Messages

1

Feedback and Suggestions / Make ships easier to get around in

« on: March 08, 2016, 12:31:09 am »

Searching for a thread pertaining to this topic didn't bring up any obvious relevant threads, so feel free to direct me to one if it already exists.

I've noticed after playing for a while that most if not all ships are constructed in ways that require players to move in roundabout fashions to access different parts of the ship (some more than others).
I suppose this isn't inherently awful (requiring more coordination on the crew's part, etc.), but the awkward collision boxes of ships' 'terrain' often make running back and forth very annoying as ledges/steps/other small obstacles impede movement and force the player to bunnyhop around to try and 'scale' what should be traversible by simply running around in most cases.
Other issues include being completely walled off from what look like scalable areas, clipping/falling through parts of ships, and being able to run straight off certain edges to your 'death.'

I realize this is not an easy thing to fix and that each ship has its own quirks, but I really think putting a little more priority on 'streamlining' ship decks' collision geometry would go a long way toward improving overall player experience.

2

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Free-look when aiming guns

« on: March 04, 2016, 12:01:47 am »

I was unaware that the arrow keys could be used to aim guns as well; that does help a lot for slower-turning guns, and allowing WASD to aim as well seems like a no-brainer.

Limiting the scope of 'free-looking' to the maximum turn radius of a gun is another option that could help discourage 'gun-squatting,' and I think implementing some to way keep guns from resetting to their neutral position after getting off would help a lot.

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Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Ally ship name display

« on: March 03, 2016, 11:44:56 pm »

OverlordEgg really hit the nail on the head for what I've been trying to get at for a while now.

Pure "quality of life" changes do nothing but remove unnecessary tedium/convolution. The argument that making things less intuitive 'encourages players to work together more' is a huge stretch in terms of logic, considering many if not most players would rather just stop playing if things were needlessly complicated than be forced to try and constantly communicate with their teammates.

If anything I'd say quality of life changes actually encourage teamwork by allowing players to coordinate their efforts without having to manually communicate every waking moment, especially since people often talk over each other in voice chat and text chat/orders leaves them unable to do anything else momentarily.

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Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Ally ship name display

« on: March 03, 2016, 04:29:31 am »

In case anyone missed it, in my previous post I addressed why the map and compass are relatively inefficient/ineffective for locating allies in three dimensions in real-time.

Having teammates' ships 'spotted' by default would allow players to gain immediate visual confirmation of all allies at any time, which is instrumental in coordinating tactics in such a positioning-heavy game as this.

I don't see why something like this would be bad for this game, but let me know if I'm missing something.

5

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Free-look when aiming guns

« on: March 03, 2016, 03:59:35 am »

While creating many others.

What other problems are you talking about?

Ye but this idea is completely unnecessary. If you wanna look around just get off the damn gun. It won't fix noob aiming because they have tunnel vision anyway. It won't add anything valuable to the game and only piss off those who don't like it.

The problem with getting off a gun to look around is that it resets the gun's aimed direction to neutral, which can be especially aggravating for guns with slow turn speeds. Numerous benefits for this type of aiming system have already been brought up, and there could always be a menu option or something to use 'vanilla' gun aiming.

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Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Free-look when aiming guns

« on: March 03, 2016, 01:51:07 am »

We call it not staying on the gun 24/7 and getting off during reload - something that pisses everyone when noobs don't see target right ahead of them and keep tracking other ship in the far distance.

You realize changing to this sort of system would alleviate those kinds of problems, right?

7

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Ally ship name display

« on: March 03, 2016, 12:59:34 am »

It's just part of the game, something you got to get used to. You try and spot the ship, if it doesn't spot, it's an ally. If you shoot it and you don't get hit markers, it's an ally. If there are 2 ships spotted, that 3rd one is your ally. Allies are displayed on your map, so all you have to do if you're confused is check.

What is the point of not just displaying ally names though? I can only see this benefiting the game.

Checking ally ships with the spyglass isn't very reliable because enemy ships often won't get spotted when you can clearly see them anyway; having allies' names displayed also allows teammates to visually locate each other through terrain or other visual obstacles. The problem with using the map to locate teammates is that it obscures the screen and only shows ally locations in two dimensions, while the compass only shows their horizontal direction relative to you within 180 degrees. The fact that flag colors are so drab also complicates the problem, and the fact that you usually switch from one team color to another frequently between matches only compounds that.

"Because it's always been that way" is not an argument, and I see no reason why the function shouldn't at least be an OPTION for players who for some reason prefer the way things are.

8

Feedback and Suggestions / Ally ship name display

« on: March 03, 2016, 12:14:46 am »

So after a fair deal of searching I found a few posts bringing this up in some old threads but none of them really focused on the issue, so I'm going out on a limb by making one here.

Why are friendly ships' names not displayed in matches? I've been playing this game for a fair bit now and it constantly irritates me that there is no way to easily tell at a glance which ships are your teammates' and where exactly they are. Is there a reason the devs still haven't incorporated this feature into the game as at least an option? It seems to me to be an extremely basic and helpful feature in team-based games, and I don't see any reason why it would be detrimental to this one.

Correct me if I'm missing something, but from what I can tell this feature would only serve to make the game better.

9

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Free-look when aiming guns

« on: March 02, 2016, 11:50:29 pm »

I knew I was missing something when making my first post; being able to turn on/off the 'auto follow' for guns would indeed be important. Being able to just hold space or something to look around freely without changing your aim as Kingsania suggested seems very practical for this.

Schwalbe's concern about being able to free-look outside of a gun's maximum range would likely be made a non-issue by having the gun's reticle just go as far as it can in the direction the camera is facing while perhaps showing an arrow pointing to the direction of the reticle when it goes off-screen.

10

Feedback and Suggestions / Free-look when aiming guns

« on: March 02, 2016, 03:12:29 am »

I couldn't find any threads related to this sort of thing after some searching, but I think it would be a simple yet very intuitive change.

With guns in this game having limited turning speed, it seems to me that letting the player move the camera freely when aiming guns and having the actual gun catch up to the camera--as opposed to having to continuously move the camera to 'drag' the reticle in the desired direction--would greatly improve the 'gunning' experience.

Two reticles could be used to facilitate this: one for the point at which the camera is facing and the other for the current point the actual gun is aimed, with the latter automatically moving to catch up with and overlap the former. In addition, the maximum field of rotation for a gun could also be marked on the player's camera while aiming.