Nightfall needs changes.

[Nata Consumer]

I have been loving this game so much, and I'll most likely make more of these in-depth suggestions. The first thing I talk about has to be nightfall, as I love survival games and the thrill of nighttime. Abiotic Factor is on the right path, but there are some glaring issues that make nighttime more of an annoyance and less of an experience.

The transition between day and night is amazing, especially the announcement one hour prior to the lights switching off. It gives you the feeling of impending doom, especially if you're deep into the facility and lost. However, there is no doom, nothing happens. Slightly more enemies and underwhelming robots. 

Nightfall should be challenging and nerve-wracking. Once the clock hits 8, you should feel the urgency to getting back, knowing you might risk your life by staying out. You should feel nervous seeing the clock tick down, waiting to go out on your first nighttime expedition. Right now, the only downside to nightfall is the occasional raid and the power going off, which isn't even a huge deal late game.

Firstly, the duration of the night is EXTREMELY short. Those who don't want to deal with nighttime can just sleep. but many people, including me, enjoy the thrill and risk of venturing out in the dark.

No significant threat. Enemy wise, night and day are the exact same. The only noticeable difference being the robots. Which are an amazing concept and fit the atmosphere really well. But right now, they are VERY underwhelming. Especially the security bots in the office sector, as they're slow and sluggish. Sure, they are hard to kill early on, but they're barely a threat due to how slow they move.

To fix this, there are a few things we could do. The first option is to make the security bots more threatening, and we can do that by making them run at you like the containment bots. Which would be a lot more challenging and overall make the nights a lot more interesting. To balance this, they should have a shorter line of sight and potentially lose you after some time. And when it becomes daytime, they become passive and return to their chargers. Right now, they stick around, which could be problematic considering these changes. 

The second option is to keep robots as they are but add nocturnal entities--dangerous ones. You can do A LOT with this, for example. A nighthunter that relies on sound, forcing you to sneak around. If it finds you it'll chase you down—killable, but challenging, and ofcourse, extremely rewarding. Or multiple blind entities that you have to sneak around; if you alert one of them, they will alert the others, and they will all come chasing you down. You get the point; you can do a lot.

I have more idea's but I'll leave the rest up to you guys, this game keeps impressing me and I can't wait to see Abiotic Fact, goodluck!

[Monokuma]

Security bots aren't supposed to be threatening in the stage that they appear in due to renewable resources being locked behind killing them in the first place. Players are already having trouble with them on a few issues, namely that it's not immediately obvious you can coax the robot out of the charging station by beating on it, and that at this stage of the game most players aren't thinking about traps like the chopinator. I will agree that manufacturing should have more dangerous ai in their robots, though.

[CombatWombat]

The bots are in a good place, actually one of the tougher enemies. I agree on the night difficulty though but would rather add some special night time mobs.

[MechWarden]

Not going to lie, the impression that the trailers give is that night time will be bad for you if you don't find a safe place to hide. In game, it's just dark, with anomaly fire flies.

I do like how the night time feels long, but not too long and tedious, given how time feels dilated with the 'always doing something' pace a videogame tends to have. Being 'forced' to stop for a few minutes feels like a long time in a game, when it actually isn't.

That said, I'm not sure how the devs will handle this. Night time is short for a reason (since you can't sleep through it), but also it is supposed to be risky... and it currently isn't. The latter is because of several other factors, but I'm not even going to get into that rabbit hole.

Now that I think about it, a more dynamic way of changing the day/night cycle could be nice. You could have the in-game watch tick faster or slower for day and night, depending on... I don't know, if 'you want to work nights' or something. Or if you are at your base, or near a bed (or both), time moves faster (excluding raids). In any case it should hopefully be something inventive to players.

Otherwise I cannot see how the devs can make night time be both not a constant tedium, and be an exciting threat for players if night time lasts for less than 5 mins in real life.

[Unwieldy Bob]

You also need a reason to go out at night, such as collecting anomalies. Certain later game gear eg teleporter could be reworked to require anomalies as well as recharging.

[A kobold]

someone doesn't know about what is coming in SEC SECTOR. you will fear the dark and the night.

[Mr_merv]

FWIW, I wish it were darker with absolutely 0 lights outside of player-placed lights. Some areas are nearly as bright at night as they are during the day.

[CombatWombat]

Originally posted by Mr_merv:

FWIW, I wish it were darker with absolutely 0 lights outside of player-placed lights. Some areas are nearly as bright at night as they are during the day.

Can you elaborate, or post a screenshot? Most places for me a pitch black with just a few signal lights. Without a flashlight you are lost.

[morpheus]

This! I was about to write a similar post.
Nights definitely need to be scarier and more threatening. The video on the store page shows that during nighttime the monsters come out, are more aggressive and start attacking your base, which you would have to defend.
Atm there is little use for all the defenses like barricades, chopinator, tesla coils, etc. because there is simply nothing to defend against.
Monsters at night could also made more aggressive/faster.
It would also be cool to have night-specific monsters or monster which are weak at daytime, but become scary at nighttime.

Imo this is a very crucial part of the game, which could make or break the long-term playability of the game and definitely should be revisited/worked on.

[duckfist]

I totally agree. Nights were much more exciting near the beginning when I was being cautious and didn't know what to expect. Now, in the dead of night I'll leave base naked without a flashlight, pet the coworker, flip off the security bot, no problem I got work to do.

On top of what was already said, I think nights could be colder, or maybe there's additional radiation or some other environmental concern. I know there's some kinda temperature change coming in the next update, maybe it'll have an impact on that.

[MechWarden]

Originally posted by morpheus:

...
Imo this is a very crucial part of the game, which could make or break the long-term playability of the game and definitely should be revisited/worked on.

Along with how the nights are handled, there are many other things that would also be classified as a 'make or break the long-term playability' of the game.
(I'd not list them, because it would totally derail the thread)

I'm hoping the Summer update will address some of this, because yeah, night time is way less dangerous than I assumed (along with many other parts of the game )