I’ve figured out what’s bugging me about this new lighting change, and why I really don’t like it or think it’s a good change.
I understand one part of what they’re trying to do (bright light ruins your night vision), but the implementation is actively worse than not messing with it at all. For one thing, there’s a serious disconnect from “real” vision, in that your character has no facing - what is shown to the player is what the character COULD see if they stood in that spot and turned all the way around.
But, even more importantly, a bright light doesn’t work anything like it is working now. If I can see the back corner of the room from where I am, and the light source is between me and it, moving CLOSER to the light isn’t going to make that spot DARKER (which is what currently happens). Also, I could stand with my back to the light, even fairly close to it, and get a pretty good approximation of seeing the rest of the room as though that light weren’t messing up my low-light vision.
To give the effect it appears you are going for, the light should act as a barrier at the far edge whether you are in it or not, NOT as a barrier all the way around if you are in it and nothing if you aren’t. That is, if I have a sight radius of 5 (night vision) and there’s a light source in the room that is radius 3 (a console), I should be able to move closer to it and not lose sight of things that are 5 away in the opposite direction from the light source.
But really, I think a better use of time would be to work on having walls be illuminated properly (turrets in labs are usually obvious from the outside, for instance).
