Ok, I see the playability point.
So then, some balance is needed. A few light sources here and there. but then areas in the same 'dungeon' that are very dark.
Basically, there still needs to be reasons to bring something along with you to help you see in the dark.

It's either dark dungeons and some trepidation about what lies ahead or well lit dungeons (Oblivion style), no use for light sources/spells and no sense of danger.


Those were the days. I remember trying to map the magical darkness areas in 'Bard's Tale' dungeons by wall banging and some areas in the dark span you round or teleported you. The don't make 'em like that anymore. :banghead:

That's because of what passes for gamers these days.

"OMG I can't see, what do you mean I haz to put away my shield to carry a torch? Taht interferes wit mah roleplayzz!1!"

"AAAAAAH, why is it dark at night?"

"EEK, why can't this abandoned cave a mile underground be well-lit?"

So to stop all the , we got Oblivion:



:wallbash:

Game play =/= playability.

I'll tell you what game has playability, checkers. Now THAT'S a game with playability.

For the rest of us, a slightly more sophisticated equation is required to undermine the complexity of games:

Game Play = Playability + Depth

We're not asking for the game to be in perpetual night with no light sources. We just want darkness to actually be a factor in the game under the right conditions as opposed to not being in the game at all.

I hope the dungeons come out as dark as the Oblivion's 360 dungeon darkness, black as night in there. It seemed relatively dark even in that open room in the gameplay that was leaked. So it gives me hope.

I dont think they need to be any darker than they were in Oblivion, some of the Oblivion dungeons were still pretty dark even with lit torches on the walls.

I started playing cRPGs on those games (the original Ultimas, Wizardry 1, Bard's Tale....).

Those "dark mazes" were annoying exercises in brute force trial-and-error mapping. Not sophisticated difficulty or some example of the nostalgic "good old days".

You said it, and perfectly. There's a difference between having arbitrary darkness in random places solely to satisfy advertising claims of difficulty, and having darkness where anyone with an IQ higher than their shoe size would expect darkness. And then an even bigger diffierence between those and having no darkness at all to prevent

I never had a problem with alot of dungeons in Oblivion, it looked dark enough on my TV. Although I do agree that several dungeons had the darkness ruined by those random glowing rocks and light shafts that would come from nowhere.

Still though most of the game was plenty dark enough on my TV, any darker would be bad unless night eye gets better.

Get real. All the Oblivion dungeons were filled with an unnatural and physically impossible light that rendered all torches and light spells useless. The actual light sources in dungeons were there only to look pretty. And yet they would look a lot better if their light was actually useful.

What we need to make everyone happy is 2 sliders. One that adjusts the gamma like we have already and another that alters ambient light levels only. Win, win.

It would be cool to have a challenging dungeon for us old school gamers. One that goes very deep(takes maybe an hour or two to explore(more if thorough)), has dimly lit rooms that get darker the more one ventures downward(need torches!), and a level of difficulty that is next to impossible for most players(but with a reward that makes the challenge worth it!)

:celebration:

"a challenging dungeon"? "a bunch of challenging dungeons" sounds better. A suggestion is Labyrinthian. I've never played Arena, so I've never seen the place myself, but the descriptions I've heard of that place makes me somewhat frightened. And it is located in Skyrim apparently, so I expect them to include it.

This. I don't want pitch black cause it's annoying when actually playing, you can't properly see your enemies or loot.

You missed the point of my post entirely. Or maybe you missed the quote of myself after the quote of you. Anyway that's not what I meant at all. I think you took the term playability in gameplay terms rather than performance which is what I was talking about.

I feel quite the opposite. I feel making it dark enough that torches,nighteye,and light spells more than just clutter would not detract from the gameplay at all or make it unplayable.

It doesnt have to be done with real light sources per se because they cause performance loss due to the amount of shadows and particle effects (see real lights for oblivion which replaces all ambient glow with real lights). They can still just lower the ambient light values without causing the performance hit. In the end the only difference is performance (oh and I guess immersion but meh IMO)

That's what torches, Night-Eye, and Light spells are for. :facepalm:

It doesn't have to be pitch black to be darker than the daylight caverns of oblivion. At any rate wouldnt it make sense that you have to make use of torches and nighteye/light spells? They are a rather ineffective gameplay mechanic if you never have to use them.

Ah, yes, I missed one of the conversations somewhere.

For that idea, it is reasonable to cater to both crowds. People who cannot play the game due to performance should have a slider to turn the game's requirements down, and if people have awesome rigs to make it look good then there is no point in not letting them slide a setting to the max to get the detail they want. I don't see a reason to stick with fake lighting, without options, if it's a case of system performance.

Though, I do take exception to your fleeting view of immersion. It's hard to play the role you want to when you are not immersed in a game. In fact, I'd say immersion is the only thing keeping you in your role and making it more believable. Immersion for the sake of immersion is bad, but this kind of immersion is supposed to add choices and consequences to your actions. You might fear what you cannot see, so will you sacrifice a shield slot for a torch or go back to town for a light spell? You might be sneaking, is there enough shadow in that lit area to sneak around it? etc.

I see true lighting, performance aside, as a reasonable immersion technique because it doesn't matter if you don't want it to. Sunlight, torches, humongous light spells, etc. remedy the issue if you cannot stand it, but it otherwise affects the choices you make from a psychological standpoint.

for undead and animal inhabited dungeons deffinitly gotta be torchless i dont thinka draugr or a rat has the brains to light a fire :flamethrower:

Yes good points all around. I would agree that proper lighting goes along way toward creating a belivable atmosphere. I'm not sure how they would go about creating a slider setting though, it's one thing to adjust ambient light and another to replace it with real light sources. If they can they should go for it for sure.

I'm just not as big on immersion being important to the game as I play it, at least not at the expense of performance. Tbh I never payed much attention to lighting while I was playing (even when i go into roleplay immersion mode) other than thinking it was too bright. That's why I tagged on IMO at the end lol because I know not everyone is the same.

Indeed, I agree. An option might be difficult to control the lighting dynamically. If they programmed with proper structure then atmospheric lights should have a property to designate them as such; which could be turned off/on in batch. Though, I doubt they were that clean cut. And how that would affect A.I. would be dicey at best.

Again, performance aside, lighting makes or breaks the mood in all aspects of life. A function of role playing games is to put you in roles that are not your normal self. However, to fall within those roles smoothly, they need to be as close to real situations as possible to flush out your role and mindset.

I warn you though, I am a long time DnD player, so when I ask for role playing in games, I'm looking for two hundred miles above what the developers could actually achieve. Ha! I like to think I'm just raising the bar by having unreachable expectations.

Very true. I still feel nostalgic for them though, as do many others, especially for the Ultima series.

There are some times where realism gets in the way of game play. This is one of those times in my opinion. They already showed interactive lighting to the gaming press, but making every abandoned dungeon pitch black sounds annoying to me, as if there aren't already enough brown and dark games this generation.

I think darker darks wouldn't be a bad idea...

Not necessarily for torches...but Night Eye...

It's a mage thing yeah, but it is a Khajiit thing...it is their big ability...like the Argonians water breathing...but in OB I never used it...Khajiits were just a race with a high Acrobatics...which is now gone...so what would they have?

Dungeons should be very dark. You could not see your arm without a torch, spell or a weard scary hole that light comes from... But nights should be pretty light considering that Skyrim is north and thet Nirn has an axel like earth. If those are both true there should be midnight sun.
Here In Finland the sun is up for 3 months during summer
EDIT: By saying that sun is up 3 months i mean that it is up 24/7