126 replies to this topic

[Pac Man]

Jacob Dieffenbach, on 08 May 2013 - 06:17 PM, said:

I personally like the feature. It adds a slight moment of hesitation after every attack--do I continue to attack and risk shooting a dead body and wasting heat/ammo, or do I wait until the kill is confirmed?--which I think this game needs, a bit less twitch, a bit more thought.

The other thing it does is, well, waste ammo at dead targets. Anyone who's played the tabletop game has wasted ammo shooting a target that got killed ages ago, because all damage is resolved at once (that is, if one gauss slug from a Jagermech ignites an ammo explosion, that doesn't stop the other gauss slug or the PPCs from an awesome or the MLs from a Jenner from attacking that 'Mech, because it's all turn based).

Having said that, I agree with people who say it should be a color-coded death. Red = alive, gray = dead. BUT, it shouldn't be an instantaneous transition. The saturation on that particular targeting box should slide from 100% to 0% over the course of, say, 3-5 seconds. So after you kill a target, for the first second there's a little bit of confusion and wasted shots--but after a second or so, skilled players will observe the change, and after 5 seconds everyone will see it's a dead target. Players with the MOST skill won't even rely on the color change, they'll notice it in their alerts and teh paperdoll and the sudden ragdoll of the mech.

Sometimes when dealing with a target its in such a confined place, or concealed by smoke/jump jet trails/soft cover, that you rely on your equipment to give you an accurate readout of the condition of the 'Mech. The computer in the 'Mech should be able to tell the difference between an active and shutdown 'Mech. If our targets are still active when they die, then our targets should remain active and locked on to powered-down 'Mech's for the same amount of time. However, if you power down, you lose all that unless you have a BAP. So why is getting cored causing any confusion to my targeting computers that I sometimes rely on?

[armyof1]

Jacob Dieffenbach, on 08 May 2013 - 06:17 PM, said:

I personally like the feature. It adds a slight moment of hesitation after every attack--do I continue to attack and risk shooting a dead body and wasting heat/ammo, or do I wait until the kill is confirmed?--which I think this game needs, a bit less twitch, a bit more thought.

The other thing it does is, well, waste ammo at dead targets. Anyone who's played the tabletop game has wasted ammo shooting a target that got killed ages ago, because all damage is resolved at once (that is, if one gauss slug from a Jagermech ignites an ammo explosion, that doesn't stop the other gauss slug or the PPCs from an awesome or the MLs from a Jenner from attacking that 'Mech, because it's all turn based).

Having said that, I agree with people who say it should be a color-coded death. Red = alive, gray = dead. BUT, it shouldn't be an instantaneous transition. The saturation on that particular targeting box should slide from 100% to 0% over the course of, say, 3-5 seconds. So after you kill a target, for the first second there's a little bit of confusion and wasted shots--but after a second or so, skilled players will observe the change, and after 5 seconds everyone will see it's a dead target. Players with the MOST skill won't even rely on the color change, they'll notice it in their alerts and teh paperdoll and the sudden ragdoll of the mech.

Are you serious, you want an FPS game to make you wonder for several seconds if the opponent is even dead or not? I get if you want to slow down the pace of the game a bit, but by giving you problems to discern if your opponent is dead is most certainly not the best way to do it.

Edited by armyof1, 08 May 2013 - 08:16 PM.

[MavRCK]

Super annoying change to the game... makes me focus on a dead guy for 3-5 secs..

I shot through a corpse and teamkilled a hunchback this evening..

Edited by MavRCK, 08 May 2013 - 09:22 PM.

[yashmack]

I do not like this change, I waste time and ammo on a mech that is already dead...
please change it back or add a bigger indicator on the screen to show the target it dead
the paper doll doesnt seem to update quite fast enough either, the mech falls to the ground and i see no destroyed torso, a second later the torso is gone and another second later i lose target lock
very confusing to say the least

[armyof1]

Another thing I noticed is you can still damage mechs that are already dead and lying on the ground even long after they're not targeted. I don't think it was like that before this patch? Makes me wonder if the damage you do to dead mechs even counts as real damage end of match.

[MasterBLB]

I've suggested to the founder of the thread to add a poll with question "Do you like this 'feature'?" answers "Yes" and "No"

Luckily,PGI once made a bad change (laser recharge sounds) and they reverted it after much of bad feedback from us.So there is hope this 'feature' will also be forsaken.

[zhajin]

I have confirmed there is a bug that i suspect is related to this as well. Had a match this morning where a dead highlander remained targetable for the rest of the match. I can not say as i have ever noticed this before.

[Mason Grimm]

That is after 12 hours of being up on MechSpecs.

[Deathlike]

This "feature" is only "useful" if there were no unintended side effects or if those side effects were addressed.

It wasn't well thought out and needs to be tweaked/addressed and/or removed ASAP.

Edited by Deathlike, 09 May 2013 - 07:56 AM.

[TheCaptainJZ]

MasterBLB, on 09 May 2013 - 02:57 AM, said:

I've suggested to the founder of the thread to add a poll with question "Do you like this 'feature'?" answers "Yes" and "No"

Luckily,PGI once made a bad change (laser recharge sounds) and they reverted it after much of bad feedback from us.So there is hope this 'feature' will also be forsaken.

Poll has been created, but I couldn't add it here. It is in a linked thread in the suggestions subforum. Link: http://mwomercs.com/...ed-after-death/

Original post here has been edited to include link also.

[Dishevel]

Helmer, on 08 May 2013 - 12:49 PM, said:

So having ALL the engineers on it is the solution? More cooks in the kitchen does not a better meal make.

Additionally, they are fairly sure they know what the underlying CryEngine issue is and are fixing it. Adding a delay in the targeting reticule dropping off neither makes the issue worse or better.

We're starting to stray off topic at this point. I don't wish to get into the argument on how Piranha should allocate their resources.



Cheers.

I am not sure what you do for a living.
But working if you are working on a bug that is affecting an specific area of code. You do not make random code changes in that area for kicks. It makes it difficult to isolate the effects you are having on that code by the changes you are making to pin down the bug.
You just do not do it. People who state that "this little change won't matter" have no idea what they are taking about.
Troubleshooting code is not magic. It is not art. There is a way that you do things to narrow down, isolate and fix bugs.

Maybe, this is the reason that it has taken Sooo Verrry looong to fix this issue.

[Alabraxis Hyperion]

I don't mind it too much, but there definitely needs to be some visual feedback when a 'mech is dead. Perhaps the target paperdoll goes red, or the box and reticle both flash and turn grey. The arrow on the map could become an X instead (if that persisted, that could be cool).
Combined with an audio alert - "target destroyed" or somesuch - it could feel more like a feature rather than a bug.

[Stoicblitzer]

this "feature" blows. the people shooting the mech before it dies know how that mech died and the only person who really NEEDS to know how a mech died is the dead pilot for obvious reasons. it should be our choice if we want the extra targeting info e.g. a checkbox in the settings menu. if they are really hell-bent on forcing this on us then make the targeting info available for less time and/or change the color of the box. how did this even occur to them? Seems like extraneous garbage not worth spending time on...

Edited by Stoicblitzer, 09 May 2013 - 10:36 AM.

[jay35]

This shouldn't even be up for a vote, it's so frustratingly simple to implement in a better way. And there are so many better ways to choose from. Good grief.

Whatever they do, DO NOT LEAVE THE TARGETING BOX RED. The very moment the mech dies, it needs to turn gray or black to communicate to the user the target is now DEAD. No more wasted ammo, no more friendly fire issues.

Honestly, the entire way they did this is a truly half-arsed way to show how the mech died. Paperdolls at the end of the match makes much more sense.

But given they've invested time (5 minutes?) into this current implementation, and given how things tend to be done in MWO, we'll be stuck with this halfway implementation for months. The LEAST they can do is a duct-tape fix like turning the targeting info gray or black the moment the mech dies, so at LEAST it's not still showing active red threat color after the threat has been neutralized which only misleads the player.

Also, what a crazy game-impacting change to not communicate as part of the patch notes. Really, wtf.

Edited by jay35, 09 May 2013 - 10:39 AM.

[Rick Rawlings]

Helmer, on 08 May 2013 - 11:34 AM, said:

Like everyone else I was a bit put off by the feature (I hadn't read the patch notes at that point). Once I read the notes, and realized it wasn't a bug, I started thinking of the implications .

It's definitely different, but I like how it adds an extra wrinkle of "difficulty". It's new, so I understand why people don't like it (and honestly the reasoning behind adding it is a little lame) but I just look at it as something new the master. Something else that some players will excel at and others will not.




Cheers.

I want to thank you Helmer! You have given me new insight into these forums. Instead of QQing over the fact that I can no longer find interesting and topical threads in a few seconds in the General Discussion forum, I will now revel in the fact that I can master the ability to micromanage 88 useless subforums (I'll take the word of whomever counted) looking for something interesting to read at lunch.

That's what we're talking about, right?

Oh, sorry, wrong thread... the qoute fit soo well! Well, I think the new HUD targeting "feature" is a lot like Ghost Rider 2, something I never knew I needed and am now pretty sure I don't want... but it does make the forum changes make more sense

[jay35]

Too often, mechs die out of your personal line of sight (but still targetable thanks to a teammate who has them in view), or they die standing up, or they take a few moments to topple over. In all of these scenarios now, the HUD targeting indicators given the user every indication the target is still an active threat. This is not only confusing, it is misleading. And it is causing wasted ammo, friendly fire, wasting time that could be spent on the next target, and similar types of problems. This needs to be resolved. This is not an acceptable or successful implementation of this "feature". Info on how a mech died belongs in the calm of the post-match report, not in the heat of the battle. The only thing that matters in the heat of the battle is knowing that the target is in fact DEAD, and you have now obscured that in an obnoxious way.

Edited by jay35, 09 May 2013 - 11:23 AM.

[Deathlike]

Just make the reticule "fade to nothing". Problem solved. Plus, it works with PGI's love for making things look pretty/slick.

[Pac Man]

I think I'm moving more and more towards a post-match detail screen where we can mouse-over every player and see their final Paperdoll, as well as 'damage recieved' as well as damage dealt, and who killed them. That way, at the end of the round, you can go through the list and see who did what, and how effective it was. A lot better place and time for that sort of analysis than the moment the person died.

[Deathlike]

Pac Man, on 09 May 2013 - 12:48 PM, said:

I think I'm moving more and more towards a post-match detail screen where we can mouse-over every player and see their final Paperdoll, as well as 'damage recieved' as well as damage dealt, and who killed them. That way, at the end of the round, you can go through the list and see who did what, and how effective it was. A lot better place and time for that sort of analysis than the moment the person died.

Sounds about right. It would be helpful in terms of analyzing yourself and your opponents. Lots of FPS games do this.. and although it has an "e-peen" element, but to understand success, you have to understand how effective you are.

It is a must have.

[Dishevel]

Why haven't they come here and let us know that they realize that this was a bad move and it will be changed/removed in the next patch?
Are they still thinking that the change was genius and that we are just not smart enough to see it?
Because if that is the case ... Listen up.

It is not genius. Not even close.