MouseThe Lighter Side of PessimismJoin Date: 2002-03-02Member: 263Members, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
The main thing I don't get with the new alien vision is why it's so goddamn bright in well-lit areas. I appreciate that they were trying to make it more like a flashlight, but the marine flashlight can be used safely in a lit room without the player being blinded.
Here i thought people were exaggerating how bad it was... but even in dark rooms the orange was nauseating, I had a headache for an hour after 2 rounds.... someones concept art was not playtested very well, i think any other color then orange like green or blue would at least be less straining on the eyes...
I understand that Bio-dome is supposed to be this big new visual breakthrough that you all placed a lot of time getting ready, but forcing us to look at it by turning AV into a headache inducing mess is not helping anyone....
I actually like the new effect for standard alien vision. However I can't seem to find a use for the augmented thing.
My only gripe is the loss of contrast. The only way to play many lifeforms, like the skulk, effectively is to be moving fast. To be moving a lot. To be turning, bouncing, jukeing and rebounding. The ultra high contrast really helped my mind perceive my own movements in relation to the Marine's own dodging.
If alien vision is going to remain nightvision, I'd greatly appreciate the outline around Marines to be expanded or changed in some way to compromise for that loss.
Personally I hate the new effect for standard vision, the orange outline is disorienting and distracting, for me it makes the aliens pretty much unplayable. For the love of god let me turn it off!
Its been mentioned already but the new alien vision sucks, I don't know what the problem with the old version was, I only ever used it in pitch black rooms, did anyone actually want this change?
Change the 'night vision color' to something else (old green perhaps). Make more parts of map dark (i liked the infestation dimming lights idea). If you can't change the outline color to one for marines and one for aliens, make aliens outlined only through walls and make only marines (not structures) outlined with direct line of sight, and make the highlight as thick as aliens through the walls is.
EDIT: and yes i went to bed with a headache yesterday from the bright color.
It really doesn't matter what the new alien vision looks like. It could look beautiful, or it could completely grey out everything, the point is no one will use it at all now. UWE effectively removed alien vision from the game, it has zero use. No place is dark enough for long enough to ever bother flipping it on, I have no idea why UWE made this change while not changing ANY map to create places where this could have a use. I'm really disappointed that they took a cool feature and completely removed its utility while missing a blatantly obvious opportunity to give it a new and more balanced used.
They've really got to stop treating this game like its still in beta, there are too many changes going on at once for anyone to keep track of how it's going to affect balance.
Give old alien vision back. Put back in motion tracking if it's that much of a balance issue. Or at least admit this change happened because of biodome.
It didn't.. i dont know why you keep spreading that misinformation.. but it smells.
Sewlek was planning this out back when BT mod was just a mod and the only thing that existed for biodome was a gray map... but go on with your bad self i guess.
:-bd
It's not meant to be used in full lighting, folks. Just like night-vision goggles, when it's used in light the enhancement is too much, and hence, makes it too bright to see clearly.
New alien vision is supposed to be used IN THE DARK.
This "in the dark" only happens for 10 seconds and rarely when there are actually marines in the room with you... WHAT IS THE POINT OF IT NOW?!?!?!
Marines turn on flashlights when it's dark, Alien's should play under those even rules.
lol the marines can have flashlight on the entire game, why not let aliens have their vision on? if its so important that aliens DONT press F when they spawn and run around with it ON by default
...then why not put the original green vision on a cool down time of 30 or even 60 seconds for thoose critical moments instead of making it so horrendous to look at that you cannot stand it for more than 5 seconds.
Using the flashlight reveals your position around corners. That is a pretty tangible downside. I mean, really, you've never seen someone get told to turn their flashlight off in a game before?
In any case AV will likely see plenty of tweaking after release as it's been a contentious issue trying to figure out exactly how to get it right internally. Remember: 252 is not Reinforced. Lots of stuff is broken or not final. Most of the new features were not even originally going to be in 252 (it was just going to be the rendering stuff) but that didn't work out so here it is. For the time being, if you hate FantaVision just don't push F. I mean, seriously guys, all you have to do is not do something.
AGAIN WHY RELEASE A BROKEN GAME WHEN IT'S NOT THE BETA ANYMORE!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't care the reason behind releasing 252 when they did, but it is broken! I did not sign up for and buy a broken game. UWE really fucked this patch up in more ways than one. Seriously doubting they're ability to give the majority of their player base what they want. We did pay their salaries for crying out loud!
This "in the dark" only happens for 10 seconds and rarely when there are actually marines in the room with you... WHAT IS THE POINT OF IT NOW?!?!?!
This has been relayed ad nauseam in this thread - Alien Vision was not intended to work as an alternative vision mode for aliens to keep on at all times, which is exactly what it had turned into.
What did you, me or any other random alien player do as soon as they spawned? They turned on AV. Why? Because it was a superior viewing option. Again, that was not it's intended purpose. It was supposed to function the exact same way as the marine flashlight - useless in lighted areas and effective in the dark.
There's really no other way to explain it than just that. If that isn't a good enough explanation than I'm sorry, because that's what UWE did, and I think it was a necessary change. Pre-252 AV was used by most aliens all the time, and it's only supposed to be for dark rooms.
Easy fix - use it in the dark, turn it off in the light. Takes .0005 seconds to hit the button. Or, we can continue to fill the forums with diatribe and nonsense.
We realized that with the immensity of the rendering changes that had to be made to the game in order to support DX11, OpenGL, and Linux, and due to those changes taking much longer to implement then first anticipated, we felt it was going to be too risky to just wait until the final release when all that promotion had kicked in. We needed to get this out to a wider testing audience, in order to get a better sense of all the issues that the new rendering changes are causing, so that we could fix them up before the final patch release. It is certainly not an ideal way of doing things, but we had hoped that our community would be understanding of this and help us to track down issues and fix them up, to get this huge Reinforced update in good shape for later this week.
That's why.
Please be "understanding" for one whole day
@IronHorse well then I'd like to have my NS2 Playtester badge back since that's what everyone who plays this game is now apparently. It seems that the only thing UWE cares about is where it will get its next income from. Lets think about a name for the next big (broken) patch... Let's call it Rebroken... that will work.
ironhorse, it would be more understood and accepted if they had not just sprung this on us so suddenly. if it was given a week's lead time with announcements of testing the upcoming changes to the system, UWE could have alleviated much of the griping and feelings of betrayal since the game people had been accustomed to would not have been snatched from underneath their feet. It pains me that even after so long they are not good at PR at all.
@enhance .....what dark rooms? There aren't any. There is no scenario where it is dark enough to where the new vision has any utility at all. UWE has just removed the ability entirely by removing its usefulness. It's not useful in dark areas and useless in light, it's just useless, we would need actually dark maps and places where people can't just keep their gamma cranked to see everything 100% of the time in order for alien vision to have a use at all.
They took something away from the aliens without any counterbalance, the new outlines get just as lost in the color palette during action as the rest of the marine does. They need to stop dumping drastic changes on the community like we're still a testing group, we're not, this isn't beta, this is a full release game that they need to take seriously when updating. Throwing 10+ new variable around at the same time tells me they still have no idea what they want the game to be and I really don't feel like sticking around long enough for UWE to figure it out.
ironhorse, it would be more understood and accepted if they had not just sprung this on us so suddenly. if it was given a week's lead time with announcements of testing the upcoming changes to the system, UWE could have alleviated much of the griping and feelings of betrayal since the game people had been accustomed to would not have been snatched from underneath their feet. It pains me that even after so long they are not good at PR at all.
@Ironhorse will never understand this point of view. Part of it is he is a Playtest lead and knows about alot of these changes and see different iterations come down the pipeline weeks before they go live, testing then 2x a week and sharing commentary with the developers. Of course then when they get dropped like a bomb on the community out of the blue to us, all we get from him is "wtf why aren't you guys more understanding".
NarfwakJoin Date: 2002-11-02Member: 5258Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS1 Playtester, Playtest Lead, Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Gold, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica PT Lead, NS2 Community Developer
That's a pretty fair critique. We obviously have a bias. I'm not crazy about the lack of communication but it mostly arose because the schedule was so obscenely demanding and literally everyone was too busy actually making stuff to do anything else. Again, UWE, the actual company office in SF, is a handful of people. UWE is small even by a lot of indie standards and even more so when you consider the complexity of the game they develop. The remote developers, mappers, testers and asset contributors do increase the total number of people working on NS2 a lot, but quite a few of them do this on the side and not as a full time thing.
There is a story as to why this patch is on a different day than originally expected (and why we had another patch right in front of it), but I'm not sure I know it all or if I'm even supposed to know any of it at all. In fact, I probably just know a completely different story about how apples may or may not be good for nutrition. This other story, though... well, it is probably fraught with danger, intrigue, coffee, passion, lots more coffee, and coffee. Those few who have been cursed to know this most treacherous of tales forever woes their fate and spits curses to the powers of content scheduling. It may even involve the fabled wereskulkoala. You'll just have to wait and see what the trailer boy wonder from down undah will have to impart upon us this morning and in the following days at PAX.
But it really sucks to track Marines in CQC....the contrast from their outlines is not enough, and is a far to drastic change to the old AV.
Hence why Aliens are so vunerable now, in the 1st 5mins.
Add to that all the crazy jumps a marine can perform, and the confusion grows.
Really felt like I was a f***ing noob again XD
This is absolutely my opinion! The outline is simply not enough when the marine is directly in your face. What do you see? Much dark gray areas and somewhere an vertical orange line. That does simply not help to track the marine. CQC is so fast he could be either the dark grey part left or right from this line. The old AV had a clear surface for the marine orange-red was marine surface, green-dark was not. Simple as that.
I don't mind the useless new AV that is even flickering when looking around. I just need to train myself not to activate it every time I respawn. But the normal vision needs to be replaced by HUZEs AV! Plz give marines a highlighted surface again instead of those outlines. And use the outlines for the aura upgrade.
As of build 253, i can say the alien vision is improved to a usable in emergency lights state. This is good, it still needs a hint of tweaking.
What people need to understand is that you are now meant to play without alien vision most of the time... That said, it would be appreciated if the orange outlines were a bit thicker outside of it. i dont know if once the odd performance issues get worked out things will be clearer but right now its kinda bad.
In 253, the marines are once again highlighted (in white this time), so it's not really that much worse than before, and the insane brightness was tuned down. The alien vision is now quite usable.
Chill out young padawan, UWE promised to fix it by tomorrow. You can either play the game and explore the new stuff or leave alone it until friday.
we filled a server immediately after the patch, 20 players from the pug mumble, promptly laughed our asses off at the.changes. then cried a bit, then stopped playing.
Guess I'll chime in as well, absolutely hate the new alien vision and think it was a completely unnecessary change. I don't understand how anyone can think the new night vision looks in any way aesthetically pleasing, it's a disgusting orange mess even when the power is out and it's supposedly useful for 5 seconds. The default vision is barely more useful than not having any highlighting at all. I find it extremely off-putting to come here and read that you're not even considering changing it back because it "wasn't being used as intended" when the vast majority of people say they hate the new version. I've yet to see anyone in-game with anything positive to say about it.
Whether it was intended to be or not, it was a core gameplay mechanic that made the confusing, disorienting experience of playing as aliens a lot more bearable. Having to choose between barely being able to see what's going on and not being able to see what's going on at all is in no way a fitting replacement for it.
Comments
I understand that Bio-dome is supposed to be this big new visual breakthrough that you all placed a lot of time getting ready, but forcing us to look at it by turning AV into a headache inducing mess is not helping anyone....
My only gripe is the loss of contrast. The only way to play many lifeforms, like the skulk, effectively is to be moving fast. To be moving a lot. To be turning, bouncing, jukeing and rebounding. The ultra high contrast really helped my mind perceive my own movements in relation to the Marine's own dodging.
If alien vision is going to remain nightvision, I'd greatly appreciate the outline around Marines to be expanded or changed in some way to compromise for that loss.
Its been mentioned already but the new alien vision sucks, I don't know what the problem with the old version was, I only ever used it in pitch black rooms, did anyone actually want this change?
EDIT: and yes i went to bed with a headache yesterday from the bright color.
They've really got to stop treating this game like its still in beta, there are too many changes going on at once for anyone to keep track of how it's going to affect balance.
Sewlek was planning this out back when BT mod was just a mod and the only thing that existed for biodome was a gray map... but go on with your bad self i guess.
:-bd
This "in the dark" only happens for 10 seconds and rarely when there are actually marines in the room with you... WHAT IS THE POINT OF IT NOW?!?!?!
AGAIN WHY RELEASE A BROKEN GAME WHEN IT'S NOT THE BETA ANYMORE!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't care the reason behind releasing 252 when they did, but it is broken! I did not sign up for and buy a broken game. UWE really fucked this patch up in more ways than one. Seriously doubting they're ability to give the majority of their player base what they want. We did pay their salaries for crying out loud!
This has been relayed ad nauseam in this thread - Alien Vision was not intended to work as an alternative vision mode for aliens to keep on at all times, which is exactly what it had turned into.
What did you, me or any other random alien player do as soon as they spawned? They turned on AV. Why? Because it was a superior viewing option. Again, that was not it's intended purpose. It was supposed to function the exact same way as the marine flashlight - useless in lighted areas and effective in the dark.
There's really no other way to explain it than just that. If that isn't a good enough explanation than I'm sorry, because that's what UWE did, and I think it was a necessary change. Pre-252 AV was used by most aliens all the time, and it's only supposed to be for dark rooms.
Easy fix - use it in the dark, turn it off in the light. Takes .0005 seconds to hit the button. Or, we can continue to fill the forums with diatribe and nonsense.
Please be "understanding" for one whole day
They took something away from the aliens without any counterbalance, the new outlines get just as lost in the color palette during action as the rest of the marine does. They need to stop dumping drastic changes on the community like we're still a testing group, we're not, this isn't beta, this is a full release game that they need to take seriously when updating. Throwing 10+ new variable around at the same time tells me they still have no idea what they want the game to be and I really don't feel like sticking around long enough for UWE to figure it out.
@Ironhorse will never understand this point of view. Part of it is he is a Playtest lead and knows about alot of these changes and see different iterations come down the pipeline weeks before they go live, testing then 2x a week and sharing commentary with the developers. Of course then when they get dropped like a bomb on the community out of the blue to us, all we get from him is "wtf why aren't you guys more understanding".
Its really getting annoying tbh.
Please start talking about this more so Flayra can sell/license the Spark engine out. Maybe he will give you a small commission.
But really it sucks. If it's only useful in the dark then power nodes shouldn't go into emergency power after just a few seconds.
There is a story as to why this patch is on a different day than originally expected (and why we had another patch right in front of it), but I'm not sure I know it all or if I'm even supposed to know any of it at all. In fact, I probably just know a completely different story about how apples may or may not be good for nutrition. This other story, though... well, it is probably fraught with danger, intrigue, coffee, passion, lots more coffee, and coffee. Those few who have been cursed to know this most treacherous of tales forever woes their fate and spits curses to the powers of content scheduling. It may even involve the fabled wereskulkoala. You'll just have to wait and see what the trailer boy wonder from down undah will have to impart upon us this morning and in the following days at PAX.
This is absolutely my opinion! The outline is simply not enough when the marine is directly in your face. What do you see? Much dark gray areas and somewhere an vertical orange line. That does simply not help to track the marine. CQC is so fast he could be either the dark grey part left or right from this line. The old AV had a clear surface for the marine orange-red was marine surface, green-dark was not. Simple as that.
I don't mind the useless new AV that is even flickering when looking around. I just need to train myself not to activate it every time I respawn. But the normal vision needs to be replaced by HUZEs AV! Plz give marines a highlighted surface again instead of those outlines. And use the outlines for the aura upgrade.
What people need to understand is that you are now meant to play without alien vision most of the time... That said, it would be appreciated if the orange outlines were a bit thicker outside of it. i dont know if once the odd performance issues get worked out things will be clearer but right now its kinda bad.
we filled a server immediately after the patch, 20 players from the pug mumble, promptly laughed our asses off at the.changes. then cried a bit, then stopped playing.
I think so for me too, I.always felt AV of old made me less choppy when moving around. less stuffs to draw, or maybe that was in my head.
Whether it was intended to be or not, it was a core gameplay mechanic that made the confusing, disorienting experience of playing as aliens a lot more bearable. Having to choose between barely being able to see what's going on and not being able to see what's going on at all is in no way a fitting replacement for it.
AV in build253 has been changed.