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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
People hating on visibility problems due to mist/lightning are wrong.
Ironhope
Member
Besides adding higher levels of immersion and ambiance the reduced visibility adds a strategic/gameplay skill element which I feel is lacking in many other games and I don't agree with the notable numbers of people complaining about it.
I strongly believe that it (mists + light effects + etc) , together with an actual night system (where the night is actually dark) should be kept in the game.
Yes there are a lot of people who want the easiest and simplest possible experience, 1+1 level quests, fast leveling (preferably pay 2 win),etc and if what they want would be implemented, the game in general would go to s***.
What do you guys think?
I strongly believe that it (mists + light effects + etc) , together with an actual night system (where the night is actually dark) should be kept in the game.
Yes there are a lot of people who want the easiest and simplest possible experience, 1+1 level quests, fast leveling (preferably pay 2 win),etc and if what they want would be implemented, the game in general would go to s***.
What do you guys think?
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Comments
I hate when games don't think about this and we are forced to play on potatoe mode to be competitive
with that said, there are things that the game can not enforce even if they try - like making dark nights that require torches, this is something gaming monitors and filters can bypass so, they shouldn't try to do it, work with buffs/debuffs instead of low visibility at night
It's all down to personal preference.
I don't mind mist/fog/haze/smog/rain as a way to reduce visibility, it's interesting and like you said adds immersion to the game.
I do mind, however, having extremely dark nights, like in Rust, for example. I don't want to have to use game filters on another game, especially not an MMO.
Not evereybody has high-end rigs either, if the game is not optimized id assume most players would want to turn down their settings to allow for higher framerates
personally i like the fog/night time/low visiblity aesthetic but you have to think of the community as a whole, not having any setting to turn this down could be a make or break for some players, but then again there will be different regions in the map with different weather, id imagine as well that a region or two will have this aesthetic regularly with slight changes based on the time of day or something.
I was one of the people that did not like the mist/fog and said as much. I wasn't bringing that up to say it was bad but to say the way it was implemented didn't look good. I have lived in L.A., Denver, Las Vegas and outside of Seattle. I have seen fog quite often through out most of my life and what they showed in the ranger demo looked like nothing I have ever seen before, but maybe I just haven't lived in the right areas
Small patches of fog floating around so thick that Stevens character almost completely disappeared when most of the surrounding area had good visibility looked very off. I have seen extremely dense fog, the kind where you literally can't see the front of your car from the driver seat. In the dense fog everything in that area was is dense, not just some small self contained patches floating in an otherwise highly visible area. I have seen light fog with denser wisp patches floating through them but still nothing like the demo.
I do agree with you that light fog to super heavy dense fog, to the point where you lose your bearing, would be pretty cool. It just needs to look right. Would also be nice if the lighting could do it's job without lens flare.
I agree that foliage should be baked into the scene to prevent people from turning down that setting and be able to immediately see where the harvestable items or players/mobs are, much like you can do in Valheim. With all the optimization efforts IS is reportedly putting into the game it shouldn't be a problem.
Having a dark night with a need to carry a light source would be really cool. Provided they could somehow limit the players ability to cheese the system with comp/monitor settings to make night look almost as good as day. I wish more games would make efforts to tackle this in multiplayer games. And yes, I do realize how difficult that ask is given the variables.
I disagree. FYI I lightened this up with quite a few unnatural light sources.
The fog on the left is the "Good" volumetric UE5 fog that can blind you in light (top) & can't see in the actual dark (bottom), the stuff on the right is "scrub club" fog in the dark & in a lighted source. Where it would actually be visible in the dark night. There are ways around "issues & concerns" but I personally not a fan of it in a game.
Seen what to dark does to a player base.
- stays in town/logs off tills its over.
Seen what Fog does to a player base.
- If you can't turn it off in the options we edit the files ourselves.
A lot of people in this thread have mentioned problems with night-time visibility limits, but no-one has mentioned what is by far the largest one: They have a major effect on game balance, and hit some classes much harder than others:
As a Bard, if I see you coming from 20 seconds away, I start the fight buffed and we have a fair fight when you attack me. If I see you from 5 seconds away, I just die.
Bards are balanced around having their buffs active. If I have time to see an attacker coming and buff myself, I am significantly stronger (i.e. actually equal to that attacker). If I don't, I have to fight without the significant buffs my class is balanced around having.
I'm all for a real, good cosmetic day/night cycle with lighting effects, but I need night to not nerf my class specifically. Sure it'll hurt everyone a bit, but Bard by nature has to spend time buffing in advance in order to match the other classes power. Stopping me from doing that is a major nerf.
There is an objectivelly right path to take on the matter and an objectivelly wrong path to take (when analyzing what would be good for the bulk of players, in the context of the game's philosophy).
Convenience has been implemented and has taken mmo-rpgs in the ground.
Add dark nights, sand storms, mist, etc for an extra dimension in pvp and pve, it's less convenient but it adds an extra layer of complexity that will force players to (at least) minimally adapt --> overcome, for real satisfaction.
Yeah that shouldn't be possible (abusing graphics game options to gain an upper hand in pvp).
Yeah it's not going to be very easy to balance and they should make sure they don't make certain classes unplayable.
Then those who want immersion will get it without fear that others cheat with game and have some advantage.
Seeing clearly at close distance is however a must. Even in real life, you can barely move in your home in complete darkness.
With a little bit of light we see details clear enough because our iris opens. That kind of clarity should not be lost for the shake of having more black color on screen.
Highlighting object edges could be a solution, maybe more if objects move.
Night should look great from a artistic stand point, not from a i can't see anything because its night now. Or i can only see in a aoe of the lamp on me to see anything.
Only time you shouldn't be able to see anything and its true night is if it is part of some gameplay mechanic for a boss or something.
However, it isnt strictly necessary to require a Bard class to pre-buff this close to engagement. It is a class design choice.
EverQuest had dark places but also races with normal vision, infravision and ultravision. Many magic items (weapons, shields, etc.) emitted light, and there were torches, lanterns and odd things like fire beetle eyes that gave illumination when equipped, but that meant losing the use of one hand so no shield or 2-handed weapon. Buffs also existed. Yet I can't forget that poor level 1 human ranger stuck in the tunnel leading out of the starting area.
In addition to the classic elves and dwarves seeing in the dark, AoC also have the Vek who are star gazers, and Tulnar who lived underground for millennia. So, thematically, some kind of enhanced night vision fits for them.
Should any races get some sort of dark vision? What do you gives to the races that don't to balance that kind of perk? For example: if Niküa had fast swimming would it be enough or that kind of bonus is too situational compared to night vision?
I admit that if a Bard can buff to full instantly, it's not really an issue, but that honestly feels like a relatively odd design choice. If they can't, we're back to the same problem, unless you allow the buffs to be strong enough to make up for that time where they're just getting hit (or worse yet, stunned out of the cast), but if you allow that, they become OP in normal fights where they do have the chance to prepare, which unbalances things in a different direction.
Alternately, you could allow Bards buffs to last on the order of 5-10 minutes, but that doesn't help either. The songs you need to face a Fighter/Mage will be different than the ones you need to face a Cleric/Rogue. If there's one universal set of songs that's always correct, there's not really a game to play.
I haven't found a solution to this that doesn't either make Bard's design super weird, or in some way break the game. What alternative Bard class design choices did you have in mind?
You would, using certain abilities/items/elements within the enviroment/etc
Yes it would be a limitation... for you and adversaries, opening opprotunities as well as creating dangers for yourself.
No one? You sure about that? It's ok to just say you don't want to and let your opinion be your opinion. Making up people to make your opinions seem more common only undermines your point.
Clearly there are some folks on this thread that do want dark to be dark. Which immediately makes your 'no one' fact wrong.
Saying "no one" is half meme, it means that it is such a small amount of people that it practically no one. Technically no matter how bad an idea is there is always someone who wants it, but that still amount to nothing since the interest is so small.
This is fine in small doses when it comes to certain mechanics that can be part of a fun challenge. When you are talking about a normal gameplay loop where you can't see anything at all (even though mobs will have name plates and people and it will clearly show where they are at) it is not good. You get annoyed not seeing anything, dying and losing xp and mats to random things you can't see as well, it doesn't push the experience forward. The types of games that do this are like games where they are trying to do like a simulation type thing like a super realistic shooter. People don't find not being able to see anything in a normal gameplay loop fun. That includes only being abel to see 3 feet around you with a latern....
That doesn't mean there can't be a dungeon that is dark and fun to do, just not the whole world at half the times of day as you are exploring outside of town..
This is the internet.
Either you use words that actually mean what you want to say, or you are a meme yourself.
My suggestion is always using the correct words.
I live outside of Seattle and we see that on occasion. I currently live pretty close to the Green River (yes, the one that Ridgeway dumped bodies at) and on certain mornings you can get really thick fog that stays low and mostly hangs around grassy areas. It can be very thick and you can't see it. I also used to see it as a kid where I grew up on rare occasions, on the other side of the Puget Sound, particularly in farmland that was off the side of the freeway (and lower than the freeway).
Here is a meteorologist describing it:
https://www.theweatherprediction.com/habyhints/8/
Typically it's either called "ground fog" or "radiation fog". If you look at the Wikipedia entry for fog, it describes radiation fog.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog
And that matches my experience. I saw fog like that this morning as I took my kid to school. I pretty much only see it very early in the morning in colder months.
Maybe the game should add such fog when you take your kids to school
Then you get your immersion one way or the other.
Also darkness during night should be greater when is night in real life. Most players sleep anyway.
That means no moon light from the several moons Vera has unless is day outside.
I get what you are saying but I was referring to the size of the fog "clumps" relative to the area it's in. What you are talking about and was described in the links, I see often. What I don't see are fog clumps only slightly bigger than a person when the surrounding area has considerably higher visibility. What you are posting I agree with and see that often on the Kitsap side of the Sound. What they showed in the game I have yet to see. I tried looking up images but couldn't find anything like it either. All the images I find that are thick enough are fog over a much broader area where many people could hide, not just 1. That's what I was referring to.