make darkness less dark please

[Mouse]

Currently, darkness is really, really dark.  It used to not be nearly as dark, but it was made darker a year or so ago, maybe a bit longer.

Anyways, for those of us without perfect vision, it's... not fun.  With Cats' Eyes and an active PDA light I can just barely make out my character in maint.

[Kotlol]

I have no problem using the black rings or light rings as a replacement too.
Or seeing just sillihoutes move like you are a ghostdrone.

Anything to remove the "fake darkness" we have, while cool and realistic and I like it... if it can be turned off and it gives a GAMEPLAY ADVANTAGE it is a bad mechanic gameplay wise.
Especially in a game where you can "fight eachother" in that dark with same stats, but someone has "accesabillity on" and thus has a major advantage gameplay wise.

(Note this aint a rant about having options to make games better for others or adding more options, I only think when options to make a game accessabile gives 1 player the advantage over the other isn't really super fair.)

So in the end... Just rework the darkness main system to block vision from a gameplay standpoint. Or just load in the tiles in the dark but you don't see what occupies them till you get closer and such. (Kinda like how Meson goggles work)

[Flaborized]

Old lighting was mostly less accessible. With the current system, anything that has zero lighting (including the ring of light all characters have around them as a lightning source) is #000000 black. This means that no matter *what* you set your monitor's gamma to, you won't ever be sent any visual details of things in "complete darkness". It's all the way dark. Old darkness basically dimmed everything, so you totally could just turn up your monitor to cheat it, and would gain a real mechanical advantage if you could just see better in the dark areas, which encouraged people to strain their eyes picking apart barely visible detail. 

New system isn't perfect, as, like you've said, just *barely* visible things are quite difficult to see, but still possible. But the older lighting where everything was *kind of* visible in the dark was much, much worse for it. Some solutions could be brightening up the vision ring around players (that only you yourself ever see) or making very very dim lighting render as fullblack as well. Maybe both? Lightning should be binary: you either see it and it's lit, or you don't. Also should still look good. Seems like hard work!

To illustrate my point I opened a local instance of the game and broke all the lights in a maint hallway on Atlas. Then, I screenshotted it and opened it up in Aseprite. Using the color dropper, it's very clear to see that areas that are full-dark.



The highlighted dark area isn't an accessibility option, everyone sees the same thing in it: nothing. If you turn your brightness you'll see a greyer black, not what's "actually there". And when I say old darkness, I mean from like two years ago. Not old old darkness with the grid-based lighting. (obviously?)

[Chayot]

I like the current lighting, especially how dark things get, it looks great.
I love walking into a pitch-black area and stumbling around in darkness.

I can understand saying "I have bad sight, It's hard to see in the dark"--I think everyone has a had time seeing in the dark (I'm referring to in-game).

I don't want brightness increased. Leave that to NVG, thermals , cat-eyes people, or anyone holding a flashlight
It gives light sources relevance and antagonists/criminals who purposefully induce darkness another factor from their environment to use.

[KikiMofo]

I have trouble seeing in the dark because my eyes are not great as well. I dunno how to fix this without making someone else unhappy though.
This is the reason I always use cat eyes trait and always get a high powered flashlight for my PDA every round even though it turns me into a giant glowing target.

[Kotlol]

I am not saying we need to remove darkness all together, but some changes to make it more gamey would be nice. The system can be mostly turned off giving an advantage to those who turn it off.

Also maybe screenshots with accesability on or off will tell us the difference.

[Chayot]

> I have trouble seeing in the dark because my eyes are not great as well.
In the image provided for instance, are you able to see the Character, the tile under him, as well as partially of one tile ahead?
Same for you Mouse.

Or are the both of you unable to discern anything in the image (Aside from the light seeping over the walls maybe.)

[Mouse]

Is there a character in that image? Because I don't fucking see shit.

In fact, until Flourish mentioned it I didn't even know the vision ring even still existed, because when I'm in darkness the only thing I can see on my tile is pitch fucking black. With Cat's Eyes I can see my character if I put my face maybe three inches from the screen, and combined with a PDA light I can generally figure out what tile I'm actually on without leaning in that much, but I don't see any more detail than that.

[Chayot]

In the bottom left portion of both photos, there is a man standing with a fire extinguisher.

If you at least can't see your own character, I'd say that's no good.
As it stands, normally, players can mostly discern their own character in pitch-black areas such as the one provided.

[KikiMofo]

I can see the character but am I suppose to see a tile around the character too? because I can't see shit around the character. Only reason I can generally see my character in the dark in game is because I know where the center of the screen is so I just assume my character is there. If I some how get stuck somehow I have no idea whats going on because the screen is no longer moving. I assume its suppose to be like that though because its dark.

[TDHooligan]

i wouldn't say no to the brightness of the darkvision ring getting raised a little, it can be a bit eye straining on some monitors.

but overall it is a matter of accessibility vs concealment in imperfect darkness

[KikiMofo]

I love being sneaky in the dark but the problem is seeing in the dark to be sneaky in. I agree the places you ARENT suppose to see should be dark but the areas where you can see like a tile or two around you shouldnt make me have to place my face against the monitor just to see those tiles.

[Kotlol]

Pretty much this is what I suggested too....

While it's cool and all, I think the squares vision may look less realistic, but it's better for most players (or atleast the option to set it to that)

[Frank_Stein]

What if darkness wasn't as much visually limiting by way of lighting, and instead more mechanically created?

For instance, all objects in low enough light get something like a "Hidden" status effect by the darkness. The sprite might get shadowed out so it's just a dark outline that doesn't give details on inspection?