39 replies to this topic

[CyclonerM]

DefinitelyNotMwHighlander, on 11 April 2015 - 07:19 AM, said:

River City Night on the other hand, there is a reason that is the most loathed map in the game. Just a culmination of being a shoebox you cannot see anything in. NO ONE likes river city night...

I do

[CyclonerM]

Alistair Winter, on 11 April 2015 - 10:17 AM, said:

• When I saw Mining Collective in a preview video (where it was presented in daylight), I thought it was one of PGI's greatest maps to date. But that map just looks real bad as a night mission, because you've got red, blue, yellow and green flood lights to match the red, blue, yellow and green lasers. A good map should have a color theme, but this is something PGI map designers only rarely seem to consider.

I do not agree on this point.

First, i do not think it is realistic to have all the lights blue or red, just saying.. And a LOT of MWO maps do not only have a color theme, they are almost monocromatic

[Abisha]

Sir Wulfrick, on 11 April 2015 - 10:46 AM, said:

Yes, I absolutely agree, we should be able to know the map on to which we're about to drop, if only for a 60-90 second window inside of which you could select your mech. A bit like editing your CW drop deck but on a much shorter time scale.

you launch with 3x mechs you selected before drop in the solo/group quoto.
only rule is they must be all of the same Class, at the timer screen you select one of the 3 mechs what you wanna drop with.

[Juodas Varnas]

CyclonerM, on 11 April 2015 - 10:47 AM, said:

I do

Yeah well, there are people that liked {Godwin's Law} too. Doesn't make him or River City Night any less awful!

[Revis Volek]

Super Trooper, on 11 April 2015 - 09:11 AM, said:

It's amazing that the the thermal and night vision of the future are worse that what we have today.

LOSTECH

Just like TruDUBS and Working JJ's....


OP,

Turn up the brightness on your monitor a little (find a good level for all maps) and save it in a custom setting if you can or write down the numbers. But i stopped using night vision on that map aside from brawl situations and Heat Vision still works better.


ProTip lolz
FYI you can see much further without night vision on that map just look for mechs against the water, they are very dark silhouettes against they grey/white sheen of the water. Use this to your advantage Mr Sniper!

Edited by DarthRevis, 11 April 2015 - 11:13 AM.

[Alistair Winter]

CyclonerM, on 11 April 2015 - 10:52 AM, said:

I do not agree on this point.
First, i do not think it is realistic to have all the lights blue or red, just saying.. And a LOT of MWO maps do not only have a color theme, they are almost monocromatic

Of course, monochromatism is not the same as having a color scheme. I think it's a good rule of thumb to find two or three colours that match very well. In Mining Collective, they have almost every colour in the rainbow, which is just visually unappealing.

And the primary colour is some sort of nauseating yellow-green, which feels very alien and inappropriate for an industrial site.

Here's an actual picture from a construction site, so that should be realistic enough. The whole site is covered in lovely orange lighting, but you also have some nice blue-white lights that create an interesting contrast. Orange and blue have the advantage of being on opposite ends of the well known color wheel, and this provides some interesting and visually appealing contrast. Realism and beauty in one stone.

[Satan n stuff]

Sir Wulfrick, on 11 April 2015 - 09:36 AM, said:

1. As Abisha commented, both "night vision" and thermal vision both end at ~600m, i.e. you can't see anything at all beyond that distance, no matter what you do.

2. Specialist sniping mechs are superb in CW, less so in other game modes.

3. Situation dictates the tactics & equipment, never the other way around.

Night vision has a slightly longer range than thermal, but if you just turn up the gamma and turn down effects you don't really need either. I only use them when I know my targets are within their effective range.

[Sir Wulfrick]

Satan n stuff, on 11 April 2015 - 01:46 PM, said:

Night vision has a slightly longer range than thermal, but if you just turn up the gamma and turn down effects you don't really need either. I only use them when I know my targets are within their effective range.

This. Once I know that an enemy has crossed the 5-600m boundary it's only at that point that I turn on thermal or NV for precise shot placement.

[Chuanhao]

Dark maps add variety. Same as in different terrain types. It would be shortsighted to only have day maps. You learn to rely more on sensors, mini map, team mates. More challenging. The law of averages means that all have equal chance to play on any map. The honorable thing to do is to play your best and not destroy another persons game by rage quitting.

The other question was 1) map selection and 2) mech customisation to map.

1) sure. Please propose a mechanic that would work. Current matchmaker works on simple assault/capture/skirmish + weight class + elo. Throw in a map selection factor. How long are u prepared to wait for a match? I suspect very long. They even tried ti do away with the assault/capture/skirmish selection previously to a majority wins model and had to junk it in a week. If anyone has a plausible map selection method that does not break the game, I think all are ready to listen to ya.

2) mech customisation after map selected. To what degree. Different weight class? Different chasis in same weight class? Or even same mech subjected to customisation? But how long should that customisatuon take? And if a person does not have a viable mech within the stipulated time, how then? Game breaks? Maybe just maybe when mechlab is reformed and they allow us to save configs. So once map selected, they give us 30 seconds, same time its takes to ready up, to select one of many pre config viable loadouts. We'll see. Otherwise, just take it as 1) incomplete intel before drop, 2) hot drop no time for customisation, 3) logistics train lost their way, make do with whatever. Its only for the next ten minutes. No big deal. Cross your fingers for the next game. Enjoy challenge of surviving thermal with an Awesome on PPCs or on caustic with only short range weapons. Still possible right?

[Kenyon Burguess]

I like the dark maps and inclimate weather effects. Helps break up the builds ppl try to use for every map.

[mark v92]

mining collective and terra therma can be pretty dark for me. i sometimes need to use nightvision for it.
got brightness on full.
might be since im running DX9 or other settings i dunno.

dont have a problem with using nightvision on something like river city night. thats how those are designed.

[Ace Selin]

Don't mind the dark map at all and had some amazingly good matches on River City Night.

[4rcs1ne]

What would be neat is if PGI could implement a random
weather generator for each map. For example,rather than having the same weather conditions each time you play a particular map, it could vary the weather conditions each time you start a match on a particular
map. Like maybe instead of the weather being sunny
every time you play Canyon Network, it could be
rainy,foggy, or stormy the next time you play that map.

Edited by Matt2496, 11 April 2015 - 07:51 PM.

[EgoSlayer]

Tarogato, on 11 April 2015 - 09:25 AM, said:

I want more dark maps. =3

Limited visibility -> shorter sightlines -> more dynamic play.

Imagine if Alpine were dark and you couldn't see shjt past 500m so an almost an entire team could pull off a flanking maneuver without getting spotted. We lose a lot of the possible tactics on Alpine because you can see mechs from completely across the map and it makes engagements very repetitive and boring.

Which would be fine if the night modes actually worked the same for everyone. The problem is that some people have better controls on their video cards and monitors and can boost gamma and brightness on maps like RCN to the point where they don't need the night vision/thermal visions modes and can play it like any other map. Others like myself don't have those adjustments and are either stuck trying to make out minor contrast changes in sheer blackness, or using the imaging modes that are limited to 750m.

[Tarogato]

EgoSlayer, on 11 April 2015 - 08:08 PM, said:

Which would be fine if the night modes actually worked the same for everyone. The problem is that some people have better controls on their video cards and monitors and can boost gamma and brightness on maps like RCN to the point where they don't need the night vision/thermal visions modes and can play it like any other map. Others like myself don't have those adjustments and are either stuck trying to make out minor contrast changes in sheer blackness, or using the imaging modes that are limited to 750m.

And I'm staying that visibility should be capped at that limit. 750 is a good limit. Visibility/distance should be the same with with normal mode, heat, and night.

[El Bandito]

Any map that requires me to have heat/night vision mode on at all times is a map that I do not like. That includes, but not limited to, River City Night, Frozen City, Forest Colony, and Viridian Bog. I would be happy if these maps show up less.

[VitiateDiabolus]

It would be nice if the night palette were more visible so playing the entire match in thermal or NV weren't a necessity. I don't think either augmented vision mode is attractive enough to warrant using it for an entire game.

[STEF_]

Alistair Winter, on 11 April 2015 - 12:04 PM, said:

Of course, monochromatism is not the same as having a color scheme. I think it's a good rule of thumb to find two or three colours that match very well. In Mining Collective, they have almost every colour in the rainbow, which is just visually unappealing.

And the primary colour is some sort of nauseating yellow-green, which feels very alien and inappropriate for an industrial site.

Here's an actual picture from a construction site, so that should be realistic enough. The whole site is covered in lovely orange lighting, but you also have some nice blue-white lights that create an interesting contrast. Orange and blue have the advantage of being on opposite ends of the well known color wheel, and this provides some interesting and visually appealing contrast. Realism and beauty in one stone.

Too much common sense; we cannot have it.
Beside, I must say that my eyes die when dropping in Mining. Those freakin lights...and dat blur....


To OP: I played mwo in two different pc, and yes, I can say it depends on the monitor or videocard.
Now I cannot see a damn thing, using a geforcegtx680, when droppin gin river city night.
But previously, with the old pc, I could snipe like a lion, because I could see everything in that map, and I had a radeon.
I'm not a pc specialist, so I cannot tell more.

[Aaren Kai]

If you can't pick the map, how about we pick the mech?

Take the drop ship concept and create an 'on deck' mode where your heaviest mech determines your grouping for team balance across the mech weights, you can have three other variants or three lighter mechs prepped.

On map load while everyone is waiting, you have those 15 seconds to keep your default mech or to drop in one of the prepped mechs.

You could even create another game mode called 'reinforcements' where everyone is given 100 tons on map start. You choose you mech and then it's weight is subtracted from the 100 tons, if/when you lose the first mech you may choose any remaining prepped mech if you have remaining tons.

Call it a compound solution of being able to select a mech, see more lights and mediums as lore says, and have some more tactics than 'bring the heaviest with most guns'.

And no I am not talk CW. Single game pug stuff here.

[AEgg]

I hope we can never pick which maps we are going to drop on, or at the very least it's a separate mode if it's introduced.

Part of the challenge in building a mech should be to make a variant that will work in whatever situation it's placed into. If you build a dedicated sniper, learn to make it work on a map with limited visibility. If you build a laser boat, learn to make it work on mordor. Map variety encourages more sensible and varied mech loadouts, because focusing on a single loadout might put you at a big disadvantage on some maps.

Stefka Kerensky, on 12 April 2015 - 03:43 AM, said:

Too much common sense; we cannot have it.
Beside, I must say that my eyes die when dropping in Mining. Those freakin lights...and dat blur....


To OP: I played mwo in two different pc, and yes, I can say it depends on the monitor or videocard.
Now I cannot see a damn thing, using a geforcegtx680, when droppin gin river city night.
But previously, with the old pc, I could snipe like a lion, because I could see everything in that map, and I had a radeon.
I'm not a pc specialist, so I cannot tell more.

The same video settings will look the same on the same monitor, regardless of what video card or other system components you are using (only exception being the occasioal bug). It's generally easier to see things at higher settings, although in some specific cases lower settings might make something more visible (in particular, turning of DoF, motion blur, and film grain make everything easier to see, at the cost of not looking quite as good).

Edited by AEgg, 12 April 2015 - 06:17 AM.