2926 replies to this topic

[Wizard Steve]

I listened to NGNG #52 with Russ Bullock and it's clear that 3rd Person is coming whether we like it or not.

It's clear that nothing we say here is going to make any difference.

[grayson marik]

Still, if you try to come around the corner with some science to justify 3pv... there is something even more simple and logical:

A kid that touched a hot oven afterwards knows that it hurts.
It does not need to do this again on an other hot oven to check that it hurts there too.

And of course does not need an other kid standing by without touching the oven to know that this other kid has no pain, not touching the hot oven....

So it is with 3pv .. it has hurt - if not destroyed - the multiplayer experience on the other MW games.
We do not need to make the try to destroy the current MW game by touching that hot oven again.

Especially because the product that was advertised and sold to many of us is a 1st person only mech sim.

[Squidhead Jax]

JadeViper, on 28 November 2012 - 07:24 PM, said:

That's why I'm not against 3rd person. I'm not necessarily for it, but I would never bar its way without that proof.

This is the scientific method, and if you are inclined to still disagree with this method, look around you. unless you are sitting naked in the middle of a field, everything you see around you came from this. Let it guide you.

You're making an analogy to the wrong fields. We've observed it to be toxic in broad animal trials (MW3, MW4, less closely-related games), why should we expect a human patient (MWO) to not be similarly harmed?

[Kavoh]

JadeViper, on 28 November 2012 - 07:42 PM, said:

Ah yes, I love that quote too!

It suggests that while they will heed lessons learned from proxies, they still wish to empirically test their version with those lessons in MWO! Kudos to your astute observation and the dev's diligence! Let the play-testing commence!

And that analogy probably raised your IQ 20 points to boot. Lobsters can do such amazing things.

I'll probably use this as a real-world example for my class in the scientific methodologies. Conflict musters such divine inspiration to enhance the lay! As to beating around the bush... How many other posts actually try and use a hint of real science for support? Of anything else in the last 20 pages it has the most support.

I normally don't like to bring real life into these posts, but because you felt the need to bring this up in your last post you seem open to it. Sorry, it didn't raise anyones IQ, but perhaps may have even lowered it. You're trying to tell us to test something we have played so many times before that just DIDN'T work in a fair environment. Jax pretty much hit the nail on the head.

It would probably be better for you to go back to testing lobsters and leave the gaming balance area alone.


Seemed fitting.

Edited by Kavoh, 29 November 2012 - 08:08 AM.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

JadeViper, on 28 November 2012 - 07:24 PM, said:

Probably my last contribution to this topic to why we should not be against it:

I'll come clean. I'm a research scientist at a university. Ecology and animal behavior is what I study. I'm currently working with Lobsters; the adorable, hot-headed cockroaches of the sea XD

In science, in order to make any kind of claim about virtually anything, you need to prove it to be so. To prove it, one must test the factor in question explicitly and contrast to a 'control group' - a group without that thing we are investigating - to show that thing has an effect. Even then, even if we do see that thing have an effect on an outcome, we must prove it has a very significant impact as compared to the control. We test the question "Is there any real difference with that thing present as with it absent?"

In these proofs, one cannot cite an example from something that's a proxy or paralell. An example: say with my lobsters I'm looking for what influences sex ratio (why are some male and others female). A similar species of lobster has already been studied, and proved to have a 50/50 male to female ratio. I CANNOT make the assumption that my lobsters will have a similar sex ratio. I must prove it within my specific species. My research would be thrown in the mud if I did use a proxy.

So let's take this back to MWO. The claim "3rd person is abuseible" cannot be made because it has not been tested specifically in MWO. Yes there are proxies, such as MW3/4, but those are an invalid comparison in an empirical (proof-required) world. MWO is a separate entity. To make that claim, one would need to collect data: the control group such as MWO right now with no 3rd person, then compare the performance of the same players with access to 3rd person. If the difference in performance is not big enough to be statistically different from first person play, then the claim is invalidated. In our question 'Is there any real difference with third person in-game as only first person?" we found there was no difference in players performance. If, however, players in 3rd person had a significant increase in, say, victories, then there would be proof that 3rd person is a bad choice, because our answer is now "Yes, 3rd person positively influences gameplay."

But we cannot invalidate 3rd person without explicitly trying it.

This methodology is tried and true. It has given rise to every science. It has produced every breakthrough. Every advancement and technology has been born through this strict method.

So until we try it, we test it, we collect evidence within MWO and prove it faulty, we have no reason to suspect it will do asit did in proxies. You can claim it failed MW3/4, but if you said that's why MWO shouldn't do it in a room-full of scientists and engineers who were hearing your testimony, you'd be laughed off the stage.

That's why I'm not against 3rd person. I'm not necessarily for it, but I would never bar its way without that proof.

This is the scientific method, and if you are inclined to still disagree with this method, look around you. unless you are sitting naked in the middle of a field, everything you see around you came from this. Let it guide you.

Hello JadeViper

bring your try it on scientific basis is commendable
But this is not a scientific case, it's about personal preferences and emotions of Menschen.ich have to kiss a man, to know that I'm straight, and I must not wear purple stuff, who I know that I'm not this color like ... I play Skyrim in 1PV and hated always jump and runs or Lara Croft games, and finished MW4, when there were more and more children with 3VP server ... it seems to me, rather, that is attempted here of a few, the mass to tire, to then to crown the winner against the majority, as history Lore I know there's enough analogies, strategies and tactics of **** sapiens sapiens that I can find here all of ... reassurance about demagoguery, to the ignorant all liars except me.

[JadeViper]

And everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. I just stated my viewpoint for 'I'm not against it.' My opinion is that any 'claim' needs empirical proof. That's my personal requisite, and not everyone needs to hold themselves to that absurdly high standard. I've been trained in it, and I apply it to all things.

If you don't like the scientific example, you are entitled to that position. But accept that there are people out there who hold opinions as valid as yours despite extreme differences in view.

With the stove example, a good one at that, I would interpret that as this: You don't learn that stoves (3rd person) are bad and painful. You only prove that hot stoves are bad and painful (poorly implemented 3rd par cam). I don't fear stoves; I fear heat. I don't fear 3rd person cameras; I fear their exploitation. I hope we could agree on that.

We don't fear the camera. We fear people who will exploit it.

with the 3rd person scientific proxy application, I think of the following:

I am a male in the middle class. My neighbor is a male in the middle class. My neighbor is married. Therefore, I must be married.

I'm not. A perfectly analogous proxy, my neighbor, was an invalid proxy even though he is identical in almost every way.

Or another: My neighbor has a workshop in his garage (MW4). I have a workshop in my garage (MWO). He has a drill in his workshop (MW4cameras). I have a drill in my workshop (MWO cameras). His drill has a broken motor (bad 3rdP cam).
Can I therefore make the conclusion that my motor will be broken too? Is MWO's 3rd person camera broken? I now have reason so suspect it might be, but Until I turn it on and try it, I can't know.

I wont abandon the s. method just because you have a very close proxy. That can backfire. I only ask that that stance be respected, if not agreed with.

Edited by JadeViper, 29 November 2012 - 09:07 AM.

[Shae Starfyre]

I would like to voice my vote to not allow 3rd person view from an individual mech perspective (perhaps a command function for tactical purposes, and not as an actual arial view, and based on ECM, cover, and Sensor capabilities in general).

I like the idea of rear-facing cameras and rear weapon mounts (but these mounts should be limited).

[Chacatumbi]

as an atlas pilot I would love 3rd person view. But as a player and a fan of MWO, 3rd person view would be a mistake. It's obvious that it would hurt Jenners and other mechs relying on strafing slower mechs. What I WOULD be ok with is a rear "glance" button that would switch entire perspective to the back like a rear camera type look. Myabe make it look like a pop-up HUD like the upgraded zoom type thing but it looks back instead.

[Squidhead Jax]

JadeViper, on 29 November 2012 - 09:01 AM, said:

I wont abandon the s. method just because you have a very close proxy. That can backfire. I only ask that that stance be respected, if not agreed with.

You're conflating similarities in coincidence with similarities in structural cause and effect.

Edited by Squidhead Jax, 29 November 2012 - 10:07 AM.

[JadeViper]

Squidhead Jax, on 29 November 2012 - 10:01 AM, said:

You're conflating similarities in coincidence with similarities in structural cause and effect, but since you insist on being insufferably Hume-ist I guess you believe the distinction doesn't exist.

A prior cause and effect correlation in a proxy structure cannot be applied to a similar subject; it may only guide the prediction of potential outcomes. This proxy is not direct evidence attributable to the subject. AS it currently stands, those proxies are being submitted as evidence and not used exclusively as a potential predictor.

And you engage in the committal of the basic logical fallacies. To give some credit, many logical fallacies are subtle. Wikipedia has a great article on fallacy. While many of them are being committed in this thread, Attribution Fallacy ("False attribution") and "contextamony" are most prevalent. Denying the anticedant, and others.

Edited by JadeViper, 29 November 2012 - 10:32 AM.

[Fuzzydragon]

as long as it doesn't change the line of sight mechanics for getting locks I don't get what the big deal is either way, we had 3 person view in every Mechwarrior game since MW2 and as I recall those were far from terrible games.

[Squidhead Jax]

JadeViper, on 29 November 2012 - 10:12 AM, said:

A prior cause and effect correlation in a proxy structure cannot be applied to a similar subject; it may only guide the prediction of potential outcomes. This proxy is not direct evidence attributable to the subject. AS it currently stands, those proxies are being submitted as evidence and not used exclusively as a potential predictor.

And you engage in the committal of the basic logical fallacies. To give some credit, many logical fallacies are subtle. Wikipedia has a great article on fallacy. While many of them are being committed in this thread, Attribution Fallacy ("False attribution") and "contextamony" are most prevalent. Denying the anticedant, and others.

For the purpose of the question "what are the effects of 3rd person" the example of MW4 is a firm predictor, unless you expect that it's possible for an egg dispersed from a lobster's brood sack to grow into a crab. 3rd person necessitates a larger FoV and a view of one's own rear facing by its nature. The only relevant difference between MWO and MW4, when evaluating the impact of that, is an even more restricted flow of non-LoS information to the player in MWO. Thus, enhanced external awareness would be an even greater advantage in MWO.

A PoV starting behind but not occluded by the player also necessarily introduces unobstructed lines of sight that cannot exist from a 1st-person perspective. The only way to mitigate that is if the engine refuses to draw some or all objects that wouldn't be a certain % visible from the 1st person perspective, but that leads to WoT's magical invisible mystery tanks.

And context of the quotes has been dissected to death.

Edited by Squidhead Jax, 29 November 2012 - 11:50 AM.

[Mallas]

I am not going to try and argue any points, but just simply state; if you implement any form of 3rd person view into the game, myself and a large chunk of the Greyhounds will simply just walk away.

A majority of us are already at breaking point with the decision to force 4 man drop groups.

Edited by Mallas, 29 November 2012 - 11:59 AM.

[LucidFir]

Just adding my voice, in case they take note

NO THIRD PERSON PLEASE

[JadeViper]

Squidhead Jax, on 29 November 2012 - 11:47 AM, said:

For the purpose of the question "what are the effects of 3rd person" the example of MW4 is a firm predictor, unless you expect that it's possible for an egg dispersed from a lobster's brood sack to grow into a crab. 3rd person necessitates a larger FoV and a view of one's own rear facing by its nature. The only relevant difference between MWO and MW4, when evaluating the impact of that, is an even more restricted flow of non-LoS information to the player in MWO. Thus, enhanced external awareness would be an even greater advantage in MWO.

A PoV starting behind but not occluded by the player also necessarily introduces unobstructed lines of sight that cannot exist from a 1st-person perspective. The only way to mitigate that is if the engine refuses to draw some or all objects that wouldn't be a certain % visible from the 1st person perspective, but that leads to WoT's magical invisible mystery tanks.

And context of the quotes has been dissected to death.

I sincerely appreciate your well thought out feedback. It's a novel feeling having an intelligent conversation.

I completely agree that MW4 is a near-perfect proxy, meaning it is a very solid predictor. But a predictor of a potential outcome. Lets say PGI are idiots and are 90% likely to repeat the same mistakes that they are admittedly aware of. a 90% cance still necessitates a firm, subject unique test. If and only if there was a 95% statistic confidence could we accept MW4 as a tru predictor.

Given that PGI have indicated they are well aware of the failures of 3rd person cameras, I would predict they have a much better chance of success than our hypothetical 10% success chance. Having such a strong predictor allows them to accurately anticipate flaws in the system, and creatively combat those. Summary, from my perspective and a little faith in the devs, there is less than a 95% chance of failure, so its worth trying.

3rd person, I would predict, has a narrower field of view as expressed by degrees. In first person, with free-loock, you have about 160 degree view arc. I predict 3rd person will be a fixed camera, therefore no free look, and be restrained to a traditional 70-90 degrees; the same as first without freelook. The fear of abuse comes from the displacement of the camera origin. With occlusion, I suspect it would be easy for the engine to draw lines from center mass of the mech model for rendering. Foes could simply fade in/out as appropriate, instead of just popping in. Don't get hung up on the rendering details, occlusion was just an potential abuse countermeasure idea I pulled out of nowhere, but it seems to have some application. Not saying that's the best way to go, nor the only way.

The issues arises from the disparity in origin of the camera relative to first, which would enable peeking. I assume peeking is the reason for the majority of 3rd person hatred. I wont deny that a displacement of camera origin does create an uncomfortable scenario of a different field of view. The trick, in my scientific mind, is that the advantage produced must be so strong that it can be proved statistically to influence matches/performance. Right now, we only have anecdotal evidence from a proxy, and we don't have explicit numbers to run. If PGI wanted to test 3rd person camera advantage, I'd be happy to offer them the use of my statistical software if they can provide me the data from an empirical experiment. I would just need an excel sheet with 'before' and 'after' statistics. Then we could prove that 3rd person confers a distinct improvement in players normal performance after identifying the variation in player's results.

For that reason I support testing 3rd person. It will give us the opportunity to empirically prove it confers advantage. I'm not looking to find" 3rd person is great its fair fanboy blah blah" I'm looking for the opportunity to give it a trial by statistical jury. If we find it's advantageous, I'll have stupidly strong proof to have the Dev's ban it for life. I just think it deserves a fair trial on its own.

From my experience, I have a lot of hit and miss games. My win/loss, cbill reward, exp reward vary so wildly, I predict that 3rd person wont be that big an influence. Sure it will influence, but not anywhere near as powerfully has having a 4player drop group vs pug. I bet that confers a bigger advantage, yet we allow and encourage that. LEts just see how much 3rd person influences it. The random assignment of matching classes in pugs probably will outweigh both 3rd cam advantage and 4 player drop if, randomly, the other team has a variet of mechs within classes, but by sheer luck, you got 5 LRM catapults, 2 XL engine awesome and a Hunchback. The randomized 'fair' dropweight probably have a huge influence on victories, yet we don't complain about that.

Influence and advantage, literally, is relative.


And to the point of a lobster egg hatching a crab, yes its stupidly unlikely, but evolution is producing offspring that are not identical to you. So yes, as some point a lobster did give birth to the crab predecessor, and that crab gave birth to another crab, and from that and a 700millioin years of time, we have 800 different species of crabs. Heck of a slim chance, but you just described evolution. And unless you are from the Bible belt, that's a real thing. Species to give rise to new species through birth. There is a reason the species of everything are categorized into things that look like family trees. Flip through an old family album and you'll find a fish too.

Hopefully you are surprised that your lobster/crab lash actually does work out for me in the end. But I get your point.

Edited by JadeViper, 29 November 2012 - 01:40 PM.

[Vassago Rain]

I'm amazed your egos are so big, you think a change like this will fly for a community made up of people this old.

[Sam Slade]

JadeViper, on 29 November 2012 - 10:12 AM, said:

A prior cause and effect correlation in a proxy structure cannot be applied to a similar subject; it may only guide the prediction of potential outcomes.

Considering the nature of this community you can bypass the relative applicability of one or the other proxy and go directly to Pavlovs Mechwarrior 4; ring that bell and you'll get a good deal of barking.

Squidhead Jax, on 29 November 2012 - 11:47 AM, said:

For the purpose of the question "what are the effects of 3rd person" the example of MW4 is a firm predictor, unless you expect that it's possible for an egg dispersed from a lobster's brood sack to grow into a crab.

'Crab sack' is the best quote from these forums thus far. Also, 'firm predictor' or not is irrelevent; you'll never find a control group.

[Col Forbin]

RENZOKUKEN, on 26 November 2012 - 09:04 AM, said:

Can you do us all a huge favor and stop whining there Agent of Change? What you are doing here is making an excuse to why you have to have the game a certain way. Stop trying to guilt trip the devs. They will make this the MechWarrior®: Online that they want it to be, and if you are going to threaten to rage quit after every update then maybe you should just uninstall. Maybe you should open your mind to new possibilities of gameplay, instead of being so narrow minded. 3PV does not mean mech commander and it does not mean mech assault, it doesn't necessarily mean anything that has been previously done.

Your ignorance toward 3PV is dumbfounding, and what you need to do is play MechWarrior 4 Vengeance and Mercenaries for 12 years and in over 10 active leagues with 10,000+ members, that all use 3rd Person View, including TWL, this was in 2001. Aswell, as leagues using First Person View, each view has its own viable gameplay, and as anyone can tell you 3rd Person View Pilots have always been Better Pilots. Personally I can play either way, but your ignorance and closed mindedness is extremely annoying.

Instead of whining about changes, learn to adapt. A true pilot can play in any view

Better pilots? Because it takes less skill lol....

[Agent of Change]

@Jade Viper

I've been following this for a few pages and I too am happy to see a solid discussion going on.

Accepting that MW4 is a good proxy for forecasting the results of similarly implemented 3PV then it would be a recipie for disaster. Following on your (the) assumption that the devs are keenly aware of the issues that were caused by 3PV in MW4 then we can be sure they will endeavor to avoid them, and given enough time it's possible that they could create something that fits both the goal of 3PV and not provide any kind of advantage. These I will grant you with out hesitation, though for me how it could be implemented is not the pressing question. The question in my mind is should it be implemented at all.

I mean you have heard the arguments from myself and others: It is a break from the game they promised, Splitting the player base is bad, I don't like 3pv with my mechwarrior, immersion cannot be sustained from outside the cockpit, et al...

That right there is one of two fundamental questions driving the divide, whether it could be implemented in a useful way i think is without question, it is certainly possible it could.. but why should it be implemented at all.

The empirical test would be nice but as was stated earlier generally once something is in a game it's in the game, coding is time consuming and expensive if it get's implemented that particular rubicon has been crossed for better or worse. The game will change with it in a way that will affect all players but how that will happen we cannot say because at that point implementation would be the pressing issue. I think the discussion really should come down to the following questions:

Why should 3PV be implemented, is it actually needed and why?
Can the things 3PV is supposed to be needed for be resolved in other manners that adhere to the current asthetic and play style of the game, can we maintain the integrity of the 1PV only concept the devs were championing not long ago and fix what ever issues are being predicted?

[LordBraxton]

3rd person will ruin the game for hardcore fans, and make alot of your hardcore base very angry

OR it will split the community, damaging the future of the game and ruining community warfare

This is a cheap move to try and sell Camo.

Please no excuses about new player experience till the game is decked out with a full tutorial and tooltips for every weapon\item\upgrade\functionality.