What is your experience with the new lighting system?

[Byrjun]

I played on Green beta for a few hours, and something really strange happened. I've played this game a million times over the past 20 years, but I got hit with a powerful sense of nostalgia that I hadn't felt before. I knew that EQ lost a bit of its atmosphere or "soul" without the classic lighting system, but I didn't realize the extent of that loss.

That said, I don't think the system is perfect and I wanted to share my experiences to see what people thought.

First character: Erudite

I logged into Toxxulia, it was night and raining and I couldn't see a damn thing, as expected. But I was also surprised by just how bright the game became during the day.

About the only weirdness that I experienced with the Erudite was how different the starter candle and a fire beetle eye were. The starter candle cast a very strong hard light in a short radius around my character, and outside of that radius was complete darkness.

The fire beetle eye on the other hand has a very different light. It's much softer, more like a dull orange light, as opposed to the bright white light of the candle. However, this dull orange light extended out further than the candle light. I tended to prefer the fire beetle eye because of this, but they were both pretty bad.

I don't really remember light sources looking so different, and actually switching between different types of light sources to use depending on my environment, but maybe that's accurate. I'm not sure.

I also noticed a big difference between the way that the lighting worked depending on whether I was in windowed mode or full screen mode. Unfortunately full screen didn't work very well for me, so I don't have much more to say about this.

Second character: Ogre

This is the one I'm really confused about. Ogres are supposed to start with infravision, but honestly I couldn't tell much difference between the Ogre and the Erudite. I definitely DID NOT feel like my vision problems were solved. In fact, I often felt more blind in The Feerrott and Innothule on my Ogre than I did on my Erudite in Toxxulia. A big part of this is the lack of a starter candle or fire beetle eyes. But I'm still a bit surprised by how blind Ogres are.

I was able to turn up my gamma, which helped a lot in the complete darkness (aka I cheated), but it's temporary as the gamma resets as soon as you alt tab the window. I've heard other people say that they can't adjust the gamma at all in-game, so not sure why I'm able to.

Questions

If you played an infravision race like Ogre, how did it compare to a blind/human race? Could you notice a big difference? Did your Ogre (or other character) have blindness problems?

Do you notice a big difference between different types of light sources? Do you remember this being a thing in classic EQ? (Because I don't.)

[Deathrydar]

I have been running around testing this for over a week now. I tested a Troll in Innothule last night and it was fine. I will try an Ogre, but the next time I can log on in Thursday night.

Also there is an entire sticky thread that is dedicated to this conversation.

[Chortles Snort|eS]

Left my stream running overnight if you’d like to see day/night cycles as a DE and then TRL

[Byrjun]

Originally Posted by Deathrydar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I have been running around testing this for over a week now. I tested a Troll in Innothule last night and it was fine.

This was during both day and night? Because the contrast is huge. Days seem fine even as a human. Nights are a hellscape.

Originally Posted by Deathrydar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Also there is an entire sticky thread that is dedicated to this conversation.

Cool, I can obviously see that. I didn't feel like I was really submitting a bug report or feedback, hence the questions in my post. I feel like a thousand people are going to get a thousand different results due to differences in PCs/monitors/settings/etc. I don't want to claim that the entire system is broken just because of my own confusing experiences. Besides, that thread atm is mainly a guy trolling other people into believing that they can get aquavision if they worship Prexus.

[dekova]

My experience is that there's little difference between normal and infra vision during the day, but it's unmistakable at night. I think they've pretty much got the vision thing nailed, though a couple quirks do still exist (boats at night being an example).

I can't imagine how much work this was to implement, I'm incredibly grateful.

Edit: It sounds like all the testing you did was in fog zones. Try creating a human in freeport and comparing that to a half elf in freeport.

[Chortles Snort|eS]

I did have to bump my gamma up recently
It was that dark after a CR at night

[magusfire24]

I think I put mine recently at 20% . wont go higher than that. and still pretty dark. But I like it

[Tecmos Deception]

I don't have any details really, but what threw me off is how sudden and significant lighting can be in certain areas. Like an evil human running through the tunnels in EFP. There are areas where it's very dark, as expected, you can just barely make out where you're going without a good light source. But then all of a sudden there's a corner with a bright green/yellow lighting that has no apparent source. And you round the corner and it's an equally bright light from no apparent source but in a different shade. Stuff like that. I seem to remember feeling similar when moving around inside Erudin with an erudite.

Maybe it's classic, I have absolutely no clue. It just surprised me.

I remember lightning being one of my favorite parts of Neriak back in the day (it's probably the only city I was in enough that I am sure I'm remembering it from classic and not from 8+ year ago p99... played a lot of dark elves, camped Ratraz for aeons on different characters keeping faction up with the wine quest, hung out with trolls and ogres in the foreign quarter for the RP, etc). The almost-crazy yellows and purples and pinks and stuff always made sense there, and I don't remember thinking "these light sources seem wonky" like I did going around on the beta in other locations.

[Deathrydar]

Originally Posted by magusfire24 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I think I put mine recently at 20% . wont go higher than that. and still pretty dark. But I like it

i have been bouncing between 10 and 15%. Seems to work that way.

[Albane]

I do not like it. As anything but a DE, nighttime requires me to bump up my gamma to see anything. I haven't noticed a difference between Infravision and no Infravision.