67 replies to this topic

[stjobe]

Reading the January Roadmap, this part stuck out to me:

Quote

New Laser Visuals and changes to Range value displays
Laser visuals have been changed so that beam will appear thinner the further it travels. The beam will also stop rendering at the point where the laser no longer applies damage.

Does that mean what I think it means? That a ML beam will simply stop at 540 meters?

If so, I have to say this is the silliest in a long line of silly ideas PGI have come up with.

[TamCoan]

If I understand the wording, the laser will get thinner and vanish. So hopefully it just looks like the light diffuses. *shrug*

[Mazzyplz]

i hope it will look like the beam is vanishing;
and not what they wrote here which is like shooting a cone of laser

[Felicitatem Parco]

stjobe, on 05 January 2016 - 10:24 AM, said:

Reading the January Roadmap, this part stuck out to me:


Does that mean what I think it means? That a ML beam will simply stop at 540 meters?

If so, I have to say this is the silliest in a long line of silly ideas PGI have come up with.

Yeah, it's silly to make the beam go away when it's not dealing damage, because people should be lead to believe that their weapons are dealing damage when they are, in fact, not.

*facepalm*

Why is this new-player-friendly feature silly? It seems fine to me.

[Monkey Lover]

I look forward to this update it sounds lie it will look fine.

Im wondering if this will hurt or help performance. You would think less lasers on the screen would help a little.

[Cyborne Elemental]

but I won't be able to scare people with fizzling armor while doing no damage anymore

[keith]

TamCoan, on 05 January 2016 - 10:26 AM, said:

If I understand the wording, the laser will get thinner and vanish. So hopefully it just looks like the light diffuses. *shrug*

i think we are going to get half assed. ever laser will get a "full" beam to it op range. say IS med so 270 then thin out to fall off distance. so its going to look meh on the smaller bore lasers, larger one fine

[Felicitatem Parco]

Mister D, on 05 January 2016 - 10:32 AM, said:

but I won't be able to scare people with fizzling armor while doing no damage anymore

AC/2...?

Heheh.. Scare them while doing damage. It's more fun.

[stjobe]

Prosperity Park, on 05 January 2016 - 10:29 AM, said:

Yeah, it's silly to make the beam go away when it's not dealing damage, because people should be lead to believe that their weapons are dealing damage when they are, in fact, not.

*facepalm*

Why is this new-player-friendly feature silly? It seems fine to me.

Because light doesn't work that way.

And there's both a distance-to-target marker on their HUD, and an optimal-range number by their weapons.

Perhaps it's just me, and perhaps it's just silly when talking about a stompy robot game, but this doesn't cross my suspension bridge of disbelief, nor is it skating by on the ice frozen over by the rule of cool, it just seems daft to me.

I can accept that a ballistic projectile loses enough penetration to do no damage after a certain distance, and I can accept that missiles self-destruct after a certain distance, but that laser light just stops?

Nope, sorry. That's taking it one step too far.

How dumb do you want the game to be?

[adamts01]

If there were a laser (in the visible light spectrum) that could cause damage, the range at which that laser could be seen would be very, very far past where the damage cutoff is. Plus, light spreads out the further it goes.

+1 for a move in the direction of realism PGI.

[CDLord HHGD]

Opinion: All weapons should have zero damage at their listed TT max range. Period.

Opinion: W(hy)TF are they wasting resources on laser beam diameter in range v distance when there's so much other things they could specifically devote a weapon projectile artist to???

[Thunder Child]

Is it really any different to the current Laser, which, if you are far enough away, just stops with a flared nub on the end of it, like it's hitting an invisible wall.

If they can make it pretty, I see no problem with it, as new peeps will suddenly realize their MEDIUM Lasers aren't actually hitting that target at 800m (I see it quite often, and either they have chat turned off, or are too focused on shooting the big stompy robots to actually read what their teammates are telling them).

Though to be fair, I would much prefer that we get a change to how missiles work, so that instead of exploding harmlessly in midair at max range, they just switched off and went into free-fall. Would also allow for some interesting tactics, like blindfiring SRMs over a rock at 270m, and letting them free-fall down the other side.

[Sandpit]

stjobe, on 05 January 2016 - 10:24 AM, said:

Reading the January Roadmap, this part stuck out to me:


Does that mean what I think it means? That a ML beam will simply stop at 540 meters?

If so, I have to say this is the silliest in a long line of silly ideas PGI have come up with.

that's what they already do. Once a laser hits its max range it just stops moving forward as if it hit an invisible wall.

cdlord, on 05 January 2016 - 10:59 AM, said:

Opinion: All weapons should have zero damage at their listed TT max range. Period.

Opinion: W(hy)TF are they wasting resources on laser beam diameter in range v distance when there's so much other things they could specifically devote a weapon projectile artist to???

Based on what I've seen and read, it's going to allow players to know how much damage they're doing.

[CDLord HHGD]

Sandpit, on 05 January 2016 - 11:48 AM, said:

Based on what I've seen and read, it's going to allow players to know how much damage they're doing.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight........

Would really like to know how what with glare and particles and map fog and.......

[DAYLEET]

Ill still shoot my ML at 1.5k on Alpine at the enemy, you can't stop me.

[Almond Brown]

Take a flashlight, a strong one even, out into the night and see how far you can actually see with it ffs. Light diffuses quite quickly, even a beam that starts out highly focused, diffuses pretty quick. In MWO the max. range of any Laser is whatever your Draw Distance Max setting is...

If Lasers were that potent over infinite ranges, then why did the Star Wars program plan to put said Lasers into space? It sure wasn't due to cost effectiveness now was it. They could be ground based and be just as effective.

Edited by Almond Brown, 05 January 2016 - 12:02 PM.

[Sandpit]

cdlord, on 05 January 2016 - 11:53 AM, said:

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight........

Would really like to know how what with glare and particles and map fog and.......

There's a couple of maps that I've tried everything I can think of including brightness and gamma levels, different vision modes, etc. and it's just next to impossible to actually see anything. They're getting way too carried away with all these effects.
Dynamic time change during a battle is awesome, "fog" and clutter (IE "plants") that jsut create confusion, eye strain, and headaches are not.

[Zibmo]

Prosperity Park, on 05 January 2016 - 10:29 AM, said:

Yeah, it's silly to make the beam go away when it's not dealing damage, because people should be lead to believe that their weapons are dealing damage when they are, in fact, not.

*facepalm*

Why is this new-player-friendly feature silly? It seems fine to me.

It messes with my ability to get people to run for cover when I flash a bright light on their cockpit even from 1100 meters with a ML. Nothing like a few heat points to make people duck for nothing

[DaZur]

HEY! Someone just fired a a medium laser at me (looks down at paper doll) ... No problem, idiot was out of range.

Not sure why this needs a usual representation via a vanishing perspective beam...

Enter the codification of new player experience.

[Sandpit]

Almond Brown, on 05 January 2016 - 11:58 AM, said:

Take a flashlight out into the night and see how far you can actually see ffs. Light diffuses quite quickly, even a beam that starts out focused, diffuses pretty quick. In MWO the range is Draw Distance Max...

well lasers don't diffuse as quickly. Even a small low powered pointer style laser can project for a hundred feet or more.

I know what you're saying, just pointing out that it doesn't dissipate quite THAT quickly. 300 feet = 100 meters (give or take)

Lasers with that kind of output and power supply would go a lot further than 1000 meters and still be visible upon hitting the target.

I'm interested to see what they do regardless.

DaZur, on 05 January 2016 - 12:12 PM, said:

HEY! Someone just fired a a medium laser at me (looks down at paper doll) ... No problem, idiot was out of range.

Not sure why this needs a usual representation via a vanishing perspective beam...

Enter the codification of new player experience.

well there's a few other factors as well.
color blind comes to mind right off the bat. I've talked to a few players that have that issue and it can be a bit difficult for them. Plus, as you said, the new players really have no easy way of knowing what a "max" range of a lot of weapons are. We take for granted that this information was dispersed years ago and we know it, new players not so much.