Thoughts on the new old nights and black nights.

Yeah these are amazing. I love dark nights. Need some bioluminescent mushrooms on the Indar canyon walls and make it way darker.

They need to force the developers to upgrade the engine's lighting system. Get Smedley onboard for implementing modern lighting algorithms for both tile based deferred lighting (or another method since there are a few competing ways) and implement some point light shadows for the closest lights (tons of ways to do this from shadow volumes to single pass shadow mapping with RTW). If I turn on a flashlight I want it to go 30 feet and spread out and get blocked by foliage and trees. That's immersive and would make night amazing.

Get some spotlights on towers that player's can control. That would be amazing.

i haven't been able to 100% verify but if the continents are actually planned wouldn't it be easy to make sure they are all spaced 1/3 of the way around the globe of auraxis this way at least 1 would always be bright day and one would be night?

i love the idea of a night alert or something. Eclipses could be a type of alert where all three go dark for short time etc.

at this point ANYTHING that switches up gameplay would be welcome and this would be fairly easy to do for the amount of replayability it would bring, hell some bases could be deisgned to play very very differently depending on light levels

example: the main day approach has very very good cover during the day but is lit with flood lights at night but the very exposed way in the back with little to no cover would be very dark at night allowing you to cross the open areas and be hard to see. this sort of stuff can completely changing the dynamic of a base based on the time of day

it opens a huge amount of new tools and items that could be tailored specifically to night based combat

I love that they brought back dark nights. It adds to the sense of immersion in the game and players should (with good reason) have to pay more attention during night operations. Combat should always favor the prepared, and most of the OPs suggestions are just some of the ways to accomplish this.

I agree that flashlights could have more purpose, blinding seems to be one of the few possible perks to add to it. I would also say that as far as vehicles are concerned, infrared could use a little bit of attention too. Twenty meters of increased viewing distance is not much of an advantage over thermal. If it were brought out another 50+ meters it would definitely be worth certing into again, giving it a specific (and neccessary) role.

On another note, would it be possible to make nights dynamic? Light from orbital bodies like the moon (on earth) varies with the amount of sunlight being reflected off of its surface. During a full moon visibility is much greater than it would be during a crescent moon. Since Auraxis has its fair share of moons and orbital bodies (the other planets), wouldn't it make sense to have dynamic nights? Notwithstanding technical barriers of course.

1) They are. 2) No its not, being able to see enemies just as clearly at night as in daytime with no optics or graphics adjustments is not a good light level for nighttime.

Love darker nights.

Low settings is BULLSCHNOPPS though. Wut the hell??? Fix it for low so it's dark like high/med and it'd be good to go.

Adding more lights, maybe some infil hackable generators (repair with engineer) to shut off lights in an area, fixing flashlights (at least make your own flashlight light up more area so you can see... you shining light makes you an easy enough target to warrant that.), and then it'd be perfect.

But I'll take darker nights before adding more lights.... just fix low. Or we'll all just be forced to play on low. And that's just dumb.

Bases that have an actual power grid and lightning that can be disabled would be fun... if not particularly game affecting.

I prefer the darker nights. I'd prefer it be comparable across settings - but either way... it's a good thing. Let people tweak their settings til the game looks awful if they want to play hardcore. I couldn't care less.

I like darker nights too! Makes everything look more realistic and gives a purpose to switching out sights as the time shifts.

Revert the change. Darker nights are stupid and unfun, and they can be easily negated with monitor and in-game settings. That alone will ensure that players like myself and others in my outfit will make the game miserable for newer players when night rolls around, as many of us have monitors with modes that scale down shadows and add tint for perfect nighttime visibility.. It's also funny the vast majority of players in favor of dark nights are complete terribads who enjoy other "immersive" things like epilepsy-level screenshake, playing with shadows actually turned on (lol) and the reflex sight crosshair that is hilariously off center.

tl;dr: dark nights are crap and "immersion" is stupid. Don't listen to the bads who want this trash.

Darker nights is a good thing. It adds more to the game, just make sure everyone sees the same poor visibility regardless of graphics settings. Night time should be more than just a dark color in the sky, it should effect the decisions you make in-game on how you approach an objective, target or what equipment you're packing. Player vs Environment can be a thing too and it can be fun, if done well.

I dont like dark nights. Cant see anything even with my tank lights on.. And thermal vision is to short. And so on and so on..
But after i have read your points in the first post I must agree with you. That would be awesome.

I have a better idea.
Make the shoulder/helmet-mounted light a free suit slot item.

keep the nights dark

I would not like darker nights. I would hate it to strain my eyes continually trying to see what's going on. Maybe if we get nightvision we can use whenever we want like in COD4 and we can also use it with the normal scopes i would be ok with it.
Else i would have to change the scopes on every gun i want to use to the HS/NV version and back when it becomes day again.
And using flashlights would be horrible, it's like holding a big please shoot me sign. If a moving light doesn't have your faction's dorito above it it's an enemy. It would even be easier to spot people than during the day.

This game is not a survival game or a stealth game. This is a first person shooter. When it turns to night, you shouldn't be struggling to figure out where people are just to spot them.
There are other games with dark nights that mean something like DayZ, Arma, Slender, or some other game. Darker nights is not for this kind of a shooter game. If people want immersion, they really should play the respective games where that is what its about.

If the night time is too dark, you are hurting a lot of people. If you don't want to buy night vision, well, tough luck. Darker nights, while it may seem cool, are really just a bad idea and will alienate more players than not. People will just turn up their brightness trying to see. If you play in a completely dark room with no daylight then you would be able to see fairly well and experience those dark nights. But else you will probably just hate them.

Here via Reddit, keep the darker nights, SOE! Much more fun IMO based on my PTS time.

I generally think that darker nights = more atmosphere to the game, and more diversity in tactics.

In other words, I approve of the changes on test

Remove night in general then if it has no purpose on changing gameplay.
Quoted from smedley's blog
"

3) Immersive world - Planetside 2 is very unique in the vast scale of our continents. It also has a complete day/night cycle. That changes everything gameplay wise. When you're fighting over a base that fight could literally take place over a day in-game that slowly turns to night. It's amazing to see that happen and it really changes how you play. It makes stealth matter in a big way, and it also means night vision equipment matters. Stealth really changes at night too. One of our biggest long term goals is to add weather to the planet that materially impacts gameplay. Imagine a sandstorm that grounds aircraft or blinds infantry or sweeps over the desert plain making visibility really bad. Our large scale also changes something really fundamental - there are no separate levels like normal FPS games. There are tons of bases and locations in many different parts of the map that are completely different from one another. We have huge sprawling bases that take combined forces to attack as well as a massive biodome where only infantry can get inside. Also territory matter in a material way. High ground matters. You can sit in a tank and literally shell the heck out of a base in the canyon beneath you. There has never been a game that has this kind of scale. "

This is an MMOFPS and Sony has already broken bounderies with scale, why not go further with gameplay mechanics and immersion?

Right now I don't like the darker nights. While it's great outdoors, I feel like the interiors of facilities and bases are currently way too dark. If bases were brighter and/or had more lights, I'd be a lot happier with the darker nights.

I love dark nights. Beta was excellent in this respect. Keep the darkness.

If they do push forward with darker nights -- then they need to consider:

• Making the day/night cycle about 50% longer. That gives players time to react to conditions and switch out scopes / gear.
• Allowing some manner of refit for vehicle weapon scopes. Or allow players to fit two scopes on every weapon with a key to toggle between them. So you could fit both NV and zoom and switch between them.
• Vehicle drivers need some sort of NV capability (not the "light everything up in orange", just basic ability to see in the dark.
• NV needs to work a lot less well in bright conditions.