Seems too much Night time.

delete5230

In watching videos, It "appears" like it's always night time and darkness. I know officially this is not the case, I believe it's half and half along with extended dusk and dawn with lesser viability.  It does work well, but "duration of dark" is on the high side in my opinion.

Understand, It's pitch dark, not just visual effects.

  

IN MY OPINION,
It takes away from "fun" to stress realism.  Sure night time, dawn and dusk adds to danger of being jumped, walking in wrong directions and overall paranoia.  BUT IT TAKES AWAY FROM BEING ENJOYABLE, if made too long. 

Realism is a developers choice.  Many survival games range from low to maximum where you have to eat every two minuets and chop down every tree.  As I say it's a developers choice. It's also a player choice to play the game or not.
 

For me, I would love to have darkness time scaled down considerably, and allow more enjoyment.  Focus on danger in other areas such as combat or travel or add your own, just not darkness.... I find it as an irritability.  

Real but not fun on this point.... I can't say anymore.




Here's an unrelated example:

7 days to die
Several years back I played during VERY early access.  I found it both fun and dangerous, I loved it !!..... It was tedious as hell but enjoyable, crafting was a necessity and that was the tedious part. 

Years later I redownloaded after many updates and patches and found it 3x more tedious. 

For me they went too far WITH REALISM and found it not enjoyable at all.  I understand the reasons, long time players over came the tedious and it got boring so developers added more obstacles at the cost of new players fun.   

  

 

Scot

Darkness is often used to increase tension in a game. Funnily enough It is often used in TV and film to cover up areas of an outside shoot or reduce the need for special effects/scenery.

I would like to see some more better lit videos, that said I only looked at them just now because of what you were saying as I don't follow development that closely.

You do realise it is going to take a long time for this one to come out Delete? I doubt we will be seeing it launch in 2021 from what was previously said, though that may have changed?

lahnmir

Darkness works great in SoL, and I’ll just leave it at that.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

Amathe

Light a torch. 

delete5230

lahnmir said:

Darkness works great in SoL, and I’ll just leave it at that.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

I definitely agree,
Just too long as a duration.... I didn't think of adding that or at least stress that, I'll edit my op.

At times you leave in daylight but when you get to your destination its dark..... If you find it enjoyable to do your task in daylight, it's best to time your approach.  But day/night is measured by the game not adjustable to the player like in many single player games.

Seems that way in many videos.

bcbully

Oh I thought you were taking about communication lol 

Was gonna blind post “Renfail only come around a week or two before presale”. 

delete5230

bcbully said:

Oh I thought you were taking about communication lol 

Was gonna blind post “Renfail only come around a week or two before presale”. 

Another good point... I fixed the headline too.
Thanks

delete5230

Scot said:

Darkness is often used to increase tension in a game. Funnily enough It is often used in TV and film to cover up areas of an outside shoot or reduce the need for special effects/scenery.

I would like to see some more better lit videos, that said I only looked at them just now because of what you were saying as I don't follow development that closely.

You do realise it is going to take a long time for this one to come out Delete? I doubt we will be seeing it launch in 2021 from what was previously said, though that may have changed?

Off the main subject,
Maybe not official launch, but one hell of a good pre-launch in 2021

As with any ones post, IN MY OPINION.

kitarad

Actually darkness does add fear. I was quite scared when I played a night blind Erudite. I'd lose my source of light when I die and would have to kill a beetle to even see it could get pretty scary in places I would get lost because I got confused in the dark. It was a definite advantage to be able to see in the dark if you had a poor sense of direction.

I actually tried to stay close to areas I knew if it was dark because I was afraid of getting lost and dying and losing my corpse. It added a whole dimension to the game world and made it so much more immersive. Everything looks far more menacing in the night and scarier creatures lurked in shadows. I actually used to feel a cold air at the back of my neck when I went through Kithicor at night. That place scared me a lot. You don't have that kind of atmosphere in WoW for instance that actual fear of the dark.

It wasn't much fun either to lose a whole slot to a spell conjuring a light or changing your race because you cannot see. Of course Toxxulia never had light even in the daytime.

Darkness should last about as much as daylight because you should have to take the time of day into account too in your travels. Monsters like that werewolf in Karana that came out at night and killed you should also lurk about and scare the beejesus out of you. That is what living in a world like Everquest theme said you live in their world not play in it.

Kyleran

I understand where you are coming from, FO76 initially had even day and night cycles but Bethesda adjusted this earlier in the year to increase the amount of day time vs night time (much to the chagrin of players who took perks which increased attributes at night)

Most players favored the change though, along with others to dial back the survival mechanics as it didn't really add to what makes the game "fun," at least to those like me.

DAOC had some really good darkness back in the day which eventually got dialed back once devs learned players were just jacking up the settings on their monitors to overcome it in order to give better advantage especially in PVP.

I think the same is true about most hindering mechanics if they don't add to the player's overall challenge and enjoyment they probably aren't going to be appreciated by a larger part of the gamer audience, which Renfail has often said he is fine with not appealing to.

He lost me with decision not to provide high level in game maps and more so no compass or coordinate location system in the name of realism and early EQ1 design.

Thing is, I know all three of these things were quickly added to EQ1 presumably due to players requesting them.

So while SoL may start out with the "darkest dark" I predict they'll one day dial it back some along with making some other QOL improvements in order to broaden the game's appeal more to todays tastes.

I'm as old school as the next cranky bittervet here but what I once found fun, or at least tolerated in my younger days just isn't worth the bother anymore.

Life's too short (at least at my age) to spend much time on frustrating mechanics, so I'm not likely to ever play this one. 

Kyleran

delete5230 said:

Scot said:

Darkness is often used to increase tension in a game. Funnily enough It is often used in TV and film to cover up areas of an outside shoot or reduce the need for special effects/scenery.

I would like to see some more better lit videos, that said I only looked at them just now because of what you were saying as I don't follow development that closely.

You do realise it is going to take a long time for this one to come out Delete? I doubt we will be seeing it launch in 2021 from what was previously said, though that may have changed?

Off the main subject,
Maybe not official launch, but one hell of a good pre-launch in 2021

As with any ones post, IN MY OPINION.

Naw, they've "gone dark" since they entered their latest pre-alpha test phase and my guess is they've probably run into the same scaling issues every indie MMO team has had to deal with in the past few years.

In the case of most of them (CU, CF, SC, Pantheon) this has forced devs to go back and do large scale redesigns delaying delivery for many years and in some cases actually killed off the project (COE)

Reality is a cold hearted bitch and I'm sure Renfail and his team are getting a good idea now on the size of the challenges they're facing.

Brainy

I hate it when games have long darkness periods.  I think the game should be nice and bright most of the time, with short night durations.   If a designer needs darkness for some reason, they should use it in caves, or make a canopy in the Trees to block light to give the effect they want.

One of the reasons WoW attracted me originally was the bright and vibrant world they had.

Dark worlds are depressing, and I don't play games for that.  Occasional darkness is fine but dont dwell on it.

Sandmanjw

Anything added to a game, just for the sake of realism...bad idea, and most often are later just a problem that dev's have to come back and work on to change.

Most often they are tied in some way or form to just making the game tedious, and time consuming.

Really gets bad when the dev's go so far as to then make skills, and or perks, to get around the tedious, boring stuff we have to deal with IRL.

Realism -VS- fun, should most often always lean heavily towards the fun part in games.  How many times do we need to see patches and dev notes after games launch talking about QOL fixes, that mostly deal with the tedious parts of games being removed/adjusted?

Would say that when your players get to the point of saying to themselves...this is just tedious and not fun...that is too late and you most likely have already lost customers -VS- having people stay for that extra bit of time that was added to make things "realistic".

Scot

I have played MMOs which I thought had too long a day/night cycle, I think it was AC or AC2 but I really am not sure. 

If you want a zone to ramp up the tension, you can always keep it gloomy while the rest follow a typical d/n cycle. Seen that often.

The balance is a tricky one, we have Brainy suggesting more day, less night. I think many MMOs adopt that? Anyway it is easy enough to change.

Delete if this is your main current SoL concern I rest easy that the game is developing nicely.

delete5230

Well it's much more than day/night cycle, it's pitch dark 50% of the time. I do say it looks immersive and scary.  Much like a horror film.  To me this is ABSOLUTELY fantastic, and it's done extremely well, by the looks of things. 

But just think about it 50% that's a lot !  To put it in perspective, if you play four hours straight that's 2 hours..... That's a long time relying on a Torch.  Something like this could take it's toll and not be fun anymore.

Like Scott stated,
If it's my only concern the game is developing nicely

Scot

delete5230 said:

Well it's much more than day/night cycle, it's pitch dark 50% of the time. I do say it looks immersive and scary.  Much like a horror film.  To me this is ABSOLUTELY fantastic, and it's done extremely well, by the looks of things. 

But just think about it 50% that's a lot !  To put it in perspective, if you play four hours straight that's 2 hours..... That's a long time relying on a Torch.  Something like this could take it's toll and not be fun anymore.

Like Scott stated,
If it's my only concern the game is developing nicely

They have plenty of time to realise the cycle needs adjusting.

remsleep said:

delete5230 said:

If it's my only concern the game is developing nicely

And we know this... how?

This game is a sneeze away from being abandoned for all we know

And for all we know it is on course, I think for some experience of the like of CoE has made them give upon the whole MMO CF idea. For now I am sticking with it.

Kyleran

Scot said:

delete5230 said:

Well it's much more than day/night cycle, it's pitch dark 50% of the time. I do say it looks immersive and scary.  Much like a horror film.  To me this is ABSOLUTELY fantastic, and it's done extremely well, by the looks of things. 

But just think about it 50% that's a lot !  To put it in perspective, if you play four hours straight that's 2 hours..... That's a long time relying on a Torch.  Something like this could take it's toll and not be fun anymore.

Like Scott stated,
If it's my only concern the game is developing nicely

They have plenty of time to realise the cycle needs adjusting.

remsleep said:

delete5230 said:

If it's my only concern the game is developing nicely

And we know this... how?

This game is a sneeze away from being abandoned for all we know

And for all we know it is on course, I think for some experience of the like of CoE has made them give upon the whole MMO CF idea. For now I am sticking with it.

When it comes to crowd funded MMOs my observations to date are expect the worst, hope for the best, and in ten plus years there "might" be a playable game.