New Poll External third person view - Release is near

[Hellhawk666]

I voted for the complicated drone approach as it solves several problems.

I do want to be able to view my ship whilst in space, but I don't want an "over the shoulder" 3rd person view, not now and not when our avatar eventually become available either. It would, however, be nice to be able to take selfies (both stills and videos) and also to have a better, clearer and unobstructed view of space when taking screenshots and videos.

A pilotable drone camera that requires dedicated control to use would be a good solution - you can either fly your ship, or the drone, but not both at the same time.

 

[Deyn]

Now why do I just not use it? I wouldn't, but I would be at a serious disadvantage compared to someone who would.

I still doubt it would be a "serious" disadvantage, but as I said: I would be fine with a limitaion to Solo mode (There is no longer a single player, but that is another discussion)

Restricting it to singleplayer wouldn't be a very good solution - the most interesting footage would be tight PvP fights.

For you maybe. I personally have more important things to do than watching external in a dogfight even with NPCs let alone Human players... I guess many if not most people looking for an external view actually want to just watch their ship, the universe, planets, cool shots beside capital ships or stations, all the beauty the developers put into that galaxy... a group of players joining in a tight formation, a nice screenshot from outside, showing the squadron against an eclipse, taht sort of things.

Heck, I'm not even looking for a fight in Elite Dangerous at the moment.

So External View in Solo mode only is a very good compromise. Give a group the option to set it or not according to their liking and it could be perfect...

 

[Armour]

Now I get it. You are in fact the strongest 3rd person view defender among us. And you've been using 3rd degree sarcasm all along. Now it's obvious!

I wouldn't go that far. I actually think it should be low on the list of priorities for the devs, but, if they can fold it into a set of higher-priority gameplay improvements like with the drone idea, then I don't see anything wrong with it - just not in real-time.

That way, people can make all the flashy videos and take all the space selfies they like, whilst those of us with things to do can utilise the same drones for their more rewarding functionality: assisting in handling guard duty for miners or other player tasks, taking spy photos for political/military/industrial espionage purposes, scanning wrecked ships for valuable loot or evidence of alien involvement, or maybe even getting a mysterious high-paying job whereby a mystery EM signature is uploaded to your ship and your job is to head to system X, find a match, and record evidence...or destroy evidence.)

 

[Tar Stone]

Not necessarily, they could be recording multispectral EM data for (simulated) AV playback upon retrieval/upload, that could conceivably allow for any POV within the capture radius. Obviously, real-time could be out, but I don't see that as being an issue, personally.

My idea was electromagnetic data capture drones. An EM drone's rating would determine the available bandwidth and power level. These stats would determine the overall max range/duration of capture.

EM drones could be tuned to a window of the total spectrum (e.g. gamma rays, x-rays, infra-red, ROYGBIV, UV, etc) which would have a bearing upon the range and resolution of the data captured, due to the bandwidth limit mentioned earlier. Opening the EM window wider would decrease max available range/resolution.

The spatial volume being scanned would also affect resolution - you could capture a full sphere in low res (only suitable for basic spectral analysis)...or you could restrict the scan angle to a smaller volume and get higher res results for accuracy (suitable for slow-scan exploration).

With this mechanic you could tune a capture drone to scanner range, set it to follow your ship at a safe distance, and capture all the useful volumetric EM data within that sphere for later retrieval and upload to your HUD/HDD/etc. The same drone retuned could scan a set of asteroids for a given EM signature (say, palladium), and then be set to patrol at a given radius for any IR activity, increasing your scanner range and alerting you when a new signature enters your sphere.

I doubt they'll go down that route, but I think it offers a lot or depth over magic floaty cam, aim and shoot mining, and "x new astronomical objects found" exploration. Anyway, it's a sidetrack to the main conversation, but I think you can probably see where I am coming from and why I think drones are a better bet to model external views.

This is a genius idea, please PM this to someone important

Sending probes down to planetary surfaces looking for assassination targets?

Won't be a popular idea, but I'd happily loose the walking around stuff in return for another year of developing ideas like this.

edit - ideas like this come about when you restrict the normal and expected things like magic floaty cams and actually have to think outside the box.

 

[Deyn]

Apparently, you didn't watch the entire video (why am I not surprised, I wonder) - skip here: http://youtu.be/v7zoVIsIT2A?t=3m38s for aspects of vehicles and here: http://youtu.be/v7zoVIsIT2A?t=6m2s for flight.

Moreover, Arma has hardcore servers, disallowing all third person perspectives, somthing ED doesn't have.

Real time third person would either be unsatisfyingly restricted or turn ED into something as shallow as War thunders arcade mode.

In fact I did, but the Helicopter example was basically the same as on the ground with troops or vehicles. Zhe thing is in space there is no GROUND, no BUILDINGS to hide behind... the few asteroids in a ring.

And just an idea: How about limiting to external view to "active shields only" so with silent running etc. you can't use it?

As for "hardcore servers": Brilliant idea - If Frontier could give us the option to chose between a "hardcore sim instance" and a "external view enabled instance" to join when playing, that would be perfect!!! Indeed a brilliant idea! I love that, all people opposing external cam can join the hardcore servers and slug it out as real as it gets, and others more fun and sightseeing addicted people can join the game mode servers.

 

[MarcusReed]

Yes please, we need external view. But not in fights.

 

[Deyn]

I wouldn't go that far. I actually think it should be low on the list of priorities for the devs, but, if they can fold it into a set of higher-priority gameplay improvements like with the drone idea, then I don't see anything wrong with it - just not in real-time.

Just consider that they currently have to redact the external cam for the public builds, as the external views are already in the game (that's how the devs do the nice promo videos and screenshots). I guess every new release somebody has to take care the dreaded external cam is really deactivated and can't be just hacked through a keybind... wasting precious development time on that.

 

[Armour]

Just consider that they currently have to redact the external cam for the public builds, as the external views are already in the game (that's how the devs do the nice promo videos and screenshots). I guess every new release somebody has to take care the dreaded external cam is really deactivated and can't be just hacked through a keybind... wasting precious development time on that.

Yeah, I'm sure that selecting "release" as opposed to "debug" when activating the build process takes them hours. I'm sure they have invulnerability on demand, infinite credits, and a scripting console bound to a keypress in their debug builds as well - perhaps they should leave all that in too! It must be a lot of trouble to remove it, after all. (Consider that particular straw well and truly clutched at and let's move on.)

 

[Draven Darken]

I'd vastly prefer the drone solution, as it could be integrated into the game as a functional technology with actual use in certain situations. Failing that, I'd at least want to see any external views confined to non-combat situations. But I wouldn't want to see either one of those be something that was opened up for solo mode only, because I can imagine some people would very much like to take screen shots of themselves flying in formation with their friends.

 

[barcode]

Yeah, I'm a fan of drones. I can see them being very useful for mining and exploration.

 

[DYSEQTA]

Congrats on creating another loaded poll. Try creating a poll that is simply 3 options. 1 Unrestricted 3PV, 2 Vanity Only 3PV, 3. No 3PV. The answer will be 2 so I'll save you the trouble.

 

[Diamond Dog]

Not that it matters what we want... but I'm up for non combat camera drones for screenshots and just to look at my ship. But I don't want a 3rd person view. Get a Dk2 you won't want 3rd person. Seriously, you have no idea what your missing!

Edit: By the way that poll is stacked. (Bias) You should be a journalist

 

[Araviel]

i have seen it to many times, games making fantastic first person interiors that people never use because they also added a third person perspective that gives much better situational awareness.

 

[WeirdWizard]

Not that it matters what we want... but I'm up for non combat camera drones for screenshots and just to look at my ship. But I don't want a 3rd person view. Get a Dk2 you won't want 3rd person. Seriously, you have no idea what your missing!

Edit: By the way that poll is stacked. (Bias) You should be a journalist

Sorry but if external views should be non-combat then so should the OR and head tracking.

 

[pocketmoon]

"No - Maybe yes with a complicated solution with drones or something"

I protest your choice of wording!

 

[Toss]

External view would give a bit more satisfaction from different paits and decls we are buying.
I would not like to see it exploitable in combat situations though. I kinda like the drone solution - only if it does not take any extra equipment slots. May be allow an external view that block any hardpoint/equipment manipulation for 5-10 seconds?

 

[Riedquat]

Yes for external view whenever you like, just give it a very slow rotational camera.

 

[WeirdWizard]

"No - Maybe yes with a complicated solution with drones or something"

I protest your choice of wording!

Sadly the poll options are poorly worded... Forums polls almost always are, it seems this one is being allowed to run though so its the best we have, the options may have a bit of bias built into them but its easy enough to understand what each means.

Personally I'd like to see a straight forward set of three options. External views open and solo, external views in solo only and no external views. Because I think the options of external views but not in combat and external views only through some sort of vague drone system come across as safe options which which people will choose without really thinking too much about it but actually both have a distinct chance of ruining the usefulness of the feature. (drones more than combat but still).

But we are where we are, Frontier seem to be quite suborn about these sort of things anyway and its their game to gimp if they want. We can feedback as loudly and clearly as we can and then we just have to choose to give Frontier our continued support and custom or not.

 

[ZeeWolf]

What a biassed poll. I can only vote no for a "bla bla bla complicated reason" or because I don't want anyone else to have external views?

 

[WeirdWizard]

What a biassed poll. I can only vote no for a "bla bla bla complicated reason" or because I don't want anyone else to have external views?

Yes its overly emotivly written but at the end of the day a no vote is implicitly the same as saying you don't want anyone else to have it. So just hit that option and don't feel bad, you're entitled to your opinion. Its wrong, but then your hardly alone in that