Night time and the UI need a lot of work still.

EVILoHOMER · 2012-09-30, 09:52 AM

The problem I have with night time is it's so dark you cannot see anything, as soon as the moon popped up suddenly it was a lot nicer, I think it needs to be like that all the time really. The other thing is the lighting is so bright and over powering I feel blinded by it and it's like being in a club with strobe lights or something.

The lighting also over powers the UI so I can never really make anything out, it always looks like a mess of lights. There are so many symbols floating around telling me what stuff is that none of it makes a lot of sense. I would have rather better base design and big signs with obvious symbols like the first game. This game just feels a mess in terms of the UI and navigation. Everything looks so generic and samey that it is really hard to find stuff.

The other thing I hate as well is when you pull up the main menu of stuff you can customize, you get a load of symbols at the bottom and the game gives you no clue to what each one is until you learn each one. It should come naturally to new players, right now it's such a mess new players feel so lost and don't even bother with any of it.

Purple and Blue in this game look so similar that I often get them confused when I'm far away. I would much rather Vanu or NC be turned into Green instead and have grey for neutral.

I also find that it's hard to tell who is who in big battles, especially at night time because you cannot see the character models very well and the icon above their hear is so small and gets covered by all the other floating icons. I can only imagine what it will be like when everyone looks slightly different because they bought hats or whatever. The Vanu Max looks so small I often run and gun into them thinking they're only HA lol. It's just so hard to distinguish certain things in this game.

The ups sides though...

My complaint with shooting has largely gone away, it doesn't feel floaty and inaccurate like it did when I last played. The vehicle physics are getting there too, they feel much better than before which is great. So it shows me that SOE are actually treating this as a beta unlike all their last games lol.

againS · 2012-09-30, 02:04 PM

I like the night time lighting, it is close to complete darkness, feels very immersive (when there is no moon), whats the point of having a night time if you can see clearly everything just like day time?

for the ui part I agree with you, its not very intuitive for new players, and the map is just a mess

Shogun · 2012-09-30, 02:20 PM

i like the no moon phase. but i am also totally with you on the overall awareness and navigation issue!

i also have big problems in identifying enemys in fight. even at daytime because there is so much going on in the background that you can not clearly make out the models. the colors don´t help as much as they did in ps1. and it will get worse when camos are in.
the ui is too confusing now. not only for new players. making out where to find terminals is sometimes hard. the floating ui icons are useless without a distance display, but that would make it even more overloaded.

please give us the option to just display the nearest of every terminal type! also this option will make the icons bigger. so it would be easier to find the nearest vehicle term or weapon term. shouldn´t be too hard to do, so let us test this for a while.

Timealude · 2012-09-30, 05:16 PM

I think it should actually be darker since everyone will just turn there brightness all the way up anyways. It will give an actual need for head lights and flash lights.

FortySe7en · 2012-09-30, 05:52 PM

Wow what a concept. Night is dark... who would have thought...

AThreatToYou · 2012-09-30, 05:53 PM

I'd like for night to be darker, really.

Vecha · 2012-09-30, 10:04 PM

Originally Posted by EVILoHOMER

Purple and Blue in this game look so similar that I often get them confused when I'm far away. I would much rather Vanu or NC be turned into Green instead and have grey for neutral.

I also find that it's hard to tell who is who in big battles, especially at night time because you cannot see the character models very well and the icon above their hear is so small and gets covered by all the other floating icons. I can only imagine what it will be like when everyone looks slightly different because they bought hats or whatever. The Vanu Max looks so small I often run and gun into them thinking they're only HA lol. It's just so hard to distinguish certain things in this game.

That's part of war, son!

Friendly casualties are bound to happen.

Making the mistake of running into something/someone more dangerous than you thought will happen.

Get with an outfit with a decent scout.

On a serious note, while I respect your opinion...I'll have to disagree with it.

I love the immersive night.

Ghost Runner · 2012-09-30, 10:22 PM

Originally Posted by Vecha

That's part of war, son!

Friendly casualties are bound to happen.

Making the mistake of running into something/someone more dangerous than you thought will happen.

Get with an outfit with a decent scout.

On a serious note, while I respect your opinion...I'll have to disagree with it.

I love the immersive night.

Agreed!

Toppopia · 2012-09-30, 11:32 PM

I so far havn't seen any of these pitch dark battles yet, all i have seen is a moon-lit night, so maybe i am not on at the right times. But i hope the devs will make moon cycles and such so every night is different to the previous.

IRSAudit · 2012-10-01, 12:45 AM

I was playing last night, and had accidentally taken my headlights off my vanguard (Actually I was trying to add to shields instead of headlights

) and I actually missed them when maneuvering in a tight spot.

I would like to have some distance at my fingertips, though. I know if you put the cross hairs on directly on a stationary triangle, it shows the distance right below the triangle, but you have to be pretty precise to get it to show. My vote would be for fading triangles by distance. That is, the farther away something is the more it's triangle fades. I don't know how feasible it is as every triangle would have to have it's distance checked in relation to you constantly. Maybe a UI toggle for it for those people that are running on older specced rigs?

I read in some post that there's a key combination that will tell you the distance of something that your cross hairs is pointed at, but can't find anything in the key binds or find any info on it. It seems that post has disappeared into the aether somewhere. Anybody know what it is?

EVILoHOMER · 2012-10-01, 06:00 AM

Thing is this is a game and not real life, when something isn't fun then people just don't play it. It wouldn't be so bad if the day/night cycle was actually based on the timezone the server is in like Dayz because then I could just switch between EU and US servers. However with the short day/night cycle it's not really worth the effort.

psijaka · 2012-10-01, 06:29 AM

Ha - had this discussion on the Firefall forum several times; it would seem that a lot of people just want night to be just a slightly dimmer version of day.

Myself, I want the night to be a different experience, full of unseen terrors; adds an extra level of immersion to the game. So darker nights for me, at least until the moon (or moons) come up. As it is, I switch off the headlights.

And darker nights would make the night skyscape even more beautiful (absolutely stunning - even better than the night skies in Firefall, I have to say).

Morsong · 2012-10-01, 11:21 AM

Well it depends on the person playing. Most people are happy with the current day/night cycle and darkness/brightness. A few obviously aren't. Not everyone is going to like the same things. Thing is the devs have to appeal to the masses most of the time. Popular vote wins all.

SturmovikDrakon · 2012-10-01, 04:21 PM

Yeah... no. The best part of the night is when the sun has set and the moon hasn't risen yet. I'm tired of night time in games being just as bright as daytime. Look at Death Valley in BF3 for how to NOT do a night-time map.

Ghost Runner · 2012-10-01, 10:23 PM

lol I remember some maps in JO and BHD meant night vision and no way around it we should get night vision goggles for ps2 another thing to cert in to :P