Board Thread:Suggestions/@comment-29781728-20180802023106

I've recently gone down a rabbit hole regarding R2D 2008 after I found out about and explored Lost Ratchet's Dead Vacation remake (the map is sick) and found myself watching lots and lots of old R2D gameplay, mainly from big Youtubers like Bereghost and SWAGER but also a lot of old crappy quality ones. Perhaps my favourites were from this guy named "MrTurpiTurtle" who released R2D review videos with pretty good quality. Sadly, this guy disappeared off the face of the earth for some reason.

Little bit off topic.

Anyway, while watching these videos I couldn't help but feel like there was something different about how R2D felt back then - the atmosphere, the gameplay, everything was different, but I couldn't put my finger on it. After playing some modern R2DA for a bit, I quickly realized the difference.

'''Lots and lots of maps in R2D were dark. They took place in dark areas, or at night time.'''

That's the huge difference in feel. In R2D 2008, it felt like every zombie that came out and damaged you was scary. The nighttime atmosphere added to just how isolated you felt when your teammates abandoned you, how intense every situation was because of the darkness, and made the game really feel like you were fighting in a bleak, dark, hopeless world.

Nowadays, almost all our maps are bright, happy, and overall sort of cartoonish. The difference in map quality is drastic, and yet the game just feels worse because EVERYTHING IS LESS STRESSFUL. It's like a horror game: imagine Amnesia but everything is lit up like it's broad daylight. Everything would feel much different, much less scary, much less intense, and that's exactly what happened to R2DA!

Now, time for some photo evidence:



This is just an R2DA comparison between nighttime and dusk. Look at the difference in atmosphere. In the dark, the scene just feels a little bit more stressful and intense. The high brightness takes away from this feeling, and it really just feels a lot less impactful.



Here's the most drastic example of a bright, "bad" feeling R2DA map. Look at this map's noticeably bright colours and sky - you're fighting zombies in broad daylight. Doesn't really feel stressful or scary.



Here's a R2D 2008 photo. Look at how everything is dimly lit. You can't see out into the distance, the sky is barren and you can only see the moon. The spotlights are your main source of light: everything is much darker, much more interesting.

Onto my suggestion: add a nighttime sky to all maps.

Might be a little difficult, yes, but I don't really know how maps work. I'm going to assume that map creators have to choose and make either a nighttime or daytime version of their map, or both. I implore map creators to either make both or to make a nighttime one, as the difference in the two is huge.

If this picks up and starts happening, I also hope that Place can make the nighttime version of the maps the default version. Keep zombie name tags on nighttime maps, and make it so that when someone votes for the map, by default the map is on "nighttime" sky and you have to click to change it to day.

Support the idea? Kudos. Thoughts on the idea? Reply down below. Thanks for reading.

TL;DR: Trying to add mainly nighttime maps would make R2DA feel a lot better, just like how it was in R2D 2008. 