Night Time Way too Dark

[Berzerker Jay]

Ultimately, isn't Kenshi supposed to be a challenging game where you start out as a nobody and earn every bit of ability you have to contend with what's out there to kill you and shut you down?

We're squabbling because it gets dark at night? So we have a worldwide night-light? I mean, come on, guys!

[BoogieMan]

Ultimately, isn't Kenshi supposed to be a challenging game where you start out as a nobody and earn every bit of ability you have to contend with what's out there to kill you and shut you down?

We're squabbling because it gets dark at night? So we have a worldwide night-light? I mean, come on, guys!

It can very from person to person due to monitor quirks and video cards. An in game brightness option would have been fine.

Just because it works for some, or you, doesn't mean it works for all.

[BoogieMan]

From what I can tell the sun goes down around 11pm and comes up around 5am. That amounts to six minutes of game-time if one should put their speed on full.

Being able to see is kind of boring. I send my squaddies out for a couple days at a time and barely watch them while they're mining, because I know I'll see anything coming from a mile away, no matter how dark it is.

It just doesn't make sense that I can see perfectly and clearly that there are approaching dogs in the forest far away, even though Kenshi's world -- from what I understand -- has no moon.

I literally mistook the afternoon for midnight today.

If you can mistake midnight and afternoon then there is something really weird going on for you. They are very, very different. Night and day, as one would say...

So perhaps your perceptions of it is far different from the average player.

[Berzerker Jay]

Trust me, it was a momentary lapse and had everything to do with that night is now as bright as daylight.

I had all the same difficulty with traveling around in the night as those complaining about the dark report. I just saw it as reasonable and realistic, and I adapted my playing to fit it. Which is what people should do.

Next we're going to hear that the town guards are too strong and should all have stats below 10 because they're not easy enough to beat? I actually see it as a negative in this game's current design that one can travel continuously without being impeded by night or day. Night or day doesn't make a difference now, except stores close in towns.

Night should be different, or what's the point of having it? If it's just a graphical change only and doesn't affect the game....

[Berzerker Jay]

I guess basically it's just that -- night should affect gameplay. Otherwise I'd like some way to turn it off entirely as it's just wasting my memory resources I could devote to meaningful areas of the game.

[BoogieMan]

Just because some people think it was too dark and they couldn't see anything to do anything doesn't have any thing to do with guard strength. Just because people seek changes to one aspect of the game doesn't mean they are going full carebear, let's be realistic here. I like the challenging aspect of the game. I can't imagine anyone would play Kenshi who didn't have some taste for a difficult game.

Strong guards, starvation, bandits, slavers - those are normal difficulties that you can adapt to and deal with. But if you could see nothing at night, well, you just could see nothing and it happened every day and all it did was frustrate you and there was nothing you could do about it.

The nights were unrealistically dark for not having a thick cloud layer anyway. I live in central Florida and my area was hit by 3 hurricanes in 2004. The one that did the most damage in the area took to out power pretty much everywhere. There was virtually no artificial light being generated for days in vast area. The glows above cities? Gone. You could see the stars again. I could see terrain features better at night then in real life with lingering clouds, than I could in Kenshi under a bright clear sky before the change.

All it takes to satisfy everyone is a slider for brightness at night, and adjusting npc view range at night so you can't see people as far away as you can during the day.


Anyway, a change was made so this is pointless.

[Berzerker Jay]

It's hardly pointless to discuss it and give feedback on the changes. As far as I'm aware this isn't a final change, and it makes sense to wait until the game mechanics reflect the same challenge for the AI as a human player faces in low light.

Here's my gameplay experience with the darkness:

Characters are idle. Time to do something. Look at the time, and it's only a few hours before dark. I put all my low-level squaddies on training equipment. Rogue character goes out into the darkness and liberates some imprisoned valuables, maybe a new sword. The sky starts to lighten around Three or Four in the morning and we all head out to do what we have to do.

Or, it gets dark and your trade convoy sets camp for the night. They can see within the firelight, but beyond that anything could be lurking, waiting to ambush someone who might wander away from the group....

I don't know. It seems like a weird thing to complain about, that it's dark at night. That's like going swimming at a pool and complaining about getting wet. At the end of the day (get it?) it adds suspense to the game, and that's good.

I don't even bother looking to see what time it is because it literally makes no difference to how I play. If it's just a matter of game mechanics to represent that your characters can't see though you can see perfectly and can issue orders to your characters with that clairvoyance, then I'll probably still not bother planning around the time of day and just have my characters sneak when the game mechanics kick in. That's pretty boring, if you ask me.

Game ends up less dynamic, and replay value will reflect that.

[Berzerker Jay]

I also really liked that it forced me to actually navigate to towns and farms along the way during a journey to keep squaddies safe at night. As the game develops there's going to be more and more to do in these places, so having to stop in for the night because you're in bandit country isn't necessarily dormant time.

[TotallyRandomPerson]

It seems like a weird thing to complain about, that it's dark at night. That's like going swimming at a pool and complaining about getting wet.

Not the best analogy due to the fact that when you go to swim you specifically want to get wet.
Where as when anyone plays Kenshi (or any game) they all dis and like different gameplay.

Some people will like having next to zero visibility during night, others will not. Personally, during night my screen is basically black. This affects my gameplay negatively and I don't like it.

Darkness either need to be balanced so the AI has the same troubles you have, or there needs to be a brightness option.

[Berzerker Jay]

It sounds like we're in agreement that it needs balancing. I'm reading here that the bright nights are the solution to some.

In my eyes the NPCs need to be impaired as well, and I'm not sure if this has started and maybe hasn't worked properly or if it's coming. We have darkness affect sneak, so in that way it's already there. Part of me wonders if NPC's are using sneak against us?

If that's the case then when Perception is implemented that will likely address it.

Ultimately lanterns are going to make the nights a lot more realistic, and I believe should come first before we turn the lights off at night. With that and maybe dynamic moonlight, nights would be a dream.

[Rices]

if not done on your own already for personal use, here comes the Mod for Darker Nights for those who likes them.

http://www.nexusmods.com/kenshi/mods/28/?

hadn't tinkered with the other vaules which change the altitude for the sun etc. but there is a short explantation to change it to your liking too.

[bk3000]

It of course is supposed to be dark, and difficult for you to see thus things may surprise you. You remedy that with lights, and avoid traveling at night. Start your travels during early morning, and avoid going too far out where you can't stay in either your base or a town.

Now if it really is too dark... that's your monitor and/or video card and Kenshi has no way of knowing how stuff will look when rendered on your monitor. I'm someone who suffers from a monitor that is insufficiently bright in many cases. As nice as it would be to have an in-game remedy(gamma slider in settings), you can solve this easily enough. Go into your video card settings and increase gamma as appropriate. You might even use a calibration tool, but that isn't strictly necessary. Adjust so it is pretty dark, but you can sort of still make out basic stuff.

That should fix it for you. Now if they could just keep the font readable for me...