18 replies to this topic

[Felicitatem Parco]

We need data from new players who are not used to leaning on the old minimap.

Many experienced players are complaining that it is disorientating to no longer have a map that autorotates and tells you where everyone is facing, but that's because we learned to rely on it for too much info.

(Do you really expect radar, in an age where the entire battlefield is swimming in radio interference, to properly detect the direction that an enemy Mech's legs are facing when thier torso is flailing about, and know the difference between them moving in forward or reverse? Really?)

I know there are failings with the new map, but what we need are fewer "I can't play anymore" posts because you should be able to play without it, or you suck. Simply put, if you NEED the old style map for the game to be "playable" then you are not a good player. Get gud.

What we DO NEED are more posts from players who are able to review the current map for what it is. Just that; not a comparison to the old one, but objective reviews of the current map. That is the only path forward to improvement.

News flash - positive reviews have come in, and oddly enough they are largely from players that have not been around for years.

New players will carry the BattleTech/Mechwarrior franchise into the future. We need to cater to the current generation because the "since MW2" crowd will not be able to shoulder this franchise forever. And this very game's survival has to be based on new players coming in and liking the game for what it is, not what it used to be .

So, from now on, I want to encourage as many NEW USERS as possible to give comments on the new map. Old users, please give OBJECTIVE reviews for what we have and how to better it.

And, please, for the love of Kerensky, don't say that an auto rotating map that shows the direction everybody is facing is "needed" for the game to be playable. Autorotation is nice. Directional arrows are rich with information. Neither are "needed."

Thanks, and now feel free to accuse me of white knighting.

Edited by Prosperity Park, 21 June 2016 - 02:09 PM.

[M A N T I S]

Prosperity Park, on 21 June 2016 - 02:04 PM, said:

We need data from new players who are not used to leaning on the old minimap.

Many experienced players are complaining that it is disorientating to no longer have a map that autorotates and tells you where everyone is facing, but that's because we learned to rely on it for too much info.

(Do you really expect radar, in an age where the entire battlefield is swimming in radio interference, to properly detect the direction that an enemy Mech's legs are facing when they are holding still, and know the difference between then moving in forward or reverse? Really?)

I know there are failings with the new map, but what we need are fewer "I can't play anymore" posts because you should be able to play without it, or you suck. Simply put, if you NEED the old style map for the game to be "playable" then you are not a good player. Get gud.

What we DO NEED are more posts from players who are able to review the current map for what it is. Just that; not a comparison to the old one, but objective reviews of the current map. That is the only path forward to improvement.

New players will carry the BattleTech/Mechwarrior franchise into the future. We need to cater to the current generation because the "since MW2" crowd will not be able to shoulder his franchise forever. And this very game's survival has to be based on new players coming in and liking the game for what it is, not what it used to be .

So, from now on, I want to encourage as many NEW USERS as possible to give comments on the new map. Old users, please give OBJECTIVE reviews for what we have and how to better it.

And, please, for the love of Kerensky, don't say that an auto rotating map that shows the direction everybody is facing is "needed" for the game to be playable. Autorotation is nice. Directional arrows are rich with information. Neither are "needed."

Thanks, and now feel free to accuse me of white knighting.

Sorry, you are just plain wrong. It was the *single* bit of information that coordinated your torso to legs direction.

If you piloted your mech in the middle of a level, pointed your legs one direction and your torso in another, then handed to controls off to a new person who did not watch you place the mech... they would be 100% unable to predict direction of travel. Period. There is ABSOLUTELY NO OBJECTIVE INFORMATION TO ORIENT YOURSELF ONSCREEN.

Secondly, the lack of rotation goes against all ergo design. We are simply not wired for it. Animal are wired to gain orientation by having ahead and centre relative information. We are, after all, in our heads.

[Felicitatem Parco]

M A N T I S, on 21 June 2016 - 02:10 PM, said:

Sorry, you are just plain wrong. It was the *single* bit of information that coordinated your torso to legs direction.

If you piloted your mech in the middle of a level, pointed your legs one direction and your torso in another, then handed to controls off to a new person who did not watch you place the mech... they would be 100% unable to predict direction of travel. Period. There is ABSOLUTELY NO OBJECTIVE INFORMATION TO ORIENT YOURSELF ONSCREEN.

Secondly, the lack of rotation goes against all ergo design. We are simply not wired for it. Animal are wired to gain orientation by having ahead and centre relative information. We are, after all, in our heads.

There is an arrow that points forward, and two key binds to choose from that center your legs and torso.

However, a good reply could be phrased as "we could really use an in-HUD indicator for torso rotation, or a way to see our current twist on the map"

Edited by Prosperity Park, 21 June 2016 - 02:23 PM.

[Snowbluff]

Prosperity Park, on 21 June 2016 - 02:22 PM, said:

There is an arrow that points forward, and two key binds to choose from that center your legs and torso.

This is untrue. The arrow isn't visible most of the time because of terrain, and even then it's no good if you've twisted your torso BECAUSE YOU TURNED YOUR VIEW OFF OF IT.

Edited by Snowbluff, 21 June 2016 - 08:21 PM.

[Cy Mitchell]

Ironically, one of the things that I had a hard time adjusting to as a new player was the rotating mini-map. Now the thing that bothers me the most about this map is that it does not rotate and I have to stop and think to figure out which way I want to go. It started getting more natural after about 10 games but still a bit weird compared to what I have become used to.

That was really the only thing that bothered me but I look forward to the changes to improve it tomorrow.

[Hit the Deck]

M A N T I S, on 21 June 2016 - 02:10 PM, said:

Sorry, you are just plain wrong. It was the *single* bit of information that coordinated your torso to legs direction.

If you piloted your mech in the middle of a level, pointed your legs one direction and your torso in another, then handed to controls off to a new person who did not watch you place the mech... they would be 100% unable to predict direction of travel. Period. There is ABSOLUTELY NO OBJECTIVE INFORMATION TO ORIENT YOURSELF ONSCREEN.

Secondly, the lack of rotation goes against all ergo design. We are simply not wired for it. Animal are wired to gain orientation by having ahead and centre relative information. We are, after all, in our heads.

Prosperity Park, on 21 June 2016 - 02:22 PM, said:

There is an arrow that points forward, and two key binds to choose from that center your legs and torso.

However, a good reply could be phrased as "we could really use an in-HUD indicator for torso rotation, or a way to see our current twist on the map"

There's these two arrow indicators on your compass which show your torso-feet alignment:



*stolen from Catalina Steiner's thread

[MadcatX]

M A N T I S, on 21 June 2016 - 02:10 PM, said:

Sorry, you are just plain wrong. It was the *single* bit of information that coordinated your torso to legs direction.

If you piloted your mech in the middle of a level, pointed your legs one direction and your torso in another, then handed to controls off to a new person who did not watch you place the mech... they would be 100% unable to predict direction of travel. Period. There is ABSOLUTELY NO OBJECTIVE INFORMATION TO ORIENT YOURSELF ONSCREEN.

Secondly, the lack of rotation goes against all ergo design. We are simply not wired for it. Animal are wired to gain orientation by having ahead and centre relative information. We are, after all, in our heads.

There's a bar on top, the one that shows your mech's direction as well as anything of interest (enemy contacts, capture points, etc.). Fun fact: It also shows your Legs relative to your Torso. I prefer using that then always glancing down at the minimap to figure out where my legs are relative to my torso.

[Blessednight]

Prosperity Park, on 21 June 2016 - 02:04 PM, said:

I know there are failings with the new map, but what we need are fewer "I can't play anymore" posts because you should be able to play without it, or you suck. Simply put, if you NEED the old style map for the game to be "playable" then you are not a good player. Get gud.

You must not be a good player because all good players that I know uses the minimap extensively to position themselves with respect to their teammates. Only noobs who aren't aware of the situation get caught off-guard and left alone when the rest of the team move off, or fail to push or flank with the team.

When I play lights, I use the minimap to navigate through terrain at speed while my torso points 120 degrees and continue to fire at the enemy. In my urbie, I run backwards using the minimap to navigate while pointed 180 degrees at the enemy. You can't do any of this with the new minimap.

[Dr Mlem]

That long paragraph is all fine and dandy, but some like myself have reported nausea. Due to a loss of correlation between movement and direction.

And I've never been sick in any game in my whole life. And I would like to be able to play without getting sick everytime just because you feel everything is great.

There are some good parts of any system, just a shame it came out in this state. And your big rant is pointless, because regardless it's going to be hotfixed.

Edited by KariLP, 21 June 2016 - 09:04 PM.

[Zordicron]

K, IMA put this here as it got salty in the first response lol..

They need a toggle, first off, in settings so people that like it fixed can keep it that way after the rotation is reverted back in.



Second...

It took me like 45 seconds to adjust to the new minimap. They still show you the pointy end of your dorito guys! not that hard.


All these supposedly uber players come here and rage the salty tears of bittervets about how they can;t learn a new trick.
Stuff gets brought up about how the skill cieling is lowered, but at the same time the map suxx( I mean, you need more info that shows right where the enemy is to have higher skill? Seems the opposite...)

Stuff brought up about how you can;t tell where your legs are in relation to the torso(related to pointy dorito on map) nevermind the setting where you can put a GIANT *** ARROW ON THE MAIN DISPLAY, you know, right on the freegin ground, to show where your legs are pointed.

Stuff about not rotating- I mean, the pointy end of your dorito is the "front" of your mech guys, if a red dot shows up towards the pointy end, its in front of you. Can't find your team or know which way they are moving because you don't have doritos to look at?
Oh and my favorite so far, the comparison a couple made to a cars navigation system "even my cars nav turns!!"



Look!! Just like a car!!

I mean sorry guys, I know some people don;t adjust as fast as others and liked the old way. People screamed bloody murder when they took away predator color coded heat vision and they couldn't double goose enemy mechs from spawn on river city anymore too. it works out in the end, given good feedback. Salty rage doesn't accomplish anything.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

I'm not having any issues with walking or figuring out which direction I'm going.

I'm having issues finding where specific allies are to help them, seeing where certain enemies are to attack, figuring out where unmarked enemies are on the minimap to call out their position, figuring out if my allies are around me and backing me up, and seeing small terrain differences near me and up ahead when running around, especially in light mechs.

Mostly the map is just too far zoomed out and not centered on my mech so I can't get a reading of what is in my general area, and as such important to short term survival, as I could before, I also lose a sense of how far everything is from each other because of the size.

Its like the difference between a GPS and a state road map, you *can* find your way around with both, one just takes much longer.

[Petrothian Tong]

the static map gave me eye strain and makes me nauseous when I am used to looking at both and having both matches.

[Mystere]

Zordicron, on 21 June 2016 - 09:14 PM, said:

Stuff brought up about how you can;t tell where your legs are in relation to the torso(related to pointy dorito on map) nevermind the setting where you can put a GIANT *** ARROW ON THE MAIN DISPLAY, you know, right on the freegin ground, to show where your legs are pointed.

You do realize that that so-called "GIANT *** ARROW ON THE MAIN DISPLAY" disappears due to terrain, right?

Also, I do not know about you, but I prefer the old rotating mini-map with cone. It is a better indicator of the relative position between your legs and torso than that "GIANT *** ARROW ON THE MAIN DISPLAY" -- especially at larger angles of torso twist.

I will repeat for emphasis. The previous mini-map was a better indicator of the relative position between your legs and torso especially at larger angles of torso twist.

[Serosanguineous]

OK You want a new prospective from someone that has not been around forever,

I am not the youngest player here (over 30's crowd) and I do not have a 2k or 4k screen, but I find the new minimap hard to see! The very point of a minimap is to give you at a glance information about your location and your team-mates at the very least, and it fails at that if you can't see it. It is insulting for "Legendary Founders" to speak on behalf of new players.

Is the worlds of mechwarrior not in the distance future? Should there not be more information provided to pilots? Is this not future tech? humans have had satellites with camera's and gps for military use for more than 30 years, and 600 years in the future where they have mastered space travel and mechs with advance optics, doesn't have either? What the point in having an ECM if jamming is just assumed cause there is no information provided.

This is not a positive change, I am not fresh off the boat nor am I a veteran player. If you want to help new players become better players and have a more rewarding experience. I see two big areas that need improvement.

1. Give more information to new players and stop relying on the community to do it.

What I mean by that is more information of the workings of the game should be available in the game without have to comb over the forums hoping to find what your looking for (if you even know what your looking for). Training wheels, that can be turned off or on, like a voice saying "you have not had anything targeted in the last 30' seconds, press R" or "your range crosshairs is 920m, your small lasers are not dealing damage"

2. Give information on general tactics in the game.

You end up with 3 types of new players
A) the one that charges in without cordnating his attack (dies over and over and stops playing)
the missile boat that just fires when he/she get a lock and moves to the next target before they even hit
C) the sniper that never works with his team.

They need to be taught, and more so than just the tutorial.

"Simply put, if you NEED the old style map for the game to be "playable" then you are not a good player."

Well I guess I am a not a good player, so stop blaming the student for not learning, and wake up to the fact that YOU and MWO are bad teachers. It sounds to me like your saying the old minimap is a crutch, so take it away and you still expect new and old players to walk and run? How stupid is that.

Its just a bad call by the designers. How much harder would it had been to just make the new minimap an option picked in settings that way everyone would have been happy.

Oh and one more thing, the white arrow to help you keep your legs strait, it would be nice if it had a black mat that it was on, so even in the snow you could see it.

[Bud Crue]

Prosperity Park, on 21 June 2016 - 02:04 PM, said:

And, please, for the love of Kerensky, don't say that an auto rotating map that shows the direction everybody is facing is "needed" for the game to be playable. Autorotation is nice. Directional arrows are rich with information. Neither are "needed."

You make some excellent points. Moot I suppose since a hot fix is incoming, but still valid points. Mine is merely this:

The new or old or soon to be hot-fixed minimap is/was not a feature that would draw new players to the game. By itself it is incidental. It doesn't add value to the game play. It certainly doesn't make the game more fun or enjoyable. But the change from the old to the current did reduce the enjoyment and fun of many of your current players/customers.

So, if a new feature isn't going to attract new customers, doesn't on its own merits enhance the product or make it more enjoyable; and it emphatically is alienating many of your existing customers by reducing their enjoyment of the product...is such a feature a good addition to the game?

Edited by Bud Crue, 22 June 2016 - 03:58 AM.

[razenWing]

You obviously put a lot of thought into your post, so I will respond accordingly. Now, after reading countless counterpoints, (well, mainly you, allistair, and maybe a few others) and heard from various units including my unit NTEX and CHB, the orientation is basically summarized as the follow:

Some people can drive with GPS always having the "north" is always up fashion, like a true map. Most people don't. Most people drive with "forward" is up. Why? It's just very intuitive. You can quickly correlate what's happening around you with your data gathering panel (your RADAR/MAP).

Now, if you like it the other way, all the more power to ya. The fault isn't with you or the new minimap supporters, it lies solely with PGI:

1, They never researched the fact (and honestly, just use their heads a lil bit) properly as to why people prefer one or the other.
2, They were taking a favored feature away, by an overwhelming odds (about 9 to 1), to perform an experiment that was doomed from the start.
3, They never considered to give you an alternative, instead, to just shove it down your throat.

As I pointed numerous times to this screenshot that I took,


It's absolutely not beyond the scope to have one or the other, or better yet... both. This has been done before, just look at the picture above. IT's exactly both the controversial new minimap (the blue) and the familiar radar system (the yellow),

The point here, is flexibility. It's not about whether one is better than the other. I respect that you guys like to look at an absolute bearing over a relative bearing. And indeed it has it's uses because in absolute bearing, calling stuff like "West" actually means something. However, it must be pointed out that this intuitive design is NOT a crutch as many pro-minimappers have claimed. This honestly is the whole point of the study of ergonomics and human factor. It's to make things more intuitive and "easier" so that you can focus your energy doing other things.

(in this case, blasting the crap out of other giant stompy robots)

I take the analogy with Starcraft, which, by the way, is a lot more controversial every time they want to make a change. There's always the debate of macro vs micro functions. I am always the proponents that interfaces should be as easy as possible. Endless repetitive key clicking is not a good way to showcase skill. Making things needlessly complicated is not a good way to showcase skill.

But the thing is, options is always there. In the Starcraft's case, you can simply turn off the "autocast" toggle if you don't want the macro, and prefer to do everything yourself. In this specific case, it's funny that people make the arguments too that these macros are "crutches" and aimed to make the game easier.

To correlate back to MWO, it's not an over reliance on the old minimap. Nobody drives staring at the minimap. However, it's an easily translatable piece of data that's convenient and fits expectation. It's precisely why we have a targeting reticle. Now, you always have the choice to turn off HUD and simply draw a dot on your screen with your sharpie, but you wouldn't call that whole screen a crutch now, would you?

In short, rather than appeal to the masses and wonder why we just can't accept a system that's not intuitive but fits your expectation, ask why PGI doesn't have the foresight to give you the option to choose one or the other.

Ask why that screenshot cannot be achieve. PGI designers are the people that you really should point the question at, not us... not why we can't use a system that you deem to be adjustable to you, but why you aren't given a choice to choose.

Edited by razenWing, 22 June 2016 - 04:21 AM.

[Thorn Hallis]

M A N T I S, on 21 June 2016 - 02:10 PM, said:

Sorry, you are just plain wrong. It was the *single* bit of information that coordinated your torso to legs direction.

My 'Mech moving in another direction then where I am looking is telling enough, isn't?

[Novakaine]

The current abomination of a mini map effectively reduces you to line of sight.
Period.
And if you are not used to bearing markers over the rieticle well......
Please revert to the old mini it worked just fine.

[BigBenn]

I liked the map being stationary. It makes perfect sense. However, adding back in the torso cone and heading arrow is a good thing. I can understand some players not being able to cope, they've not ever been taught how to use a map, or to adapt and learn, etc.

North is always up. Even in China.

I'm sure glad I bought stock in Kleenex yesterday morning.