Why so dark?

How come whenever I sit down to play, it's always nighttime? Yes, about every 12th time, I am greeted with daylight. Yes I play mostly in the day and live in a very well lit large room. So I thought to adjust the gamma. Nothing seemed to change then I noticed I was in windowed full screen and it say gamma is only for full screen. I vaguely remember a reason for it, but it escapes me now (anyone have an idea?). However, even if I ramped the gamma to 100, the payfield was still very dark. Next time I manage to get daytime I'll see if everything is blown out. I suspect not as I suspect there is a far far narrower range to the gamma control. In other games I can move to 60-70 and everything is grayed out.

What is your experience?

Tinker with the monitor and video card settings, before tweaking the game gamma, for best results when dealing with a non-full-screen mode.

As for the "How come whenever I sit down to play, it's always nighttime?", the FF14 in-game day/night cycle is every 35 minutes real time, so 35 minutes real time = 12 hours of time in game, with a in game 24 hour cycle being 1 hour 10 minutes real time.
https://ffxivclock.com/ is useful to find out what time of day it is in FF14, from outside of the game.

In the game settings for gamma, there's a key there, a black box and white box, and it asks you to adjust that so that in one box you can/cannot see a symbol and in the other box the symbol is just barely visible. That's correct (well, suggested...) gamma as far as this game is concerned.

If that's still too dark, then you should calibrate your monitor outside of FFXIV (there are a plethora of websites that will assist) with similar tools such as the boxes with symbols, color bars, etc., etc.

Here's a CNET article, but it's just one of many out there:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/...-your-monitor/

As for the day/night cycle, Kirika- was spot on; if you continually log in to it being "night time," that's just luck. Or bad luck, depending on your point of view.

Indeed I am aware of ET time and the cycle. Guess it's bad luck to almost always log into nighttime! Of COURSE I just logged into ET daytime (thanks guys)!

Yes I am in full screen mode now... only difference I've noticed so far is that when I am tabbed to another app, FFXIV seems to be in a window and not full screened as it was under "windowed full screen," something I find a-ok.

Yes, at 100 gamma the circle on the white background is visible... as I go down in gamma, the circle kinda fades away then gets stronger as it goes to the low range. As my monitor seems very well balanced for productive stuff (like image editing) I do not want to start trying to goose it directly, it doesn't need it except for FFXIV.

I do now recall some of the images they released where the "new" graphics were way, way better far less black crush. Something tells me we may not see that till 7 releases. The in-game gamma seems to have a far more restricted range than what I am used to.

Ahha, it's pitch dark by 6PM ET...

NOW I know why I need borderless windowed, my combat overlay does not work in full screen!

you can try making a reshade preset of your own. if youre familiar with manipulating levels in photoshop or making color grading in lightroom its quite easy, and its not performance intensive at all

Check the settings of your monitor. I have never adjusted the in game gamma or brightness. And I can clearly see everything during night time