Goblin Squad Member
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...when the lights go out, that it is actually hard to see.
Unfortunately, we had a thread on this, and Ryan's view was:
Here's the one thing that means that darkness isn't worth building into a game design:
Players can easily run software that will render the surrounding areas as if lit. If a game actually shipped with "meaningful darkness", a player-built patch to remove it would be available within hours. Then the only people who would "suffer" from darkness would be the ones who are unwilling to "cheat", and the "cheaters" would have a huge advantage.
Nothing, nada, zip, zilch, zero could be done to stop this from happening. (Look up what happened when people figured out you could make the walls transparent in iD games if you're interested in the cat & mouse between developers and those wiling to cheat).
Did you know that World of Warcraft runs a hidden process on your machine that is designed to detect this kind of cheating? It's called "Warden" (you can read about it here: [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warden_%28software%29[/url]
And even with this, people still hack the heck out of the WoW client.
Ask yourself if you really want Goblinworks to be that creepy, all for the un-achievable goal of making people have to worry about torches, lanterns and light spells.
It was an almost-400-post thread, including at least one necro, so there's obviously plenty of interest, and we can hope things might've changed somehow.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In my opinion, you can convey on the screen that it is dark without making it physically difficult to see. And the only real effects darkness should have would be debuffs or effects on your character, not effects on the player. This is both because of the previously mentioned possibility of cheating to remove darkness, as well as the fact that a player's ability to see shadowy figures should not affect a character's ability to do the same.
Ah, the daily necromance.
Anyways, I think it would be better to make the majority of useful racial abilities part of a short list of "free" feats. You don't have to perform any substantial tasks to get then—you just have to get the XP and be of the right race.
So, dwarven proficiencies and armor speed stuff would stay. Dwarven crafting skills, however, would basically be an extra buff, but not an automatic one. You'd still be spending XP to get it.
This would keep them from being the "Duh, gotta play a dwarf to craft shit" race while still giving them a notable edge.