Ground vehicle driving

[ringring]

I agree lots of these polls are completely useless. Many times I look at one and think that none of the options really align with my opinion.

I wonder if anyone plans on doing a proper poll, once beta has been active for a little that is.

By that I mean not a forum poll, they don't have enough functionality I mean something loike surveymonkey with question like:

On a scale of 1-5 where 1 is low and 5 is high, what is your opinion on driver/gunners where the driver operates the major weapon.
On a scale of 1-5 where 1 is low and 5 is high, what is your opinion on driver/gunners where the gunner operates the major weapon.

and so on across areas of contention......

[Figment]

Originally Posted by kaffis

Well, you know -- I'm also firmly entrenched on the "I don't like driver-gunned vehicles, and think multi-crew should be much more powerful/useful if we have to leave driver-gunned in.

That's a separate discussion and should be treated as such. Making driving worse on multiple fronts doesn't improve driving. Two wrongs don't make a right.

It's crooked logic.

No 3rd person cam nicely dovetails with that perspective, doesn't it? You want to drive effectively? Dedicate yourself to it, let your gunner(s) gun. Yes, that goes for a Lightning, too. In fact, the Lightning can be less of a "gimped version of a MBT" from an armor/gun strenght perspective if we don't have 3rd person, since the visibility will help balance that out.

Forcing people to hand over the gun to a secondary party so they don't get motion sick is nothing less than extortion and not fun gameplay design.

Last I checked games were designed to have fun. This type of thinking goes way out of line with a lot of people who want to "compensate" one gameplay by hurting another and is especially strong with those compromising between the two.

This does nothing but deliberately sacrifice gameplay in one field to compensate for the loss in another. That means there's fundamental flaws being built in, on purpose. I can't think of a worse rationale to design a game, tbh. :/

Plus you're basically excluding people who are prone to motion sickness from specific units and gameplay, which is incredibly selfish. In fact, the entire debate about removing it is born out of selfish thinking by non-drivers, who should simply ask for two things instead:

Cover and a decent to use AV weapon.

Finally, if you'll note, I said tanks ought to have good visibility to the front, and probably should have good reverse visibility options. In other words, you can see where you're pointed. This means that whenever you hit the gas, you can see where you're going (assuming a dedicated driver, rather than a driver with a turret-cam). Thus, it's quite easy to not run over friendlies without 3rd person.

Magriders would be the exception, of course, since they can strafe -- and thus go in a direction they can't see directly. I'm okay with this, as it's counterbalanced by the greater ease of Magmowing enemies -- it's hard to dodge a tank that can strafe if it misses you. The Magrider can maneuver without strafing when friendlies are nearby, and in the thick of things, the Vanu infantry can be just as wary as their enemies' infantry.

You don't seem to have defined very well where one has to look in order to drive, you're far too focused on two things and don't consider the other things a driver has to do. It's very important to be able to look around. EVERY SINGLE TANK SINCE WORLD WAR I has 360 degrees vision for the commander built into the top of their turrets. Since the driver is the commander, you have to consider what the commander has to do.

And yes, we both agree the driver should not be the gunner, but punishing the driver for a big mistake on the dev's side is not the answer. That's just an extra mistake.


@Sobekeus: you are kidding, right?

[Marinealver]

I always had an idea of calling 3rd person view "Holo(graphic) View" With basicly a 3rd person Transparent view over the FPS view for people to use. Sort of saying it is a HUD ability that has been developed by some future technology to help with navigation and situational awarness. Can be disabled by jammers or Flashbangs though. HEy we can explain anything in science fiction right?

[Baneblade]

Originally Posted by Figment

@Sobekeus: you are kidding, right?

Are you saying you want to gun and drive in TPV?

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Sobekeus

Are you saying you want to gun and drive in TPV?

AFAIC, everyone should have a form of third person, because this is not a FPS game. Tbh, "MMOFPS" has always been a bad label since it implies first person oriented playing. PS1 was played predominantly in third person until you needed to fire. MMO Combined Arms Shooter (MMOCAS) would have covered the content more accurately. I don't particularly feel it HAS to be a pure FPS, because to me that is too restrictive for the type of game.

That said, firing or gunning will always be done predominantly from first person. I don't particularly care about someone trying to fire a gun in third person as it has few advantages (if any, likely it has more disadvantages to fire in third person). Though when firing from third person while driving it's more that you'd do so to optimise your driving at the cost of the accuracy of your gunning. Hence why I thought the comment by someone else to widen your cone of fire was an absolutely ridiculous and unnecessary nerf suggestion: driving already expands the cof already and intuitive "hip shoot"-aim is not incredibly accurate either, especially not without a reticule.

It's much harder to determine the appropriate angle from third person as the mouse cursor and therefore the reticule (if one is even visible) behaves different with respect to the terrain. So if people want to and have the skill to do so, who cares if they handicap themselves by firing using a harder firing mode?

And why should people not be allowed to use third person to determine at which enemy they'll be shooting and if it's still safe to stay in a certain area? Why should people have tunnelvision? How does that improve the game? There's too much tunnelvision in the world as is!

Third person is therefore for situational awareness and more of a tactical level view (as well as being easier on the inner-ear), first person is fastly superior for firing. I don't mind the way they did it in PS2 so far, with no gun angle indicators in third person (it'd be fully intuition based on tracers, that's fine with me tbh).


If we're talking the Lightning for instance, I'd say the driver would definitely need both, yes. Next to the driving vehicle gameplay nerfs, you'd after all be excluding people from an entire unit type who get motion sick from first person and that is just wrong.


For a MBT I'd definitely split the roles and have no driver who's also a gunner but that has nothing to do with third person for gunners, everything to do with power distribution per player. For all I care the gunner gets third person on a MBT as well, if not just to determine which target it has to fire at.




Still, I don't get why someone should not have third person (infantry/GV or aircav). I've yet to hear what's so bad about it, that can't be prevented with a new spotting system ("looking around corners"/"seeing enemies a few (deca?)meters behind you" is the only argument against till now). And come on, what's wrong with having some sort of timing your action ability? IMO, if they're visible on the map, you should be able to see them in third person.

It seems to me that fear is the motivational drive for those voting against third person. Thing is I simply can't detect a rationale beyond the idea that someone might time an action against them using third person (wall humping) and out of their direct field of vision. Which IMO is basically only relevant to players who can't work out where an ambush might take place, meaning either lazy or mediocre and worse players. Why should people have extremely little information to work with? How is that fun gameplay? In a game where there's around 1300 enemies on the same continent and an incredibly low TTK, why should you NOT be able to see in third person where those enemies are (after being spotted at least) so you can generate a plan? Should you really just blindly "Leeroy Jenkins" into every situation just because that's easier for your opponent? Really? :/

The immersion aspect of it hasn't even been brought up yet. Simply being able to look at your own character / unit is a nice thing. That's relatively irrelevant for gameplay, but for experiencing the game it means quite a bit. Being able to switch between first and third person is to me important in many ways.




Point in case, there are tons of ways to implement and fine tune third person:

(Fixed/possible) angle(s)
Distance domain (amount of zoom)
Spotting system (what is visible under which conditions)

[Baneblade]

Well... the issue for me isn't even the practicality issues. I don't like arbitrary situational awareness advantages. Everything is supposed to have a weak point, for vehicles that should always be visible field.

If you remove the blind spots, what is the point in jockeying for position?

[Sledgecrushr]

Im trusting the devs on this and that first person will create a better experience for everyone that is playing PS2.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Sobekeus

Well... the issue for me isn't even the practicality issues. I don't like arbitrary situational awareness advantages.

It's not arbitrary at all, there are very good reasons (which you can find all over this thread) for specific implementations. A choice is certainly not arbitrary.

Everything is supposed to have a weak point, for vehicles that should always be visible field.

Says who? How about weapon type, amount of hitpoints, armour values in different spots or sections of the vehicle (damage absorbtion), turret rotation speed, speed, accuracy, cone of fire, size, gun depression (ie at what angles can you fire), etc.

Sorry, but visibility is not THE weakness of a vehicle. Maybe in your mind it is, but visibility is NOT a defining weakness.

If you remove the blind spots, what is the point in jockeying for position?

...KNOWING something is there doesn't mean you can actually do something about it!

Ask any tank destroyer that is outmaneuvred by a light tank, or a MBT in PS outmaneuvred by a buggy.

It does however, give someone a fighting chance and a way to compete with a unit that has superior maneuvrability or superior firepower (know when and how to dodge by seeing where their gun barrel is pointing and those of other tanks). And that I personally find important in a game, that you're able to compete. It's very easy to kill vehicles in PlanetSide as infantry, of course 90% of the players don't know what an EMP grenade is and 99% of the players don't carry one in slot 1 (virtually all kits I plundered had plasma nades or rek/healing/repairs instead...).

I'm sure you did such things aswell, but I've singlehandedly destroyed Lightnings, BFRs and Switchblades with a Phoenix and EMP nades and a small hill (bump in the road really) in a dogfight where they DO have third person. And that's not exactly a forgiving AV weapon compared to the Lancer and Striker, which, used in groups, are really deadly. Do they need a vehicles visual blindspot to get a kill? No, definitely not: just appropriate cover to dodge shells and create interference for them or get to their bad gun angles. Does that mean I should be able to kill all vehicles alone as infantry? Good question. Yes, but not always super-efficiently. A MBT? Should require teamwork to take down IMO. Jacking them was quite easy since Expert Hacking though.

A gun angle blindspot is much more important than a visual blindspot.

Speaking of crutches, please recall that infantry can carry C4 that can apparently instantly kill vehicles have jetpacks this time around. Do you really want the same type of trolls like in BF3 that bail from aircraft to paste C4 on everything they come across? TB already discovered this tactic could be applied especially well in the dark. Why should people be completely oblivious to threats? Particularly those that others have spotted for them?

And on top of that:



Tanks HAVE 360 degrees vision. Depicted above is a Tiger II (King Tiger) turret. If World War II units had full vision, where the hell do you get the idea from that people in vehicles are supposed to work in tunnelvision?

[Baneblade]

Originally Posted by Figment

If World War II units had full vision, where the hell do you get the idea from that people in vehicles are supposed to work in tunnelvision?

Who said that?

TPV and directed FPV are two very different things. Don't pretend they are the same. Having 360 degrees of visibility is not the same as being able to see all 360 degrees at once.

[captainkapautz]

Originally Posted by Figment

Tanks HAVE 360 degrees vision. Depicted above is a Tiger II (King Tiger) turret. If World War II units had full vision, where the hell do you get the idea from that people in vehicles are supposed to work in tunnelvision?

You do realize that those periscopes were purely used for spotting infantry sneaking up on the tank right?

They had nothing to do with letting you parallelpark better.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by captainkapautz

You do realize that those periscopes were purely used for spotting infantry sneaking up on the tank right?

They had nothing to do with letting you parallelpark better.

Thank you for pointing out infantry cannot demand blind angles on vehicles so they can at all times sneak up.

They were also used for spotting enemy units and determining distance, btw. The commander used it as a safer alternative to the preferential method of sticking his head out, as that provides a much easier to use perspective. And you honestly think tank commanders when parking did not want to look outside while doing so?

In neither persicope or sticking head out does the turret have to rotate for 360 degrees view. That is the point and a pure fps view is therefore a HUGE step back.

[Figment]

Or in case of the Magrider, having to turn your entire hull just to look around as the tankcommander.

[Sledgecrushr]

Originally Posted by Figment

Or in case of the Magrider, having to turn your entire hull just to look around as the tankcommander.

I think the tank commander is going to be manning the secondary gun. Of course this is going to take some team work.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Sledgecrushr

I think the tank commander is going to be manning the secondary gun. Of course this is going to take some team work.

Considering a lot of people will play them solo and the main gun is used by the driver, doubtful.

[Sledgecrushr]

Originally Posted by Figment

Considering a lot of people will play them solo and the main gun is used by the driver, doubtful.

A tank with only one crew member just wouldnt have a tank commander, would not have great situational awareness and would most likely be left in a fiery ruin by any infantry/flanking vehicle that stumbles on it.