It’s been 2 years (and a bit) since NightLight’s release… I can’t quite believe it. Nearly 11,000 of you have signed up and between us, we’ve uploaded nearly 300,000 screenshots. I had hoped there would be some interest for the site, but I never imagined so many of you would join and upload each day - it really blows me away.
2 years is really quite a bit of time, and whilst work has been leaving me with less time to wonder what I was thinking when I view old code to work on NightLight I still managed to average nearly 4 hours a day on it last year. You (like me) might be wondering where that time went, I think the fact I’ve been learning “on the job” has meant a good bit of time rewriting/improving older code… Frankly though, I’m glad I kept up with it because I’ve got a project I’m (mostly) happy with and more importantly, still love working on (even if I haven’t really had time to play the game for a year 
).
I talk about the past and the journey it’s been to get here partly because there are a lot of decisions I’ve made which made sense at the time but end up making me go “Uh, hmm” when someone/something makes me question it down the line. A big one of those which is also a large focus of this update is the sample size for community stats…
Community Stats Updates
The community stats have always been a case of “more please” but even with the number of games NightLight sees a lot of stats would just end up being from far too few games to have any meaning. But we all want more, and it was silly to let the game of “is there enough data yet” stop us when there are still many fairly reasonably founded stats.
With this update, counts have been added alongside the percentages for the new stats (and most of the existing ones). This will allow me to create more graphs and views even if they include some values that aren’t as well founded as you can clearly see how many games they are based on.
Stats Viewer
The Killer Stats page was an interface I thought could be really cool, but it ended up being a bit “meh”. I’ve now rebuilt it with a bunch of style and functional improvements, it’s also been generalised to work with other stats (hello maps and perks!).
These are some of the changes:
- Sample size values have been added to each row and an improved “disclaimer” message now exists at the top which shows the exact sample sizes over time (a slight improvement on “a few thousand games a month” in a yellow alert box).
- The controls are now saved in the URL of the page so when you find something interesting it’s easy to save or share with others
- The Custom Date Range filter for supporters can now be used to specify any date range (down to as little as a day) and can extend back almost to NightLight’s creation.
- When using a custom date range, the forward/back arrows will use the same day count so you can now navigate say, week by week.
- Note: When sharing a link with a custom date range with non-supporters they will be greeted by a warning message and the default of the last 28 days will be used instead.
Map Stats
They’re finally here! Map stats are live at https://nightlight.gg/maps - I wasn’t quite able to do what I had in mind because the sample sizes really were too small, but I think I’ve still managed to answer some of the main “questions”. I expect the UI to evolve as we get more data and I hear your thoughts - nothing’s set in stone.
One issue I ran into is with stats like perks, I use a weekly resolution for the data but sample wise, this ended up being too variable for maps. Increasing it to a month or something also wouldn’t work as the idea was to have it align with the usual Tuesday DbD patch time. Then I realised I could just align the datapoints with the patches… (it feels really obvious in hindsight). I think having it aligned like that answers the main question we’ll have - what was the impact of a patch? And then the fine-grained custom date ranges on the Stats Viewer allow us to answer more specific questions.
As the stats are patch aligned (to clarify, that’s not including bug fix patches), the stats would be a little barebones after a new release. To combat this, the previous patch will be used for 7 days after a release to allow some data to accumulate. Again, custom date ranges on the view will allow viewing new data sooner.
Perk Stats
The main thing here is the addition of the Stats Viewer, this (finally) allows viewing all perks usage rates together with their names/icons.
There are also some smaller changes like the “rank” (position amongst other perks usage wise) being displayed. And, hopefully, a bug that would stop the usage rate graph from loading is how resolved (yay).
Build Challenge
None! Up to 4 of them in fact are now regarded as a valid build. They won’t show on the “generator” but they’re available to claim or check with the Availability Checker.
Builds are now also linked to the match in which they were run (you can click the 
on the Build Challenge page to preview the match) - this also means that it’ll be revoked if the match is deleted or the build edited (note: only the builds submitted when reviewing are eligible to claim a build).
Want to check which builds you’ve run? The build tables will now load infinitely, well, for as long as you have claimed builds to show (rather than just the last 20 or something). They also now have a count of how many of your builds match the filter you use.
Now you’ve got all these builds, how about some improvements in viewing your totals… The Dashboard’s Build Challenge summary cards now show an over time graph for the last 14 days (like the other cards there). Also, the leader board will now show you and your position regardless of whether you’re in the top 10 - how far are you from number 1?
Overview
The Overview has always had a bit of a problem - space. With more chapters being added, and more datapoints being added to NightLight things were getting a little too squished. This update brings some fairly significant rearranging to the page to give everything a little more room.
There’s a new addition to the page, build tables - now you can really flex running no perks. A sacrifice was made to fit these in though, the Least Viewed, uh I mean Least Used perks table is no more. I did like it in a way, but its data was repeated from the perks table so I think it was reasonable to remove.
The Survivors Graph has had its meaning swapped around, the primary axis now shows the escape rate and the survivor count is now shown by the right axis. This brings it more inline with the Kill Rate graph. I’m still not totally sold on it, but I think it’s an improvement?
Outcomes are now grouped by their base type (i.e., Dead (Mori) is grouped under Dead) on their pie chart, the breakdown for each can be viewed by hovering on a slice. This is a necessary by-product of adding more status types (listed in full below).
Filters
This update brings three new filters, Friend, Unknown, and Time. The function of which are as follows:
- Friend: This is slightly misleading as rather than allowing filtering by your NightLight friends, it allows filtering by Nightlight users set as friends in your matches. The distinction being, it allows filtering by indirect friends from shared matches too. This is available as both a Match and a Player level filter.
- Time: This one is pretty straight forward, you can now filter matches by a certain time range.
- Unkown: This is exclusive to the Matches page, you can now find those pesky matches with Unknown/unreviewed icons with ease.
With the exception of the Unknown filter, the new filters are available as part of the Advanced Filters for Supporters.
Filter Groups
Convenience is everything, right? The Item and Offering filters now have group options to allow easily filtering by collective types. This makes filtering by say, Med-Kits or Map Offerings much simpler. The Map filter also now allows filtering by Realms.
Other Changes
- HISTORY PERIOD: Increased the history period to 3 years for Supporters
- MATCHES PAGE: Pressing shift will now allow skipping match preview
- MATCHES PAGE: Added a “per page” selector
- MATCH EDIT HISTORY: Add a way to copy the edit ID for debugging
- MATCH REVIEW/VIEWER: Added highlighting of unknown icons
- TAGS: Renamed the KYF tag to Custom Game to more explicitly represent it’s purpose
- FILTERS: Added “empty group” text for filterless groups
- ACCOUNTS: Added Email changing
- ACCOUNTS: Added a UI to the account page to show any active email or username change cooldown
- ACCOUNTS: Added new NL themed email templates for all existing and new account emails
- UNLOCKS: Added the option to limit Shrine notifications to just new perks (rather than perks with new tiers)
- MISC: Added a 2nd Year Anniversary badge
- MISC: Added two new system tags: Map Offering, & Unfinished
- MISC: Added new status types: Dead (Mori), Dead (Power), Dead (Bleed out), Dead (Devour Hope), Dead (Rancor), and Sacrificed (Given)
- MISC: Added a new browser tab icon that supports dark mode colour schemes
- MISC: Prevented select box dropdowns from using the mouse when opened via keyboard
- COMMUNITY STATS: Excluded matches with the PTB & Custom Game tags
Bug Fixes
- MATCHES PAGE: Fixed the Role field sort ignoring the SWF/KYF status
- MATCH EDIT: Fixed SWF/KYF tags not being updated when associations are edited after review
- DASHBOARD: Fixed incorrect tooltip showing on the summary stat cards
- DASHBOARD: Fixed summary chart graph scaling for percentage-based values
- OVERVIEW: Fixed the Daily Summary chart showing no data when no date filter is specified (it now shows a range based on your matches which meet any other filtering criteria)
- BUILD CHALLENGE: Fixed an error that could occur when visiting the page after signing out
- PERKS PAGES: Tentatively fixed an issue which could cause the Usage History graph to fail to load when navigating from another page
- FORUM: Fixed an issue which could prevent usernames from being updated on the Forum when changed on the main site