Camera & Control System Preview and Guides

We can accept change

Seems to me that most are not able to accept change, they will just complain on PCF for quite a while and threaten quitting yet still remain and lurk to give their feedback.

I'm sure this will all just be a s**tshow when it's implemented....it was the same when i gave a smartphone to my old man for the first time. He got over it and I'm sure we all will.

If this gets really messed up, the sky still won't fall on this game....those controls are not needed for EP4
 
Tab will simply lock on the closest target or the target you directly aim at.

Need some clarification... so if I am in aim mode and right after I kill a mob my aim happens to be lined up with another mob in the distance, will pressing F lock on that mob in the distance even if another mob is right behind me attacking? This would not be good.

Thanks very much for your quick replies.
 
I agree and it will restore the zoom level last used, so it is easier to go in and out from Scoped mode. We still have an option for those that want to use the old way of scrolling from third to first-person and into scoped mode.

(This was in response to my comment about not having to scroll in and out on scopes, by the way, to save me from doing complicated nested quoting)

This sounds good. What would be super-good would be if I could choose to have two or more different zoom levels saved and could cycle between them, using the same key. Could be an option in control settings to say how many levels I wanted - 1-3 would be plenty (I think two would be fine for me personally). So (if I have it on 3 settings) when I press the key first it goes to Zoom Length 1 (I'd set this at full range). When I press it again, it goes to Zoom Length 2 (mid-range). Next time it goes to Zoom Length 3 (close-range). Next time it goes to normal unzoomed.
 
What is with third person and scrollin up to see more space around the Character? I hope the dont take this option out. I can not play in first person mode, because i have motion sickness. I need to scroll out and distance..

By the way Dragging and clicking health bars is my preferred style of playing. I dont think the new camera system helps me or is something i need. I also dont like go in front of Terminals and open it with F, the old system mit the computer mouse was ok.

This is a change that is a step back and not something that helps...
 
What is with third person and scrollin up to see more space around the Character? I hope the dont take this option out. I can not play in first person mode, because i have motion sickness. I need to scroll out and distance..

By the way Dragging and clicking health bars is my preferred style of playing. I dont think the new camera system helps me or is something i need. I also dont like go in front of Terminals and open it with F, the old system mit the computer mouse was ok.

This is a change that is a step back and not something that helps...

ya i dislike the fps mode in this game ... totally play like scrolled way out as far as possible. one of the reasons i hate mountains so much. and inside the caves , yeesh. but dragging the health bars I dislike. so hopefully they leave all of these modes available. f = open terminal!?!? bwahahaha who knew!

i'd also like to take this opportunity to mention how much i disliked the navigate with mouse click or navigate with double mouse click ... please PLEASE make an option to disable that altogether...

and finally big GZ to OP for ballzing up and speaking with us. we'll seriously try to make the experience enjoyable!!!
 
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I like this stuff a lot. I seems to me grinding gets a little bit easier and some of the unpleasant bugs will go forever.


Also Oleg's idea is very good and worth taking into consideration.

(This was in response to my comment about not having to scroll in and out on scopes, by the way, to save me from doing complicated nested quoting)

This sounds good. What would be super-good would be if I could choose to have two or more different zoom levels saved and could cycle between them, using the same key. Could be an option in control settings to say how many levels I wanted - 1-3 would be plenty (I think two would be fine for me personally). So (if I have it on 3 settings) when I press the key first it goes to Zoom Length 1 (I'd set this at full range). When I press it again, it goes to Zoom Length 2 (mid-range). Next time it goes to Zoom Length 3 (close-range). Next time it goes to normal unzoomed.


I do hope healers will get some attention in the process.
Maybe some settings like:
- heal the most low HP party member;
- heal attacking mob's(or targeted mob's) targeted party member;

I think with very little tweaking from what I'm seeing in these videos, the changes could benefit also this profession.
 
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I like to get nearby avatars (contacts interface) then drag the healthbar out, select and Target Body, so that I can see what they up to without having to approach them, voyeur style (or get a good upskirt view, avatar dependent of course!). This better not mess that up :mad:
 
Seems to me this new system is a kick in the balls to people who prefer to use the mouse for interacting in the game. All these changes seemed geared to forcing more keyboard wasd play and making interaction feel more like a shitty console port game lol

Is the next step going to be xbox controller support? Then porting to console?

Oh well, you do you I guess....
 
For the "drag out status bar" removal I understand your concerns. It did create certain behaviors and other issues that are not working as intended. I can see where it can be a helpful tool, but right now it doesn't fit with the design and direction we want to take with Entropia Universe. This doesn't mean that there are not situations that we need to reevaluate, but the main goal is to imnplement a system where pulling status bars is not necessary. As stated in the announcement, one of our goals is to streamline the new system, and even though freedom is good with multiple ways of interacting with the game, it also put constraints on the development and the actual interaction.
My most frequent usage of the status bar is getting an overview of creatures within range in case of mixed spawns out of which I want to target something specific. For this purpose I designed my keyboard layout so that I can press next-target and activate-status-bar in quick succession. This captures also the ones outside the current field of vision so that time consuming turning around is not necessary. Will this still be possible somehow after the change?

Avatar run speed had too many variables and one of our goals is to speed up many aspects of avatar control. It felt like the avatar stuttered sometimes due to uneven terrain. For climbing I can understand that pushing yourself up a cliff was a bit fun but not for content when trying to create the world where we are not sure if the player can traverse or not. Future terrain changes will now have this in mind and it is easier for a player to know if they can/should follow a specific path or not. Climbing, jetpacks or tools are a better way of solving this in the future instead of avatars very slowly walking up steep hills.
Does this mean climbing ability and jetpacks will come at some time in the future, meanwhile we're stripped of access to such areas on foot and all planet partners are forced to redesign their landscapes as well? As much as all of the above sounds positive, there is unfortunately a long track record of such announcements that subsequently fell down the priority ladder or just got quietly abandoned. I would like to strongly suggest mandating that all replacement features for discontinued abilities go into one and the same release package. Otherwise there will be a lot of protest to deal with.
 
Hello again everyone!
For the "drag out status bar" removal I understand your concerns. It did create certain behaviors and other issues that are not working as intended. I can see where it can be a helpful tool, but right now it doesn't fit with the design and direction we want to take with Entropia Universe. This doesn't mean that there are not situations that we need to reevaluate, but the main goal is to imnplement a system where pulling status bars is not necessary. As stated in the announcement, one of our goals is to streamline the new system, and even though freedom is good with multiple ways of interacting with the game, it also put constraints on the development and the actual interaction.

CRAFTERS BEWARE

I presume not having healthbars will be the same as not having terminal bars.

As a crafter, removing these will be an ATH pis*er.

Having the bars to access, auction, crafting machine, technician, storage, tt. Is a must have when crafting a lot. Removing these you are going to annoy a LOT of players . . just a friendly warning to MA.

Rgds

Ace
 
•Slope run speed penalty has been removed. Avatars cannot traverse slopes higher than 60 degrees.

It's high time we get a "Jump" mindforce spell to quickly scale cliffs. Now presumably more than ever.

and investigator profession level should increase your radar range (i.e. the red dots appearing on it)

PS: and with this newly found zest for work next tackle one of the things that have been promised for years and years (pets stage 2, housing stage 2, space cargo missions, AUCTION REWORK)
 
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•Slope run speed penalty has been removed. Avatars cannot traverse slopes higher than 60 degrees.

It's high time we get a "Jump" mindforce spell to quickly scale cliffs. Now presumably more than ever.

and investigator profession level should increase your radar range (i.e. the red dots appearing on it)

The Red Dot detection range on radar got reduced once around 2005 for "weak" mobs for performance concerns, not sure if this should still be an issue 2019 :) More radar range would be nice !
 
Very bad!

What about mobs that sometimes glitch into the ground when killed (f.e. Igni do that very often).

How can I loot thirs mobs if I dont have the status bar ???

No I dont want to use a autoloot pill to do that!

Personally I use that feature very often as it is comfortable.

Especially in croweded areas, where several hunters are active I often drag status bars of several mobs, that I can avaoid shooting others mobs by accident.

Removing that not a good idea, if you ask me!

Does it still work for players? Can I drag status bars of players, when I am out of team?
What about teams, will I have status bars of my teammates.

I fear good by FAP jobs for teams, if not member of the team, as it will definately will be very anoying not to have the status bars of all hunters that I should heal.

next target key and loot key?
 
My feedback

I've seen the videos and read all of MA/Dennis' posts + all others. So far I can sum it up like this:

PROs that can be seen from the video and text:
* Hunting atrox with tagger and then switching to other weapon (or fap) will be more smooth
* It looks like the feature where you are dragged towards your target when auto-aiming has been fixed (?)
* wasd-gaming mode will probably make the game easier to sell and teach new players
* According to Dennis, a new control system will make other content easier to implement (I have no knowledge in this area, so will have to take his word for it)
* Running faster up 60 degree slopes sounds good. Also makes room for jetpacks, climbing skill and what not = fun stuff, and not ruining much really (nowadayws you can VTOL onto any peak anyway - not so when I played i 2006)


CONs
* No video or explanation of other activities beside hunting atrox: MINING, HEALING, TAMING, SPACE, RESOURCE GATHERING to name a few important ones. My biggest worry here is that the new control system will work for hunting big mobs, and leave other professions in the shade for months to come while trying to cope with 10,000 complaints and bug reports. Detrimental to player base.
* People don't like chance, especially when up to 15 year old controls etched into the nervous system needs to go. Do not underestimate this.
* Beta testing: Why not invite 200 players (from level 1 to 200 in all types of professions) and let them try it out for 2 weeks? Weed out the bugs before implementation. Why take the risk of using the player base as beta testers? New players signing up to a super-bugged system won't help player retention... And for what it's worth - players have been asking for a lot of features, but I don't see many threads on this forum complaining about controls. If you need to fix stuff that works, MA/Dennis, you better make it work damn well from the get-go.


All in all I am positive to the chance, but rushing this big chance without proper testing is repeating past mistakes (and I thought MA finally was done with that tbh). Good luck.
 
a stretchable inventory window would be cool :)

a searchable window!
a sortable window!

plus I want a storage upgrade option, even if it costs ped

and how about not getting stuck in bushes (worst offender the trees with the attackers in southern pvp) or on cliffs (you can't go up more than 60°, but clearly you can still go down! and that gets you stuck sometimes) etc. add a 5-foot step option that lets you get out of such messes easily and quickly.
 
Removed the ability to drag out status bars. This feature caused many unintended issues and problems, and is no longer needed.

This needs to be reconsidered....there are instances which will be broken once this is implemented. Warehouses on ark for example... you guys broke the ability to right click the terminal already, now dragging the bar to interact on the gate is the only option left.

I can think of a few other instances like in shops or estates, dragging the bars out sometimes were the only way to keep them from getting lost behind a wall if moving items around.

Or healing a bunch of others when not in thier team...

I forsee a lot of side consequences that were not considered beforehand in relation to those draggable bars.
 
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On status bars again, this:

"Removed the ability to drag out status bars. This feature caused many unintended issues and problems, and is no longer needed."

makes me think you don't know how people use status bars. Perhaps you think we use them to select and interact targets. We don't, for the most part. We use them to keep track of what is happening near us.

for the record, I for one never used em and not having to click them away when they needlessly appear is a slight benefit

but I don't like change in general so I'd keep em exactly as they are right now
 
New motto: If you don't like the crafting results, just walk away!!! ;)
But seriously, great questions there. I hope vehicle action ranges are extended a bit so that jumping out does not already put you too far away to put the vehicle away again... and I'd love a 'put loot in selected vehicle window' option, while being able to move within a radius and shoot stuff.
It would also be nice to be able to select what to focus on, such as target select mobs only, even when a vehicle is out.

It looks like many people are concerned about the loss of dragged-out bars too. Add me to the list there, Dennis. I hope you've tested teams, space (vehicle pvp) etc etc as well in all of this...

since when can you move when crafting...
 
ITT: Old people who have never played literally any other game?


Seriously folks, these are long overdue changes that fix some glaring UX bugs and modernize the controls a bit to be more in line with what new players will expect. I'm sure there will be issues right out of the gate, but this is a fundamental part of the game that has definitely been needing an overhaul. Sorry your 15 year old keymaps might need to be updated.


Next I hope they get rid of this 1982 style inventory management and replace it with a tabbed list view.
 
since when can you move when crafting...
Going by the videos posted - in the future ;). Well, they didn't show it for crafting but for moving away from other terminals instead of being unable to move with a terminal active - hence the point was raised and I jokily commented...

Anyway, Dennis quote:
"For the "drag out status bar" removal I understand your concerns. It did create certain behaviors and other issues that are not working as intended. I can see where it can be a helpful tool, but right now it doesn't fit with the design and direction we want to take with Entropia Universe. This doesn't mean that there are not situations that we need to reevaluate, but..."

To summarise responses so far we have teaming and healing, taming, overall area awareness (including maybe health check on a damaged mob which isn't yours), proximities in space, etc. If you mean 'reevaluate' as being 'at some point in the future', then that is going to be loads of grief right now.
You did put your quote right at the top of your response to us, but can you please revisit the points we have made please? Especially, will ALL status bars be gone, including mothership health sections, for example, or have we misunderstood?
 
Removing healthbars does hopefully come with foresight about all impacted game elements - eg in a space battle with multiple ships in a 3d pvp environment with no radar its very hard to keep an overview on how damaged your respective opponents are if you cant pull their heathbars.
So i really hope that we will get some form of 3D radar (short range and longrange) for space that also displays some health(structural integrity) information, before you take away the only rudimentary 'tactical combat map' (dragged healthbars) that currently exists for space.

lool what do you think this is, star citizen? do you believe they thought about space even for 1 second when they decided to make this update?! :laugh:
 
Especially, will ALL status bars be gone, including mothership health sections, for example, or have we misunderstood?
I sure hope we have!

lool what do you think this is, star citizen? do you believe they thought about space even for 1 second when they decided to make this update?! :laugh:

The worrying part is without an overhaul as JBK has suggested, there could be a few elements here which really mess with space game play.

I'd be happy to show a dev the intricacies of a typical flight/hunt night with big ship and crew if it would be of use.

alainax said:
I am presuming the auto use tool won’t be enabled in pvp? It would suck to be firing off 1 ped shots into the abyss of space for nothing! Or the cost of hitting nothing is changed to be the same as mob hunting planet side?
No it will not enabled in PvP for avatars, but still works the same way for creatures as in non-PvP.

Thanks for the reply, can I just clarify that whilst hunting mobs in PvP the auto use will be on?

My concern is the ammo burn in PvP whilst shooting mobs if you don't actually hit the mob. We never auto use as a gunner as its 1 ped per shot, even if your shooting blank space. Will this feature be able to be disabled? Or will there be a way in which no shot is spend unless its directly on a mob?
 
Very simply said..

If your changes break how things work in testing (I know, that seven letter word) then you need to hold implementing this till that is resolved. Breaking the game to put in a new interface is not acceptable.

Many here have given you things to evaluate and I think we need to see how these will effect those areas before you move forward with this otherwise you will lose more people than you will gain.
 
Congrats on being put in charge. I can't decide if it is a good or bad thing to have someone who used to do testing, then be in charge of testing, being in charge of the whole thing. Ordinarily I'd say this would be a good thing (get someone with grass roots experience of the pain involved with bugs in charge) but MA have a shocking history of releasing stuff that has really obvious bugs that should have been picked up in minutes worth of testing, so I can't help wonder who was responsible for that... still, none of us can judge another person's working conditions or pressures to get something out the door since we simply don't know the scenario. The facts remain the facts though, regardless of the cause.

Okaaay... on to the camera milarki first off, credit where credit is due. Well done for posting videos and for starting a thread discuss ahead of time. Doubly well done for coming back and answering question/responding to feedback. Most people MA who've started threads before tend to post then go and hide under the desk AFAIK in the past, never to be seen again, often to be replaced by some new community rep a year or more later. Please keep posting.

I've been around since 2003 and one thing that attracted and hooked me was the open world and ability to go to almost any landmark.

Players have spent many hours climbing mountains just for the sake of exploration. We have travelled to out of the way vistas just to marvel at the world before us.

The ability to climb mountains and explore endlessly is not something I have found in other games.

It is not something I ever expected to lose in this one.

Avatar run speed had too many variables and one of our goals is to speed up many aspects of avatar control. It felt like the avatar stuttered sometimes due to uneven terrain. For climbing I can understand that pushing yourself up a cliff was a bit fun but not for content when trying to create the world where we are not sure if the player can traverse or not. Future terrain changes will now have this in mind and it is easier for a player to know if they can/should follow a specific path or not. Climbing, jetpacks or tools are a better way of solving this in the future instead of avatars very slowly walking up steep hills.

Let's cut to the chase. MA removed item dropping because they couldn't fix bugs relating to it (or exploits or lag or whatever the reason was). As such they killed an absolute TRUCK LOAD of quality emergent game play, the extent of which they will never be able to fully understand or quantify. Game play that had been present since 2003.

Reading the above response it very much conveys the same message: "letting people go up mountains can lead to bugs like people getting stuck in the landscape, so, rather than fix the landscape so this can't happen, we'd really rather just remove the feature altogether, OK?"

No, very much not OK. Lets break this down a moment:

Avatar run speed had too many variables and one of our goals is to speed up many aspects of avatar control.

Too many variables? Too... maaany.... vaaariables....????

Let's consider this, it is 2019, the era of "big data", people are solving all sorts of problems with thousands of influencing factors. The avatars themselves have a ton of variables just in how they appear. I've heard the phrase "too many variables" in the context of things like machine vision. To hear it in the context of something as comparatively simple as how fast something is allowed to move in a computer game.... well. I... I just don't really know how to respond to that.

It felt like the avatar stuttered sometimes due to uneven terrain.

So... you knew this, and you didn't fix it? Did you check it was really uneven terrain to blame? I've known this occur due to lag with lots of avatars around and due to vehicles appearing. Also due to traversing between server squares... I don't remember ever encountering a run speed issue due to terrain though.

For climbing I can understand that pushing yourself up a cliff was a bit fun

a "bit fun" is a gross over reduction of the freedom delivered in a game by being able to traverse almost where ever you please. It also grossly underestimates the value of the emergent game play derived from such an ability

but not for content when trying to create the world where we are not sure if the player can traverse or not.

Then... (and I realise I repeat years of sentiment here...) FIX IT. Don't make it worse! Three options:

  1. Remove restrictions on climbing ability, make it so we can walk up anything regardless of slope (unless 90 degrees - because that would be daft) until you have time to sort things out properly.
  2. Add a new feature to the game, a simple option the teleport 2 meters to the left instantly. This would allow us to get out of all "stuck" scenarios, without the annoyance of having to go back to a RT.
  3. Fix the landscape: to do this, program up some sort of search that finds and highlights all vertices in the map over a certain angle to the ground plain. Then you will be able to clearly see where people can and cannot go. This would actually make a great addition to the Sandbox editing tool and would be very useful for your designers.

Future terrain changes will now have this in mind and it is easier for a player to know if they can/should follow a specific path or not.

All well and good for new terrain, but what about all the previously created terrain? You just stuff it in one foul swoop and make it inaccessible now? Is that really how you want to treat your own content? Something that some artist has spent ages making just for you to come along and make if so no one can access it anymore? Really? REALLY?

Also does it matter if we don't immediate know if we can climb something or not? Half the fun of exploring and "mountain climbing" is not knowing what you will find. The joy of seeking out a route where the terrain is "just about" climbable and finding a way that no one else knows about. This is the joy of exploring. You may dismiss this as just "a bit of fun" but you hurt yourself by removing this fun.

Climbing, jetpacks or tools are a better way of solving this in the future instead of avatars very slowly walking up steep hills

I would agree but lets be clear, this is MA. Such things are promised, talked of but are commonly forgotten and never heard from again. This too, once you have deleted access to vast swathes of the terrain, will also be forgotten. I challenge you to deny this.

Yes absolutely, a climbing animation would be better than the slow walking up a steep incline with your nose pressing against a low poly/texture wall but, trust me, you are never going to implement it. So lets not suggest this as a solution to a problem you are about to create please.

Lets avoid creating the problem in the first place

Anyhow, back to the main thing here, specifics about the camera change. Some questions:

  1. If right click is some sorta extra context driven interaction button now, then how the do we open the system menu? I find myself wondering why would right click ever be used for anything other than opening a menu? At a guess we are going back here on approx 30 years of expected interface behaviour that is being abandoned here.
  2. When in a car, currently holding the right mouse button and moving the mouse left and right allows for analogue steering using the mouse. Similarly, pressing both buttons and then continuing to hold the right one, makes the avatar run and allows mouse control of direction. Will both these (essentially the same) features continue to work after the "camera update"?
  3. What is wrong with aiming at a mob, shooting it (with left mouse button) till it is dead then looting it (with left mouse button)? Why do I need to use the right mouse button now? (I'm confused as to why this helps/is good)
  4. I was going to ask about being able to carry on using the zoom mouse wheel for mode transitions but I see that was already answered (seriously WELL DONE! more please!). Instead I will ask, can we map the camera speed control to buttons instead of the mouse wheel? I don't think I'll want to adjust the speed too often (but its a definite "nice to have" so thanks) whereas zooming in and out is something I do constantly
  5. I note in the videos you never zoom out much. Will we still be able to zoom out as much as we used to?
  6. Currently zoom out/in limits in vehicles in 3rd Person are different to those when viewing an avatar in 3rd Person. They are not particularly good at the moment as the limit on zoom in (before switching to 1st Person) is actually quite far from the vehicle (I think this is only on the flying vehicles actually) will this be fixed so we can get in closer to our flying vehicles?
  7. When in car, there is a bug in that the avatars head ends up turning in weird directions when viewing in 3rd person (depending on where you view from) will this be fixed by the new system?

Thanks if you can advise on these, and sorry if I over ranted on the terrain stuff. I'm sure you understand it is because I care. If I didn't, I wouldn't take the time to write stuff here and would simply drift away from the game. It really is a shame though to see someone with a computer science degree claiming something has too many variables and so should therefore be removed. I mean... you guys have walking multi-legged robots in game. They have to be more complicated than the avatar run speed algorithm surely?

All the best and I hope to see more responses to these questions/comments.

Wistrel
 
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what about if we dump battle simulator, and you setup one entropia testing server for (some of) us? :laugh: :eyecrazy: :silly2:

hey don't get me wrong, but i think nearly everyone wants to test new camera mode if he can use fancy guns and armors too :tongue2:

you could make an EU bughunt season, and award prices for fixing your issues, before you even released them to the public!!!!
maybe think about it :smoke:
 
what about if we dump battle simulator, and you setup one entropia testing server for (some of) us? :laugh: :eyecrazy: :silly2:

hey don't get me wrong, but i think nearly everyone wants to test new camera mode if he can use fancy guns and armors too :tongue2:

you could make an EU bughunt season, and award prices for fixing your issues, before you even released them to the public!!!!
maybe think about it :smoke:

I'm not sure if ditching the batsim would help (but don't know much about it) but a test server for this would be a good idea. For once MA can't claim that the update would give anyone an unfair economy related advantage either.

I say do it!
 
Very simply said..

If your changes break how things work in testing (I know, that seven letter word) then you need to hold implementing this till that is resolved. Breaking the game to put in a new interface is not acceptable.

Many here have given you things to evaluate and I think we need to see how these will effect those areas before you move forward with this otherwise you will lose more people than you will gain.
:wise: what he said. Please??? :wise:
 
Congrats on being put in charge. I can't decide if it is a good or bad thing to have someone who used to do testing, then be in charge of testing, being in charge of the whole thing.

It's fairly common in the software industry for QA to move into BA and then PO, or sometimes skip BA and just go from QA to PO. I'd say more than half the POs I've had started in QA.


Too many variables? Too... maaany.... vaaariables....????

Let's consider this, it is 2019, the era of "big data", people are solving all sorts of problems with thousands of influencing factors. The avatars themselves have a ton of variables just in how they appear. I've heard the phrase "too many variables" in the context of things like machine vision. To hear it in the context of something as comparatively simple as how fast something is allowed to move in a computer game.... well. I... I just don't really know how to respond to that.
(......)

This isn't a data lake, it's a computer game, and micro-optimizations can make a meaningful impact on performance and experience, though I don't believe he was actually referring to simply the movement calculations... I think adding a slope cap and simplifying avatar movement will not only help with a lot of the glitches but make the level designers jobs easier.

I don't want to wall-of-text the reply, but there's good reasons why all 3 of your proposed solutions are bad ideas from a technical standpoint.


All well and good for new terrain, but what about all the previously created terrain? You just stuff it in one foul swoop and make it inaccessible now? Is that really how you want to treat your own content? Something that some artist has spent ages making just for you to come along and make if so no one can access it anymore? Really? REALLY?

Kind of seems over-emotional for something you didn't create yourself, lol. A good terrain designer can bang this stuff out in remarkably fast time. Nice of you to be thinking about the artists though.

I don't think their intent is to just close off big sections of the game (you can still fly, remember?). The current pathfinding is very crude (we've all complained about mobs getting stuck in things), by simplifying what's accessible and what isn't they can set themselves up for improving this. There's a reason most games are setup this way. It also might afford them some creativity for things like guided missions in the future, or missions done with NPCs.


Reading the above response it very much conveys the same message: "letting people go up mountains can lead to bugs like people getting stuck in the landscape, so, rather than fix the landscape so this can't happen, we'd really rather just remove the feature altogether, OK?"

But they ARE trying to fix it. This game needs a ton of work, and it won't happen overnight. I've never been shy in the past about how lame I think MA is development-wise, but I see this as a great step in the right direction. They are a very small team with limited resources, and incremental fixes are the right way to do it.

There's a lot of people in this thread who have heavily invested in this or that which want to see their particular corner of the game worked on, but I think fixing these fundamental things that will benefit all players is smarter than working on systems that only certain people care about. Not saying those various systems shouldn't get their time in the spotlight, but I definitely think fixing the basics is the right priority. The camera controls, movement, and general interaction has been in bad shape for a long time so IMO this is long overdue.
 
Let's cut to the chase. MA removed item dropping because they couldn't fix bugs relating to it (or exploits or lag or whatever the reason was). As such they killed an absolute TRUCK LOAD of quality emergent game play, the extent of which they will never be able to fully understand or quantify. Game play that had been present since 2003.
It's maddening, frankly.

Reading the above response it very much conveys the same message: "letting people go up mountains can lead to bugs like people getting stuck in the landscape, so, rather than fix the landscape so this can't happen, we'd really rather just remove the feature altogether, OK?"

No, very much not OK.
Not OK. And while you're at it, put Drop back into the game so we can hide rubios in bushes and build castles in the air.

It felt like the avatar stuttered sometimes due to uneven terrain.
Stuttering and rubberbanding are such minor annoyances compared to what else is on your table! Please prioritize the worst offenders and fix them first instead of getting distracted by shiny objects!

[*]Fix the landscape: to do this, program up some sort of search that finds and highlights all vertices in the map over a certain angle to the ground plain. Then you will be able to clearly see where people can and cannot go. This would actually make a great addition to the Sandbox editing tool and would be very useful for your designers.
This issue acts like a reversed order of resolution during clipping, ie, CryEngine seems to first decide the avatar's location and then check to see whether the surface is penetrable. The simple fix is to reverse that order of resolution, but as this acts more like an engine bug than a platform bug, we may be SOL until MA gets a new engine again, which may or may not do anything for any problems at all.

Future terrain changes will now have this in mind and it is easier for a player to know if they can/should follow a specific path or not.
Goodbye "open world play", hello sequence of scripted scenes? Well it does suit CryEngine much better, but how well does it suit this game?

Also does it matter if we don't immediate know if we can climb something or not? Half the fun of exploring and "mountain climbing" is not knowing what you will find. The joy of seeking out a route where the terrain is "just about" climbable and finding a way that no one else knows about. This is the joy of exploring. You may dismiss this as just "a bit of fun" but you hurt yourself by removing this fun.
Quite so.

Climbing, jetpacks or tools are a better way of solving this in the future instead of avatars very slowly walking up steep hills

I would agree but lets be clear, this is MA. Such things are promised, talked of but are commonly forgotten and never heard from again. This too, once you have deleted access to vast swathes of the terrain, will also be forgotten. I challenge you to deny this.

Yes absolutely, a climbing animation would be better than the slow walking up a steep incline with your nose pressing against a low poly/texture wall but, trust me, you are never going to implement it. So lets not suggest this as a solution to a problem you are about to create please.
Oh trust me, varying my climb path slightly this way or that til I make upward instead of downward progress, is a spontaneous puzzle solving activity which adds much more fun to the game than these suggested additions would. From my history of contact with the rest of your playerbase I feel confident in saying that the majority of your longest lasting players will say the same. This type of emergent play challenge adds to the play experience.

Anyhow, back to the main thing here, specifics about the camera change. Some questions:

  1. If right click is some sorta extra context driven interaction button now, then how the do we open the system menu? I find myself wondering why would right click ever be used for anything other than opening a menu? At a guess we are going back here on approx 30 years of expected interface behaviour that is being abandoned here.
  2. When in a car, currently holding the right mouse button and moving the mouse left and right allows for analogue steering using the mouse. Similarly, pressing both buttons and then continuing to hold the right one, makes the avatar run and allows mouse control of direction. Will both these (essentially the same) features continue to work after the "camera update"?
  3. What is wrong with aiming at a mob, shooting it (with left mouse button) till it is dead then looting it (with left mouse button)? Why do I need to use the right mouse button now? (I'm confused as to why this helps/is good)
  4. I was going to ask about being able to carry on using the zoom mouse wheel for mode transitions but I see that was already answered (seriously WELL DONE! more please!). Instead I will ask, can we map the camera speed control to buttons instead of the mouse wheel? I don't think I'll want to adjust the speed too often (but its a definite "nice to have" so thanks) whereas zooming in and out is something I do constantly
  5. I note in the videos you never zoom out much. Will we still be able to zoom out as much as we used to?
  6. Currently zoom out/in limits in vehicles in 3rd Person are different to those when viewing an avatar in 3rd Person. They are not particularly good at the moment as the limit on zoom in (before switching to 1st Person) is actually quite far from the vehicle (I think this is only on the flying vehicles actually) will this be fixed so we can get in closer to our flying vehicles?
  7. When in car, there is a bug in that the avatars head ends up turning in weird directions when viewing in 3rd person (depending on where you view from) will this be fixed by the new system?
All good points, thank you Wistrel and I hope the new noobdev isn't under the desk yet :eyecrazy:
 
Going by the videos posted - in the future ;). Well, they didn't show it for crafting but for moving away from other terminals instead of being unable to move with a terminal active - hence the point was raised and I jokily commented...

Anyway, Dennis quote:
"For the "drag out status bar" removal I understand your concerns. It did create certain behaviors and other issues that are not working as intended. I can see where it can be a helpful tool, but right now it doesn't fit with the design and direction we want to take with Entropia Universe. This doesn't mean that there are not situations that we need to reevaluate, but..."

To summarise responses so far we have teaming and healing, taming, overall area awareness (including maybe health check on a damaged mob which isn't yours), proximities in space, etc. If you mean 'reevaluate' as being 'at some point in the future', then that is going to be loads of grief right now.
You did put your quote right at the top of your response to us, but can you please revisit the points we have made please? Especially, will ALL status bars be gone, including mothership health sections, for example, or have we misunderstood?
Dear god, I hope not. Status bars and their diversity of applications provide a great way to sidestep some of the more onerous aspects of play so that our experience can focus on funner things to think about.
 
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