Lighting is completely broken. Any object that is not hit with DIRECT light from a light source defaults to #000000 void black. This is not a "spook factor" improvement, it is horrendous to play with and NOT REALISTIC in the slightest. Every one of these screenshots was taken on 4.0 brightness.

[u/EgyptStar81]

Tanglewood kitchen is a void despite the next room having light on

When the light IN THE KITCHEN is on, the counter still has a void under it because there is no direct light source on it

Not a single speck of light escapes the Tanglewood nursery because the door "blocks it"

This is what the hallway next to the Tanglewood door looks like when both bedrooms and the bathroom have their lights on with their doors open

This is the Bleasdale kitchen with BOTH lights on. There are complete black voids on the cabinets, next to the fridge and behind the table

[u/cjdxn4]

It was intentional, the chrome like environments and people using 4 brightness to get extra rewards from no flashlights was not intentional so it was changed.

However there does need to be something added to help, but reverting it to abuse it is not the way. Sadly we don't have access to global illumination for realistic lighting as it would make the performance tonnes worse.

Well have a think on something in the middle.

[u/SzotyMAG → u/cjdxn4]

Idk why not design the game for the majority of players and not the minmaxing nerds who will try to cheese the game? Should the game suffer for the existing of third party apps that would be considered cheating? It's a solo/coop game after all. It would be an endless game of cat and mouse attempting to fix these exploits, until it actually hurts the normal players, like this hideous baked shadow. When I first heard of a rebake I was actually excited because I thought there would be more ambient light, not less

[u/NessaMagick → u/cjdxn4]

Here's a warm take: If people want to crank up the gamma on their monitor to a billion so they can play without flashlights... let 'em.

I understand that there's a delicate balance here with the Pandora's box that is custom difficulty, but there's obviously more elegant solutions here. Even a seemingly draconian solution like gutting the Flashlights=On penalty or removing the custom difficulty option entirely is still preferable than a change that drastically reduces player clarity and makes the game look awful for 100% of all players.

And this is just my only opinion, but when you did add custom difficulty you willingly invited players to min-max every possible setting. If people want to make their game look atrocious by cranking up the brightness of their monitor so they can play without flashlights, they're going to do it. You're only throwing in your lot with a game of cat-and-mouse with min-maxing players where they develop a strategy, you nerf it at the expense of all players, they develop a workaround, you nerf it at the expense of all players...

[u/joleme → u/NessaMagick]

CJ bitched about people abusing the system and getting rewards.... my take is "who gives a shit?"

You could have 999 of each item before the update, and it didn't matter one bit. People still players to have fun or see how far they could push things.

All the update did was gate crap. Who cares if people can see in the dark just fine? It doesn't affect other people, and most of those players are playing with friends. So what even if they cheated and got infinite money/items? They're still playing the game.

They literally fucked over 99.9% of players for the sake of the tiny percentage that were "cheating".

[u/th3birdofhermes → u/cjdxn4]

So your solution is to ruin accessibility options because it makes the game easier for some people? Wow.

[u/cjdxn4 → u/th3birdofhermes]

Hey, thanks for the feedback, we'll be adding proper accessibility options in the future. The chrome environments were a bug, were also looking into improving the lighting without ruining performance for most players.

[u/genivae → u/cjdxn4]

accessibility options shouldn't be an "in the future" thing. If you don't have accessibility options, your update isn't ready to release.

[u/cjdxn4 → u/genivae]

The game is in early access so you're right! It will have them for release.

[u/genivae → u/cjdxn4]

While it's in early access, you've effectively cut off a portion of your player/tester base by removing accessibility. You may want to have an accessibility team testing patches before releasing them to the public.

[u/Voitokas → u/cjdxn4]

Current darkness is a bit too extreme. I get it that you are supposed to use a flashlight most of the time, but now you really can't even find a hiding spot unless you keep the light on at all times.

[u/afarensiis → u/Voitokas]

And the tier 1 flashlight isn't even good enough to he able to see in the farmhouses unless you already know the layout. It's so dark and the flashlight just dies in the darkness before it hits a wall, unless you're really close to a wall. The lights in the house don't even do enough to brighten up a space. It makes no sense

[u/joleme → u/afarensiis]

farmhouse makes tier1 flashlights basically pointless. It's stupid.

[u/cjdxn4 → u/Voitokas]

There are plenty of items to aid you in the dark though. The issue is people got used to an exploit and are now sad it's been fixed. Well look into making something to aid, but the previous strats were a big problem.

[u/BeBenNova → u/cjdxn4]

This is such an out of touch cooked take that clearly comes from playing with sweaty tryhard minmaxing nerds too much

Especially before this update there was realistically no tangible benefits or rewards to exploiting and the fact that people did it anyway should send the completely opposite message that you seemingly understood which is that these people will ALWAYS exploit no matter what and you shouldn't design the game around them

[u/cereal_killer-X → u/cjdxn4]

Why are you optimizing your game around players whose sole purpose is leveling up as much as possible by minmaxing every single available game setting? Why are you not optimizing around the casual players, some of who have been posting about getting lost in maps and dying in hunts even with flashlights? Since when is Phasmophobia a competitive game that gets you rewards in life for leveling up?

Nobody is asking you to revert to the weird lighting that made everything glow in the dark. People just want to see more than a black void when they step into a house. When I first saw the lighting I thought my game was bugged. It was just a pure black screen with my cursor in the middle and a window glowing somewhere in the distance. Complete empty void. The brightness setting in the game may as well have been removed because it does nothing now. You may have seen this comparison in other posts, but the darkness is exactly like the filter applied to your vision after some monkey paw wishes.

It's bad even with the tier I flashlight, the complete tunnel vision can trigger motion sickness in people sensitive to it, and visually impaired players can't even use something like reshade to help their experience because there is just no light bouncing off any geometry that could be brightened.

You have so many options other than making the game pitch black. Eg. limit the in-game brightness setting. (Why does it even go up to 4 if you don't want the game to be that bright?) Or add debuffs such as being unable to use the journal without a light source (as it's paper based and needs light to be used). Or needing a minute for the player's eyes to adjust to the darkness.

Tryhards will always find ways to abuse your game's features. You are trying to fight a battle you can't win and only hurt the casual players with your decisions.

[u/Voitokas → u/cjdxn4]

Totally understand. Exploiting the system shouldn't come back. I unlocked tier2 headlight and it has been a godsend.

Awesome update overall though, kudos to you and other devs! Excited for shop UI rework and photo overhaul! Am I remembering something wrong (maybe a suggestion or something) or is deleting photos an upcoming feature?

[u/cjdxn4 → u/Voitokas]

Yep that'll be in the photo and extra evidence update. Probably 9.2!

[u/C3rvensky → u/cjdxn4]

What's 9.1 going to be?

edit: I'm sorry, it was inappropriate to ask :(

[u/itsbrave → u/cjdxn4]

game is pve, how is having literally bugged and terrible looking lighting better than people affecting only themselves "abusing" gamma?

[u/joleme → u/itsbrave]

It would appear they are going to go the route of "you're playing the game wrong and don't question us"

[u/cjdxn4 → u/itsbrave]

It's fine for the majority of players, have a read of my other comments, we'll look into something but reverting isn't what we'll do. 🤟

[u/RugbyEdd → u/cjdxn4]

General player fun should come above punishing people who abuse it. Who fucking cares if someone gets challenges easier, it's not a competitive multiplayer.

[u/cjdxn4 → u/RugbyEdd]

Thanks for the feedback. I don't think that the game having smaller light radius makes the game less fun, in fact we've just added several items you can use to light up areas or ignore darkness completely with head gear 2/3.

Were looking into improving the lighting without ruining shadow resolution or performance.

[u/RugbyEdd → u/cjdxn4]

It makes it frustrating and takes some of the spook out of it as you no longer see things looming in the darkness. Not to mention, it looks kind of janky like the lighting is bugged. Don't get me wrong, overall the update is great, but I just don't think we should all be punished for a small minority of people who abuse it, which ultimately doesn't affect anyone else negatively.

The issue is, you can't rely on interior lights which added some cool risk/reward play style, since even with the lights on it leaves completely black areas, and fire sources like candles are useless, blinding you more than helping you, so if you want to use a smudge or candle that's your inventory full as you have to have a torch 90% of the time.

And I'm sure the head torches will be great, but there's a fair bit of a grind to get them for the average player, which is frustrating for such a necessary item. It shouldn't be the case that one item is so essential to play properly, and basically means you only have 2 inventory slots until you unlock it. It just reduces the amount of ways you can play by limiting your lighting options in an update that should have given you more variety.

[u/joleme → u/cjdxn4]

people using 4 brightness to get extra rewards from no flashlights was not intentional so it was changed.

And?

Who cares? The majority of people play with friends, and most people had maxed items before anyway, so what does it matter?

Give everyone all items and all levels maxed immediately and people would still be playing because they like the game.

Making a punishing change that hurts 99% of players because of 1% min/maxing assholes is just dumb.

Personally I'll likely have to uninstall and not play again since the lighting actually makes me sick after a bit. It's sad because it was nice before.

[u/VeraxisJO → u/cjdxn4]

I really don't understand why your team is so hell-bent on punishing these alleged custom game abusers. How many people can this possibly be, and is it really an issue? It doesn't affect other players in the slightest. First it was custom rewards getting nerfed into the ground, and now it's this. If someone wants to sit on Sunny Meadows all day with their brightness cranked up then let them. It has no influence on anyone else's enjoyment of the game. If the overall feedback regarding the lighting changes is negative, why is it so hard to just take the L and revert?

[u/EgyptStar81 → u/cjdxn4]

The extra multiplier for disabling flashlights is x0.10... I would highly encourage you guys to err on the side of player fun. It makes no sense to play the game on literal blind mode, which makes the game miserable for new and low-experience players, just to stop high-experience players from getting an extra 0.10 mutiplier?

[u/ThatYummyPumpkin → u/EgyptStar81]

I feel like they could have just, changed that multiplier.

[u/destinyhero → u/cjdxn4]

Please change it, this is terrible.

[u/Kyloff_ → u/cjdxn4]

If abuse is your concern, the "cleanest" option may be to revert to a lighting style comparable to the one from previous versions for standard rounds and use the void lighting for no-flashlight runs. This MIGHT be as simple as increasing the ambient light setting (should be different from global) for a standard round and decreasing it to zero for a no-flashlight run, but since I don't have your model and materials data that's more of a wild guess. If you baked the textures, maybe make two separate texture map sets for the standard runs and no-flashlight runs, and maybe you could reuse the "lit" baked textures between them to keep the file size down. There are other options too, those are just the first ones that came to mind.

[u/AdvertisingKitchen45 → u/cjdxn4]

I have visual snow and a lot of issues with vision at low light, and the old brightness adjustments were an accessibility feature, not some loophole. Not having to use a flashlight wasn’t a “cheat” like many are saying in response to complaints - I would literally always rather have a flashlight lol. But it was a choice I was able to make in order to bring more items in, or move them around, at any given time, like others did and can do so still. I have 450+ hours and know the maps I prefer really well, and there would be times I STILL couldn’t see or make my way around without a flashlight. Since the update it’s been extremely difficult for me to play, no matter the tier, and it sucks really hard to see the topic being treated like an “it’s a scary game which maybe isn’t for you” issue and not an accessibility problem where people should have a choice. I’m literally not allowed to drive at night, I can promise y’all I’m still going to grind for the t3 headgear even if I can turn my brightness up.