Monsters and Memories (Project_N) - Old School Indie MMO

Kithani said:

Lighting system in this game is a train wreck

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What makes you say that? I'm digging the way lights look, but I don't have sophisticated knowledge of this to say the least. My spell effects light up the MOBs I'm fighting at night and I love it.

There definitely needs to be more of them.

Quaid said:

What makes you say that? I'm digging the way lights look, but I don't have sophisticated knowledge of this to say the least. My spell effects light up the MOBs I'm fighting at night and I love it.

There definitely needs to be more of them.

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I meant the day/night cycle in general sorry not technical aspects of the lighting, probably should have worded it better.

It's basically like

"Hey remember in EQ how pain in the ass night was for Humans? How about we make that for all races, but instead of putting a greater lightstone in your inventory... you have to equip it, and it only lasts 20 minutes before it burns out!"

Kithani said:

I meant the day/night cycle in general sorry not technical aspects of the lighting, probably should have worded it better.

It's basically like

"Hey remember in EQ how pain in the ass night was for Humans? How about we make that for all races, but instead of putting a greater lightstone in your inventory... you have to equip it, and it only lasts 20 minutes before it burns out!"

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Ya the night is unacceptably dark if the moonlight isn't favourable, even with Infravision.

You can manage it by leaving your wilderness XP loop and going to find a place to grind in the city, or use a torch to get to a well lit MOB camp/dungeon until morning. But man, constantly being worried about an approaching nightfall feels similar to counting calories when you're hungry.

Wait until you find out how big some of the traversal zones are. I ran out from the Night Harbour gates by the Necro guild for the first time today and just went exploring. I ran for about 30 minutes straight and made it just 2 zones over. Sungreet Strand and Glass Flats are, if I'm estimating, 8x or more the width of East Commonlands EACH. It was unbelievable - vast with sporadic POIs. Vanguard-esque. I had to stop in the middle of nowhere on a rock for the entirety of the night because sunset came before I got anywhere and I couldn't see MOBs to traverse the zones. There are going to be gameplay sessions where you're a class without Gate, and you ding a critical spell level in a dungeon, but your class trainer is 4 zones West and you have a 2 hour round trip ahead of you.

There is going to be a subset of people that love and defend this gameplay style, but I'm not sure I can do it.

Flobee said:

Infravision and ultravision should be a thing for certain races, just have to pick it as a trait iirc

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They’re either not actually implemented or they don’t do jack shit.

Judging by Shawn’s attitude on Reddit/Discord I’m going to guess they don’t do jack shit and it’s a “cool immersive feature”

Locnar said:

Oh man , you rang? Brings me back to the first time I stumbled into Mnts. of Rathe at night (as a troll..) and still could not see shit. Started to rain and in the lighting flashes I saw all these mobs around me and I was scared to move..

Yes , keep all that in M&M. Just the thought of being stuck on a rock all night, like a huddled prey animal... I need that.

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Shit like that was cool when I was 12, the internet was new and I had literally zero obligations every weekend.

Now spending an hour sitting on a rock because there’s no night vision even when I pick an infravision race… well actually I’d just log out and do something else.

Edit: not to mention if you actually look up at the sky / skybox… the world actually wouldn’t be that dark in reality!

Quaid said:

Ya the night is unacceptably dark if the moonlight isn't favourable, even with Infravision.

You can manage it by leaving your wilderness XP loop and going to find a place to grind in the city, or use a torch to get to a well lit MOB camp/dungeon until morning. But man, constantly being worried about an approaching nightfall feels similar to counting calories when you're hungry.

Wait until you find out how big some of the traversal zones are. I ran out from the Night Harbour gates by the Necro guild for the first time today and just went exploring. I ran for about 30 minutes straight and made it just 2 zones over. Sungreet Strand and Glass Flats are, if I'm estimating, 8x or more the width of East Commonlands EACH. It was unbelievable - vast with sporadic POIs. Vanguard-esque. I had to stop in the middle of nowhere on a rock for the entirety of the night because sunset came before I got anywhere and I couldn't see MOBs to traverse the zones. There are going to be gameplay sessions where you're a class without Gate, and you ding a critical spell level in a dungeon, but your class trainer is 4 zones West and you have a 2 hour round trip ahead of you.

There is going to be a subset of people that love and defend this gameplay style, but I'm not sure I can do it.

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You can scribe some things ahead of time into your book if you think you'll be leveling anytime soon. You just can't mem them, obviously. I don't think you can pre-scribe with innates, so you'd have to eat a bag slot for the scroll if it's important.

As far as night time danger- I'm for it. But what it really boils down to is your group finding an opportune spot to pull and dropping a campfire. So even those without infra/ultra vision aren't totally blind, and you can use it as a point of reference if you're the puller with shit vision.
Also, crafting torches if you chose a night blind race is pretty trivial.

infra has been in various shades of working over the last year or so. Back when ultravision was available that was clearly the play, but that's gonna be locked to the underground races and they might bake the day blindness in that was around for a bit, but who knows. Deep elves are actively being worked on, so we'll find out sooner or later. They mentioned they're working on gamma adjustments, so you will probably be able to scam your monitor settings around any sense of danger.

Kithani said:

They’re either not actually implemented or they don’t do jack shit.

Judging by Shawn’s attitude on Reddit/Discord I’m going to guess they don’t do jack shit and it’s a “cool immersive feature”

Shit like that was cool when I was 12, the internet was new and I had literally zero obligations every weekend.

Now spending an hour sitting on a rock because there’s no night vision even when I pick an infravision race… well actually I’d just log out and do something else.

Edit: not to mention if you actually look up at the sky / skybox… the world actually wouldn’t be that dark in reality!

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One of the team said they’re looking into settings-based solutions for darkness at night (Shawn I think? The livestream zone design guy). Like a ‘darkness slider’ type thing. I think that’s a good way to deal with this.

Kithani said:

I meant the day/night cycle in general sorry not technical aspects of the lighting, probably should have worded it better.

It's basically like

"Hey remember in EQ how pain in the ass night was for Humans? How about we make that for all races, but instead of putting a greater lightstone in your inventory... you have to equip it, and it only lasts 20 minutes before it burns out!"

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Chop wood, craft torches, easy.

Or you can buy a lantern once you've played for a bit and accumulate the money and those last for hours with 1 fuel source.

bolok said:

You can scribe some things ahead of time into your book if you think you'll be leveling anytime soon. You just can't mem them, obviously. I don't think you can pre-scribe with innates, so you'd have to eat a bag slot for the scroll if it's important.

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I don’t think this is a reasonable expectation for anyone who isn’t a veteran player. Veteran players will be the easiest ones to satisfy and retain.

Flobee said:

Infravision and ultravision should be a thing for certain races, just have to pick it as a trait iirc

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Ultravision will be a thing for the deep races.

Apparently ultravision will penalize you during daylight on the surface though lol.

So if you can negate the whole "night blindness" with a "darkness slider" gameplay setting and/or gamma adjustments, it kind of begs the question...

WTF is the point of the whole system in the first fucking place then?

I realize a lot of these things aren't tenable to boomers like us anymore and that there is a whole new generation of teenagers/20 somethings with all the time in the world on their hands. But, they have shorter attention spans and thousands more video game options than we had in '99. The video game industry has increased 2400% since '99 in terms of sales.

It's cool to live on nostalgia and boomerism, but most of the Dads and Grandpas on this forum don't have the time/patience to deal with those types of mechanics anymore.

Kirun said:

So if you can negate the whole "night blindness" with a "darkness slider" gameplay setting and/or gamma adjustments, it kind of begs the question...

WTF is the point of the whole system in the first fucking place then?

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well i mean… there’s gotta be night. So you can’t get rid of the system. And they didn’t say how wide the slider effectiveness would be. I doubt you’ll be able to totally negate the darkness.

Sure, games have to have day/night cycles, I get that.

Do games have to be Toxx Forest in '99 as an Erudite, where you can't even navigate the world and have to huddle on a rock? Or always pick some race/racial trait every time you create a character?

There's a very wide chasm between, "Game has a day/night cycle" and "The night cycle is so dark your monitor might as well be turned off".

Kirun said:

Sure, games have to have day/night cycles, I get that.

Do games have to be Toxx Forest in '99 as an Erudite, where you can't even navigate the world and have to huddle on a rock? Or always pick some race/racial trait every time you create a character?

There's a very wide chasm between, "Game has a day/night cycle" and "The night cycle is so dark your monitor might as well be turned off".

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I’ll say this, as a human it was unplayable. Even the torches didn’t do a lot outside a small lit perimeter. I couldn’t see the curvature of the terrain even with a full moon, and finding my corpse 50 yards from the city gates was near impossible. My plan come release was to exclusively roll ultravision races, which I’m sure i wouldn’t be alone.

The change they’re thinking of is perfect, as long as the player’s ability to negate night isn’t too too much. But these guys are smart and I’m confident they’ll get it right.

Kirun said:

So if you can negate the whole "night blindness" with a "darkness slider" gameplay setting and/or gamma adjustments, it kind of begs the question...

WTF is the point of the whole system in the first fucking place then?

I realize a lot of these things aren't tenable to boomers like us anymore and that there is a whole new generation of teenagers/20 somethings with all the time in the world on their hands. But, they have shorter attention spans and thousands more video game options than we had in '99. The video game industry has increased 2400% since '99 in terms of sales.

It's cool to live on nostalgia and boomerism, but most of the Dads and Grandpas on this forum don't have the time/patience to deal with those types of mechanics anymore.

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Dad here

Night time is immersive, plan accordingly

Low play time is fine, just give up the server first dreams and be happy you have any time for the old med and nuke sim at all

That's what I am doing these days

If the world was completely safe, neutered of danger etc, id similarly log out but for different reasons

Nirgon said:

Dad here

Night time is immersive, plan accordingly

Low play time is fine, just give up the server first dreams and be happy you have any time for the old med and nuke sim at all

That's what I am doing these days

If the world was completely safe, neutered of danger etc, id similarly log out but for different reasons

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There are plenty of ways to make a world challenging without introducing a mechanic that's best handled by simply "sitting around and waiting." That's a 1999 design philosophy - and only boomer dads or so-called "disabled" adults sponging off SSI and huffing nostalgia copium are willing to endure it for any length of time.

That isn't challenging game mechanics/gameplay. That's tedium.

I vowed to never be one of those older ppl that dragged everyone else's MMOing down if I had kids. That's going to be most of where I'm coming from with saying OK if it adds time running for spells when the zones are huge and you have to be careful.


Generally immersion for the sake of it has some "pain" associated. That "pain" is a lack of ease in obtaining things or getting clipped by some mob in the dark and dying. I'm not viewing dark night times as some mythic difficulty mechanical challenge but it's something to manage and will separate the men from the boys in the questing for sure. Somewhere in there, after you succeed despite all of that, where your character gets to feels more meaningful.

Another thing I noticed is some people are like "having to go get food and water from a vendor is gay and I just wanna kill mobs". I think they've missed the point of what a game like this is trying to do and the experience it is trying to create. I get it, some people don't. I get called a neckbeard and view that as a badge of honor.

Maybe this is something that can be handled with rulesets. True classic mode with the darkest of the dark, the unforgivingest of the unforgiving, where the nights are long and the gains are more meaningful. Then you can have the casual ruleset servers where night time is slightly dusky, food and water lasts way longer, run speed mounts up as you auto run for long periods. It's just a thought because I've been here long enough to know that "shits classic bro" does grief people off and I want to see my pals making this succeed and keep it afloat for the true questers.