31 replies to this topic

[TinFoilHat]

Used to use the old "Inspect" option back in MW2:Mercs. Used to be able to target with it a damn sight quicker than the actual Target button too lol

[DAEDALOS513]

TinFoilHat, on 13 July 2014 - 08:34 AM, said:

Used to use the old "Inspect" option back in MW2:Mercs. Used to be able to target with it a damn sight quicker than the actual Target button too lol

What is that exactly?

[Mad Porthos]

At present, if you point at your allied mechs long enough directly under your reticule, you do get a readout like they are targeted in the sense that it gives the blue bracket and percentages. However, it never gives target info, because it's not a hostile. I think I get the point of knowing this though. Plenty of times I'm in the thick of things and see an allied Atlas backing up out of a hotzone, rather than advancing. Sometimes i can see he's smoking and about to go down, other times I don't get that visual, but he's already taken bad damage to a leg or torso... I simply can't know, because he's either not in my lance, so I don't get a handy percentage by his name in the top right of the screen, or I can't tell because it's his back to me.

If I could get a target readout of an allied mech, under my reticule, in a DIFFERENT location (and in blue), then maybe I could know the state of my ally and adjust accordingly. His AC20 side is almost out...ok, I understand you've lost your direct fire and you are backing off to lob your missiles. But I can't know this now. And I have wondered it, time and time again. I do see what I can do to support others and at times I see situations where I could stop a situation if I really know what my allies state is.

Example, I'm in a jenner with air and arty. The Atlas and Banshee that pushed under the arch on Forest Colony towards the cave are now backing into me and I hear a huge barrage of fire on them. ECM is cloaking how many are coming out of the cave, but I can do two things... one would be run up on top of arch and drop arty or air into the line leading to the cave. The other is back to the right side of the arch against the cliff wall and put an air strike at the arch mouth, to slow or stop the combined push of the enemy. Thing is, I don't know if the Banshee and the Atlas are backing due to idiocy, severe damage, or an attempt to draw the enemy through the arch. I do know we on ourside are under ECM so the enemy don't know how many of us are here either. What do I do?

Knowing the Atlas and Banshee are down to 43% and 38% respectively under withering fire and seeing movement coming to the arch behind them, I might make the executive decision to park and target my strikes at the arch, firing as soon as my allied assaults go down, because it will catch the enemy dire whales and warhawks who were killing them. Or, seeing that my allied Atlas and Banshee are actually in decent armor and weapon condition, I could decide they are making a tactical pull back to lure the enemy in. In this case, an air and arty strike on the cave mouth would push enemies BACK into the cave, or else flush them out more into the space between the cave and arch, perhaps making them even push through the arch where others could demolish them. But these decisions require information on allied status and armaments that simply can be read and that we do not have currently.

Something should be done. Getting actual target info from reticule being on allied mechs would be a start and since allied mechs are in constant contact with you, it should be quick and thorough information passed to you the same way targets of the enemy are shared. The commander of a group ESPECIALLY should be able to see the status of all his allied units... know that his assaults are incapaciated, or his missile boats are running low on ammo for suppression. Allies can use this too and should have it.

[TinFoilHat]

DAEDALOS513, on 13 July 2014 - 09:20 AM, said:

What is that exactly?

When you put your targetting reticle over a mech and hit the "I" key, you'd get a readout on the mech without actually targetting it, which made it useful to see what friendlies were carrying. Was also useful for long-range sniping as it also wouldn't alert the enemy mech to your attack unless you got too close.

[Kristov Kerensky]

Target friendlies, easy enough, it was in the previous MW titles and it was quite useful. You could see the status of their armor and what weapons they had, and what was still working if they had been damaged. Just use Q for that feature, simple enough, pulls up the friendlies info like it would the enemy but you don't get lock with LRM/SSRM.

And Daedalos, MWO has incredibly simplistic controls and uses very few controls, not to mention the learning curve is pretty shallow. As mentioned, BF4 is more complicated to learn for a newbie, and this holds nothing to the previous MW titles when it comes to learning curves.

[DAEDALOS513]

Kristov Kerensky, on 13 July 2014 - 10:40 AM, said:

Target friendlies, easy enough, it was in the previous MW titles and it was quite useful. You could see the status of their armor and what weapons they had, and what was still working if they had been damaged. Just use Q for that feature, simple enough, pulls up the friendlies info like it would the enemy but you don't get lock with LRM/SSRM.

And Daedalos, MWO has incredibly simplistic controls and uses very few controls, not to mention the learning curve is pretty shallow. As mentioned, BF4 is more complicated to learn for a newbie, and this holds nothing to the previous MW titles when it comes to learning curves.

I'm not talking about just the controls but the game in general has a very high learning curve (ie. UI, modules, heat effic. etc), especially when many things aren't explained in-game. They must keep it as simple as possible to keep the newbs interested long enough until they catch on.

[POWR]

DAEDALOS513, on 10 July 2014 - 04:35 PM, said:

What is the point of specifically targeting a friendly? Just curious. I would rather be able to use the same button (press and hold 'Q') than confuse things by adding another button to the tons we already have.

Because we have a keyboard with 100+ keys on it. Having more functions layered on the same key just makes things a finicky mess and gives a poor user experience.

See for instance Battlefield 3 and 4, where they caved for the request to put in a command wheel, a terrible invention that is really poor in every game it has ever been in, and they put it on Q, which is also the spot key. A key you press a lot. It can't be rebound. So sometimes you're aiming at a guy, shooting, and you want to spot him too, and the game takes your spot press as a longpress, which then pops up the terrible commandwheel and drops your ADS and now you're just spraying bullets everywhere and you die.

Also, this makes me remember that someone thought it was a good idea to spam PGI to implement a goddamn commandwheel in MWO! Wow! Thanks a lot, now we'll have dev time spent on a TERRIBLE piece of interface!

I hear all the time how the players of this game are old, so how about you remember back when we had various shortcuts or a structured quickmenu for automated communication? Sony Online remembered this when they developed their shorthand communication interface for Planetside 2. Like in many older games where speedy communication was required and noone had voicechat, just like no one has now because they don't want to listen to children/russians swearing constantly, or jerks spamming music (which is all a problem in Planetside 2), those games had a keypress, often V, that would popup a list of numbers, each of which would lead to a series of communication snippets. Like V, 1) support 1) need medic 2) need ammo, and you'd press "v11", doable in a split second.

In a commandwheel, you'll first be holding down a key to enable it. Then it pops up, now you need to fiddle around with your mouse to select an option in it. And because these things are always terrible, this takes more time and fiddling than it should, and you'll always forget where things were in the circle, because it's impossible to lay it down to muscle memory due to the nature of stuffing way too many things inside at the same time.

Consider instead a command menu, where you could have all kinds of things.. like "1) enemy spotted -> 1) light 2) medium 3) heavy 4) assault *click 1* -> 1) jenner 2)raven 3)kitfox ... etc.you get the idea. Using such a system you could have all kinds of speedy communication. With a commandwheel? You can have almost no communication and you end up spending more time looking at this thing than you do anything else.

[DAEDALOS513]

POWR, on 14 July 2014 - 04:31 AM, said:

Because we have a keyboard with 100+ keys on it. Having more functions layered on the same key just makes things a finicky mess and gives a poor user experience.

It's pretty much the same function.. both are 'info' functions. It makes logical sense too. Press it and you get basic info (name, %health, mechtype).. keep pressing it and you get more detailed info.

POWR, on 14 July 2014 - 04:31 AM, said:

See for instance Battlefield 3 and 4, where they caved for the request to put in a command wheel, a terrible invention that is really poor in every game it has ever been in, and they put it on Q, which is also the spot key. A key you press a lot. It can't be rebound. So sometimes you're aiming at a guy, shooting, and you want to spot him too, and the game takes your spot press as a longpress, which then pops up the terrible commandwheel and drops your ADS and now you're just spraying bullets everywhere and you die.

We decided that there WON'T be a pop-up to block your view but rather the detailed info will replace your own status windows (weapons, body armor) and will glow a different color to indicate that it's not your own status info showing.

How is this messy? There won't be any fiddling because I don't see why this has anything to do with a command wheel or communications function..

I find the solution we've developed so far beautifully logical in its' simplicity.

Also keep in mind that this function is never going to be used in the heat of battle but rather when things are calm or you have a moment to breath.

Edited by DAEDALOS513, 14 July 2014 - 10:16 AM.

[Grendel408]

DAEDALOS513, on 11 July 2014 - 02:36 PM, said:

I honestly doubt in the HEAT OF BATTLE your going to try to find out the status of your mate instead of trying to get shots on the enemy or saving your own skin... even on comms, I've never asked my mate if he has 'weapons' or 'low armor' in the middle of a battle, that's just silly.. but whatever you say.

Being a drop commander for my unit... I am often trying to keep updated on the situation... it's much harder to ask someone what their status is while 3-4 people are on the comms calling targets. At that point... hell yes I want to know what my team is holding up to armor/weapon-wise. It would let me know if I need to pull someone back from the frontline, or send them in as a distraction for flanking... it's all about strategy, and being able to get friendly target info would be a tool I would utilized... don't assume to know wtf I think in-game... just because it's your preference, doesn't mean a damn bit for the next person. I tried to bring some different perspective to this topic as a fellow member of the Community... don't go assuming things otherwise pay attention to the first three letters of that word and don't make one out of yourself.

[DAEDALOS513]

Grendel408, on 14 July 2014 - 03:21 PM, said:

Being a drop commander for my unit... I am often trying to keep updated on the situation... it's much harder to ask someone what their status is while 3-4 people are on the comms calling targets. At that point... hell yes I want to know what my team is holding up to armor/weapon-wise. It would let me know if I need to pull someone back from the frontline, or send them in as a distraction for flanking... it's all about strategy, and being able to get friendly target info would be a tool I would utilized... don't assume to know wtf I think in-game... just because it's your preference, doesn't mean a damn bit for the next person. I tried to bring some different perspective to this topic as a fellow member of the Community... don't go assuming things otherwise pay attention to the first three letters of that word and don't make one out of yourself.

Ah but see? You are NOT personally in the heat of battle, you are standing behind commanding and watching the battle unfold. Do you not see the difference? I know you better than you know yourself.

And don't sit there and tell me you are going to bother targeting friendly mechs while you are being shot at / retreating / or firing on the enemy (ie. heat of battle).

PS. There is no need to swear to bring your point across.. it says much about your character and actually serves to weaken your credibility.

Edited by DAEDALOS513, 14 July 2014 - 05:39 PM.

[senaiboy]

You've still not answer the question about scrolling through friendlies.

With a dedicated button for friendly targeting, it can work the same as "R" (ie tap the button to scroll through).

With the function being added onto "Q", you can see how it will complicate things further than necessary.

I still don't get why you're so against adding another button. Does anyone even use Center Torso or Center Legs? Why not just replace that button then if you don't want more buttons.

Also, there's no feasible reason why you need to have BOTH a friendly and an enemy's status on screen at the same time. Hence friendly status replacing enemy's makes things easier to identify (newbies will naturally know where to look at). And with it working the same way as "R", there's no new 'learning curve' to overcome.

Edited by senaiboy, 14 July 2014 - 07:04 PM.

[DAEDALOS513]

senaiboy, on 14 July 2014 - 07:00 PM, said:

With a dedicated button for friendly targeting, it can work the same as "R" (ie tap the button to scroll through).

I never thought of 'scrolling' through teamates to view their statusai. That's kinda cool as long as their blue triangle would glow a different color to indicate location and identity of which friendly you are currently 'targetting' and not ust blindly scrolling through your mates.

Edited by DAEDALOS513, 14 July 2014 - 07:07 PM.