5 replies to this topic

[Roland]

Way back in closed beta, when we only had one lonely map in the form of Forest Colony (and it had no ship crashed in the water), that map was actually better than it is now in many ways. Why? Because the visibility was clear. There was no fog making you squint into the distance. Things were fairly clear.

Of the current maps, certain ones suffer from poor visibility, while others do not... and as a result, the ones that suffer most from poor visibility tend to be hated by players.

There is a mistaken belief that poor visiblity, such as darkness on River City, adds some degree of tactical depth. I offer you a counterargument to that suggestion.

On a map like River City, newer players may indeed try to flip around between thermal and night vision mode.. but good players don't.

Why don't good players user those alternate modes most of the time? Because they limit your range of vision severely.

So, instead, what do folks do? They just go into the options and jack up the gamma. Then you can see in the darkness (albeit it still looks like {Scrap}).


When I consider which maps I enjoy playing most, it's most definitely the maps with the clearest visibility.... and the ones I hate the most are the ones where its darkest, with poor visibility.

What's more, when you look at other shooters... there really aren't a whole lot of them which employ poor visibility. Why? Because squinting at your computer monitor, or jacking your settings to make everything look washed out, is NOT FUN. It adds nothing to the gameplay.

Now, I fully understand why the vision modes like thermal and night vision have limited range.. because, previously, everyone pretty much ran Thermal all the time... Like, always. Because it was simply better...

But the question is, why was it better? It wasn't really that blue-vision was tons of fun. It really wasn't. But it eliminated a lot of the garbage poor visibility that had been added into the game.

And that's the crux of the issue. Poor visibility is not fun. And it really adds nothing, because it can generally just be circumvented via various settings and graphical tweaks.

I would suggest that, instead, we just migrate back to maps which have good, clear visibility... instead of falling back onto what end up being pointless gimmicks, let's just let folks actually play the game. Because honestly, I don't know anyone who is like, "Ya know what, I love blurry, foggy, dark messes. Those are my favorite maps."

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

I love the concept of night fighting, and of fog/rain/snow, but the execution is really very unpleasant. I don't know how PGI could do it in such a way as to make it really work, but as things stand my two least favorite maps are River City Night and Frozen City, and visibility is probably the only significant reason for that.

[Henry Morgan]

Actually I liked the limited vision maps. Where visibility was limited to sensor range. Except I usually played them as they were and didn't opt to using outside settings to negate the in-game effects. I thought the maps were fun and had a different feel to them.

But you're right in that a design like that, which can be easily negated by a player adjusting their monitor or resolution/detail settings is a poorly designed one. It essentially allows one group of players to 'cheat' their way to an advantage over another group of players, which is not a good game feature.

One of the best "Fog of War" types I've seen was what World Of Tanks did with their camouflage and visible detection. I don't know how they coded it, but I suspect every player was put in their own phase of a map, and phases would be linked based on the visibility calculation and radio ranges of the same team. Basically it was a skill versus skill detection, and if your skill failed, then you simply did not see the enemy tank. Of course there were a lot of other variables that came into play, but in the general sense, I always liked that concept. It allowed for field of vision to be limited on certain tank models, and that visibility could be structured around different skills and bonuses and/or penalties.

I don't think we'd see that anytime soon in MWO thought, as I suspect it would be a complete re-write of a lot of code. But it could have a lot of potential into adding another layer into MWO. More of a reliance on sensors and the addition of sensor packages. ECM being more than mainly a missile lock-on blocker. Communication ranges added to Mech's where battle field intelligence is shared but only within defined ranges of each mech.
It could also serve to open up another patch of pilot skills around sensors, detection, evasion, etc... And maybe even another path along the lines of communications.

Probably too big of a change to wish for, but it was one feature of World of Tanks I always thought was very well done compared to many other games.

[Myomes]

The obvious design would be to create artifacts in the view of the player which are completely invisible at "proper" settings, but show up obscuring "vew" and blinding the player at higher settings.

think of how call of duty had these "not see" "barely see" "see well" ranges that you attuned the game brightness to, and the not see one was supposed to become invisible when you made it the "right setting".

Could do the same thing.

[Sephlock]

They won't do this.

Why do you think that Thermal and Night vision have changed from "useful" to "squint-o-vision"?

(At least beyond short range).

Edited by Sephlock, 31 December 2013 - 05:17 AM.

[DaZur]

I'm far less impressed with night fighting than I thought I would be... I know some players don't but for most, it's de facto to automatically drop into heat or night vision mode and play 99.9% from there. Which to me devalues the system...

All being said, I'd be much more impressed with PGI keeping battlemechs "day fighters" and as such, modeling the hours between dusk and dawn... But making environmental profiles far more diverse. I.e... rain, snow, fog, dust, wind..etc.