[Suggestion] Night/Day Cycle

[Augusto (DayZ) 3]

I know this has been posted before but the other threads about this seem to be buried or closed right now and I'm also aware that the devs want the 12/12 hs cycle in.

Anyways here it goes:

Im seeing lots and lots of players that only play in daytime, as soon as night falls ppl start changing servers.

So what I suggest, is a shorter day/night cycle about 6h each, but (and I don't know if this is possible) syncing up every server so that its night in every server at the same time, this way ppl would be forced to play at night, this in my opinion is more realistic than the 12/12 cycle.

Right now you are not forced to play at night (or forced to play at daytime, it has its dangers too), you can just change servers and its daytime/night again. I think one of the ideas of the mod is to convey the sense of a real survivor trying to survive in zombie infested world and trying to survive at night is a big part of that.

And besides the 12/12 cycle doesn't add up with the amounts of water and food you need to consume every day, my character needs like 10 meals a day and 700 hundred liters of water each day.

With the state the cycles are right now you almost never get to see daybreak or sundown or get a feeling of accomplishment for having survived through the night or a sense of despair for being out of food or water at night, you never get to make the switch for the different styles of play required for night and day in one sitting.

I'm ready to receive your insults now

P.S: This is the greatest game ever THX rocket and all the other devs for this its amazing, I just can't stop playing

In 14 years of gaming I have never seen anything quite like this mod

Thank you

[mansize_rooster 19]

I hate the day/night cycle. :(

The people who are absolutely for this system probably don't experience night often. They're more than likely the people who work normal jobs and have an average lifestyle. That is to say they're awake from 7:00am to midnight - where they experience night time only for a period of a few hours - if at all.

I, personally, live a different lifestyle than most and for the most part play in the after noon hours. Meaning when I get in-game the sun is going down or it's pitch black outside. Can I join a server overseas? Sure, but I will have to deal with a high ping. This means problems with hit reg, chances of getting kicked, language barriers, etc.

The funny thing is if you were to swap the hours around (make it 6pm when it's 6am) I guarantee these same people are for the current day/night periods will outraged. It's realism when it's relative to them. Like you said - they probably have no problems eating every 30 minutes. :D

[edit] Having said all that - I do not think lowering the day/night periods should be forced. There are a lot of people who prefer it this way and if that's the what how they enjoy playing then there's no reason to force them. Which is why I'd suggest it to be server-side where if admins want their server to have shorter periods.. that option should be there. It's a win/win.

[Leechman 8]

Many, many people have had these ideas before, not just in this forum. You are aware of this, why post again?

The system does not need to change. If you wish to play at daytime, but can't, go to different servers. 200 ping is not the end of the world.

And for the record, I almost exclusively play at night time on my local servers. The ANZ servers that more often than not have no moonlight.

[BurstFire (DayZ) 1]

Well if nights were just improved a bit more and became reasonable, this wouldn't be an issue.

[Augusto (DayZ) 3]

I like nights actually but i would like ppl to be forced to experience everything and not have the server change almost its entire populace when it transitions form day to night and vice versa

Atm ppl who play at night its because they like nights and ppl who play at daytime its because they lice the day no one feels uncomfortable when roaming around

[Fionny 7]

The day night thing is the only big gripe i have with the game, but it could be addressed by making night time a bit more tolerable aka more realistic where you can actually see beyond your own nose.

OR just let servers have their own rotations.

[ZehDon 0]

I'm glad I'm not the only person who has an issue with this. I jumped into Day Z for the first time ever this evening. And, obviously, it was pitch black.

From a new player's perspective:

I literally thought something was wrong with my game at first, until I kept moving the mouse around and caught some of the movement of what I eventually discovered to be the ocean.

So, I could see was a little speck of white which I presumed was glittering water. And what followed was probably the least compelling experience I've had in a long time.

I could hear the snarl of zombies. Eventually an hour glass symbol appeared on my screen. According to the chat, this meant that I had died - I had been attacked by Zombies I couldn't see at all and was killed. Next time, I decided to use my flares. I ran out of them pretty quickly, and was eventually killed by zombies I couldn't see or avoid.

If you were kitted out, sure - then it's becomes fun and tense. But, I wasn't. It was my first time playing - ever - and I was greeted with literally a blank screen before being told I had failed. I'm all for the "No Hand Holding" aspects - I found it nice that I was dropped in and told to survive. But, as a game, this lacked any kind of fun.

So, for a first time player, the "Dark Night" was basically the most off-putting introduction I've ever encountered in a video game.

I totally understand the point the mechanic: simulate the whole survival experience.

However, the solution most readily adopted in this real world situation would be to hold up in a building and wait out the night. Which means:

1. Sit silently still in a building for 12 gameplay hours.

2. Log off and wait for day.

I'd recommend altering the day night cycle to be within the reasonable play session - 2 hours for the complete cycle. This means a player _CAN_ wait out the night.

I'll try again in the day time. I know it'll be much, much better.

[hazdude222 0]

I know this has been said before but I think the 12/12 day/night cycle is silly and should be changed.

I can understand what they're trying to achieve, but it's so easy to get around, and isn't a true representation unless you're asking the player to stay up for 12 hours.

[TeaLeaf 5]

I'd prefer the OPs suggestion but I would be fine with nights if they allowed me to see at least a couple of metres in front of my face. I ran out of flares one night and had to switch servers because I was essentially blind.

I grew up in the country side and it was never that dark unless you where in such think forest that all moonlight was blocked. I guess it could potentially get as bad if it was cloudy and the moon was weak, but that should be rare.

[Hesson 1]

Another thing, there are only a few places in the world where it is ever truly a 12/12 cycle, and even then only for a few days out of the year, more common than not, people live in 14/10 areas, I know mine now is around 15/9 and its never so dark that you can't see anything like it is in this game, as it is now, your only hope is sprint to the northern airstrips, and pray you find nvg if you want to play at night, since flares are a beacon to everything that wants to kill you, and only last 5 mins a piece

[ezdaroth 1]

The system does not need to change. If you wish to play at daytime' date=' but can't, go to different servers. 200 ping is not the end of the world.[/quote']

I don't like laggers and I don't want to be one. Even if DayZ is a rather slow game compared to twitch-shooters, the action can still boil down to fractions of a second, especially indoors.

Everybody has a better experience when pings stay low.

We just need more servers with -12h time setting, so there's daylight games during the night and dark games during the day for all the players, without all the lag.

Rocket said the servers are free to set their own time, as long as it's still 24h day cycle. If that's the case, the issue will probably be fixed by itself when people rent more servers. I'm surprised I haven't found a single EU server that actually does this, which is a shame since 90% of the time I can only play during the night and I'd like to enjoy some daylight once in a while.

[_Profile_Shame 37]

struggling to see how you can rationalize a 12 hour day with a worldwide uniform cycle as being more realistic than a local 24 hour one.. sorry champ

edit - actually since it takes place in the same map, a uniform day/night cycle is more realistic - though i enjoy being able to play at night, increasing atmosphere and tension because it is also night irl

[Augusto (DayZ) 3]

When I say it's more realistic what I meant was it would make much more sense with the hunger and water needs in the game right now, you are required to eat and drink way more than you would normally do in a day.

You would still get to play at night when it's night IRL just not for 12 hours maybe for 6 hours I think that should be enough for everyone and would please everybody

[peetgamer 10]

Start night cycle at 10 pm and end at 6 am so you have mostly daytime and still can experience night time when you play after 11pm specially in weekends.

Thats still 8 hours of night time.

I 100% agains sync EU/US servers with same times having night/day times.

I forgot to mention i love the night time finally game that have REALISTIC NIGHTS.

Maybe some implemment some CITY LIGHTS or some FIRES lit up by players that burn for few houres?

[tkgwheeler 3]

Don't change the day/night cycle.

Don't change how dark it is at night.

Do give every player a torch as part of their standard kit.

Consider additional game play mechanics that slightly alter how we approach the game at night.

Zombies make more noise at night

Zombies eyes glow slightly at night

Both of these night time specific features would help players determine zombie numbers and position with the possibility of also adding more tension.

[calranthe 8]

New players are the ones hit the hardest especially since the zombies are now attracted to flares.

It is fine saying it is realistic or that people could go on other servers but ping does make a difference and if the only solutions are "deal with it" or "go to an overseas server" then sorry that is fail.

Night time should be scary and different BUT I used to night fish out of town and away from residual light, even on cloudy nights vision was better than in this game.

[silentbob17 0]

The realism that a real-time cycle is attempting to add is completely circumvented by the ability to change servers. Not to mention it's completely inconsistent with the frequency of food/drink requirements. I think more players would play a more balanced variety of day/night if there was a more frequent change between the two. It is blatantly obvious, by the player-count on day servers vs night servers, that the vast majority of players do not want to stick around when they know 12 hours of night are ahead of them.

8 hours of real time for 24 hours in-game time would be ideal because it would stagger the experience for people who tend to play at the same time of day (IRL), and it would produce more frequent day/night changes for people to experience. 7 or 9 hour days would stagger it even more; varying it over the course of multiple IRL days.

REGARDING HOW DARK NIGHTS ARE:

For the first time yesterday, I played through a day-to-night transition and continued playing into the night. It became unplayably dark very quickly. But then I increased my gamma and started bumping up my LCD's brightness setting as the night grew darker. The result was equivalent to your eyes adjusting in the dark; colour turned to a bluish greyscale and details were harder to make out. This was admittedly a pain (adjusting the brightness settings) but it clarified the problems with making nights brighter: If nights were very much brighter and I set my gamma and brightness to the same high levels, it would be clear as day. If another player didn't set his brightness as high (wanting a more immersive and accurate experience) he would be at a disadvantage in a PvP situation (and in general). The end-user's ability to drastically brighten the game world with local brightness settings could actually circumvent the difficulty created by an insufficiently dark night.

All this being said, I think the nights are still slightly too dark. Maybe increase 10-20% if there is no moon, or moon-lit clouds, but increase 100% or more if there is any moon-based light source in the sky.

...fml text-wall

[duddbudda 33]

nights are super dark because Rocket knows players will bump their in game gamma and brightness to maximum no matter how dark he makes it as standard, so default darkness is deliberately accounting for that adjustment

[silentbob17 0]

Perhaps a problem the devs foresee is; with accelerated time, the transitions from day to night would be so fast that you may not have time to prepare yourself.

My suggestion for this (and I don't know if this is possible in the engine) would be to lengthen the transition period to be closer to real-time but still change the length of pure day/night to be only a few IRL hours.

Thoughts?

[rotekz 18]

Here's my 2 cents. The day/night cycle is fine as is but the ratio of day to night could follow the seasonal changes of the area that the map is modeled on. I'm no expert but it's Eastern Europe/former USSR somewhere isn't it?

The big issue that is causing players to jump servers is that the game does not accurately model natural night vision. Even on dark nights the average person can see enough to walk around. The game should reflect this so that fiddling with gamma is not necessary. In the same way bright lights like headlights and flashlights messing up your night vision should be modeled as well.

Until the game does natural night vision properly I (like nearly everybody else) will just keep jumping to a daylight server.