[Suggestion] Please Make Night Darker

Honestly, the night just isn't... dark enough. It's as if Auraxis is engulfed in a permanent full moon.

I love the way light is rendered and used in the game--it's very realistic--but there simply isn't enough darkness to justify spending 100 certs on the flashlight upgrade and/or muzzle-flash suppressor, or keeping your headlights on. You can still see them from kilometers away, and they can still see you as well--especially if you power up those lights... and it seems like a waste of good processor power to include such a well-designed lighting model when it's not currently necessary.

I did some night-operations training way back in the day when I was a cadet. They taught that light is a double-edged sword: you can actually see your surroundings, but in doing so, you make yourself a big target. Trouble is, when you switch the light off, it's extremely hard to see anything. Light becomes a luxury--something you need, but can't always afford.

In Planetside 2 night-time, it's more of a single-edged sword--with the blade pointing towards you. It's not as if keeping the light on helps you see, since it's so bright outside anyway--but it sure makes it real easy for enemies to spot you.

I think that making the night darker will:

• Improve gameplay immersion and heighten the tension immensely.
• Provide countless more opportunities to make use of existing certs that simply aren't worth their price
• Light will become, like I said before, a luxury.
• Lit buildings will become safe havens, yet dangerous harbors as players are drawn to their light like moths to a flame.
• Switching off the headlamps might allow you to sneak close, but you may also drive off a cliff if you're not careful.
• Players with muzzle-flash suppressors and silencers will become the stalking tigers of the darkness, and those with flashlights can momentarily blind unsuspecting enemies with a flash of bright light, as well as being able to see what's going on around them.
• The day-and-night cycle will turn the already terrifying battlefield of Auraxis into different beasts entirely.
• Players that dominate in the daytime may suddenly find themselves caught off-guard by what they suspected to be unskilled enemies, but turned out to be patient and observant night-operations soldiers.
• You could integrate an entirely new dynamic of skill into the game: those who do well in the light, and those who do well in the darkness. Entire outfits could be made with the purpose to train and excel in night-ops.

It would be glorious.

(Before you ask, I have switched the game brightness and my screen brightness to their lowest respective settings to test, and it's still simply too bright.)

To the common argument of ''people will just turn up their gamma!'' there are two easy solutions:
1) Bloom
2) Noise

For Bloom, you know the overused bloom-on-white that every game has nowadays? You can do the exact same thing with black to blotch out extremely dark areas so that jacking up gamma/brightness won't help. It's incredibly inexpensive video processing-wise so you can force it on everyone without crippling their framerate.

For Noise, you know the film grain effect games like Killing Floor and Left 4 Dead have? You do that, but scale it based on how dark a given pixel is, so the darker, the more randomness applied to that pixel; modulate it by the overall darkness level. This is more expensive than bloom, but could likely still be optimized to the point where the impact is nil.

Either makes gamma/brightness tweaks ineffective and lets you actually have darkness be effective. Wouldn't it be novel if flashlights had a purpose and nightvision was for more than just Liberator gunners and the 2 people who use smoke grenades? If indoors had lighting that could be flipped off at a wall switch or a generator blown up to knock out the lights?

I completely agree, this is a suggestion that has merit and good points, something to be taken seriously and not brushed aside by a community that doesn't care for a meta-game. This will add extreme depth to combat, even flying will become hazardous and difficult. I love it, it adds a whole new level of challenge to a game that is far too easy. It will make thermal optics very useful. Nightvision will have a new purpose.

Night time use to be true night during the PS2 beta's early days. To be honest, the only memorable thing I have about PS2 was one time during the beta, on USWest02, where I rode again with the Blue Lions.

There were about four galaxies worth of Blue Lions/randoms. This was back when the NC warpgate on Indar is where the VS one is now. We flew north out of the warpgate and were enroute to the VS/NC frontline...Night was beginning to fall and everything was rather quiet. There were other gunships enroute as well, along with tanks, sunderers, etc.

You knew you were getting closer to the fighting because the explosions got louder. Streams of tracer fire from ground AA were moving closer as well. And then, BAM. The galaxy started shaking as explosions erupted all around it, the other galaxies broke away to land at other points. The galaxy landed just below a spawn room / satellite of Hvar, I believe. By now it was truly night time and the galaxies shield went up.

We piled out of the galaxy and charged toward the closest building. However, we were immediately cut short of our sprint as a hail of VS fire came from the windows, roof, etc. The VS were there and we just couldn't see them, the only thing guiding us were the flashes of their guns. What followed was a good 20 minutes of pure chaos, NC zerg rushing this small stronghold of sorts as engineers desperately kept the galaxy up. The galaxy had landed in such a way that the forcefields didn't protect us a we spawned, so a lot of NC soldiers were gunned down instantly. Those who managed to run away and attack from the flanks are what got us the leverage we needed.

Either way, it was ******* awesome. I miss that so much.

Longer & darker nights with no spotting would be glorious.

I'd also like to see lights on other vehicles, a galaxy with landing spotlights would look amazing. The 'ultra' lighting ini tweak looks spectacular, and darker nights would only improve it.

endorsed

With more thought, this would make driving any vehicle on Amerish a challenge. A good challenge.

Endorsed. This is needed.

And then if they implement weather and clouds, they can implement a moon cycle(UGGH why does Minecraft come to my head again? You know you're sad when minecraft ideas like biome transition and weather cycles are good ideas for a 2000 player MMP FPS) where on cloudy days it's really dark- and have non cloudy days(cloudy being a loose term- it can mean whatever you want, real clouds or juts a grey sky) , and the moon -er, moons aren't full every day.

actually, looking at the two planets(am i seeing right that esamir, indar, and amerish are all moons of a larger planet ? That's what the moons look like when you look at the sky)

That might not be...feasable, unless the rotation period is slowed- oh wait, the planets are always in the sky.

:|

...you all know what i mean , - make it feasable so it makes sense, so we can justify darker nights aka clouds, weather- a planet cycle.

We need the immersion factor- that's just one of many reasons for darker nights.

And then buff headlights and flashlights. None of that battlefield blinding stuff though- more ARMA style(a game that gets it right for darkness)

I can't cite my other favorite of night time, SOCOM Confrontation- but overall, if there's ways to get past gamma cheating- then do it!

Along with this, add in the game the ability for drivers of all vehicles to get headlights(if they currently cannot) and IR and thermal sights-


(that way they get the same vision as their gunners)



signed and signed again. All of this should be added. Darkness can't be that hard..

They already said weather was definitely in the works back during the beta. It wouldn't be any time soon but they did say they had some tests I think using the engine and they said it was pretty awesome. It probably just isnt optimized yet or something though. I'm guessing they need a way for it to be dynamic.

is this a secret Buff for VS?

Throwing my vote into the hat on this as well. I would like to see dark nights (ala beta) return and give a purpose to headlights/flashlights again.

Bring back night combat! Not world of warcraft "everything's purple!" combat. Night's not bad right now, but it could seriously use a bit of darkening.

I would be surprised if even 1% of players have certed into a flashlight on ANY gun.

Agreed 100%. This will give the game more depth.

Rofl, VS were really hard to see back then but it really wasn't a problem. Even if it was we have IRNV scopes available. Not really a big deal.

Quoted for Truth.

Quoted for Reason.

Hmmm, we need to get more people behind this idea. At least those who are the slightest bit intrigued.

I play exclusively on Esamir since I really hate dark. Was going to ask if day/night can be removed from game.

The darker nights in beta led to some of my favorite moments of the game. First day I installed, I ended up in this big SE Indar canyon battle, with us up against the side of one cliff and the VS up against the cliff on the other side. Even at that relatively short distance you couldn't make people out at all and had to rely on firing at their muzzle flash or nearby explosions lighting them up temporarily. I thought it was the coolest thing and it definitely played a big part of getting me hooked on PS2. Spotting might need to have a shorter range at night if things were made darker though.

If nothing else, it would be neat to have a continent that's super dark at nighttime and limits spotting, and maybe even NV. It would be nice to have more variation between continents than "This one has an ice tileset, this one has a fire tileset, this one has a forest tileset..."

While I agree that the night should be darker (most nights I don't realizes it is night)
the headlights only reach about 1m in front of the vehicle. so they really are quite useless
apparently displaying 2,000 lights that reach 100m each is too much for some computers.

I was going to say. I already can't see VS infantry during nighttime base battles. Maybe their alien armor should glow nice and bright.