Sneak Peek #60

[Chromedome2 34]

5 hours ago, Aleš Ulm said:

and because we know that absolute majority of our players play in 3rd person mode most of the time

I don't believe this is true... Very few, in fact, are even active on the forums and of those who are, most of them prefer 1st person mode. In my experience, I have never been forced to switch from 1st to 3rd person mode except where you are attempting to force us to play in 3rd person mode in the coming update. I am 58 years old and my eyesight isn't all that sharp anymore! I can only see well enough to play the game in 1st person mode. Moreover, we do not get the full range of motion to either aim at or interact with objects and entities in 3rd person mode.  If this change goes into effect I personally will not be playing Ylands anymore.

[Chromedome2 34]

3 hours ago, RedEagle_P1. said:

There are simply too many 1st person camera glitches and "weird" moments that we won't be able to fix in time.

Artificial deadlines?! I just bet that if Ylands had never been released into early access you would have found the time to fix all that and more!!! But because it is in early access and you got paid upfront corporate mismanagement of all sorts has made it impossible to do the right thing. This statement was not intended for RedEagle_P1 but rather for the Ylands devs.

Edited November 11, 2018 by Chromedome2

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

12 hours ago, TheSparkPlug said:

So, it will be a lot less temporary than you were leading us to believe!

I'm not sure what you mean by that - I don't see anything that we said which could be  considered misleading in any way. We simply said that we are disabling the 1st person camera mode just like we did with the water simulation (which we explained earlier) and that it would eventually return. As soon as we saw players had questions about this topic / that it was important to them, we immediately elaborated on that. I'd say we try to be as transparent about this as possible  

@Chromedome2 As for not believing us that most players play the game in 3rd person view - I respect your opinion, but our decision was based on data we're getting from anonymous ingame analytics which is a very precise way of telling what players' habits are.
 

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

15 hours ago, Chromedome2 said:

I don't believe this is true... Very few, in fact, are even active on the forums and of those who are, most of them prefer 1st person mode. In my experience, I have never been forced to switch from 1st to 3rd person mode except where you are attempting to force us to play in 3rd person mode in the coming update. I am 58 years old and my eyesight isn't all that sharp anymore! I can only see well enough to play the game in 1st person mode. Moreover, we do not get the full range of motion to either aim at or interact with objects and entities in 3rd person mode.  If this change goes into effect I personally will not be playing Ylands anymore.

I apologize, I need to read these a little bit more carefully. I thought it was a permanent removal of first person. I read from in bed

I feel bad!

 

[dj__jg 2]

5 hours ago, Aleš Ulm said:

I'm not sure what you mean by that - I don't see anything that we said which could be  considered misleading in any way. We simply said that we are disabling the 1st person camera mode just like we did with the water simulation (which we explained earlier) and that it would eventually return. As soon as we saw players had questions about this topic / that it was important to them, we immediately elaborated on that. I'd say we try to be as transparent about this as possible  

@Chromedome2 As for not believing us that most players play the game in 3rd person view - I respect your opinion, but our decision was based on data we're getting from anonymous ingame analytics which is a very precise way of telling what players' habits are.
 

Would it perhaps be possible to keep first person as an 'option' hidden in the console or something like that? I don't mind it being a bit buggy and I can understand that it isn't something that can be fixed short-term. I also understand that you wouldn't want to have a buggy feature easily accessible because it might scare away players. If it were locked away in the console, perhaps with some all caps warnings about it being an experimental and unsupported feature that wouldn't be a problem and those that really want the feature can still access the buggy version for the time being.

 

I also have some questions about the nature of the in-game analytics: I probably spend a large majority of my time in third person, whilst sailing or exploring an island. However, the short times I do turn on first person, I really really really want first person. Stuff like lining up things outside of the building grid. By definition the camera will always be farther away when you do stuff like that in third person because the player will always be inbetween you and the thing you're trying to interact with.

However, this might show up as: 90% of time spent in third person, 10% of time spent in first person. I don't know if your analytics work that way but this might skew them.

I also have to say that I just plain like first person sometimes. It greatly enhances immersion. When I go into FPV on my tiny ship in the middle of the ocean in a thunderstorm, it feels /really/ awesome. I might not play in FPV most of the time, but the moments I do are very valuable to me.

[Indomitus 388]

It seems to me that, apart from a few who play 1st Person at all times, most of us are concerned about specific situations where the 3rd Person camera either fails or is not accurate enough.  It sounds like BI is trying to correct the camera (or surrounding game mechanics) for those cases, which is definitely a good thing.  Ylands is a casual game, and the majority of casual gamers either prefer or are perfectly fine with 3rd Person.  It makes sense to make that the dev's focus in this case.  The fact that we have to switch cameras so much just points to why it needs to be done.  We shouldn't have to rely on that to play the game.

I'm not 100% in agreement with removing 1st Person entirely.  As was pointed out a couple times already, maybe it could be a hidden option with warnings that it's not fully supported yet.  That way the players who prefer 1st Person could still have it, and just deal with the accompanying bugs for a while.

And for the rest of us, I think we can give the update a workout and let BI know about some specific cases where it might not be good enough yet, so they can get the 3rd Person camera working as well as possible before the full launch.  I'm sure it would be not problem for us to do some extensive testing on precision digging (like clearing floating bits), tunneling, building, planting, picking, and so on, and let them know what still needs to be improved.

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

You are right - many players play most of the time playing in 3rd person mode and switch to 1st person only when needed. That's exactly the problem though - if you're building something and feel like your avatar gets in the way then a better solution than switching over to the 1st person mode is for us to make 3rd camera work better. I would ask you to give the new building mode present in 0.11 a try - I think you will find it much more convenient than before. 

I also agree that first person camera view is better suited for some situation (especially in "cinematic" moments like the one you mention) and that's exactly the reason why we're removing it only temporarily. 

We definitely can't leave 1st person camera in its current state fully accessible when we get to 1.0 - while some of the players might be fine with it being broken, imagine someone (let's say a former Minecraft player) who is used to playing the game in 1st person mode. They start Ylands, switch to 1st person mode... and pretty much immediately see that many actions are simply not possible to do there. That is quite obviously broken. We can't in good conscience call a game polished and fixed with this present - and currently it's too much work to make it perfect (especially since we need to do this with 3rd person camera first).

The idea of letting players access some sort of "experimental" 1st person camera mode via console is something we will definitely discuss. It's too soon to say if it something like that will happen but we'll weigh pros and cons and let you know. But what's most important - please understand that we do Ylands for you, the players. Many of you know that we take your feedback very seriously (I've been talking to you this way for five years now ), so I can assure you that when we decide to do something like disable an existing feature, it's not a sudden decision and we understand that it will result in some frustration. That's exactly why we're telling you that this is not permanent  

[TheSparkPlug 128]

56 minutes ago, Aleš Ulm said:

please understand that we do Ylands for you, the players

No. No you don't. It's your living. You do it to make money.

Absolutely nothing wrong with that, so no need to lie

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

55 minutes ago, TheSparkPlug said:

No. No you don't. It's your living. You do it to make money.

Absolutely nothing wrong with that, so no need to lie

Well, what can I say? You see right through us all. We all do it simply to make money. All the programmers who could easily make 2-3 times more money in banks or large multinational companies (I personally know people who actually left positions with way higher salaries because they wanted to do what they love - make games), all the developers who do crunches and work long weekends. I guess it's finally time for us all to come clean - it's not at all about passion and loving games, it's just the money  

[Miguel Preguisa 443]

4 hours ago, TheSparkPlug said:

No. No you don't. It's your living. You do it to make money.

Absolutely nothing wrong with that, so no need to lie

I'm sure there are more ways to make more money than to develop Ylands the way they do.  I may change my mind when Canadian devil with his freemium users takes over both multiplayer and singleplayer, but that  does seem far away  Even though I don't play nearly as much as you all do, I'm around Ylands quite a long time now, and let me tell you, that I'm 100% certain that most (or at least some) devs actually love this game and they take it not just as job but also as a passion. All my love for the game aside, that is the truth that's not that hard to see. Just take a look at them talking about the game anywhere! 

[bojo2736 1016]

4 hours ago, TheSparkPlug said:

No. No you don't. It's your living. You do it to make money.

Absolutely nothing wrong with that, so no need to lie

Really? I do what I do for a paycheck. It doesn't negate the fact that I do my best. 

Can the first person mode in the interim be a command like the free camera mode?

I don't use it much, but when I do it's  because I need to. I can't imagine changing 3rd person will fix that.

Also, in a not unrelated note, can planting seeds be made to snap to a grid?

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

4 hours ago, TheSparkPlug said:

No. No you don't. It's your living. You do it to make money.

Absolutely nothing wrong with that, so no need to lie

Having been speaking to @Aleš Ulm quite a lot over the last two weeks I can say that he really has an incredible passion and vision for Ylands. He's not somebody who strikes me as doing it for the money hardly at all. 

That said I don't think there's anything wrong with working for money, everyone does it so what's the taboo? At the end of the day we all need to eat. 

 

[Chromedome2 34]

22 hours ago, Chromedome2 said:

we do not get the full range of motion to either aim at or interact with objects and entities in 3rd person mode. 

In 3rd person mode, it would be impossible for me to make all the cloth that was required for the Awnings that were used to build even the Grill and Pergola that you see below let alone the Cabana which follows. Without the cube, it was a labor-intensive grind requiring no fewer than 400 Sisal Agave plants, 34 Spinning Wheels and a dozen looms ...It was a lot of very precise clicking! It's all about precision and depth perception. It can not be done in 3rd person mode. Then too, aside from that let's say we're in the caves and Mutants are beneath us and we are using a propeller pack and a spear, in 1st person view we can actually see the mutants and kill them but in 3rd person mode, we cannot. The mutants will not gather just a bit away from us so that we can kill them but they will always gather directly below us where we will not even be able to aim at them let alone hit them.

[TheSparkPlug 128]

2 hours ago, RedEagle_P1. said:

That said I don't think there's anything wrong with working for money, everyone does it so what's the taboo?

None. hence me saying - quite clearly  - "Absolutely nothing wrong with that"

[bojo2736 1016]

In discussion of the various cameras, I feel like an aspect of the game is being overlooked, at least from anything I have read.

I play Sims 4.  One of the things that is very important to that community is story telling.  Many Simmers play the game to tell stories.  They screen cap and video record.  Some write actual stories and act them out.

From what I understand this is something people use GTAV for. 

Having a way to use Ylands this way is an obvious addition to the idea of being able to build your own games.

It would be great to add a director edit, various camera angles. In director edit, maybe the player name tags could be turned off. 

Maybe while you are perfecting first person, consider adding features that would allow for video making and machinemas.  If you've seen Red Dead Redemption II this is something they do amazingly.  The thing looks like a movie.

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

Guys, I totally understand that you're worried that without the first person camera some things may be difficult (if not impossible)  to achieve but I think you should give us a benefit of the doubt and wait till 0.11 comes out. You mention things like problematic building and combat in 3rd person mode - both of which have been reworked and are now much better in 0.11. The update is coming out very soon, so be sure to give it a try and let us know how do you feel about those new systems so that we can improve then even further.  

Machinimas: we see this as something extremely important. Adding some editing video editing tools in future is a must - but I hope we will be able to add at least some small improvements to free camera before 1.0 to make it more useful.

[Chromedome2 34]

2 hours ago, Aleš Ulm said:

The update is coming out very soon, so be sure to give it a try and let us know how do you feel about those new systems so that we can improve then even further.  

Well then, I suppose it wouldn't be fair to any of you if I didn't wait until after the new update and at least give it an honest chance to prove me wrong! 

Edited November 13, 2018 by Chromedome2

[burzummy 4]

On 11/12/2018 at 4:35 PM, Aleš Ulm said:

@Chromedome2 As for not believing us that most players play the game in 3rd person view - I respect your opinion, but our decision was based on data we're getting from anonymous ingame analytics which is a very precise way of telling what players' habits are.
 

Thats what we called User Experience