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Player Features and Ideas Discussion

 
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Direction indicator
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procopy
The Pornstache
#1 - 2014-09-21 09:25:56 UTC
It is not uncommon for anyone to end up in a cluttered environment. Be it Jita, a blob, gatecamp, outnumbered fight or something else. In such moments it's crucial to get your stuff sorted quickly so you gain the upper hand or at least don't pop prematurely. And by "stuff" I mean your ship's position and orientation. I tend to play with my grid zoomed out to extent where my ship is no longer or barely visible. I also do not use the tactical thingie, as it is way too intrusive. In order to find myself in space I need to press alt. Which is not exactly helpful most of the time.

Once I see where my ship is in space, I can click on it and be able to relatively track my position in space (providing I am flying a fast ship to make some visual difference). However this does not answer one crucial question. Where my nose is pointed at until I zoom back in and spin the grid a little. And mind you, I find this quite an important matter.

So, why not come up with a simple helper that indicates ship's direction? I will leave to you to figure the exact way of indicating up and down movements. In this case I used a directional arrow to make my point.
Donnachadh
United Allegiance of Undesirables
#2 - 2014-09-21 12:58:29 UTC
Can't say that this has ever been a problem for me but I see know reason why a simple I am pointed that way indicator would be bad especially everyone would have one.
Server load is the only thing I can think of that would make this a problem.
procopy
The Pornstache
#3 - 2014-09-21 15:01:27 UTC
It has no relation to server. Server always knows where you are pointed regardless. It's more of a local UI feature, just like brackets.
God's Apples
Wilderness
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
#4 - 2014-09-21 15:50:39 UTC
Was actually just discussing this with someone else last night. It would improve nano gameplay by some much to add this simple feature.

"Hydra Reloaded are just jealous / butthurt on me / us because we can get tons of PVP action in empire while they aren't good enough to get that." - NightmareX
Hakan MacTrew
Konrakas Forged
Solyaris Chtonium
#5 - 2014-09-21 15:55:33 UTC
Your idea would be great if EVE worked in 2D or was at least limited to a fixed viewpoint, but it doesn't and it isn't. Displaying relative orientation in 3D with no fixed viewpoint is a bit like trying to use a magnetic compass to tell you if you are going up or down.

If you can think of a way that would work, then fair play and I will retract what I have said, but as of now your suggested method only displays 360 degrees of one plain, ignoring the second. It would not work.

Friends
procopy
The Pornstache
#6 - 2014-09-21 16:26:52 UTC
@Hakan MacTrew IMO it's not that hard to find a way to represent vertical inclination and get used to it. What I threw was a very basic example. After all, we are operating in a 180 degree hemisphere, with two equally sized and shaped positive and negative coordinate parts.

One thing I thought of initially was to represent the plus and minus coordinates with different colors and intensity (say blue for positive inclination aka top, red for negative aka bottom). The steeper your angle is, the more vivid the color of the indicator shall be, bright red representing a vertical dive for example. It only needs a little practice to get used to this.
God's Apples
Wilderness
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
#7 - 2014-09-21 16:58:05 UTC
You could have the circle with the arrow sit directly on top of the ship and has the same orientation. So if you tilt your ship up 30 degrees the circle tilts up 30 degrees with you. Only problem is if you are looking at a complete bird's eye view you can't tell whether they are going up or down, just that they are moving in one of those directions.

"Hydra Reloaded are just jealous / butthurt on me / us because we can get tons of PVP action in empire while they aren't good enough to get that." - NightmareX
Damen Apol
Task Force 641
Empyrean Edict
#8 - 2014-09-21 21:02:43 UTC
God's Apples wrote:
You could have the circle with the arrow sit directly on top of the ship and has the same orientation. So if you tilt your ship up 30 degrees the circle tilts up 30 degrees with you. Only problem is if you are looking at a complete bird's eye view you can't tell whether they are going up or down, just that they are moving in one of those directions.


Could do it the way physicists do vectors

X if it's down O if it's up.

maybe I got that backwards.
Jack Carrigan
Order of the Shadow
#9 - 2014-09-21 22:02:59 UTC
Would have to be something to the effect of a glidescope with a compass. This is not really necessary.

I am the One who exists in Shadow. I am the Devil your parents warned you about.

||CEO: Order of the Shadow||Executor: The Revenant Order||Creator: Bowhead||
Iain Cariaba
#10 - 2014-09-21 23:44:56 UTC
Or, you could learn to play zoomed in a bit more so you can see where your ship is oriented and learn to flip back and forth between zooms. My stock whineblows mouse settings give me the ability to adjust how much travel each notch of my scroll wheel actually moves. Set it high enough, and with a little practice you will be good at flipping out to see the big picture, then flipping back in to see your ship orientation.
Damen Apol
Task Force 641
Empyrean Edict
#11 - 2014-09-21 23:55:38 UTC
Iain Cariaba wrote:
Or, you could learn to play zoomed in a bit more so you can see where your ship is oriented and learn to flip back and forth between zooms. My stock whineblows mouse settings give me the ability to adjust how much travel each notch of my scroll wheel actually moves. Set it high enough, and with a little practice you will be good at flipping out to see the big picture, then flipping back in to see your ship orientation.


Lets remove the ability to group weapons while we're at it eh?

Who needs features that remove unnecessary difficulty right?
Iain Cariaba
#12 - 2014-09-22 02:54:06 UTC
Damen Apol wrote:
Iain Cariaba wrote:
Or, you could learn to play zoomed in a bit more so you can see where your ship is oriented and learn to flip back and forth between zooms. My stock whineblows mouse settings give me the ability to adjust how much travel each notch of my scroll wheel actually moves. Set it high enough, and with a little practice you will be good at flipping out to see the big picture, then flipping back in to see your ship orientation.


Lets remove the ability to group weapons while we're at it eh?

Who needs features that remove unnecessary difficulty right?

Sure, why not. Because it has nothing at all to do with topic, and we just want to throw pointless comments out to try and confuse things. Besides, I'm a missile user from back when a single rat defensive missile could wipe an entire volley at once, so you didn't keep your launchers grouped if you ran missions/anoms.
Gawain Edmond
Khanid Bureau of Industry
#13 - 2014-11-16 13:00:16 UTC
or do just like they did on the system scanner around the hud and the problem is already solved
procopy
The Pornstache
#14 - 2014-11-16 15:02:28 UTC
This new hud thing is the most useless piece of crap I've seen in this game.