[Responded] You're killing my eyesight!

1/29/2018 4:56 PM
Title: It's too dark!!
Reproduction Rate: 100
Blocker? no
Details: It's way too dark, all across the board, the entire game, including the overworld. At night, especially in certain scenes, it's so dark you literally can't see anything at all without continually casting a light or night vision spell. Not everybody wants to rely on those spells ever minute or two, and the light spell is fairly inadequate when it's TRULY dark all around.

This much overwhelming darkness actually creates eye strain and headaches after a while. We had a release before where the entire game was uncomfortably dark. Enough people complained that you returned the overall light levels to normal. Please "fix" it again.

Steps to Reproduce: N/A (play during in-game night)
User Specs:
OS: Windows 10 (10.0.0) 64bit
CPU: AMD FX(tm)-8350 Eight-Core Processor (8) System RAM: 16350
GPU: AMD Radeon (TM) R9 390 Series GPU RAM: 8168
SotA.EarlyAccess.LIVE.Win.64.725.Date.01.29.18
Area: HiddenVale_Forest02_Tier5
Area Display Name: Deep Ravenswood
Loc: (-177.3, 38.4, 134.1)
Debug: SGlkZGVuVmFsZV9Gb3Jlc3QwMl9UaWVyNXx8KC0xNzcuMzQyLCAzOC40NDEsIDEzNC4wNTEpfCgwLCAwLjkzNywgMCwgMC4zNDkpfDg2MC45Mzd8MTUuNDkxNTh8My4xNjk5OTk=

 

@Tamsen
I recall the release you speak of. But we haven't made any changes since the last release...
I do want to help you, however. Do you have brightness turned up? What is your shadow distance like? Turning it down may help, particularly at dusk or dawn. Here it appears the weather is bad and it's at the darkest part of the night.
I also recommend night vision. It works a quite well these days! At GM level it lasts for over 36 minutes and stays on between scene changes now. You can see nodes with it and everything.
Just trying to help I'm sorry for the issues.

 

Thanks for the reply, @Lexie.

I have brightness turned all the way up and shadows off. My monitor has the same brightness/contrast setting it has always had since I last tweaked it to work well with SOTA's lighting.

You're right, I took the screenshot while it was raining. Party by chance, partly to accentuate how dark my view was. I'll continue to use night vision as you suggest. I agree that it has been vastly improved, and I'm very thankful for that.

I only wanted to draw somebody's attention to my perception that it is overall uncomfortably dark since R50 and its patches. I'm not the only one who has been effected by the darkness, judging from my conversations with other players. Just the other day, for example, there was a mob RIGHT next to me and another player, at night, and neither one of us could see it, even dimly. We could only see the nameplate. Unfortunately, I missed my opportunity for a screenshot.

Thanks for trying.

 

I agree that the game is really dark at night, too dark for my liking but the night vision spell works fine. I hate night vision due to it washing out all the beautiful colors. Kinda ruins an amazing looking game. More importantly though...fix taming!

 

@Tamsen
I understand completely. Thank you for explaining your side of things. I totally get why you sent that pic because it *can* be that dark...

 

Gotta agree with @Tamsen that the game is often too dark. I know you folks are going for realism and immersion - but it's often unplayable unless you use Night Vision and/or light spell - which ruins the color and aesthetic of the game - so intentionally making the game so dark, is just shooting it in the figurative foot I think this will be a criticism in reviews once the game is launched.

Even @Chris mentioned during the R48 telethon, during the PVP segment with Kor and List, I believe - that he was seeing how dark the game was, even with all the fire effects and whatnot happening on screen - and would be making some adjustments.

My 2 cents