Please lower the Contrast - it's TOO Dark!

I don't see that happening at all. There is no advantage of being able to see your opponent semi-brightly and very brightly. None.

 

Unless stealth isn't 100% INVISIBLE. And like in some other multi-player games, you can BARELY, just barely, see stealthed players as shimmers. Then yes, lighting could play a very important role.

 

Yes, this sounds like a bug or system-related behavior. I was adventuring with another player who said the same thing about everything being too dark and I couldn't understand what the problem was because I did not have the same experience. I never changed any display settings in the game and my monitor still has the factory defaults, and I have normal-looking (and pleasing) environmental lighting in SOTA.

 

I got the light spell loaded on my non combat bar upon character creation. As I'm sword and board ATM, it has become a mandatory spell to keep up while underground. I'm perfectly ok with that.

 

I just wanted to throw out there that this issue probably has to do a lot with hardware and monitor setups (maybe mac vs, PC?). I play this game on two different machines. A Macbook pro and Home PC (with acer K272HUL). I don't even bother trying to play on the Macbook when it's night time (in game night). Even when you have the light spell that casts a ball of light in front of you. I think I spent 20 min trying to find the exit in deep ravenswood in the dark even with the light. I was laughing thinking some GM must be watching me and not understanding why I'm circling the levels parameter over and over.

My home PC is the polar opposite. I don't need to cast any light spells (saved myself 2pts!!). Night time is bright enough to see %100 of everything. I didn't spend any time messing with brightness / contrast settings of either machines.

In my opinion there should be a brightness and contrast setting in the game. It should follow the standard of other games that have a way to calibrate. If you want to immerse yourself fully in the game, playing the game as the developers intended, then you'll follow the recommended calibration. I could probably create a new color profile for my Mac so the game is playable at night but this seems like something that should be part of the game not an os setting that needs to be adjusted.

Also I'm glad this thread is getting some action. I think it's important that the game has a similar visual experience across most machines.

 

I do find it kind of amusing that even when it's really dark and you can't make much out the names over players are still BRILLIANT BLINDING cyan.

 

Its too dark and we need sliders. Thats all I have to say.

 

Especially dark scenes tend to have widely varying effective contrasts depending and screen quality, room lighting and OS settings. When ideally it would be a contrast of 1:10, in a specific setting it may drop to 1:2. And even if the screen provides a good contrast, but the player prefers well-lit rooms to reduce overall eye-strain, distringuishing shades of black will become impossible or very hard.

The net effect is that in many games, unless I increase the gamme setting significantly, my eyes will hurt in dark scenes after mere minutes. Also in my experience making a small portion of the screen brighter can even worsen the effect; Human eyes don't take well to strong brightness differences in the field of vision.

Also, when thinking of "realism" or "immersion" please cosider that in real life we have other senses that complement our perception of our surroundings and orientation. Lacking such, being deprived of vision is actually by far worse in games, more akin to loosing the sense of vision, balance and feeling all at once.

 

I guess this will always just be personal preference.

My opinion on the darkness is I love it.

Torches and light spells are never used in other games as there is no use for them, and I really like that this game makes use of skills such as the light one, when you are adventuring in the dark you are supposed to feel scared, you are supposed to feel somewhat disorientated, I enjoy that this game makes you actually think in the darkness about where you are and finding your way, it completely adds to the game in my opinion.

The thing about not being able to have a torch because your a duel wielding fighter, well in my opinion seems a little silly as realistically you cant have the best of both worlds, in real life you'd have to adapt for night time, and get that there should be a balance between game and reality, but then you can just go to extremes with that, and im hoping that this game stays like this as its these little things which make it different, like being able to close doors, being able to turn on street lights, it is really cute.

I recently went back to try world of warcraft before I knew this existed and enjoyed the pvp and scale of the game, and when I noticed that they completely scrapped night time, and only the sky actually changed to night time with the same lighting on the areas as daytime, I actually quit, specifically for that reason, its ruining atmosphere and ambience because people want to be able to go make the most of their time, which again to me I just don't like, I really want to feel involved in the game and think its pretty cool to see a group of people with mage lights or torches.

The people that are suggesting changing it to be brighter, I imagine want it bright enough to be able to see everything at night time, which would just make the use of torches or the mage light spell irrelevant, which would be disappointing in my opinion!

Perhaps another solution would be make the torches or street lights have a bigger lighting radiance? For example in town when all the street lights are on, I do think it perhaps could be a bit lighter, but in a dark forest you would expect it to be a lot darker, but again if the mage light or torch had a somewhat bigger radiance then perhaps your healer of your group, could be the designated light carrier.