54 replies to this topic

[PocketYoda]

Try third person in a nightstar haha, can't see squat..

[Lightfoot]

First Person, Joystick, is as close to a Mech Simulation that MWO provides so that's how I go.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

Nema Nabojiv, on 16 January 2018 - 03:37 AM, said:

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.

this "new" Players thats never heard from BT before.. never this folks came to founding in MWO and give the money for the Start and First evolution of MWO ...and this Mechwarrior ...not Mechassault ..in MW4 the most leagues prohibited the 3PV..the FPV popultaion was the only Population thats founded MWO...to the Timepoint thats Russ finds his 8 Years old son can MWO better plays with a 3PV

Edited by Old MW4 Ranger, 16 January 2018 - 07:49 AM.

[Stinger554]

Daggett, on 16 January 2018 - 03:22 AM, said:

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.

So you cannot literally see the enemy tank with your eyes by corner peaking via 3PV in WoT? Because last I had played you could. Which BTW is a tactical advantage over 1PV. Even if the tanks literally didn't render 3PV would still provide tactical advantages just because of the increased FOV...as I said ignoring reality.

Edited by Stinger554, 16 January 2018 - 07:54 AM.

[Anjian]

I feel that the Mechwarrior franchise is heavily associated with 1PV. It doesn't feel Mechwarrior without being First Person.

Other games though, have been very successful with 3PV. The rise of 3PV shooters has a lot to do with World of Tanks and those trying to compete with it.

Edited by Anjian, 16 January 2018 - 07:56 AM.

[Nema Nabojiv]

Old MW4 Ranger, on 16 January 2018 - 07:48 AM, said:

this "new" Players thats never heard from BT before.. never this folks came to founding in MWO and give the money for the Start and First evolution of MWO ...and this Mechwarrior ...not Mechassault ..in MW4 the most leagues prohibited the 3PV

A game, and battletech franchise, in general cant succeed without expanding its audience.

There only that much of old farts who played battletech and mechwarriors in 90s. And their numbers are declining because as people get older they usually stop playing videogames.
By the way not all of them even supports 1PV only, I know I dont, and there are other people on this forum who dont.
The audience from WoT-like vehicle shooters, who are like the easiest playerbase to drag into mechs, simply dont understand why you have to play without 3PV and why should they even bother.

And so we have 30 thousand active players, half of which has "wallet closed policy because clams and hurrdurr"

[Anjian]

Nema Nabojiv, on 16 January 2018 - 08:02 AM, said:

A game, and battletech franchise, in general cant succeed without expanding its audience.

There only that much of old farts who played battletech and mechwarriors in 90s. And their numbers are declining because as people get older they usually stop playing videogames.
By the way not all of them even supports 1PV only, I know I dont, and there are other people on this forum who dont.
The audience from WoT-like vehicle shooters, who are like the easiest playerbase to drag into mechs, simply dont understand why you have to play without 3PV and why should they even bother.

And so we have 30 thousand active players, half of which has "wallet closed policy because clams and hurrdurr"

The long term demographics don't look good.

1. The PC market itself is shrinking. This also means less and less new PC gamers are being added each year.

2. The greatest growth area for new gamers are coming from Asia and developing markets, like the BRIC countries, CIS region, SEA, Middle East, Latin America. BT/MWO audience is North America mainly with some in Europe.

3. Greatest growth of gamers are in mobile, the most preferred and most popular gaming platform in those areas mentioned in #2.

4. Big spenders are in #2.

Edited by Anjian, 16 January 2018 - 08:18 AM.

[Daggett]

Stinger554, on 16 January 2018 - 07:51 AM, said:

So you cannot literally see the enemy tank with your eyes by corner peaking via 3PV in WoT? Because last I had played you could. Which BTW is a tactical advantage over 1PV.

I played WoT from closed beta 2010 until 2016, they never changed their visibility system during that time. Maybe what you remember was early closed beta or you had the luxury of other players spotting the tanks around your corner, i don't know. But what i described is what they used for at least over 7 years now.

For more information here is a video how their visibility system works and what i'd like to see in MWO too:



As a bonus you can see that role warfare makes much more sense this way, scouts do and are required to actually scout in WoT and in late game a team without a scout is at a serious disadvantage while we Mechwarriors just brawl it out.

Sure it's less realistic to have enemies pop up and being unable to spot them with the naked eye. But gameplay-wise it's the much deeper and more interesting approach.

For me it makes no difference now, i love MWO despite having the weaker but more realistic visibility system. But more players and therefore a more secured financial position for PGI would probably have benefited everyone.

Stinger554, on 16 January 2018 - 07:51 AM, said:

Even if the tanks literally didn't render 3PV would still provide tactical advantages just because of the increased FOV...as I said ignoring reality.

This is a fair trade-off i think. In 3PV you get the increased awareness but can't aim as precisely as in 1PV. WoT managed to make both modes equally important so you usually switch regularly between them. It's similar to Heat/Night vision in MWO except that those modes are not as important as 3PV is in WoT. No one considers heat-vision as an unfair advantage because it's an integral gameplay element with pros and cons depending on situation.

I'm pretty sure if PGI would not have promised 'no 3PV' but instead clearly communicated that whatever they will do will not involve MW4-style hill-peeking then they wouldn't have received that big of a shitstorm and left lots of players without trust.

Then they could have just made 3PV as an integral element of the game like Wot did instead of the bolt-on mess we have now, and MWO would have likely been able too keep much more active players.

Edited by Daggett, 16 January 2018 - 09:16 AM.

[alVolVloLy]

Old MW4 Ranger, on 16 January 2018 - 07:48 AM, said:

this "new" Players thats never heard from BT before.. never this folks came to founding in MWO and give the money for the Start and First evolution of MWO ...and this Mechwarrior ...not Mechassault ..in MW4 the most leagues prohibited the 3PV..the FPV popultaion was the only Population thats founded MWO...to the Timepoint thats Russ finds his 8 Years old son can MWO better plays with a 3PV

That's not true, there were definitely founders who supported 3pv. My recollections was that NBT was the FFP league, MWL was the 3pv (more or less, I think they had a FFP league also).

[Stinger554]

Daggett, on 16 January 2018 - 08:58 AM, said:

I played WoT from closed beta 2010 until 2016, they never changed their visibility system during that time. Maybe what you remember was early closed beta or you had the luxury of other players spotting the tanks around your corner, i don't know. But what i described is what they used for at least over 7 years now.

For more information here is a video how their visibility system works and what i'd like to see in MWO too:



As a bonus you can see that role warfare makes much more sense this way, scouts do and are required to actually scout in WoT and in late game a team without a scout is at a serious disadvantage while we Mechwarriors just brawl it out.

A simple yes would have sufficed lol. That system is interesting to say the least. I don't think it'd work in MWO though. The view-range portion in particular would just not work.

Daggett, on 16 January 2018 - 08:58 AM, said:

Sure it's less realistic to have enemies pop up and being unable to spot them with the naked eye. But gameplay-wise it's the much deeper and more interesting approach.

For me it makes no difference now, i love MWO despite having the weaker but more realistic visibility system. But more players and therefore a more secured financial position for PGI would probably have benefited everyone.

Sure that's one way of putting it. Personally I think it's beyond stupid to literally not be able see something you should be able to see.

If 3PV was implemented similarly well tbh I'd have to try it in MWO before I'd be able to really give an opinion on it, but judging from the WoT vid I'd not like it at all.

Daggett, on 16 January 2018 - 08:58 AM, said:

This is a fair trade-off i think. In 3PV you get the increased awareness but can't aim as precisely as in 1PV. WoT managed to make both modes equally important so you usually switch regularly between them. It's similar to Heat/Night vision in MWO except that those modes are not as important as 3PV is in WoT. No one considers heat-vision as an unfair advantage because it's an integral gameplay element with pros and cons depending on situation.

That's how 3PV works now 3PV gives more situational awareness but limits aiming...while I'll admit that 3PV isn't really important because you can obtain situational awareness once you've played enough(or you should anyways) it still gives you more than 1PV.

Daggett, on 16 January 2018 - 08:58 AM, said:

I'm pretty sure if PGI would not have promised 'no 3PV' but instead clearly communicated that whatever they will do will not involve MW4-style hill-peeking then they wouldn't have received that big of a shitstorm and left lots of players without trust.

Well that just shows how much 3PV in MW4 was completely ****** because they went so far as to promise no 3PV mode.

They still would have had trust issues lol.

Daggett, on 16 January 2018 - 08:58 AM, said:

Then they could have just made 3PV as an integral element of the game like Wot did instead of the bolt-on mess we have now, and MWO would have likely been able too keep much more active players.

Maybe but I doubt it as people just would not take the time even with decent 3PV to learn the movement for MW.

[Daggett]

Stinger554, on 16 January 2018 - 11:00 AM, said:

That's how 3PV works now 3PV gives more situational awareness but limits aiming...while I'll admit that 3PV isn't really important because you can obtain situational awareness once you've played enough(or you should anyways) it still gives you more than 1PV.

The problem i see with current 3PV is that it takes away much more than just aiming precision to be a viable choice and i can't switch between modes quickly enough to mitigate this. For instance i lose more situational awareness through the loss of the battlegrid then i gain from the perspective itself. Of cause they had to do it the way it is to make hill/corner-peeking less advantageous with their visibility-system.

So current 3PV may hit it's goal to aid players with movement but without the battlegrid those players tend to stray away from the group and get isolated quickly without noticing.

Stinger554, on 16 January 2018 - 11:00 AM, said:

Maybe but I doubt it as people just would not take the time even with decent 3PV to learn the movement for MW.

Millions have learned WoT movement which is not drastically different so i think they could do for MW too if the conditions are set right.

Of cause MW games have some additional obstacles like firing groups, heat, different weapon mechanics and so on which takes away concentration needed to learn the basics while in WoT all you need to do is to point the enemy and left-click to fire a gun which works the same on all tanks with only minimal variation like autoloaders and autocannons.

Of cause the solution should not be to dumb down MWOs complexity but i think more can be done to improve the learning-curve.

I just think a proper 3PV would have the biggest impact but maybe there are other solutions as well. For example i loved when PGI finally implemented throttle-decay. Not for me since i already got used to set fixed speeds, but rather to make the game more accessible to new players especially if they converted from WoT like i did.

[Mystere]

Daggett, on 16 January 2018 - 11:52 AM, said:

Of cause they had to do it the way it is to make hill/corner-peeking less advantageous with their visibility-system.

You're being too kind. I see it as PGI intentionally butchering their own implementation as an exercise in appeasement.

[Ken Harkin]

I love 3PV... for my opponents. I get to see the stupid drone over their head before they crest a hill or when they think they are maneuvering out of site.

[Stinger554]

Daggett, on 16 January 2018 - 11:52 AM, said:

The problem i see with current 3PV is that it takes away much more than just aiming precision to be a viable choice and i can't switch between modes quickly enough to mitigate this. For instance i lose more situational awareness through the loss of the battlegrid then i gain from the perspective itself. Of cause they had to do it the way it is to make hill/corner-peeking less advantageous with their visibility-system.

So current 3PV may hit it's goal to aid players with movement but without the battlegrid those players tend to stray away from the group and get isolated quickly without noticing.

Which comes back to the issue of forcing people to use 3PV to be as effective as possible thing which no one wants. There is literally no balance that can be achieved between 1PV and 3PV without forcing a player to use one over the other or both.

Also players getting isolated is because they aren't paying attention...it's very easy to look around and visually see where your team is and isn't...it's why stealth armor is even remotely effective.

Daggett, on 16 January 2018 - 11:52 AM, said:

Millions have learned WoT movement which is not drastically different so i think they could do for MW too if the conditions are set right.

Of cause MW games have some additional obstacles like firing groups, heat, different weapon mechanics and so on which takes away concentration needed to learn the basics while in WoT all you need to do is to point the enemy and left-click to fire a gun which works the same on all tanks with only minimal variation like autoloaders and autocannons.

Of cause the solution should not be to dumb down MWOs complexity but i think more can be done to improve the learning-curve.

I just think a proper 3PV would have the biggest impact but maybe there are other solutions as well. For example i loved when PGI finally implemented throttle-decay. Not for me since i already got used to set fixed speeds, but rather to make the game more accessible to new players especially if they converted from WoT like i did.

Millions play WoT because of it's simplicity though...The movement system isn't super complex.

People stop playing MWO because they either ignore the tutorials or don't(or don't want to) take the time to learn the systems ie heat, loadouts, firing groups, Ghost heat, etc, etc. It's because in general people just want something they can pick-up and choose a rifle and just go pew pew at a different player. MWO is not that.

I tried to get a friend to play the game and movement wasn't an issue, though it's a relatively steep learning curve. It was the mechlab that tripped him up and he didn't want to put in the time required to understand the mechlab and so he stopped playing.

[Anjian]

Anjian, on 16 January 2018 - 08:17 AM, said:

The long term demographics don't look good.

1. The PC market itself is shrinking. This also means less and less new PC gamers are being added each year.

2. The greatest growth area for new gamers are coming from Asia and developing markets, like the BRIC countries, CIS region, SEA, Middle East, Latin America. BT/MWO audience is North America mainly with some in Europe.

3. Greatest growth of gamers are in mobile, the most preferred and most popular gaming platform in those areas mentioned in #2.

4. Big spenders are in #2.

Sooner or later I might add, that the digital rights owners (Microsoft) are going to ask these issues to the licensees as to what are their plans to truly grow franchise recognition and user base.