567 replies to this topic

[BlueSanta]

Seanamal, on 08 March 2013 - 10:21 AM, said:

Look. How about you try something first before you decide it's broken. If I see the consumables are unbalancing the game I'll rant about it. But until I get to see it's actual impact on gameplay firsthand that sort of criticism is premature. The same with the proposed changes to the vision modes. I see positives in this already because I can't tell you the number of times I've started on the water side of forest colony and started to receive sniper fire 15 seconds into the match from some gauss sniper on the other side of the map targeting my heat signature.
But maybe once I play with it I won't like it. The point is give it a chance to succeed or fail FIRST. Then criticize it.

Sorry I have a problem with people I pay LYING to me.

[Remorse]

Altough changes made to the night vision make it better and I like the change away from mixing to different types of heat visions and going only to grayscale, I don't understand the need to nerf any of the visionmodes. Why not make the normal vision better as it should be? This would solve the problem of everyone smart enough only using heatvision.

With the current lighting conditions it would be better just to remove the night vision.

[Djdood]

I love the changes.

Right now, when I see a night map on a session, I am always dissapointed and that's not a good sign in a game that should be fun.

I've also noted folks just instantly switching to Thermal View, regardless of map or conditions, which does indeed show an imbalanced that needs to be addressed.

Edited by Djdood, 08 March 2013 - 10:28 AM.

[Footupyzz]

Levi Porphyrogenitus, on 07 March 2013 - 08:09 PM, said:

However, I would really like to see some screens on Frozen City during a blizzard before I will really say that these will work. As things stand now, you pretty much have to run heat mode whenever the snow starts falling. How that will interact with the new gray scale vision will determine whether or not that map will become pretty much unplayable.

i know what you mean...but because it is a simmulator things must be as realistic as it can get. So a blizzard making you completely blind in combat is one of those things.....I like that extra aspect in games....and am curious how it will affect the gameplay.

Can't wait to test it:D

[Tarman]

BlueSanta, on 08 March 2013 - 10:24 AM, said:

Sorry I have a problem with people I pay LYING to me.

Then you stop PAYING them if your trust is too breached. Easy peasy, pilot.

They're just dudes, gamers who are making a game. Yes, they screw up. Look at this week. But they also realize when they screw up, and try to fix it. That counts for a lot.

[Karenai]

While the nightvision 2.0 makes it viable, the mega nerf to thermal vision will hit everyone on a less then stelar rig especially hard. Because it is freaking hard to see those little dots of gray on gray on a lower resolution without 30 kinds of filters.

Let us be honest, it is simply put a big nerf. Night vision becomes less usless, normal vision is promised an upgrade while thermal gets the nerfbat bigtime.

The problem right now is river city night. It is way to dark and weapons fire does not illuminate it.
Also nightvision is crap right now and still there are people running with in instead of thermal vision.
So, the old night vision is a big piece of freeborne junk and instead of making it better, let us make thermal worse, way worse so people actually use our better night vision.

For the sake of one very badly implemented, way to dark map without dynamic lighting let us make everyone enjoy the snow on frozen city or run with nightvision.

BTW the termal signature of a mech on a clear day in the snow from 1km would be like a chrismas tree with fireworks.
If you want to nerf thermal view, make it more realistic, like snowfall decreasing the range.

If it goes trough, I will fall back to running LRM boats all the time, untill they nerf LRM into oblivion.

[Side Step]

Skyscream Sapphire, on 08 March 2013 - 10:22 AM, said:

^This. Thermal does need a serious nerf, probably even more of a one than this proposal, considering I probably spend 90%+ of combat in it. As others have already said, let me see the pretty graphics without hampering my effectiveness!

However, nothing substantial has been done to curb the extremely overpowered 1.5 ton module known as ECM and a nerf of thermal is going to exacerbate this.

I am glad thermal vision is getting a change. I agree though, ECM will become even stronger. Considering ECM was probably designed around having access to thermal batman vision, maybe it'll get looked at next.

[DeathWalker305]

I was definetly swiching to thermal as soon as powered up. I understand the need for change and miss regular veiw, but the reason was simple; the advanced soom modual is practicly useless as is.. so please if you change the ability to snipe with thermal then fix the advanced zoom. ThE ADVANCED ZOOM MODUAL cost millions in c bills and 1 whole modual slot - it should be a crystal clear picture. I think there should be some color to thermal, even just a little in the mech as it heats up,even if the enviorment stays monocrhome. At this late date all black and white is no fun at all for a modern pc

[Dikaiosyne26]

Thanks for eliminating "Detective Vision" from the Game!

Still using different vision modes, including thermal, was one of the best ways to counter ECM for 100% of mechs, 100% of the time. It was also great for lining up the PPC shot to disrupt it for the rest of the team.

If this leads up to a nerf of ECM, I'm all for it, if not well, you've removed a natural predator to something that has few enough counters as it is.

[Matthew Craig]

jay35, we're not saying that will always be the case in the short term perhaps but longer term there can be modes to give you the ability to snipe in the dark etc. but the goal is to ensure you have to make a trade-off to do so and that, that behavior is not just available by default to everyone. So in future you may have a spotter on your team who's load-out choices allow him to get your team that information and act on it actively encouraging more active team communication.

In the short term though this will be a side effect of these changes, though I don't think it hurts to see how it plays without that as an option for a little while, maybe it should be pretty hard to snipe in the dark/bad weather conditions?

[ShadowSpirit]

So seeing things at a distance is being nerfed? A couple questions and points ...

• Does this not reduce the desirability of long range weapons? Maps are random and varied.
  
• Can users modify the user.cfg to maximize view distance or will this be locked and/or against TOS?

I think the new modes are nice looking but I don't see why we have to nerf view distance on top of the already extremely power ECM radar stealth bubble. Thermal vision became popular because of ECM and the addition of night maps .... so it seems like ECM is getting even more powerful with this change.

Edit: New consumable idea - flares. Tactical use of flares will force people to change modes and possibly illuminate the battle field.

Thanks.

Edited by ShadowSpirit, 08 March 2013 - 10:55 AM.

[Matthew Craig]

Almeras, on 08 March 2013 - 10:21 AM, said:

Strobing. Just as a sparkler leaves a trail a mech should leave a 'wash' of heat behind/around it which becomes more obstructive the further away a target is.

Interesting but my first thought would be that if you now had Mechs both near and far that the smearing effect from the far ones would make the near information useless perhaps?

[XIRUSPHERE]

Can you guys make a statement about the people who modify their game files to clean up thermal and or increase draw distance? Id like to know if there are any plans to address the fact that people are modifying files to gain an advantage and they really should not be able to.

[Victor Morson]

Great to see Thermal getting nerf'ed a bit, I was getting rather tired of spending every map that wasn't Caustic with it enabled. Also great news on buffing the night vision! This should make maps like River City Night a lot more fun to play.

XIRUSPHERE, on 08 March 2013 - 10:53 AM, said:

Can you guys make a statement about the people who modify their game files to clean up thermal and or increase draw distance? Id like to know if there are any plans to address the fact that people are modifying files to gain an advantage and they really should not be able to.

That's pretty cut & dried cheating, I'd think. The Thermal stuff at least. The view distances might be more of a gray area, since I know a lot of die hard visual fans that would do that without the intention of gaining an edge, but it's still questionable.

[Matthew Craig]

Sure, essentially this change will help I've also looked to ensure all the parameters are server side, and we're actually now in the middle of doing a fresh pass on all exposed user.cfg options to ensure nothing game breaking is exposed.

At the same time while we can make it harder to do we aren't going to be able to make it impossible, though you can expect that at every turn we take with new features we will work to make it harder and harder to alter settings in a manor to gain unfair advantages.

[Tarman]

Damien, on 08 March 2013 - 10:07 AM, said:

Thermal: Of, relating to, using, producing, or caused by heat.
Vision: 1.Something that is or has been seen. 2. The manner in which one sees or conceives of something.

If with our technology now, we can accomplish this: http://www.imaging1....mal%20image.gif
Then why in the year 3050 is thermal vision so bad?

If you do leave it as posted, please rename it to PGI vision.

Dude, this topic about future technology has been covered only about sixty billion times. Ingame, humanity warred itself literally almost into extinction across colonized space. Their technology base is super super spotty and still is full of stuff they can barely work, let alone replicate. There's a reason nobody attacks Jump Ships; nobody can MAKE them anymore.

History-wise, technology does not always magically progress into the future and get better all by itself. Doesn't happen like that. Ask Japan about crossbows, and how they let the tech fall into obscurity because it was imported and easily used by peasants. They ditched them basically because they weren't cool enough.

Outgame, IRL 21st century technology would make the game BORING BORING BORING. The IS could invade current Earth right now and we would wipe the floor with them. They'd be picked up by our far more advanced detection kit, have their own primitive detectors completely shut down by our EWAR, and get wiped out from hi-altitude bombing and guided ordnance from literally klicks away. Mech tech is highly outclassed by 21st century kit.

[Spirit of the Wolf]

While I love the new night vision, so far I'm not big on the new thermal -- that said, you guys mentioned that thermal isn't finished yet, so I'll reserve tentative judgement.

I'd love it, however, if you could keep the potential for the current thermal and turn it into a module -- Improved Tactical Vision, for example, and give it the added benefit of allowing you to gain an additional vision bonus, such as picking out the origin of the artillery strike that was just launched at you. (That's an example, just to make a point -- for all I care you could make it track the trajectory of ballistics rounds or highlight the footprints of enemy mechs.)

[BlueSanta]

Tarman, on 08 March 2013 - 10:31 AM, said:

Then you stop PAYING them if your trust is too breached. Easy peasy, pilot.

They're just dudes, gamers who are making a game. Yes, they screw up. Look at this week. But they also realize when they screw up, and try to fix it. That counts for a lot.

I have stopped paying.

They're not just dudes. They're professionals in their fields, supposedly. They don't always realize when they screw up and try to fix it (ECM, MM, Streaks, etc.).

[XIRUSPHERE]

Matthew Craig, on 08 March 2013 - 10:58 AM, said:

Sure, essentially this change will help I've also looked to ensure all the parameters are server side, and we're actually now in the middle of doing a fresh pass on all exposed user.cfg options to ensure nothing game breaking is exposed.

At the same time while we can make it harder to do we aren't going to be able to make it impossible, though you can expect that at every turn we take with new features we will work to make it harder and harder to alter settings in a manor to gain unfair advantages.

Really appreciate the reply!

[Scipio Nostra]

Just to clear a few things up about thermal vision:

- Thermal vision is passive, it only recieves heat waves from objects.
- There are systems working with color, but the military normaly uses monochrome, kinda. Typically white-grey-black or white-green-black.
- The user is normally able to switch polarization: either black for cold and white for hot or the other way around (black-hot, white cold)
- Thermal vision is not for impaired vision. As I said, it utterly fails at fog, rain, steam, snow etc. Its for night and to spot camo'd targets (in foilage). It is even possible to spot wheel tracks on a snowy surface (if they are fresh, since the wheels are hot and "imprinted" their "footsteps").

I know you have to balance things out, so again, my proposal is to "nerf" thermal vision with enviromental effects, not artificially limit it to X-hundred metres.