One problem I had with EVE is that you really had no idea who or what your targets were...they were just a list in a window on the right of your screen, and dots to you on your hud. Since theres going to be dogfights and chases in JGE are you going to be able to clearly see who you're chasing, what clan they are in, etc...The type of thing where you'll remember someone the next time you meet.

I dont remember from the footage but they have gamplay videos out there that would tell  you

 I think name tags everywhere can ruin immersion, but I wouldn't be opposed to displaying the name of whatever target you've locked on to above his name or somewhere else in the UI wherever it's appropriate.

If you watch the vids in combat when an enemy is locked on to you'll see in the top left hand corner a portrait flash out. I believe other info on the target is contained in that box, I could be wrong as I'm just taking a guess from the videos released.

Yeah just seeing it when you lock on is really gay. It will just become really impersonal, no idea who you're attacking.

Theres no reason a name and squad logo can't come up digitally on your hud, just like your crosshair or something.

Originally posted by Calind0r

Yeah just seeing it when you lock on is really gay. It will just become really impersonal, no idea who you're attacking.

 

Theres no reason a name and squad logo can't come up digitally on your hud, just like your crosshair or something.

Meh.  All that matters to me is if they are red.  The names/clans etc are unimportant.  I try to make them dead, simple as that.

Then they may as well be mobs.

I want PvP to be personal, I know who I'm up against, form rivalries, friendships, see "X Squad" and know that they are badass from previous encounters, see someone I don't like from far away so I can chase after them, etc...

If they're nothing but a red dot until you put your crosshair over them, they may as well be mobs.

Originally posted by Calind0r

Then they may as well be mobs.

I want PvP to be personal, I know who I'm up against, form rivalries, friendships, see "X Squad" and know that they are badass from previous encounters, see someone I don't like from far away so I can chase after them, etc...

If they're nothing but a red dot until you put your crosshair over them, they may as well be mobs.

I think they're focusing more on faction vs faction than plaver vs player here. If they're to have these big battles that they claim to want, having names floating over ships might be a little confusing. I prefer to fight another faction and get the pilot info popping up when I lock on them. Also this is a space sim not a button mashing fantasy snooze fest, in a large battle I doubt you'd have the time to pick out the guy on the enemy faction you want to fight. I should imagine you'd be wasted long before you finished cruising around to find him even with names over ships.

I believe personal rivalry can be sorted out 1v1 at an appointed place so no need for names. In a large battle, players only looking to settle personal scores would just holding back their side and probably die long before finding their target. Perhaps they'll make names over ships optional for those that feel it's really neccessary, but if you've been playing these games since Elite I doubt it's really a desired feature, probably the opposite!

Originally posted by Agricola1

Originally posted by Calind0r

 

I think they're focusing more on faction vs faction than plaver vs player here. If they're to have these big battles that they claim to want, having names floating over ships might be a little confusing. I prefer to fight another faction and get the pilot info popping up when I lock on them. Also this is a space sim not a button mashing fantasy snooze fest, in a large battle I doubt you'd have the time to pick out the guy on the enemy faction you want to fight. I should imagine you'd be wasted long before you finished cruising around to find him even with names over ships.

I believe personal rivalry can be sorted out 1v1 at an appointed place so no need for names. In a large battle, players only looking to settle personal scores would just holding back their side and probably die long before finding their target. Perhaps they'll make names over ships optional for those that feel it's really neccessary, but if you've been playing these games since Elite I doubt it's really a desired feature, probably the opposite!

Yeah cause you'll never be PvPing except for mass PvP's right? How would names over ships be confusing in a big battle, if you wanted it off sure there would be an option, and you would have to see what faction/clan they were in order to attack them in the first place. And I thought it was going to be like the original Jumpgate, Squads can fight each other even if on the same faction. And whats this talk about "locking on" you just point and shoot at an enemy ship, you would only need to lock on if you were going to use missles. And picking out the one person has nothing to do with mass PvP's...have you ever even played a PvP based game game before? Even DaoC was RvR and it had some of the biggest rivalries ever. In a PvP based game you dont "sort out rivalries" at an appointed place...its a freaking rivalry, like playing a sports game, you meet the people/clan all the time in the game, and constantly battle, thats why its a rivalry.

A simple name-toggling button would suffice, I'd say. I would think nearly everyone would be playing with names enabled in this case, though.

Killspam in sector chat could be cool (eg. "So-and-so was blasted apart by Whatshisname's Gatling Ion Cannon Array."), although the negative of this is that the aggressor doesn't necessarily want people to know that he's there blowing up ships.

It will be radar based and target locking based just like any other flight simulator.  Part of your ship load out is a radar.  Various radars have various ranges and power consumption.  Therre is a sort of 3D-ish circle/globe on the bottom part of your HUD with various color dots and and lines that are within range.  if you want specific information you need to target it.  Which ones are players are obvious.  if they are out of radar range or have a radar jammer then you will need to see them visually.  If they are far away this may not be possible

Names over ships simply makes no sense when put into the context of space.  In Jumpgate classic I can get radars with over a 30k range, how would you even see a ship with your eyes at that range?  You can't.

Anyway the radar interface is fine.  Its not a list like EvE which I understand can be kind of annoying and hard to parse.  But it does share the same distance issues which is the way it should be seeing a big 10 character name on a pilot flying 20 KM out from you would be silly.  If they are close it doesn't really matter, this isn't EvE it will look a lot more personal in a dogfight.  And if you plan on attacking them you definitely want them targeted.  Especially if you use missles.

Its not like the name is coming up out of thin air, you are looking through a HUD of some kind aren't you? When a fighter jet's radar picks up a target miles away completely out of sight, its information still comes up on the pilot's hud...its not like he has no idea what's up ahead until he actually locks on from close range.

I guess it would make sense if they were really far away, unless you hovered a cursor over them...but if they were close by, especially in visible sight, it would make no sense at all for nothing to come up about the ship on your hud.

Personal - concerning or affecting a particular person or his or her private life and personality. A dogfight isnt personal just because you're up close. Personal PvP has to do with forming rivalries, respect, maybe even hatred. IE: WoW PvP is impersonal because its just a random person you don't know from another server, who you can't even talk to that you will meet in a Battlegrounds, whereas Lineage 2 or EVE is personal PvP, because you get to know enemies, fight them repeatedly, meet their clans, talk to them in game and on forums...I can't fathom why someone who likes PvP/PvP based games to not want to know who they are up against, or who is nearby before they actually lock on.

Originally posted by Calind0r

Its not like the name is coming up out of thin air, you are looking through a HUD of some kind aren't you? When a fighter jet's radar picks up a target miles away completely out of sight, its information still comes up on the pilot's hud...its not like he has no idea what's up ahead until he actually locks on from close range.

I guess it would make sense if they were really far away, unless you hovered a cursor over them...but if they were close by, especially in visible sight, it would make no sense at all for nothing to come up about the ship on your hud.

Personal - concerning or affecting a particular person or his or her private life and personality. A dogfight isnt personal just because you're up close. Personal PvP has to do with forming rivalries, respect, maybe even hatred. IE: WoW PvP is impersonal because its just a random person you don't know from another server, who you can't even talk to that you will meet in a Battlegrounds, whereas Lineage 2 or EVE is personal PvP, because you get to know enemies, fight them repeatedly, meet their clans, talk to them in game and on forums...I can't fathom why someone who likes PvP/PvP based games to not want to know who they are up against, or who is nearby before they actually lock on.

This isn't EvE your perspective is not a third person view with camera far away.  The view is from the cockpit.  A ship that is like 3-8 KM away is going to be indistringuishable from a star of some speck of asteroid.  Ships can go from 0 to a few KM away from each other in a matter of seconds.  They will regularly be 20 KM away.

Either use your radar and targeting or get killed.  Period.   Seeing a name over someone below the 5 KM range means very little and seeing them past the 5 KM would be such easy mode weaksuace as to be preposterous.  No serious PvPer could possibly think that is a good idea to completely subvert the radar mechanics and jammers and such.

As for info on them you get it all in the target window.  And I am not sure how JGE will work but the PvPers trash talk each other in JGC and mostly know each others abiltiies.  Its too low of a population to extrapolate that though.  But i am not a long time JGC players just someone who tried out the game to see what it is like.

But I would venture to say that a game like Jumpgate will be far more personal.  Because ability and flight style will be far more personal.  Exactly how formidable someone is will be far more personal than EvE or Lineage 2.

Well I guess I didn't realize you could get kilo meters away in a matter of seconds (makes me wonder how people will be able to dogfight and PvP if players are able to become a spec no different than a star in a few seconds).

And I doubt it will ever be more personal than Lineage 2. L2's politics and dramas are responsible for dozens of murders in Europe and Asia, including multiple accounts of in game clans meeting IRL to have parking lot brawls against each other.

When I played at Connect '08 last year, the scale was very much on a par with Jumpgate Classic. That is, I understand we're looking at weapons with a variety of ranges from close-range (800-1000m) guns to long range (4000m or more) slow-firing projectile weapons. The recent PC Gamer preview even mentions long-range howitzers with splash damage. There was no indication that outside of a couple of thousand metres a target was nothing more than a speck in the blackness of space, nor that a target could - in seconds - evade and put enough distance between his attacker and himself to make himself a miniscule target.

The game is still all about dogfighting; in-your-face guns-blazing fighter combat. ND aren't going to implement a mechanic that deliberately detracts from that philosophy.

edit: I hate the paragraph spacing on this forum

So how do these dog fights happen if someone is going to get out of visible range in a matter of seconds? Is it just going to be lock-on missle fighting. I thought the idea of dogfighting was that you get in chases with one another, have to shake them off, kind of like a jet fighter...or WW2 plane battle.

All the trailers for the game show the ship chasing someone and leading off firing lasers at them, it's very misleading if their target can get out of sight in a few seconds.

Sorry, you misinterpreted my post. Enemy pilots will not be out of range/sight in seconds. This is not LOMAC, head-to-head with full afterburners and a lock-on at 15km. This is taking the Star Destroyer head-on, jinking to avoid the bogies on your six pumping magnetically-accelerated plasma into your tailpipe, in-your-face (or six) pewpew dogfighting. There is no evidence from pre-alpha demos last year (Connect '08) to recent videos that people will be able to break combat and disappear in seconds.

It's all about the furballs, baby!

Then if you're not going to be able to dissapear in seconds, whats wrong with showing the names on your hud of all nearby visible ships?

I never said there was a problem. I only just hopped into this thread to clear up a few misconceptions. For what it's worth, unless the HUD has undergone a drastic overhaul (and it could have since March '08) then that's exactly what you did see - a target list you could prioritise (enemies, friends, containers, etc). Much like EVE I guess but it identified nearby pilots as well.

It works like that in Classic (though you need to cycle through targets). I imagine something similar will be in place in Evolution. Personally, I don't want to see names above ships, but having named targets in a list or in your target reticle is a must.