I must be partially blind because I needed a light source in Oblivion's dungeons. I thought they were pretty dark.

so wait, casual players can′t be aware?

first of I′m no casual player by a long shot, believe it or not, but not everyone plays like you, so next time learn about a person before flaunting the term "casual" as some kind of semi insult, just because someone doesn′t agree with your gameplay observations.

I just used an Oblivion mod to make those environments darker.
Never adjusted the monitor brightness down, because then eveything would be dark, even when light sources are present underground.

I did this in oblivion by turning the brightness down... its much more immersive/creepy.

also, only be able to light a torch when you have a flame sorch ie campfire, tinderbox..

pulling out a flaming torch from your pocket is too convienient...

big hell no for me ,i want to see the terrain at night and dungeons.

Never adjusted the monitor brightness down, because then eveything would be dark, even when light sources are present underground.

I did not vote. this poll makes no sense. the purpose of a torch is so that you can see where there is no light.

But there is no place with no light in either OB or MW, therefor in ES games they have no purpose

there are places that are dark enough that you might as well be blind. even if it isn't pitch dark tho torches are useful to those characters who have super low magicka and restoration skill and don't want to waste it on short lived illumination spells.

Me too! Are you on a console? I play on Xbox 360 and I'm sure I've heard that it's darker for some reason. Maybe it's just my crappy eyesight and ancient TV, but I can whack the brightness right up and still need a torch, light or nighteye spell to see in some dungeons.

It would make sense that if it's cloudy/stormy, being outside at night would be dark enough to warrant a torch in Skyrim - I never had problems seeing outside at night in OB.

I want it to be almost pitch black at night, and in dungeons, so torches are more necessary than in previous Bethesda games. I never needed to light a torch in MW or OB

I have read a lot lately on here that people want the nighttime and dark places to be handled better than it was in the last games.
Most people want it to be black as pitch at night arguing that without the moon on earth, the night is actually really dark. But Nirn has two moons and IIRC Masser is always shown; thus it would always provide some light, never getting to the ‘so dark you can’t see your hand in front of your face’ that it does in the real world.

But the thing that I always noticed about the dark, that I’ve never seen any game do well is that there isn’t actually any color if it’s too dark; you can only see in grayscale.
Just that would make a huge difference, you would still be able to travel at night without a light source, but you don’t get color.

But while inside in dark caves there should be ways of being able to see without giving the dungeon bizarre light-that-comes-from-nowhere like in most of Oblivion.
In the real world, when you go from a well lit room to a poorly lit one, you start off unable to see anything at all, but after a minute your eyes will usually adapt and you can see what’s around you.
So in-game to speed things along you are able to see again without light in maybe 10 seconds, with some races having a faster transition.
Also after exposure to bright lights, you’re almost blind for a few seconds while your eyes change back to dealing with a large amount of light, this could give light spells an actual use, blinding the bandit hiding in the cave.

Now onto the subject of night-eye, while Oblivions use of the false color was interesting, personally I found the blue to be a bit of an eyesore. If the darkness were done in grayscale, then night-eye would be a sharper version of that; possibly removing any effect of other lights (i.e. you do not get blinded by bright lights, or other spell effects).

With racial bonuses to light: Khajiit should be immune or highly resistant to blinding and the eye-of-night should be some sort of toggle spell that provides night-eye until deactivated.
Dunmer should also be resistant to blinding and have equal or better dark adaptation speed to Khajiit. (i.e. if other races have 10 seconds before they fully adapt, Dunmer should have two)

There should still be torches and other light sources that the player and other NPC’s can hold, but there should still be a way for people to go without.