It's more about what is is good for the eyes I think. It's not good for your eyes if things are too dark.
Try using darkness mods for Oblivion and see how it affect your eyes after long plays.

It's like with music. You can't have too loud of too extreme soundtracks all the time, despite how epic and good they might be. That will hurt your ears. It will become more of an annoyance after long plays.

Same thing with too much contrast in a game.

Well I have both the need to wear glasses and my hardware isnt that modern.
So those pictures youve linked are to me mostly a blue and brown blur, I can make out very few details, even when wearing my glasses.
I had the same thing with Alduin's wall.
Everyone was having a whale of a time talking about everything they discovered on it, but everything Ive learned about it was from what people wrote. I couldnt join in the search for clues because Alduins wall, to me, is just a black screen.

The point is that games should not be so dark so they become unplayable for people that do not have 20/20 vision,
the latest model monitor, or both. I have one of those games, its money down the drain, its totally unplayable for me.

... 'round this parts, some consider that an exploit.

What does that have to do with anything?

Night darkness should vary (Clouds covering the moon or not, full moon gives eerie and beautiful visibility).

And torches should be relatively easy to obtain (To the point I'm not stuck unable to get one even if I tried).

Well, this is one thing that's hard to complain about in Oblivion. Torches were freakin' everywhere in that game (and had zero weight!). Every single cave and ruin seemed to have the "barrel with 2 torches" just inside the entrance.

-----

In the end, playability trumps "realism" or "immersion", every time.

"I wish it was brighter" is more of a problem than "I wish it was darker", since "I wish it was brighter" appears to be a playability issue for some fraction of the playerbase, not a aesthetic preferance.

:shrug:

And of course, that's what me (and many more) are talking about: we want a black screen where we have to imagine the game, so depending on one's imagination it will look cooler or not.

I don't have the last model monitor, and I use glasses too (to read and use computer), but I don't see the problem on needing to use torches in a dark night; just give them a little more radius, or use a light spell, or nighteye... where could be the problem then? Darker nights and dungeons wouldn't be a health problem unless you decide to NOT use torches/spells; I'm not asking to play a pitch black dungeon, I'm asking to a) give us a reason to use them and B) give us some plausible locations. If I'm in the wilderness at night, I want it to feel like night, and if I'm in a subterranean cave, unless it's populated by "humans", don't put torches, so it will feel like a cave and I'll need to use some spells/torches to illuminate them.

Plausibility, that's all I'm asking.

P.S.: please, there's no point on talking about Darker nights; I'm asking it for Skyrim, a new game, not Oblivion.

Oh Im all for the need for a light spell or torch to be able to see.
My point is that that was already the case for me.
Ive read someone post on this thread about visibility difference between cloudy nights versus clear nights with full moons and I think it would be awesome if that was in Skyrim.
What I would really like though is the return of a Morrowind style nighteye. The Oblivion style one with the colour filter didnt help me see at all, everything sort of blended into each other.
So I got used to using torches at low levels and light spells at high levels and especially with a torch I liked the way it lit up the environment. It felt more like I was spelonking that way.
The only problem with that was that it made a sneaky thief type character not really an option, so for that a better nighteye would be ideal.

It shouldn't be too hard to make dungeons darker. Even Pokemon had caves that were so dark, you couldn't see anything.

:whistling:

Tis what I did.

or

Play in brighter surroundings


But

Yes, I would darker darkness :nod:

Ah, I whistfully remember counting my steps until I bumped intoa a wall in the original Wizarrdrys LOL Just imagine the fun it'd be having to figure out your pace count (distance per tap) and counting taps while watchign the compass {/sarchasm}

No light without a source please.
The darker dungeons mod for Oblivion was great.
There was a time my last torch went out, and I didn't have any light spell (except for tossing a fireball), I tried to find my way out using the map. Creatures were following and eventually caught up to me, and I was slaughtered!!. I guess they were good at seeing in the dark or by smell or something.
But yeah, it was quite thrilling.
Makes you think about better equiping yourself before venturing about.

Agree with that

Nah, their behavior scripts just wasn't altered by your "dark" mod, so they were all wandering around acting like they could see fine.

As great as it would be to have all light come from a source it's probably not going to happen. If they did there would be an ungodly amount of shadows to render that would cause performance loss. Just try real lights for oblivion.
That's one reason why the ambient light can be an advantage because it doesnt cast shadows, but that doesnt mean they can't lower it to be a bit darker for the same effect.

I ranted about this a while ago in my own thread, and yes I still agree.

In my opinion:

Fake lights are bad for immersion. I really am not scared, cautious, curious, or otherwise thoughtful of a dungeon where I can see absolutely everything ahead of time; darkness adds a layer of much needed role playing value to, you know... a role playing game.

Fake lights reduce the visual quality of the game. Dynamic shadows, highlighted areas/objects/creatures, advanced reflection, and advanced refraction all look better with dedicated and direct light sources; as opposed to being washed out by the copious amounts of magical light.

Night-eye, light spells, torches, lanterns, and staves did not have a purpose to me until I installed the Darker Nights+Dungeons in Oblivion. If Skyrim has fake lights galore, then there will be little need for them again.

Because some people don't want to have to strain their eyes, or actually have to use in game tools to solve a problem, I suppose it would be fair to have an option to turn off Atmospheric Light Sources in the options of the game.

good food for thought.
So hopefully, the script should change based on light levels for Skyrim. Some navigationg better in the dark, and others not so good.

And of course spells like 'night eye' and 'detect life' would be more valuable.

Then turn into a black nord? No way!

I see everyone talking about darker dungeons....am I the only one who uses cava obscura

I think that in some places there were too many lit torches, they should really try to have believeable light sources. The ambient light levels were terrible. They really should reduce the number of permanent torches lit in dungeons filled with creatures and find some light sources that could always be there and aren't creature dependant, such as light coming from outside in the caves. Then we could have torches in dungeons that make sense, like those filled with bandits. And the ambient light levels need to be severely lowered, if they want the fog to have an erie glow for the skeletons in the background, put a light source somewhere.

They could easily make this a setting to change for people who like the darkness, and people too annoyed to use torches.

Gameplay trumps "immersion" every single time.

You do not limit gameplay because it might "feel" better to some people.


(as an aside, did you know that some "night" scenes in motion pictures are filmed in the day, with a blue filter? Well, and even night filmed scenes are typically very bright. Why? Because it's more important for the audience to be able to see what the heck is going on, than to make it "realistic". The exception, of course, is a minority of suspense/horror movies, who milk that "OMG DARK!" thing for all it's worth. But even most of those films have plenty of light most of the time - again, people want to actually see things.)

The game has to remain playable on some level too. It's not all about immursion

^ this would be interesting.
if they could pull this off id be down fr it.

What is it about darkness that makes the game unplayable?

Read my post about Silent Hill: Homecoming, literally unplayable because, to me, it is just a black screen with grey bits and I cant combat or run away from something I cant see.

If only someone had told me sooner D: (Only played the game at my cousin's house every now and then).

I'll take note of that for skyrim.