Test Server Feedback

This is possible slightly off topic for the test forum, however since it's this is the place for testing things I guess i'll place it here and hope to get a hold of one of the many lurking devs.

The subject of this post is CQ ship view scaling, and mostly me wanting to hear from a dev the reason for why it is like it is now, possible some dicussion into people's thoughts about this subject as I over the time since incarna release have failed to see much talk about it.

While I know most people just got CQ turned off by default from either hardware or simply dislikes (I admit I don't use it either, due to it not having any usability currently) this is not a post about if we like CQ or not, so please don't begin on that thank you <3.

The topic is scaling, and to make sure everyone gets it, here's a little gallery, showing caldari frigate, cruiser, battlecruiser, battleship in the same standing position overlooking the hanger from CQ. http://imgur.com/a/wr29J#0

My big question is why does it scale this way, and what could be the reason for it, we allready got the hanger view with good scaling, why haven't CCP simply panned the view and given us that, I know some ships might be to big for the view so we can't see the whole ship, but for the sake of imersion, which CCP tries so hard to promote, wouldn't it be much better, what do people prefer ? I kinda feel like this is quite an annoying issue.

While that can be an issue for shuttles and frigates, I still find it very view that a cruiser and battleship is basicly same size, and a frigate raletively fairly close to a battleship aswell in size, in general I see that smaller ships possible could have a problem, but for anything then shuttles and frigates it's severely hurting the feel of imersion, anything bigger feels like a toy ship, and for people who really wanna use CQ it can be quite annoying to look at, for the sole reason I prefer the ship hanger as it shows the real scale of ships.

Yeah frigates being to small is a real problem, but so is the fact that all ships beside capitals looks the same size, it really don't reward the feeling of getting a new ship, at this point i'm an old player and know the size raletive to each other, but for a new player, consider going from a cruiser to a bs, and see it's the same size in the quaters, most be a sad feeling somehow, but then again they'll learn the size at some point, I just feel this function is working against what ccp is trying to achieve lately.

Taking into account how active CCP have been recently with improving things, I think you're right to bring this issue back up -- because now's the time, if ever, to fix such a thing...

Well, if we go on the basis that the CQ's were strongly designed around enhancing the 'new player experience', and therefore, improving player retention, then making Frigates easier to see is a great idea. Unfortunately, this means that some comparatively 'epic' machines look 'meh'.

That problem, I think was partly compounded by the (perhaps misinterpreted at the time) idea that players were raging because they couldn't 'spin' their ships anymore... 'Spinning' was never really the true problem, but if the ships (as they currently are right now) didn't rotate any more then you could still have big-looking Frigates, but epically-huge Battleships and Capitals that would stun you to see.

But... I fear, having them 'realistically' huge *and* rotating would probably end with them smashing through the walls... :(

Personally, given the choice, I'd ---

1. Establish a 'Frigate size' and position, that would still look excellent to new players...
2. Scale everything else up *proportionately*...
3. Remove the rotation animation, if it means the above couldn't happen without a Charon smashing through your couch.


And in an ideal world, I'd model a proper Pod-decanting room... (*cough*)

I would like to know why any ship does not get smaller on my physical screen the further I walk from it. Perhaps the sizes really are dictating such a thing, but it still looks nonsensical.

Looking down the walkway from inside the CQ, a Slicer will appear to be some gargantuan mothership floating on top of everything. But standing on the balcony it just looks like a little ship.

For conveying the scale better, maybe you could have some manned vessels do some routine maintenance on the hull while docked. Applying new paint, fixing micro-fractures, retightening the armor plates and stuff like that. Since the utility vessels are of fixed size they would look bigger when buzzing near a frigate but on a battleship you could barely see the sparks coming from the repairs.

There is nothing wrong with it. The reason you're struggling to tell the difference between the size of a frigate to a cruiser is because you're looking at a 2D representation of a 3D environment.

To get a sense of scale, just look at your ship as you walk up or down the gangway with the camera zoomed in. Because you'll have some objects moving in the foreground, you'll suddenly get afeel for the real size of your ship.

Yes.

If you haven't learned how to use the above cues to judge distance and scale, then I can only conclude that you have never actually looked at anything other than a computer screen.

Yes the ships are smaller due to distance, but I Would like to note that a hanger don't have unlimited range to put a ship on distance, and another more concerning topic on that matter is that if you look at different sizes of ships, you can't see they are supose to be futher away, for the naked eye they look to be on the same distance, size of the ships would possible indicate they are, but it's impossible to see or tell just by looking at them, the only sense you get is that battleships are freaking small.