54 replies to this topic

[Mole]

Mystere, on 12 January 2018 - 01:16 PM, said:

This is one of those very rare instances in which a broken promise by PGI could have been a very very good thing. Unfortunately, we got this abomination instead.

If this was the only promise they ever broke I think we'd all be happy campers.

[Verilligo]

Mystere, on 12 January 2018 - 01:16 PM, said:

This is one of those very rare instances in which a broken promise by PGI could have been a very very good thing. Unfortunately, we got this abomination instead.

A functional 3PV would break a lot of how the game works and associated balance, though. The MW4 implementation essentially made it the only viable option if it was available for use. Applied here, it would be the death of entire modes of play.

[Mystere]

Verilligo, on 12 January 2018 - 01:29 PM, said:

A functional 3PV would break a lot of how the game works and associated balance, though. The MW4 implementation essentially made it the only viable option if it was available for use. Applied here, it would be the death of entire modes of play.

As I said on page 1, this entirely depends on the design chosen. Choose an idoitic design and you get idiotic results.

Having said that, I will not openly call the MW4 implementation "idiotic" given that CPU and GPU capabilities at that time were just a fraction of what they have today.

[Verilligo]

Mystere, on 12 January 2018 - 01:34 PM, said:

As I said on page 1, this entirely depends on the design chosen. Choose an idoitic design and you get idiotic results.

Having said that, I will not openly call the MW4 implementation "idiotic" given that CPU and GPU capabilities at that time were just a fraction of what they have today.

Given how bad cockpit design in MW4 was and other limiting factors, I'd say the 3PV option there was actually a kindness. It was a bad implementation at its core, but it gelled well with the rest of the game. It was still bad for game balance, especially in tandem with ECM or passive sensors, but that was as much due to other balancing decisions (poptarting Black Knights with C-ERLL and ECM) as it was due to 3PV.

[Xmith]

Mole, on 12 January 2018 - 08:57 AM, said:

PGI made a promise long ago that there would never be third-person in MWO because it potentially gave people an unfair advantage over players using first-person. Then they broke their promise but tried to justify it by making third-person view as combat ineffective as possible. I never use third-person unless I just want to look at my 'mech.

They never promised there would be no 3pv. At the time they said they were going to have a look at 3pv.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

the giving the Crash Bandicot kiddie view and restricted the heat and Nightview in Range (ok first logical by the bad placement of the drops of the to small maps)...thats two aspects from many thats not to understand like the idiotic Implented Minimap with nothing tactical Infos(only the contrast of the coordinates now after years ok and good viewing)

Edited by Old MW4 Ranger, 13 January 2018 - 03:32 AM.

[Appogee]

Xmith, on 12 January 2018 - 01:52 PM, said:

They never promised there would be no 3pv. At the time they said they were going to have a look at 3pv.

Wrong.

They said explicitly that no player would ever be forced to play in matches against other players who had 3PV. They gave assurances at the time they were seeking founders, all the way through to the patch where they suddenly and unexpectedly introduced it.

This external blog contains some background and this image captures specific statements from the devs.

So stop trying to rewrite history.

EDIT: the original thread in which Russ gave his reason for the about-face is shown in a post below.

Edited by Appogee, 15 January 2018 - 05:27 PM.

[xe N on]

In fact 3rd person would be more realistic than FPS cockpit view considering mechwarriors using neurohelemt that compress the normal FOV and thus allowing a much higher situation awareness.

But apparently people love to steer their mech looking through a small cockpit windows as tanks in WW2, despite this is the year 3050+

Edited by xe N on, 13 January 2018 - 04:31 AM.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

Neurohelmets not have Visual Informations only Feedback to drive the machine with the own sense of Balance...the view in all Novels and in the Lore only in Cockpit (low Tech)

Edited by Old MW4 Ranger, 13 January 2018 - 06:58 AM.

[dario03]

Appogee, on 13 January 2018 - 03:37 AM, said:

Wrong.

They said explicitly that no player would ever be forced to play in matches against other players who had 3PV. They gave assurances at the time they were seeking founders, all the way through to the patch where they suddenly and unexpectedly introduced it.

PGI deleted the thread in which Russ tried to defend its introduction. But this external blog contains some background and this image captures specific statements from the devs.

So stop trying to rewrite history.

The response thread is gone but the post from Russ is still up. Unless there was a different one.
https://mwomercs.com...3rd-person-why/

[xe N on]

Old MW4 Ranger, on 13 January 2018 - 06:57 AM, said:

Neurohelmets not have Visual Informations only Feedback to drive the machine with the own sense of Balance...the view in all Novels and in the Lore only in Cockpit (low Tech)

Sarna:
During the Succession Wars neurohelmets greatly degraded in capability as the knowledge of the Star League became lostech. These bulky helmets required physical contact with the MechWarrior's scalp and had to rest on their shoulders, preventing them from turning their head. As a compensation they incorporated a monitor on the inside, taking sensory information from the 'Mech and compressing a 360° view to a 160° display. By the middle of the 31st century though, the Inner Sphere had recovered enough to where their helmets had improved significantly, though nowhere close to those of the Clans which retained the same technology as the Star League.^[1][6][8]

[Shifty McSwift]

I don't know about the lore, but you should totally be able to snipe the little floating camera and destroy someones 3pv for that match.

[sycocys]

They can have full blown 3pv if they wanted, they just needed to put them in their own queue because the people that funded and supported this game in closed were pretty adamant about wanting the game to lean on classic sim aspect.

[blood4blood]

Can't speak for all founders, but there was definitely at least a minority of us who were fine with 3PV in MW4 and would have been fine with it in MWO. As is, the implementation in MWO is so intentionally bad it seems an entire waste of time. Even in 1PV MW4 had better vision implementation with rear view and side view controlled via joystick "hat." Plus MW4 allowed using arm weapons with side view to shoot someone who thought they'd evaded your field of fire, which was always fun. Yes, the 3PV allowed for peeking over and around walls, hill, corners, etc. It wasn't a big deal in competitive play unless you ran into actual role-players who insisted on 1PV and saying "Quiaff" and "Quineg" in chat, called legging dishonorable, etc. For them, they could just use FFP (forced first person) server settings, so still not a big issue despite how much people liked to argue over it.

[Stinger554]

dario03, on 13 January 2018 - 07:15 AM, said:

The response thread is gone but the post from Russ is still up. Unless there was a different one.
https://mwomercs.com...3rd-person-why/

FYI that basically said that people are too stupid to figure out that the Torso moves separately from the legs. Which literally anyone with half-a-brain would be able to figure out in 30 secs of play. So they wanted to add a 3PV camera so those people could literally see that their legs moved differently from the torso.

Now getting used to it and being able to move fluidly would take practice.

[Stinger554]

blood4blood, on 15 January 2018 - 02:43 PM, said:

Can't speak for all founders, but there was definitely at least a minority of us who were fine with 3PV in MW4 and would have been fine with it in MWO. As is, the implementation in MWO is so intentionally bad it seems an entire waste of time. Even in 1PV MW4 had better vision implementation with rear view and side view controlled via joystick "hat." Plus MW4 allowed using arm weapons with side view to shoot someone who thought they'd evaded your field of fire, which was always fun. Yes, the 3PV allowed for peeking over and around walls, hill, corners, etc. It wasn't a big deal in competitive play unless you ran into actual role-players who insisted on 1PV and saying "Quiaff" and "Quineg" in chat, called legging dishonorable, etc. For them, they could just use FFP (forced first person) server settings, so still not a big issue despite how much people liked to argue over it.

IIRC the biggest grief with it was that 3PV does provide advantages over 1PV(anyone who denies this is ignoring reality) and they were going to introduce two queues for it one with 1PV only and I don't recall the exact reason why they abandoned that probably because they realized that they didn't have the playerbase to do something like that.

The 3PV in MWO is intentionally bad because of wanting 3PV and 1PV in the same queue. So that 3PV did not become the only option if you want to remain competitive.

[Appogee]

dario03, on 13 January 2018 - 07:15 AM, said:

The response thread is gone but the post from Russ is still up. Unless there was a different one.
https://mwomercs.com...3rd-person-why/

It must have been moved when they reorganised the forum structure. But I still can't find the thread where players gave feedback to Russ's post.

That was one hell of a thread

[Appogee]

Stinger554, on 15 January 2018 - 03:16 PM, said:

I don't recall the exact reason why they abandoned that probably because they realized that they didn't have the playerbase to do something like that.

The 3PV in MWO is intentionally bad because of wanting 3PV and 1PV in the same queue. So that 3PV did not become the only option if you want to remain competitive.

You are correct on both counts. And in fact PGI was correct in retrospect not to split the queues.

What was absolutely ASTONISHING at the time was, after all the controversy and all the assurances they'd given, they just patched in 3PV unexpectedly one day, casually mentioning it in the patch notes as if it was no big deal.

It was the single biggest WTF moment in the history of MWO.

[Daggett]

Verilligo, on 12 January 2018 - 01:29 PM, said:

A functional 3PV would break a lot of how the game works and associated balance, though. The MW4 implementation essentially made it the only viable option if it was available for use. Applied here, it would be the death of entire modes of play.

Stinger554, on 15 January 2018 - 03:16 PM, said:

IIRC the biggest grief with it was that 3PV does provide advantages over 1PV(anyone who denies this is ignoring reality)

I'll quote myself here from another similar thread:

"They could have evaded this problem by changing how mech detection works.

In WoT for example the 3PV camera can't give you a tactical advantage because enemies are only drawn if the tank could see them. To see and display an enemy it must be possible to draw an unobstructed line between the player and that enemy. So if i switch to 3PV in WoT and look around corners enemy tanks are still hidden because my tank still don't have a line-of-sight.

In MWO however mechs are always visible/displayed which causes the problems with 3PV.
But the funny (or sad) thing is that MWO already has a line-of-sight mechanic similar to WoT. It is used to determine if the UI should display a target indicator or not. That's why mechs beyond our view-range or around corners are not revealed with UI-doritos.

So it's shouldn't be rocket science to apply this existing functionality to determine which mechs are displayed and which not.
But PGI decided to stay true to their system maybe because they don't wanted to further change things veterans already got used too or they wanted to differentiate themselves more from WoT.

But to make 3PV work PGI and those veteran players as well would have needed to swallow that pill. I'm sure in the long run it would have improved the game and it's player-base and we would have got a proper 3PV with no tactical advantages over 1PV."

Mole, on 12 January 2018 - 08:57 AM, said:

PGI made a promise long ago that there would never be third-person in MWO because it potentially gave people an unfair advantage over players using first-person. Then they broke their promise but tried to justify it by making third-person view as combat ineffective as possible.

Appogee, on 12 January 2018 - 11:08 AM, said:

And that's all. I was strongly against 3PV. PGI's last minute betrayal of their cast iron commitment to players not to introduce it was the single biggest "WTF you must be kidding" moment in the troubled history of the development of this game.

PGI should have never made that promise in the first place. They should have instead promised that if they ever implement 3PV that it would be better than the MW4 one and will provide no unfair advantages like hill-peeking.

Stinger554, on 15 January 2018 - 03:11 PM, said:

FYI that basically said that people are too stupid to figure out that the Torso moves separately from the legs. Which literally anyone with half-a-brain would be able to figure out in 30 secs of play. So they wanted to add a 3PV camera so those people could literally see that their legs moved differently from the torso. Now getting used to it and being able to move fluidly would take practice.

I think you misinterpreted that. It's not about 'figuring it out', of cause everyone would know that legs and torso would move differently.

But the whole 'getting used to' is the problematic part. I played video games for about 22 years when i stumbled upon MWO and no shooter i ever played was that unforgiveable just because there was no indication where your legs are and there was no throttle-decay either to have more direct control over your speed.

It took several matches for me to start dealing some damage and more than 20 to achieve the first kill (it was not even a kmdd one). Maybe you got the hang of it much earlier but i'm sure i was not the only one with such massive problems back then. In fact most new players i see have exactly those problems and they often compensate by being very stationary and concentrate on the shooting.

For reference: I played WoT excessively before MWO so i was already perfectly used to control independent movement and aiming parts of a walking tank. But in MWO this has not helped. It was the ability to instantly switch between 1PV and 3PV and that they had throttle decay that made WoT much more accessible. In fact my first WoT matched have been a great experience with no control issues but in MWO it was much worse despite both games being very similar. I almost quit MWO at that time.

So i think for a new player it's very important to actually see the position of legs and torso. The white and ugly direction arrow we have today is not enough because it is only visible if you are already looking in it's direction. You are still lost if you are looking in a different direction. A proper 3PV is still the best solution to that.

I'm 100% sure that if WoT would have gone the realistic and immersive 1PV only way like MWO did that they would have never become as successful as they are today. And MWO on the other hand would be much more successful if PGI would have just copied the WoT way of mixing 1PV and 3PV.

MWO had and still has an accessibility problem and PGI correctly realized that 3PV was the best way to solve this. Their problem was just that they already promised to never implement 3PV before they got this insight.

So i totally agree to their position, they had to implement a proper 3PV despite their promise to get new players used to the game without becoming frustrated like i did. I would have broken this promise too.

But sadly they did too much wrong in the following communication with the community and actual implementation as well so today's 3PV and with it MWO's player-count is miles away from what it could be.

Edited by Daggett, 16 January 2018 - 04:36 AM.

[Nema Nabojiv]

PGI made a mistake by listening to sim cryhards and not making a proper 3PV.

As a result they failed to attract as much new players as they could with 3pv, and 1pv population was limited to begin with, and is slowly declining due to various reasons like some stuff happened to FW long ago or the nerfs to their favorite meta or the skill tree. Perfect lose-lose situation.