|
|
#1
12-27-2010, 06:22 PM
|
|||
|
|||
Scoreboard and UI tweaks
Don't you hate it when some jerk who barely understands your game joins the forum and starts posting suggestions for changes? And he clearly has no idea how the game works, and also fills his post with more typos and txt speak than an AOL chat room? I am that jerk! Although I will try to keep typos to a minimum.
My suggestions, in order of random: 1. Show the HP for your killer. If you've got the camera set up to follow the plane that killed you, of course, it would be nice to get a quick flash of what their life bar is at. I've probably been spoiled by too much TF2, but being able to know that the other guy got away with just a sliver of life makes your death feel less horrible. Even better, a little shot of their plane, HP, name, and perks. Maybe stuff it down in a corner so you can keep watching the action while also getting a quick picture of your murderer. I know, it does sound like a TF2 knockoff, but there's a reason that game is ridiculously popular, and it's not just hats. They do a lot of things right. 2 (and 3). Add XP to the scoreboard. Following on that idea, sort the scoreboard by XP. Since MVPs in ball are already determined by who got the most XP, why not go all the way and show it on the scoreboard and sort by it? A lot of gamers obsessively check scoreboards while playing. I do it in every game, even when I'm pretty terrible at it. Sorting by pure kills doesn't give as much of an idea of who is contributing to the team as sorting by XP would. Maybe some acid Loopy isn't racking up the kills, but he's got 50 assists. Maybe someone isn't deathmatching in the middle of the ball arena, but they are actually scoring goals. Put those people at the top! Scoreboard sorting can go a long way towards bending play-styles towards the right things. Right now the ego-boost just goes towards the guy who got the most killing shots off, even if he's just sniping kills away from other people who do all the hard work first. Why not let people see who's really being the most useful in the game? The XP system already exists and tracks this pretty precisely. Show it! As a footnote to this, some headers on the scoreboard would be nice too. Even just letters. K/A/D over the columns? I'm assuming the numbers go in orders of Kills, Assists, and Deaths of course. I don't know... because they're not marked. I just assume the small number is my kills and the big number is my deaths, that's usually a safe bet. 4. Pretty up the kill log. This is just a nice feature that I could live without, but hey, why not throw it all in? I don't know how possible it is, but icons for the kill weapon would be nice. The existing perk icons would work OK, although I don't know if they could be shrunk down and still show up in a readable format. Plus you'd need to add some art assets for things that don't have perk icons to represent them, like Randa warp kills. Yes, I know, I'm stealing ideas from TF2 again. Sue me! Also, a way to highlight your own kills in the log would be nice. Bolder or lighter colored text or something, so I can tell when I get a good streak (which never happens to me anyway, but a man can dream) without having to read through what everyone else is doing. 5. Self-only multi-kill notifier colors. When a guy next to me gets a double kill, or whatever, I can't tell if it was him or me that caused that notification to pop up (hint, it was probably him. Did I mention I'm pretty bad?). If teammate's multi-kills showed up in, say blue, and my own showed up in green, that would be nice. For bonus points, make the enemies' multi-kills show up in red. I think that's all for now, but I'm sure I've got more bad ideas just waiting. So go ahead, Altitude community. Explain to me why my ideas are terrible and would never work and have brought shame upon me and my family unto the seventh generation! 
|
|
#2
12-27-2010, 07:03 PM
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quick correction: MVP in ball is always determined by most goals scored, XP is a tiebreaker, I believe.
(goals only give 10 XP if I recall correctly) I've actually been thinking about a suggestion like this for a little while; it's a good thought. The more info on the tab screen, the better. --- THIS IS A LONG POST FULL OF MUCH RAMBLING AND MANY COOL IDEAS, JUST LIKE ALL MY POSTS --- ETA: Here's how I think the screen could be better utilized and more interesting:  1) Put the teams vertically instead of horizontally. This will allow for: a) player names to be displayed in full, up to the 20 character limit, as opposed to 13-14 as it stands now. Yay!. b) much more information, which is always a good thing. So, what do we put there? I'll tell ya! I) Keep K/A/D as they are. No issues. II) I forgot this part in my picture (lolme), but keep the perks next to each player name. Easy. III) Add "goals" and "base damage" to the tab screen. This is important information that tells you who is being most effective, and who you should pass to/ let take the bomb. --NOTE: goal assists would be cool too. IV) Add a "# of times ball/bomb picked up" slot. This could just be very interesting information and someone could be bored enough to calculate efficiency. Yay?! V) As suggested by the OP, a slot for "XP." This is just fun to look at during a game, especially for newer players who still get XP (sadface.jpg). VI) Make the "SCORE 1, SCORE 0" image above the current player names a bit smaller. Under my new imagining of this screen, it would also be better if you moved each team's score immediately above that team's player names. ------ END GAME SCREEN SUGGESTIONS ------- I) Add goal assists into ball mode MVP calculations. Make them worth 1/2 a goal in the formula or something. It's depressing to get four goal assists and a goal, and lose out on MVP. II) Make the data come faster. It's really fun to stare at your accomplishments, but the problem is that the ones that show up last (killstreaks, multikills, kills) go away so quickly that sometimes you barely even see them. --- Might I suggest putting the MVPs up immediately, then everything else a bit later. III) This is the big one: add "places" for each category. Show the top 3 finishers for each MVP (and what they did: goals, kills, goal assists, XP, base damage), and for each subcategory for that game mode. Keep the plane showing for only the first place finisher, and just display the other two guys names. --- It is a lot of fun to laugh and such when you beat someone for MVP by three XP or something ridiculous, and having this information on screen would be funny. That's all for now! Last edited by elxir; 12-27-2010 at 07:28 PM.
|
|
#3
12-27-2010, 09:10 PM
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
|
|
#4
12-28-2010, 01:09 AM
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
|
|
#5
12-28-2010, 01:24 AM
|
|||
|
|||
|
Hmm, arrogant was the first one to reply to overly humble. Opposites attract indeed.
On a serious note, the only one I see being implemented is the addition of xp and goals scored to the scoreboard. If the kill log (which I'm fine with atm) is reworked for #4 it could be with a grayed out mini version of the killer's perk (regardless of death by warp). To be honest, I don't think many people really care about how the person was killed. I personally only look at the names and colors to get a rough picture of who's alive and if it's a good time to push in with the bomb (I'm talking strictly TBD here). Also, elxir: goals are 50xp each. I refuse to read your tl;dr further than that unless you provide additional pics :<
|
|
#6
12-28-2010, 05:51 AM
|
|||
|
|||
|
1. As people already mentioned, you can get a fairly accurate reading on health level by the color of the smoke (though not exact). If you have those big flashy popups they added turned on you also get to see the perk loadout of the plane that killed you!
4. You might try turning on the old xp log under options, which shows the kills, assists, etc. that you get ingame. They removed it as a default setting when they added the new popups, but it's really helpful. Overall, great ideas! You shouldn't be so hard on yourself. Just think of this thread next time you wonder if your ideas are well thought out enough to post: http://altitudegame.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2256 
Last edited by Pieface; 12-28-2010 at 05:55 AM.
|
|
#7
12-28-2010, 03:48 PM
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
And I know, most of these are little things that wouldn't change much about the game. I did turn on the XP log which helps me know when I'm actually doing useful things. But the reason I'd like everyone to see it on the scoreboard sorting is that I really think it would encourage better playing. People want to be on top of the scoreboard. It's just the competitive gamer mentality. You look and see your name towering over the pile of peons below you, and you feel great. A lot of people get so tunnel-visioned on that top score that they ignore anything else that they should be doing. Everyone death-matching in the middle of ball maps, I'm looking at you here. Let me go back to the well and compare it to TF2 again. (I swear I've played other games besides TF2. Shut up!) There, everything on the scoreboard is sorted by points, and it's used as a way to get people doing the right things. Capturing objectives gets you points, healing teammates as a medic gets you points, building things as an engineer that your teammates use gets you points, etc. So people are encouraged to do things besides just kill kill kill all the time by the invisible hand of the scoreboard. Of course kills get you plenty of XP as well, so it wouldn't be surprising to see scoreboards sort pretty similarly to the way they do right now. But it would encourage people to play more of a support role and less of a lone hero role. Right now assists just show up in grey (which is an odd color choice, makes them look unimportant somehow) and don't really do anything. If things sorted by XP, someone with a ton of assists would actually see their place rise in the list. Anyway, I think I'm overstating my point by now. Thanks for the replies.
|
|
#8
12-28-2010, 03:57 PM
|
|||
|
|||
|
I actually dig the vertical split idea. There are quite a few threads hoping for better scoreboards, I'm almost tempted to say the best would be to expose the score-board to modding. A pure ball server has different score-board needs than a mixed server. Or rather the scoreboard kind of needs different info depending on the game type.
If there was a way to script scoreboards the community could experiment with layouts and over time some could be made standard.
|
 |
|
|
Linear Mode
