567 replies to this topic

[Cest7]

I don't like how dark the thermal is in the river city screenshot compared to alpine city, hopefully the second pass of thermal lighting will take ambient temperature properly into account (-18° C on Alpine, 26° C on River City/Night)

[Commander Kobold]

I like the changes though I wish night vision was a little clearer at closer (500 meters-ish) ranges right now I'm still not seeing much of a reason to not use thermal...especially now since it wont melt my eyeballs.

[Tuonela]

Looks great, happy about the change

[Mazgazine1]

I like how sharp the modes look. Its good that thermal now doesn't instantly light up mechs.

I would like to see video of a mech firing to see how visible they get though.

[Attalward]

This is very nice change and looks very promising. I fully support it.

[POWR]

Looks great looking forward to testing it out ingame! Any word on when this might launch?

[Emery Radick]

I love this so much! Please do not listen to the whiny sniper types. I play mostly long range sniper builds and I'll be the first to say thermal as it stands now is an easy mode button.

Keep up the great work PGI!

[Scipio Nostra]

Having used thermal vision on my tank for several years (rl), there is something which seems off:

the higher the difference in temperature, the better you can spot something. So, a hot mech on a glacier should be very easy to spot, since the ice and snow provide a smooth (cold) background. There is no reason why normal vision should be better than thermal in this case.

In which situations does thermal vision fail?
a.) Spotting something which has approx the same temp as the background (like dug in tank with its engine off for some time).
b.) And that's the point which could be relevant for MWO imo - rain, snow and fog (read: water in the air) will reduce the effectivness of your thermal vision. Dunno if its possible, but if you had weather changes during a match (or 2 map versions) it would make a difference for the usage of thermal view.

Edited by Scipio Nostra, 08 March 2013 - 04:47 AM.

[Barghest Whelp]

Great news! I never liked the fact that thermal was being used for sniping, and NV has been horribad from the start. Also very glad to hear that the advanced zoom is getting some love. I still remember the feeling I got when I used the zoom reticule in MW3 and managed to pop a mech with ERPPC's. So yeah, keep up the good work!

On a side note, I have a question for you: y u no ignore your community? You know, like all the other software developers out there...

[CG Oglethorpe Kerensky]

Fantastic!!!

[Jungle Rhino]

I like this a lot, I'm also hoping that NO vision modes work well on Frozen City in a blizzard! It should be mechs bumbling about bumping into each other for completely disorganised close range hilarity!

[Flusensieb]

Scipio Nostra, on 08 March 2013 - 04:45 AM, said:

Having used thermal vision on my tank for several years (rl), there is something which seems off:

the higher the difference in temperature, the better you can spot something. So, a hot mech on a glacier should be very easy to spot, since the ice and snow provide a smooth (cold) background. There is no reason why normal vision should be better than thermal in this case.

In which situations does thermal vision fail?
a.) Spotting something which has approx the same temp as the background (like dug in tank with its engine off for some time).
b.) And that's the point which could be relevant for MWO imo - rain, snow and fog (read: water in the air) will reduce the effectivness of your thermal vision. Dunno if its possible, but if you had weather changes during a match (or 2 map versions) it would make a difference for the usage of thermal view.

True words, this thermal vision looks more like an ultra violet filter - thermal vision is thermal vision, I dunno what this grey viewmode shall be and I don't appreciate to spent time changing stuff that have been worked as intended before.

[jay35]

Is a fix to the current thermal vision needed? Yes, in the sense that it sucks to have to run it 90% of the time in order to be competitive, even on daytime maps, and thus you don't get to enjoy the natural view of most of the maps. BUT, that doesn't necessitate nerfing it to the point where you can't actually engage beyond 700m on half the maps with anything other than radar-locking missiles.

Quote

We will look in the future to support additional vision modes that are equipped as modules to give various tactical advantages, but will come at a trade-off.

Please don't turn this into a game where we have to run modules in order to have any semblance of the functionality we currently have without any modules needed.

We do not want to be forced to run a full set of modules simply to get back functionality we have today, in this case the ability to see and target enemies effectively.

The evidence provided in the Command Chair post shows what appears to be an inability to visually locate an enemy beyond 700m on River City Night using any of those view modes, which will only cause more people to hate that map than already do, especially with the current random map assignment where they are unable to avoid it.

Based on the proposal in the Command Chair post, I see zero visual modes that will allow for the use of long-range non-guided weapons (i.e., Ballistics and Energy-based weapons) for sniping on roughly half the current maps. So you'd be artificially curbing the long range weaponry (and scouting) on night maps and inclement weather maps.

This could be a Good Thing™, except that MWO forces random map assignments on everyone, so they cannot properly prepare for each map based on its conditions, meaning any players with a long-range build that are served a night-time or foul weather map, are immediately punished with a significant disadvantage both for themselves and in turn their team, and will be unable to compete fairly against anyone (or a team) who happened to field close-range brawler builds, and through no fault of their own. This is the game randomly punishing certain players at the start of each round, which is a terrible user experience and design philosophy.

That said, brawler builds are not similarly inconvenienced to the same extent, because every map has enough cover that they can survive and engage when the ranges better suit them (generally within 450m). So if these vision changes were to take effect, the overall influence would be a push toward everyone running Brawler builds as those are "safer" to run for the widest range of maps. Random map assignment already curbs diversity and this change would further reduce the diversity in builds that are actually fielded. Not good.

At the end of the day, what will make this even more imbalanced would be to stuff better vision modes into modules, ensuring that some players will have a distinct visual/tactical advantage over other players, whether it's paid for via MC or c-bills. Vision is such an essential component to the playability of the game and a level playing field for all players. If you give certain players the ability to see better than others, you're directly imbalancing the game and removing the ability to have a fair contest between any two players or group of players.

If Gameplay truly is the primary consideration, the proposed changes could use some further refinement.
The visual changes look nice, but reduce functionality for scouts and for long-range non-missile builds for, if we're honest, the sole purpose of pushing modules. Not cool.

Edited by jay35, 08 March 2013 - 05:37 AM.

[3rdworld]

Give us weapons that can shoot over 1000 meters

Remove our ability to see enemies past 700.

This is not the proper way to make brawling viable.

How about make it where thermal isn't the only display that can see that far and it wouldn't be the only one used.

[Firefox14x]

I like where the new vision modes are heading, can't wait to see the views more polished. I do want to see the plans for the enhanced zoom too.

[buttmonkey]

the night vision is looking so much better thank you pgi!
im hoping also that there will be some nice clear skies and alot of starlight

[IG 88]

and what about the adv zoom module ?

[Reno Blade]

Hey, I was always in the impression that thermal vision was too clear and had too much range.
I think the changes may be spot on.
Thermal should help with camo in woods and spotting an ambush at a ridgeline above you, but not to snipe someone 1000+meters.
I thought about thermal heat sources producing more steam on thermal vision (like a big cloud around a mech) that does spread and fade if the mech does not move and stay/fly behind if the mech does move.
That way thermal would not give enough detail to see where the mech exactly is, or what kind of chassi it is (because of the annoying cloud of hot air around it).

[Congzilla]

I like the changes. But can we have blue scale instead of gray scale?

[Murku]

Loving changes.

As well as some of the other vision modes in development, could we have modules that allowed modes to be overlaid on each other?

To make it visually work I guess each could be rendered at about 50% transparency, so some detail would be lost anyway preventing it being too OP.