Remove all light sources to reduce lag

[Rocco Ward]

you might think darkness doesnt have that much of an impact on balance but I do remember a while back in an attempt to fix the clicking darkness shooting bottom left bug devs gave a bit of light to dark tiles, moon light or whatever, marines stomped xenos so bad devs scraped that idea immediately

Yea, I'm calling bullshit. Lighting has never impacted game balance this critically. Marines at the current moment are able to chase down lurkers and runners easily in areas where there are no flares just using their armor shoulder lamps. Nor does the current lighting mechanics allow castes to sneak up on marines since there is sufficient light to see them from 5-6 tiles away.

With CM hitting +200 players regularly lighting needs to be looked at. 150 marines are raycasting on ~60 tiles each. That's almost 1,000 heavy calculations per tick that is updated constantly just to have a cosmetic feature that is window dressing.

I'd recommend scrapping lighting for a few rounds and see how well it fixes the lag. My hunch is that lag will vanish and gameplay will be normal.

[CABAL]

remove humans they make lag!!!!

Benos despite consisting only 13% of the server population, are responsible for 50% of lag. You know what to do.

Also, benos are racists as they portrait super-fertile black woman and thus its also cringe. Remove benos.

[lurkermain]

Would removing lighting from just the almayer z-levels have any effect on performance?
I'm saying it could stay full starlight lit even post-crash

[CABAL]

Would removing lighting from just the almayer z-levels have any effect on performance?
I'm saying it could stay full starlight lit even post-crash

Thats a start for sure.

[MasterShakeEZ]

Yea, I'm calling bullshit. Lighting has never impacted game balance this critically. Marines at the current moment are able to chase down lurkers and runners easily in areas where there are no flares just using their armor shoulder lamps. Nor does the current lighting mechanics allow castes to sneak up on marines since there is sufficient light to see them from 5-6 tiles away.

With CM hitting +200 players regularly lighting needs to be looked at. 150 marines are raycasting on ~60 tiles each. That's almost 1,000 heavy calculations per tick that is updated constantly just to have a cosmetic feature that is window dressing.

I'd recommend scrapping lighting for a few rounds and see how well it fixes the lag. My hunch is that lag will vanish and gameplay will be normal.

you obviously never played when dark was actually dark and light didnt reach as far from suits. So I dont know why you are calling bullshit when you have no idea what you are talking about. Anyone who thinks lighting doesnt matter never plays xenos.

[Akabinxstar]

Just get a better pc LOL

[Nyvrem]

If lighting doesn't impact the game why did they scrap directional lighting?

[CABAL]

If lighting doesn't impact the game why did they scrap directional lighting?

Stupid question that you should know the answer too.

The truth is that the only thing that really would be broken with everything brightly lit is B8 Smart Scope. Rest is perfectly balanced. Other scopes don't shoot trough marines, so they are useless on the offence, but they would be viable on the defence.

All that is needed to balance lack of darkness would be to give benos increased vision, simillar to runner, but adjusted accordingly to each caste. Here, its done, benos still can avoid marines, because they see them before marines can. Non-Smart scopes become viable, but not OP as its still very hard to hit something fast on the x4 distance. Way less lag.

I see this as win-win situation. What flaw could a benomain find in this solution? With slightly increased beno vision it would have been perfectly balanced in my opinion.

[Rocco Ward]

you obviously never played when dark was actually dark and light didnt reach as far from suits. So I dont know why you are calling bullshit when you have no idea what you are talking about. Anyone who thinks lighting doesnt matter never plays xenos.

I've been here since Apop & Feweh era, so I guess that makes me a boomer. And yes, I played as much xeno as I did marine. I'm talking about the current version of lighting mechanics that affects gameplay. Marines literally already have 4/5th of the screen lightup from their armor. If you make the range of light on armor small enough, it can affect gameplay as I already pointed out in my earlier post.

I think there is also a possibility of a compromise but it would affect game balance. You would need to remove roaming light sources and I think it would change a lot of how CM is played currently. That means, no more shoulder lamps on armor, no more rail flashlights, etc. The only source of lighting can be flares, buildings, fire, and floodlights. This would make darkness a lot more dangerous.

Reducing lighting would be a huge advantage to xenos. There would definitely need to be some kind of compromise.

If lighting doesn't impact the game why did they scrap directional lighting?

I'm not talking about old lighting mechanics here. I'm talking about the current ones where marines can already see most of their screen. Removing the lighting effects at this point shouldn't effect gameplay balance and would reduce lag by a fuck ton.

And CABALs idea has some decent merit.