65 replies to this topic

[patpowers1995]

I hate night games. You can't see what you're doing. Plus, what you can see is butt ugly. It's like the designers said, "Hey, these cool 3D maps we've constructed for Mechwarrior are WAAAAAY too much fun. Let's make "night games" and force people to use "Night Vision" and "Heat Vision" to create a map that has the look of bad Commodore 64 eight bit graphics! Everyone will LOVE it! So retro!"

To be fair, there are two exceptions: the night games in Frozen City are great. You can see everything in that cool blue ice light. Great look!

Also, the day games in Frozen City with lots of fog ... just as freaking bad as the night games.

WTF were they thinking? I guess maybe having what seems like more maps, without the expense and trouble of creating new ones.

[StalaggtIKE]

patpowers1995, on 04 February 2013 - 03:01 PM, said:

I hate night games. You can't see what you're doing. Plus, what you can see is butt ugly. It's like the designers said, "Hey, these cool 3D maps we've constructed for Mechwarrior are WAAAAAY too much fun. Let's make "night games" and force people to use "Night Vision" and "Heat Vision" to create a map that has the look of bad Commodore 64 eight bit graphics! Everyone will LOVE it! So retro!"

To be fair, there are two exceptions: the night games in Frozen City are great. You can see everything in that cool blue ice light. Great look!

Also, the day games in Frozen City with lots of fog ... just as freaking bad as the night games.

WTF were they thinking? I guess maybe having what seems like more maps, without the expense and trouble of creating new ones.

Thermal vision. Get used to it. With ECM that's all you'll be using anyway.

[focuspark]

Thermal or Night vision are your friends. This is the same with the blizzard on Frozen City... you need Thermal to have a shot.

[Mercules]

It is another aspect of game play and skilled people will swap between normal, heat, and night vision modes to use whatever works best at the given moment. It also simulates that you don't always get to chose when and where battles occur.

[Tombstoner]

I'm sure a graphics rework is in the future.. far future. as it is i think they are working out how to make night games and i'm sure they know no one uses night vision due to lack of detail.

[Krzysztof z Bagien]

I'd love to see searchlights added to mechs.

[AnotherFineMechYouveGottenMeInto]

Search lights would be neat. So would active IR searchlights. And artillery illumination. If the engine supports it, make the most of it.

The moonlight Frozen City map is nice, one of my faves, but the game mechanics hardly change from day maps. Pitch dark maps give players a new mechanic to play with. Toggle between thermal to search for targets and night vision to negotiate terrain. Big open night maps are going to be intense.

Edited by AnotherFineMechYouveGottenMeInto, 04 February 2013 - 03:32 PM.

[focuspark]

Tombstoner, on 04 February 2013 - 03:16 PM, said:

I'm sure a graphics rework is in the future.. far future. as it is i think they are working out how to make night games and i'm sure they know no one uses night vision due to lack of detail.

It's my hope that thermal loses significant amount of detail to give normal and night visions reason to exist. Today, you're better served by just using thermal 24/7.

[Jetfire]

focuspark, on 04 February 2013 - 03:34 PM, said:

It's my hope that thermal loses significant amount of detail to give normal and night visions reason to exist. Today, you're better served by just using thermal 24/7.

Yup, unless of course the mech happens to be behind a glass window, you know.... Just a giant glass wall for no reason.

[Cybermech]

I must agree it is funny to design such a sexy game and then get people to use heat/term.
it really to add some flavor but i still find it funny

[CoffiNail]

Krzysztof z Bagien, on 04 February 2013 - 03:26 PM, said:

I'd love to see searchlights added to mechs.

THIS RIGHT HERE! See that post Garth? Spotlights, go load up MWLL, load a dark map, and hit the 'L' key. I freaking loved it. I am 50m away, oh spot light goes on and your eyes bleed! Want to go around without carrying you are a big lit up target, hey, you can see! I am VERY much hoping they go and toss in spotlights. I mean it is a freaking vehicle, I am sure it has 'headlights'

Edited by CoffiNail, 04 February 2013 - 03:48 PM.

[patpowers1995]

I get that Thermal vision and night vision add different gameplay elements to the game, but I think doing it at the cost of extremely degraded graphics is just real freaking dumb. If you could temporarily switch to thermal vision and then return to a map that was dimmer but still usable and attractive to look at, I could see it. But playing the whole scenario in night mode with crappy-*** thermal vision degrades the visual quality of the game. If I wanted to be shooting at blurry things I could not see, I could put a Commodore emulator on my Windows machine, y'know?

[CmdrPoopyPants]

focuspark, on 04 February 2013 - 03:34 PM, said:

It's my hope that thermal loses significant amount of detail to give normal and night visions reason to exist. Today, you're better served by just using thermal 24/7.

Several maps are much harder with thermal on than off. It drives me nuts to see spectator mode with thermal on when it's a clear day map.. it makes it MUCH harder to manuver and track your target.. yet, people seem to think losing 1/2 their visual queues is a good idea.

I only use thermal for River City Night and the heavy fog in Frozen City.. and in the heavy fog I turn it off once I'm in close combat with other lights because chasing them with terrain mostly missing is a really bad idea. I also use thermal at the start of assault for forest city, to see which way the enemy is moving out, but I turn it off as soon as I start to move.

And even though River City Night is my most hated map, it's also one I tend to do pretty well in (thermal vision the entire time). I always get flustered when I end up in spectator mode there and see the pilot in normal vision mode, with no clue where enemies are because they don't know about or refuse to use thermal vision.

so.. it has its uses, but they are limited and most definately not 24/7... not if you expect to be your most effective.

[CmdrPoopyPants]

patpowers1995, on 04 February 2013 - 04:08 PM, said:

I get that Thermal vision and night vision add different gameplay elements to the game, but I think doing it at the cost of extremely degraded graphics is just real freaking dumb. If you could temporarily switch to thermal vision and then return to a map that was dimmer but still usable and attractive to look at, I could see it. But playing the whole scenario in night mode with crappy-*** thermal vision degrades the visual quality of the game. If I wanted to be shooting at blurry things I could not see, I could put a Commodore emulator on my Windows machine, y'know?

And yet, this is the MechWarrior world.. and battle happens at all times of the day and all places of the world. It's about realism, and thermal vision isn't how we 'normally' see the world so it's ugly to us.. but it has it's uses, which is why it exists!

[CoffiNail]

I do have to admit to enjoying the varied battlefields we get. Not every fight is going to take place on a nice tropical planet that is terra like...

[focuspark]

CmdrPoopyPants, on 04 February 2013 - 04:13 PM, said:

Several maps are much harder with thermal on than off. It drives me nuts to see spectator mode with thermal on when it's a clear day map.. it makes it MUCH harder to manuver and track your target.. yet, people seem to think losing 1/2 their visual queues is a good idea.

I only use thermal for River City Night and the heavy fog in Frozen City.. and in the heavy fog I turn it off once I'm in close combat with other lights because chasing them with terrain mostly missing is a really bad idea. I also use thermal at the start of assault for forest city, to see which way the enemy is moving out, but I turn it off as soon as I start to move.

And even though River City Night is my most hated map, it's also one I tend to do pretty well in (thermal vision the entire time). I always get flustered when I end up in spectator mode there and see the pilot in normal vision mode, with no clue where enemies are because they don't know about or refuse to use thermal vision.

so.. it has its uses, but they are limited and most definately not 24/7... not if you expect to be your most effective.

Right now I get the feeling that thermal's usefulness is dependent on the quality of your graphics card. I watch YouTube videos of MWO matches sometimes and several times I've seen people use thermal and think: when did thermal look so crappy?

[CoffiNail]

Probably more based on your graphic settings over the actual graphic card.

[focuspark]

CoffiNail, on 04 February 2013 - 04:32 PM, said:

Probably more based on your graphic settings over the actual graphic card.

True - also I disabled LOD. TO be fair GPU plays a lot into what settings are available to you.

[CmdrPoopyPants]

focuspark, on 04 February 2013 - 04:36 PM, said:

True - also I disabled LOD. TO be fair GPU plays a lot into what settings are available to you.

Are you saying having some settings turned down makes thermal 'better'? .. and if my settings are set to show the best thermal, my argument still stands.. at least for me, lol. It's useful, but not something I'd run when I don't need to. Daytime in Forest City and clear Frozen City are just fine and would be much, much worse in thermal. Same with that toxic wasteland.. too much heat for thermal to be useful.

I don't know.. thermal in my game looks pretty true to life from all the thermal imaging I've seen. I'll look at my settings and see if there's a way to improve quality (but I'm guessing it will reduce realism, which defeats the purpose).

[focuspark]

Add 'r_DepthOfField = 0' (minus the quotes) to user.cfg in the root of you MWO installation.

Also, sorry - not LOD but DOF was disabled. I don't know if that's what makes my thermal so good or not, but it might be. I also have a top of the line GPU with all settings set to max. That might help as well; and before you think I'm bragging about my hardware: I'm not, this PC was a gift, I didn't choose anything in it.