I haven't been decorating as much lately (because of the blasted stronghold cap), so it took me a while to realize this. When an issue with the Temple Sconce was called out, I checked and verified I could see it too. Then today when I saw someone call out a light change on the Unstable Arbiter decos I checked that and can confirm I see that one too. That got me to wondering if this was an across the board problem, not just two decos. And based on my observation walking through all of my strongholds tonight, that does in fact appear to be the case.

 

It is as if every deco that casts a light source has had the R (red) on its RGB scale dialed back extensively. What that is leaving us with is a lot of very white-washed/brightened lights that have lost a great deal of their color shading. All lights now cast a broader and much brighter/whiter aura.

 

You can see the scaling back of the red very dramatically with the Emergency Ceiling Light (Red) deco and the Imperial Ceiling Light deco. The light those decos cast now is practically pink rather than red, and much brighter and more diffused. This change actually entirely defeats the purpose of decos like this, which is to make - duh - RED rooms. Not pink ones.

 

Decos that previously cast very distinct shadows (such as the Yavin Chandelier and the Zakuulan Standing Lamp) have had their shadows scaled back dramatically (which completely changes the light function they serve). I'm guessing this is a result not of shadow designs being removed but of the light intensity being increased. They cast almost no shadowlines now at all, and their dark gold shading has been changed to a pale yellow.

 

All decos that cast light because they are "fire" have also been washed out so that their glows are much less warm and less orange than they used to be.

 

Lights that previously cast a distinctly blue shade (like the Generator Ceiling Light) are casting a light that is now almost entirely white.

 

The very distinct dark and rich gold glow cast by the Massassi Ceiling Light has been lessened too. It's still the most distinct of all the lights only because it used to be so dramatic, but it's definitely been brightened just like everything else.

 

The Luminous Sconce: Yellow decoration no longer lives up to its name. The light it casts can now barely be classified as yellow, it's almost entirely white, and also much more diffuse.

 

My guess would be that you will be able to trace the issue back to an update in June, which is when the bug with the Temple Sconce was first reported in this forum. As stated, it really does feel like the R on the RGB was dialed back, either that or some effect meant to intensify light radius was added.

 

Unfortunately whatever the change was, the impact it has on decos is very negative. Manipulating lighting is a key part to decorating, and rooms now look extremely washed out, like an over-exposed photo. I myself have designed many rooms around the particular shadows that the Yavin Chandelier, Zakuulan Standing Lamp, and various torches cast, or around the spotlight effect that the Luminous Sconce: Yellow and Massassi Ceiling Light could create - and now 90% of those effects are gone and rooms are a fully illuminated and insipid pale yellow. It's pretty gross.

 

If this was a bug, I sincerely hope it can be addressed across the board. I don't know if it's just my imagination now that I'm looking for it, but it does feel like everything may have been brightened right across the board inside strongholds; Tatooine is no longer quite as twilight and the interiors of all the rooms are brighter. Perhaps it's part of whatever issue now also has the stronghold doors pulsing with an interactable-object glow after they've been activated once, which is something they did not used to do. Shadowy areas like Nar Shaddaa exteriors are also feeling washed out.

 

If it was a deliberate change that had something to do with graphics effects elsewhere in game, I hope someone can take the time to revisit light source decos and strongholds and adjust their settings back to what they used to be. I know that's a lot of decos (116 in the Lights category), but they are, you know... lights. The light they cast is the whole point of their existence, and achieving aesthetic effects is the whole point of the entire decorating system. The light decos were designed as they were in their initial state, by your artists, for specific reasons. Changing them like this definitely amounts to, if not strictly a bug, at minimum an unasked for change in their basic function.

Edited August 27, 2019 by JediBoadicea

I'm bumping this thread because there's been zero dev response or attention paid to it. I am experiencing all the same lighting effect issues in my strongholds, and I'm the one who made the original post regarding the Temple Sconce lighting change in particular. This affects all strongholds, and includes many Light category decorations that are BOUGHT WITH REAL MONEY. This needs to be fixed. Edited September 10, 2019 by AscendingSky

With a new SH about to be released, please take the time to address many of the long-standing bugs with strongholds.

 

Bumping this because it's not a small thing. I'm not sure if anyone from the dev team actually decorates using the SH system, but I would ask you to do a test and place Imperial Ceiling Light or Emergency Ceiling Light (Red) decos somewhere. These were clearly designed to shed an intense evil red light, and in fact that's what they used to do; I made whole rooms based on the theme of the color 'red' using these lights. But now they're PINK, guys. PINK. The Yavin Temple Chandelier and Zakuulan Standing Floor Lamp used to have light&shadow patterns so clear and intense that we could use them to shape the sight lines of an entire room, and now they just spill desaturated, insipid, diffuse light everywhere.

 

You can use my original post here and the previous posts made by Ascending Sky (which I linked in mine) to track this to its date of origin. PLEASE look into this. You're about to release a stronghold that is dimly lit inside, begging for people to play with their own lighting... and most of our light sources don't at all work like they were designed to.

 

I don't know if this was a change that affected decos, or if it was something that changed the way lighting worked in the entire game. If it was the latter I suppose we're SOL, and I just wish someone had tweaked decos accordingly in anticipation of that change. But if it's the former, please look into it.

I know that in one of the posts I linked to in the first post in this thread (Ascending Sky's bug report on the Temple Sconce), Ascending Sky already posted screencaps to compare before-and-after, but I thought I'd do the same and checked to see if I happened to have any screencaps from before, for some of the red lights. Turns out I did have one from an RP session, in a location I happen to not have repurposed/changed since.

 

Here is the comparison. On the left, the way the Imperial Ceiling Light previously cast red light, and on the right the way it looks today. Keep in mind that I have multiple Imperial Ceiling Lights in this room, and the ceiling here is low, so the effect even in the right-hand side is an ultra-concentrated one, and even so you can still see how washed out and pink it now is. It's also much more obvious in-game (where you get the full ambient lighting) than in screencaps.

 

I see this effect much more dramatically in other places, but unfortunately I don't have screencaps of the before-the-change state for those so I can't do a comparison post. I just know that in much larger rooms, like the central quad on a guildship's Command deck, where the ceiling is so much higher, that Imperial Ceiling Lights in those rooms now have almost no effect whatsoever, when it used to be they made the whole room reddish. And I know that I used to be able to create deliberate triangles of light on the floor using the Yavin Chandeliers and their light/shadow contrast, and now that's all but vanished leaving just a diffused washed out light spreading everywhere.

Edited January 24, 2020 by JediBoadicea