11 replies to this topic

[HammerSwarm]

Dear PGI,

You screwed the pooch here. It's okay because I am here to carefully explain how and why the addition of third person view broke the game. This is not a thread about your lying, deceitful, incompetent launch of this feature. That is best saved for other less passionate fans that could write such a thread without pointing out that your evolving positions on third person and the meta game are disheartening. This is a thread about the game balance problem that exists because of third person.

Prior to all of that I wanted to dispel some myths about third person view.

The first fallacy of 3rd person view:
"Dude, the red blinky thing totally gives away your position, so it's okay"

This is a poor argument.

First it doesn't just give away your position. It signals your position and the position of anyone around you. The main tactic in pug matches, most matches really, is to stick together. When one person moves with a blinking fairy over their shoulder, then everyone is forced to abandon that person or lose any hope of subterfuge. This sabotages team work and will ultimately harm the new player experience.

Second, even if it gives away my position if I can see from cover over a distance, then I can relay my sight to my team. Example - Tourmaline Desert. I have stood behind tourmaline at a point you can’t hit me in my spider, I enable 3rd person view. You can now see my red blinky light off in the distance, but you can't shoot me, so I am relaying valuable target information with immunity.

Third, AMS also gives away your position. Try it. you can shoot missiles at the horizon and see where any mech with AMS is as they shoot your missiles. the red blinky light is not always visible, as documented in screenshots. So just knowing someone's position isn’t that important. It is important, but it isn’t that important.

The second fallacy of third person view:
“No dude, you aren’t being forced to do anything, it’s an option.”

This is blatantly shortsighted. I only control what I do. I don’t control what you do. So I am being forced to play against other people who are or may be using 3rd person view. This is not an option. An option would be a queue of first person only players.

The third fallacy of third person view:
“No dude, they can’t segment the player base with multiple ques. This would lead to longer ques, and a split player base.”

This may be true but is logically inconsistent with the stated goals of third person view. ‘To train a new generation mech warriors, to appeal to more players, and to help players better understand mech movement.’ This should not segment the player base because A.) Existing players presumably prefer overwhelmingly to stick to first person as demonstrated by the multitude of forum polls; and B.) Recruiting new players which is the stated goal of third person should fill that queue in short order and if successful lead to shorter ques. The current implementation cannibalizes the first person gamer pool to support the third person gamer pool. Something that has first person purists reluctant to go swimming in that pool.

The fourth and final fallacy of third person view:
“Bro, I don’t see what you are complaining about, I don’t think it’s that good anyways, it’s not an advantage.”

This is insulting because your opinion is irrelevant to the facts, and to me. Something about how opinions are like bathtubs, everyone has one and no one wants to hear about yours? The facts are all that matters and screenshot after screenshot are surfacing of third person view providing you with additional view angles. Even the drawbacks of the view don’t overcome this single exploitive feature of third person view.

Honorable mention but too stupid to detail:
“Dude, Seismic, Dude, Targeting, Bro”
"If you don't like it you can quit"

The preceding four arguments in any form are not a valid defense to the following:

Third person view is an unpopular addition to mechwarrior online. The community opinions are well documented on the subject. Bryan in his statement admits that third person does have some advantages, “In fact we found out that each view has pros and cons...”. So it’s a moot point as to if this view has advantages because we as a community predicted them and tested them and the indications are that we were right. Initially this was not supposed to have any effect on us As of 8/21/2013 the statements from PGI are that they are moving forward with this as one queue.

The predictable and game breaking advantages of third person were mainly in the ability to see over and around things. This has been and is being documented by players through testimonials and screenshots. The common defense is that these are bugs, but unless the mechanic is completely broken the instances are far too numerous to be a simple bug in ray tracing. Because of the sensitivity of the community on this issue I assume that much internal testing was done and this was intended to be a near final implementation of third person view. Not insinuating otherwise in your initial defense also lends credence to this conclusion. As a near final implementation of a feature a “Vocal Minority” didn’t want this was a botched roll out as you didn’t mention your new plan to have a single queue before doing it. This can only lead to the conclusion that you did not desire community feedback on your choice.

Because the predictable outcome of third person is supported by an emerging mountain of player feedback I can say at this point the outcome does not look good. It’s hard to quantify what advantages this will yield in the lasting metagame because we’re only one day into the third person era. The previous experiences with third person and it’s effect on the metagame may yet be proven to have been corrected by PGI’s engineers. The initial data suggests otherwise though as I myself have parked my mechs behind several objects and screen shotted the field of view that is now available as a result of third person view. The idea that the drone can be shot is also not appealing because at distance the red beacon is less observable and the zoom as well intentioned as it is not precise enough to make shooting down drones easy or effective.

I hesitate to offer solutions for other peoples problems as a matter of course these days. That said none of my theoretical solutions do anything to help new players to the game, and instead are all aimed at punishing third person mode to make it so unattractive that only people who are new would use it before learning to turn it off. The solution is simpler than all of that though, allow people to opt out of it. Restore your promise of a “skilled players” queue.

-HammerSwarm

[Syllogy]

I see lots of opinions...

[MeiSooHaityu]

It will be seperated out. Notice the drop down when you select the match type. The ones listed Hardcore should end up being 1st person view only. I am assuming those rooms should be accessible within a month or so.

Honestly, tried 3rd person mode and don't care for it. I know it gives you a bit better situational awareness, but overall I find it distracting.

[Jestun]

MeiSooHaityu, on 21 August 2013 - 07:44 AM, said:

It will be seperated out. Notice the drop down when you select the match type. The ones listed Hardcore should end up being 1st person view only. I am assuming those rooms should be accessible within a month or so.

Honestly, tried 3rd person mode and don't care for it. I know it gives you a bit better situational awareness, but overall I find it distracting.

No no...

PGI have the following to say:

"After designing, developing, and testing the MWO’s 3PV, we quickly realised that 3PV offered no significant advantage over 1PV."

http://mwomercs.com/...e-those-queues/


As far as I can see there's 2 options.

1. They are actually stupid enough to think that seeing over cover (evidenced in dozens of different locations in various screenshots) is not a significant advantage.

2. They fully intend to do a u-turn, thinking that this will make them seem like they care what the community thinks and hoping people will forget that the community was against 3rd person in the first place.

[AnAwkwardCuddle]

While rather harshly worded, the points the original poster makes are valid. Third person mode -destroys- the tactics of mechwarrior. Anyone attempting to play with realistic tactics can easily be destroyed by folks using the tried and true third person style of hide and spy where you remain out of physical site but can view movement with the camera. Given how insanely important knowing your enemies position is in this game, I cannot for the life of me understand why the developers think this doesn't provide any unfair advantages. Poor, poor move Piranha. I'm not gonna 'quit the game' or anything melodramatic, but yall just lost a sale of an Overlord package with this nonsense.

[ArbytheDragon]

I just had a match with a pair of CPLT-K2s with PPCs on Terra Therma using the 3rd person camera to peer over a ridge beside the mountain in the center. Yeah, we saw it coming, but there was nothing we could do to keep them from seeing us. We hit the probe with AC10s and lasers with no effect. The K2s just rolled up the hill, alpha striked us with their PPCs and rolled back down.

You have no idea how infuriating this was. I wanted to blow that probe out of the sky but instead, it absorbed those direct hits from an AC10 like an atlas who knew how to spread damage.

Has anyone thought about the ability to shoot down the probe? Once shot down, it can't be used for the rest of the match. Why can't we have it that way?

[Asmosis]

^^ you know people have been doing that since closed beta right? you walk up the hill fire a shot and walk back down. simple.

you dont even need to know if someone is there because if there isnt, you can either wait and shoot them when they pop out (which is what you do to hill snipers/poptarts) or you roll back down and back up again later.

If they are doing it in 3PV, you know exactly where they will pop up and can shoot them before their weapons clear the ridge to shoot you.

[Dirty Starfish]

Asmosis, on 30 August 2013 - 05:18 PM, said:

If they are doing it in 3PV, you know exactly where they will pop up and can shoot them before their weapons clear the ridge to shoot you.

^^
really the only useful tactical advantage is in brawling and even then the camera takes long enough to retract that any close range target will have moved.

[John MatriX82]

I'd like them to completely ditch the 3PV. But then all their phantom uber numbers of players that popped out from nowhere enjoying third person would come here in rage so they'll never make a u turn.

The two only possible solutions, besides giving us the option to never play vs 3PV or 1PV mixed with 3PV as it is now is to either:
-make that the drone is a module
-make that you can shoot it down and render it unaccessible till the next match

or:
-limit 3PV view to 750m to put it inline with thermal and night vision.

The two things might do it. Or take the feature away completely.

[Kain]

Totally agreeing with John MatriX82 post

3PV is an abomination, and hopefully they will remove it, or change it.

[Jacmac]

Kain, on 31 August 2013 - 12:25 PM, said:

3PV is an abomination, and hopefully they will remove it, or change it.

Honestly, I don't care if 3PV is in the game or not, I just don't want to play in matches against people that have the option of using it. It is pretty much like you said:

PGI says it's optional, but you have to use it because the other side is using it. There is a definite disadvantage to pretending it's not there when it is being used against you.

[Valaska]

First time segregation has ever meant a good thing... Way to go PGI.