anybody else miss pitch black dungeons?

[Caribou]

Also, how would darkness be functionally different from the fog of war effect?

The full fog of war disappears after you've discovered that section of the map, and darkness would have to be accounted for and countered. Fog of war just is or isn't.

 

 

Oh, I thought fog of war was separate from seeing the map, because it's possible to see terrain features once discovered, but not creatures, etc.  I guess it's a bit of a moot point in PoE since this is really only an issue with patrols wandering into an area already discovered or the bounty quests since there are no respawns.  

[Crucis]

The point about the overworld is a good one, too - anyone that's been out late at night, away from the major cities or large green houses (seriously, those damn things), would know that night is really, really, really dark, unless there happens to be a full moon and clear skies. A torch or minor light source gives you considerably better vision, but in a very small radius, and as it blinds you, everything outside of it is likely to be pitch black. Meanwhile, you're made visible from miles away.

 

I really hate how in many modern games, there's really no meaningful difference between night and day, and you've got perfect 20/20 vision either way. If Skyrim had proper lightning, you'd have to make camp overnight, and even a small town would stand out as a beacon against the clouds of the night sky.

 

And I love the very thought of coming down a dungeon with my torch, and either it tips off the people down there, or I can see the flickering lights in the distance myself. But more than than, the fact that the enemy would need light sources too, there's the fact that a good many would not need any at all, whether they're spiders or slimes, and it'd just make them so much more horrifying.

 

Makes it so much easier to appreciate the existential horror of living in a pre-industrialization society, where there's something evil just past the reach of your fire, and everything that can see your torch in the distance likely wants to eat you.

 

 

Luckman, I agree about day and night and wishing that there was more difference between them.  One of the things I really liked about BG1, way back when, was that at night, the stores closed.  But the later IE games all cities and towns acted like there was no difference between night and day.  Stores remained open.  The people on the street never went home.  And so on. 

 

Also, while BG2 had this (IMO) flaw, it had one other thing that I liked.  In some cities, vampires could turn up at night.  So if you wanted to travel in those cities at night, you had to be wary of the random vampire attack.  Of course, in PoE, fampyrs no longer worry about night and day, which is a change I do NOT like.  That was one paradigm or cliche that was perfectly fine as is and didn't need changing.  But I digress.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

Not seeing much point to it, given that torches don't seem to get used up (granted, it's not like I used them outside the first dungeon - maybe "don't seem to get used up in any timeframe that may make the resource-management aspect interesting?").

 

Also, I don't think it meshes well with Pillars' general aesthetics and design philosophy: dungeons are, by designer's decree, places where balanced and fun combat happens, not places where fools venture to risk life and limb for a fortune.

Well, first of all, saying that torches don't get used up is a pretty big assumption. In a system employing this, I'd expect torches to get used up, unless they're enchanted. But more importantly, you'd only be able to see as far as the light reaches, and you'd actually need to have ways to carry that light, whether it's carrying a torch in your off-hand (which poses the interesting question as to whether you'll use it for fighting or not; it might get damaged, or snuffed out mid-combat) or having a magic sword or a dedicated spell.

 

And obviously, encounters and dungeons would have to be designed with this in mind - but I absolutely think that entering a dungeon should be done knowing full well that you might be risking life and limb, fortune or not. Hell, we're already risking life and limb fighting monsters, in a narrative sense - I just wish we'd do it in a mechanical sense, too. Honestly, going up against a party our own size should always be a real danger, and I hate how we're slaughtering sometimes entire camps at once, when a stray bullet should be able to put us down.

 

 

Well, at this point, we're talking about a paradigm completely different from how PoE actually plays, and what its core gameplay assumptions are.

[Messier-31]

It's not something super important, but having torches in PoE is somewhat just a cosmetic feature.

[Caribou]

It's not something super important, but having torches in PoE is somewhat just a cosmetic feature.

 

Apparently they were at one point more than cosmetic.

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/62578-torches/

[Ranes]

I recognise there might be technical limitations with the PoE engine that make absolute darkness too big an ask, but I agree that pseudo-medieval fantasy RPGs have shied away from realistic lighting for night and underground environments for some years, and I miss that. The superbly lit caves of Skyrim irked me, too. I remember it being a feature of FTL's Dungeon Master and working to great effect. More recently, Legends of Grimrock did something approaching total darkness (complete with a period of light sensitivity adjustment to sudden darkness) that only added to the atmosphere.

 

As Luckmann and others have said, it would be necessary to design for this feature to make it both interesting and fair but this thread convinces me that there is at least some call for it. I don't remember Diablo (the original) that well but I do remember a D&D-esque infra vision spell that would reveal the heat signatures of creatures behind closed doors. (And yes, apparently skeletons animated by necromancy have heat signatures.) The potential for character races and magic effects to enable players to work around the challenges darkness can present are as many as you can imagine. Some good ideas have already been put forward in this thread.

 

If it's up for grabs in a future PoE, count me in.

[gkathellar]

Really, while there's nothing inherently wrong with having a lighting system in place, I think it risks being a tacked-on inconvenience unless it's fundamental to and inseparable from a game's general exploration mechanics. The IE games would not have been improved by a lighting system, due to the style and structure of their dungeons. Neither, I think, would PoE.

[vv221]

And I love the very thought of coming down a dungeon with my torch, and either it tips off the people down there, or I can see the flickering lights in the distance myself. But more than than, the fact that the enemy would need light sources too, there's the fact that a good many would not need any at all, whether they're spiders or slimes, and it'd just make them so much more horrifying.

 

Makes it so much easier to appreciate the existential horror of living in a pre-industrialization society, where there's something evil just past the reach of your fire, and everything that can see your torch in the distance likely wants to eat you.

You summarized pretty well here why I would love to see darkness implemented as a game mechanic

Edited March 21, 2016 by vv221

[HawkSoft]

I would like a pitch black dungeon.

 

It would need to be supported though -- there are torches, but we'd also want spells and items which emit light, or infra/ultravision etc. Perhaps death godlikes use some other sense than sight to "see" and are immune to darkness.

Fire Godlike?

[PugPug]

Here you go, OP:

 

 

Light being a limited resource is the main point of the game. There isn't even combat. Well, enemies can hit you.

[demeisen]

Thanks PugPug - I own it!

​

[corrado33]

I think needing to light your way in a dungeon would be useless personally. Just a gate for you to travel through. (Having to find torches.) It would be more annoying than anything. Now, if it was a feature that you could turn off, fine.

 

Besides, if you found yourself in the dark you could just go to the map, double click on the exit, then send your party there. Pathfinding would get you there. So again, it'd just be an annoyance rather than a decent game feature. 

[wanderon]

Let us not forget that in dark dungeons you are also likely to be eaten by a grue - never a good thing...

[demeisen]

Let us not forget that in dark dungeons you are also likely to be eaten by a grue - never a good thing...

 

​I recall my first grue encounter, circa 1980.  I thought, "Grue?  How bad can that be?"  -> "go up."

 

Turns out, pretty bad .

​

PoE2 should have an easter egg.  If you explore a pitch black dungeon with a light source, all is well.  If your light goes out for more than say 60 seconds, a grue shows up and eats your whole party...  no matter how badass you believed, just moments ago, that you were.

​

[HippoJ]

 

It's not something super important, but having torches in PoE is somewhat just a cosmetic feature.

 

Apparently they were at one point more than cosmetic.

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/62578-torches/

 

 

Is there proof in that thread that torches were more than cosmetic?  I just perused but didn't see anything that stood out to support your claim.  I could have missed something obvious, of course. 

 

Having lighting affect gameplay (even just a few night-time or dungeon encounters) seems possible with PoE 2, and I do love the possibilities for use of a day/night cycle in interesting ways.  I'd give Obsidian a general pass for PoE as they were building the game entirely from the ground up using a kickstarted (admittedly overwhelmingly successful) funding project for development.