for a few hours, it's already dark. So if this is left the way it is, that means I will ALWAYS be playing in the dark. And I'm sure that's the same way for many other players, too.

I don't think Rocket intended the game to ALWAYS be night time, but for players like me it will be like that.

[Drug Mule 0]

I tried to get in for two hours, and the 5 times I made it in I was spawned into the bug forest without any gear and crawling on my belly. This game is really cool and fun when you can play, but that is to few and far between for me. I'm going to wait until it's at least a Beta, but this game is going to be the next big thing when it is 100%.

[rottingcore 1]

1. Select server

2. click "join server"

3. did you join? no? HIT ENTER REPEATEDLY UNTIL YOU JOIN.

Too complex? Suck it up and play a nighttime server.

[vedicardi 7]

you know that it's not that dayz doesn't want to change the cycle speed... it's that it is nearly impossible

[Bremerton 1]

I usually to to find a server that's still early morning. Plenty of light peaking over the horizon, and fewer griefers to interfere with my Airfield runs.