Too many downsides playing night?

[Pills (DayZ) 1]

If it's dark and scary out, you could just log out and go to bed perhaps?

[GeneShark 0]

Everyone seems to be posting as if daytime servers would lead to night being impossible to find, and as if people liking night is the majority view.

Perhaps here on the boards where more hardcore players come, but have you seen the server lists lately? Pick a timezone: Is it day there? Full servers. Night? Few if any people.

My regular hangout (EU4) is at a constant 50/50 during the day, and takes 5 minutes to fill straight back up after any required restart. When it hits proper nighttime, it's lucky to see one person.

I can only assume people are leaving to play on a server in a different timezone, leading to.. more issues with players getting into the server they want to play on, and an unutilised EU4 sat on it's ass doing nothing.

Our admin changed the time to morning after each required restart when he first ran the server and it was constantly full, but after being reprimanded for that (Seems that's a nono after the UK#11 'permaday' fiasco) it's sat in.. I think UTC-6 and will stay dormant half the time. It sucks.

I'd say give the server hosts the option to run servers that keep the timezone where the light is. There'll never be a shortage of servers which run the night normally anyway, so what's the problem?

[Alendor 2]

At first I didn't like night time at all. Now I feel a lot safer' date=' hell I even run around in Cherno 90% of the (night) time.

[/quote']

ya i was the same, then i learned i can turn up gamma to full and turn hrd to very high, and i can run around great.

thats the problem i see with night time. its so dark almoast everyone just jacks up their gamma and hrd.

you can still make dark managable without making it well lit. heck its not even at a realistic level thats the big complain. the amount of darkness is closer to being in a unlit closed off building than actually being outside during the night. doesn't matter how dark it gets outside, you'll still be able to see your feet, or look at your hands and see what your holding.

why even include items that light up the game world? just include in the readme to jack up gamma and hdr, and you can save some developement time.

I personally would love a darkness level that still forces me to have to use flares and gear to light the place up, but i should still be able to have some visibility in my immediate area. hell if a zombie is attacking me in the middle of the night, he can be right in my face wailing on me, and if there is a building or mountain blocking my horizen i still cant see well enough to defend myself.

it simply is unrealistic and thats the overall complaint people in this community have with the darkness.

its not even the fault of this mod, its mostly BI. Its assumed from a game coding/level design pov, that they set the amount of light projected from teh sky at a range of 0-whatever. currenly with a new moon whatever calculation the game uses, brings it down to almoast absolute zero. hence everything in the game world is 100% black (or very near). they shoudl have capped the amount of light a bit higher so as this doesn't happen. its a design flaw from BI, that should be fixed by this mod

hell even lighting levels of 3-5% of daylight would still be extremely dark, but would be a bit more realistic. but right now it must be well under 1%, talking a couple zeros after the decimal point low

[fosty99 160]

I like the day/night cycle.

It gives me a reason to sleep at night so I can wake up to sunlight in Day Z.

Sometimes when I'm working I'll just go to an American server at night because I missed out on my daylight gaming.

[stilton 14]

People are so retarded they overlook the most obvious facts.

The servers are empty at 3am on a weekday... Wow. Rly?

Wait im having an idea here.... MAYBE ITS CAUSE PEOPLE FROM THAT TIMEZONE ARE ASLEEP?

Because... they have to be up for work the next morning.

It would also explain why, on the weekends... You can go into a uk server at 4am and they're still pretty populated / full.

Thank god for the people who get it though.. Nighttime is safer and thats why people play it..

Because unless you are a complete badshit crazy nub whos afraid of the dark your not going to be running down the railroad with a flare in hand....

Well, maybe youll do it once or twice.. Until you get murdered.. then hopefully it will sink it.. Darkness is your friend.

[Dorak (DayZ) 4]

Nights are too dark.

Light them up a bit and it's k.

[Alendor 2]

People are so retarded they overlook the most obvious facts.

The servers are empty at 3am on a weekday... Wow. Rly?

Wait im having an idea here.... MAYBE ITS CAUSE PEOPLE FROM THAT TIMEZONE ARE ASLEEP?

Because... they have to be up for work the next morning.

It would also explain why' date=' on the weekends... You can go into a uk server at 4am and they're still pretty populated / full.

[/quote']

well by that logic it would be safe to assume that during the day before 5pm local time the servers should be pretty much empty, due to the fact that everyone is working (you do state that the reason they arn't on at night is due to work the next morning, so this assumes that they are actually at work during the day, which they of course are sleeping in preperation for at 3am). Yet they seem to be filled with peopel speaking russian. (they are also filled with non russians at times as well, all depends on how many people leave the game after the russian servers get dark. but we're looking more at why they are empty at 3am, as opposed to why the very people who are can't play at 3am due to work the next day, are actually playing during work hours.)

This leaves us with 2 options.

A: unbeknown to me (a native of the state,) a lot of people from ohio and the eastern timezone speak russian earlier in the day and just switch back to english at night. (they don't do this in real life tho, only in dayz chat. crazy, i know)

B: or the russian people come over to our server to escape the endless black of their local ones well after their 3am, when they are supposedly all asleep for work the next day, and the people in the eastern timezone move back to pacific to avoid the nighttime on their servers

[ambient 0]

there either needs to be moonlight, or some form of very dim ambient lighting at night.

Lets face it, its just not fun/practical/smart to venture out at night without NVG's.

[GeneShark 0]

People are so retarded they overlook the most obvious facts.

The servers are empty at 3am on a weekday... Wow. Rly?

Wait im having an idea here.... MAYBE ITS CAUSE PEOPLE FROM THAT TIMEZONE ARE ASLEEP?

Because... they have to be up for work the next morning.

By this logic during usual working hours servers would be empty too' date=' but.. they're not. Also.. I hate to stereotype, but people playing a realistic zombie survival sandbox might not be the people with the most usual of sleeping habits, just sayin'.

It would also explain why, on the weekends... You can go into a uk server at 4am and they're still pretty populated / full.

This does not seem to be the case on our usual server, which as I said, clears out at night.

Thank god for the people who get it though.. Nighttime is safer and thats why people play it..

Because unless you are a complete badshit crazy nub whos afraid of the dark your not going to be running down the railroad with a flare in hand....

I'm not sure how straining my eyes jacking up my gamma and running into zombies I can't see is safer. 'Nor getting sniped by NVG-equipped bandits is safer. But k.

Darkness is your friend.

Unless you can't see anything, and aren't having any fun.

I'm still unsure why night-liking people are super-opposed to people who like playing in the daytime. We're not asking to eliminate night, we just want the freedom to play in a nice and sunny server. If anything these sorts of servers would help reduce the load on the main database (and server player-counts), when people see it's night, leave and proceed to spam connections to full day servers.

[stilton 14]

@ Gene + Alendor

I dont propose to know what -everyone- does.. I was just saying what i think the reason that the population of a region goes down significantly on weekdays is yes.. Because a lot of people from that timezone are probably preparing for their next day at work.

OBVIOUSLY.. some people play on servers which are not of their own timezone.. including myself.

(You can go about trying to 'prove me wrong' but i dont really care for what your trying to sell because your not unbiased as you obviously want it to be changed to cater for you. )

If you 'just want the freedom to play on a sunny server'

- you have that already... just play on a server not from your own region... if its night where you are.. Probably will be daytime other side of the world.

I'm not super opposed to you joining a server running daytime hours.

What i'm against is people asking the entire system as its currently established (aka, all servers are region specific when its comes to their time) be changed to suit them...

Yes, that's a bit unreasonable...

[v3c1c 86]

geez KIDS ... stop crying - not good that not good this - nights are to dark, FFS if its too dark in one server leave to other server. Usualy ppl who cry that nights are too dark are noobs who jast want to camp with sniper rifle and kill ppl. I found that night time is the time i like play most coz:

1) zeds not see you

2) survivors dont see me (im bandit)

even as survivor i prefer play in dark - bandits could not see me :)

[Mangles 1]

I think nights are too dark. I don't want a sunny server at all. I like nights, the best stories I have are of nights. I still think that nights are much to dark.

[GeneShark 0]

@ Gene + Alendor

If you 'just want the freedom to play on a sunny server'

- you have that already... just play on a server not from your own region... if its night where you are.. Probably will be daytime other side of the world.

I'm part of the community that runs the EU4 server' date=' we don't have the freedom to play on a sunny server because we're not allowed to keep the server sunny by the current rules of hosting a server.

We don't want to have to spam connections to a high-ping across the world server to play when we have a perfectly good (Albeit empty because it's night) server right there that we pay for.

[As a side note, server hopping to the light is not an option if you have a camp built up']

[Dorak (DayZ) 4]

What's the point of playing on nightime anyway.

It's not fun, not interesting, it's just PLAIN FUCKING BLACK.

You can't see a single shit, it's not even realistic at all, nothing, the only thing you can do is max your gamma and brightness / HDR, and try to recognize gray shapes in a black world.

Add the permanent fog at 100M and you get the most unrealistic, retarded, boring night experience in any games. Ever.

Too bad, because if you try the nights in ArmA 2 editor, they will actually looks like something. And not like a ridiculous black mess.

Why anyone ( non-retarded ) would play in those conditions ? Better disconnect and go in a different server with daytime timezone instead of loosing your time destroying your eyes facing your monitor.

[stilton 14]

I'm part of the community that runs the EU4 server ... we're not allowed to keep the server sunny by the current rules of hosting a server.

We don't want to have to ... play when we have a ... night server

lol so you want it to change to cater to you and your small group... basically.

You have the alternative option of setting up a camp on another server in a new timezone..

But instead you are here, on the forums to get the game/rules changed.

Good plan.

[Dorak (DayZ) 4]

What, you're afraid of changes, afraid of people asking for something you don't want ?

You want to keep your fucking pitch black ass nights to feel " hardcore " and being confident about not being a member of the " carebear COD players community " ?

Too bad son, here we come.

[GeneShark 0]

lol so you want it to change to cater to you and your small group... basically.

You have the alternative option of setting up a camp on another server in a new timezone..

But instead you are here' date=' on the forums to get the game/rules changed.

Good plan.

[/quote']

We want to be allowed to run our server in the daytime, yes. The way we had it setup before we were asked to stop was, whenever the server had to be restarted (Which DayZ servers do on a regular basis to stop zeds/loot not spawning) is to change the server timezone to morning.

This is something that only effects people on our server, not the whole game. It's not a change that requires any time or effort from any DayZ developer other than a quick change to the server hosting rules thread.

We're the guys laying down the donations each month to keep this and our other servers running. Our server is empty when it's dark, no matter what timezone it's set to. We've had messages thanking us for running a (previously day, currently reversetime) EU server, and as far as we've gathered our players want to play in the day.

So no, we don't want to change the game for our small group. We want the freedom to run a server the way our players want.

[Also what's the point of setting up a camp on one server and storing your loot there just to serverhop and have to do it all again, that makes no sense.]

[Alendor 2]

What i'm against is people asking the entire system as its currently established (aka' date=' all servers are region specific when its comes to their time) be changed to suit them...

Yes, that's a bit unreasonable...

[/quote']

the whole local server time being synched to realtime is a great feature and should not be removed. i completly agree with that, its far more immersive knowing that the environment your playing in is the exact same as what is literally outside your doorstep (even tho some servers set their game time 3 hours behind local time just so that people coming home from work can enjoy playing the game with more than a few hours before it goes pitch black, kinda supporting that people log off because its too dark, seperate point tho.)

the issue people seem to have is that the darkness is an unrealistic level that makes the game near unplayable. the simple fact that its pretty much a community consensus that you just max out your gamma at night is kind of a red flag that there are issues.

thats one glaring piece of feedback that typically says a bad design decision was made. of course there are others, like the fact that entire servers empty after about 9-10 pm local time once it gets dark. that some servers set local time back several hours because they know no one can play at dark and want some playtime after work ends (my regular server is -3 of its local time, and by 11:30ish local time most of the people on the server have activated their gamma vision goggles.) that the only current solution is to play on a server on the other side of the planet where you ping 200-300

either of the 4 issues alone are usually good enough to point out a bad design aspect in a game, as they force users to use means outside of the actual game to get around an issue.

[stilton 14]

but you did know the rules when you decided to 'lay down the cash' in the first place...

..and your now basically trying to manipulate the mod after the fact by asking for the rules to be changed?

So basically you think your opinion carries more weight than the rest of the userbase if we're not paying for servers?

Say im hosting/paying for 3 servers myself, personally...

What rules can i asked to be changed / ignored in the face of my 'freedoms' eh?

think about it before you start asking people to go down the route you propose.

[JamesGTAIV (DayZ) 15]

Get night vision' date=' problem solved.

[/quote']

This.

I hate the night almost as much as anyone else but I know it's only a matter of time until I have NV. I would be pissed if I finally got them only for nights to be brighter in an update.

[Stinglock 1]

What's the point of playing on nightime anyway.

It's not fun' date=' not interesting, it's just PLAIN FUCKING BLACK.

You can't see a single shit, it's not even realistic at all, nothing, the only thing you can do is max your gamma and brightness / HDR, and try to recognize gray shapes in a black world.

Add the permanent fog at 100M and you get the most unrealistic, retarded, boring night experience in any games. Ever.

Too bad, because if you try the nights in ArmA 2 editor, they will actually looks like something. And not like a ridiculous black mess.

Why anyone ( non-retarded ) would play in those conditions ? Better disconnect and go in a different server with daytime timezone instead of loosing your time destroying your eyes facing your monitor.

[/quote']

Would you like some more cheese with your wine?

[GeneShark 0]

but you did know the rules when you decided to 'lay down the cash' in the first place...

..and your now basically trying to manipulate the mod after the fact by asking for the rules to be changed?

So basically you think your opinion carries more weight than the rest of the userbase if we're not paying for servers?

Say im hosting/paying for 3 servers myself' date=' personally...

What rules can i asked to be changed / ignored in the face of my 'freedoms' eh?

think about it before you start asking people to go down the route you propose.

[/quote']

Oh my, you don't seem to understand. We.. we pay for our machine already, we want to run this to add to the community, add to our enjoyment of the game, and to support DayZ's continued growth.

This is something we -could- do right now if we weren't threatened with blacklisting for doing it. Changing the servertime to something out of your region is something a -lot- of servers do already, all we'd be doing is changing it regularly to keep the server light.

It once again, requires no changes to DayZ, and would have no effect on nighttime play, other than possibly making it easier to connect to servers as a major timezone shifts into darkness (Typically when a lot of people move servers causing strain on the main database)

As for if you ran 3 servers personally, I'd say as someone supporting the mod and the playerbase, your input would be valuable, as any server hosts should be after their experiences with players. Ours happens to be that our server clears out at night regardless of timezone.

[Alendor 2]

So basically you think your opinion carries more weight than the rest of the userbase if we're not paying for servers?

please quote where i made that claim.

i'm merely stating my opinion and explaining how i have arrived at it and where i'm coming from. if you see any friendly debate as someone trying to force their opinion on you' date=' an internet message board isn't the place for you. i don't recall saying my opinion is more important than anyone elses (you claim i do, which in turn would ironicly make you claiming that yours is more important than everyone elses aswell)

Get night vision' date=' problem solved.

[/quote']

This.

I hate the night almost as much as anyone else but I know it's only a matter of time until I have NV. I would be pissed if I finally got them only for nights to be brighter in an update.

game already has built in NV that everyone starts with.

its called gamma control, and since nights are so dark that you can't play without it, the majority of the community is forced to use it

[Shizukage (DayZ) 17]

I love playing during nights, its a lot more uncertain, and you can never really feel secure because you might suddenly get jumped by a zombie you can't see.

That said, the nights are really way too dark. When I can't even see what I'm holding in my hands it has come to the point of being ridiculous, when playing during nights I crank my brightness/gamma to max and I can see a lot better. and its at that brightness level I enjoy it the most, because you can see, but you can't see everything.

IMO the nights need a bit more moonlight so that players don't have to be forced to crank up their setting just to be able to see. What ever happened to the human eye's ability to adjust to brightness in the dark?

And for all u "pros" no, I don't have NVGs...

[Aerograt 0]

I actually feel a lot safer at night with HDR and Hamm cranked up. It's still hard as balls to see, but:

1. I like nightime.

2. My chances of being shot by some douchebag sniper drops significantly.

3. Since I still pretty much crawl everywhere at night, I usually see outlines of other people first who are crouch walking. It makes it a lot easier to try and communicate with them and convince them that I'm friendly, since they know I have a huge advantage over them which I'm giving away. It seems to get people teaming up with me since they know I would have just shot their ass had I wanted to.