Are player tags that important?

[Mad-Mike]

Yep, fine how it is but I wouldnt mind if they got taken off.

[[R-CON]Burton]

There's actually no difference when the name tags are off - slightly hard when your mixed in with other squads - but I've played for a week or so without nametags after removing them for a demo.

If they are taken out of PR - they wont be able to just be taken out though as there's problems with identifying troublesome players. If we had what we have now when you're next to an enemy after 5 seconds his tag pops up - that would work IMO

[Snook]

I started a thread very similar to this

http://www.realitymod.com/forum/f18-...0m-radius.html

[system]

Originally Posted by [R-CON]Rudd

Removing labels is fine for me if they are a little way away,

I need nametags when they are close though, not for friendly fire avoidance, but to know the name of teh random guy I need to talk to.

Yeah I definitely agree with you, I don't think removing them would be the greatest idea.

[[R-DEV]Ninja2dan]

Personally I think the current system works just fine. It's fairly realistic as far as range and recognition goes. When I'm out in the field or just walking around post, I can tell who someone is at up to 50m. Beyond 50m and it can be harder to tell just from looking, due to all of their battle rattle covering up physical identifiers.

If you are looking at someone long enough, the tags show up. This also works in a fairly realistic manner because if you are looking at someone from a distance for a short time it might be hard to ID them. Watch them long enough, and you'll figure it out.

A problem with PR is that at a distance everyone looks the same. Kits stop rendering, or the base character models are so similar that it can be hard to tell. You don't see short/tall, skinny/buff soldiers running around. They are basically the same model just shaped ever so slightly different. Tags as they are now help eliminate FF that would normally not happen in real life.



And regarding air combat, pilots have something called IFF. This helps prevent friendly-fire accidents by marking their "scope" and shouting verbal alerts if you target a friendly aircraft. Tags in PR sort of function similar to an IFF system.

[SilverJohn]

Ninjadan made a very good point! Name Tags should remain exactly as they are, the system works very well and as realistic as it will get inside a virtual world.

Only thing that could maybe be changed to make things more true to life in this area is to remove players positions of the map screen, so that you only see your squad rather than every squad.

In a real battlefield you wont know exactly where everyone is and what they are doing but thats really a different subject entirely.

[[R-DEV]Ninja2dan]

Originally Posted by SilverJohn

Only thing that could maybe be changed to make things more true to life in this area is to remove players positions of the map screen, so that you only see your squad rather than every squad.

In a real battlefield you wont know exactly where everyone is and what they are doing but thats really a different subject entirely.

Actually, on the modern battlefield it's quite simple for conventional forces to maintain a pretty good situational awareness of all units. Basically, every unit should know who is on their left and right, and where they are exactly in order to avoid FF incidents. These positions are relayed back through the net and some poor bastard sitting in front of a PC updates his map with little markers.

With vehicles, the location updates are automatic thanks to GPS systems. With ground forces, their locations are not updated in real-time, just when either they or an adjoining force sends the update. But overall, it's accurate enough to know that the group in front of you is the good guy or not.


The system in PR is a little more "advanced" than our current systems because it allows real-time troop locations. This might, and I stress might, be possible in the near future if they get this LW crap integrated. Something to consider is that in real life you have much better communications between units, both visual and audio, that PR/BF2 is not capable of. Having the real-time map markers is mostly a "fix" for this as well.

There's probably some poor bastard named Mongo walking around in half a dozen LW systems over the last decade, with none being adopted yet.

[Duckmeister]

I think the markers should stay exactly as they are, as it simulates identification of long-distance sightings.

With the BF2 engine, everything looks the same once you get a certain distance away, so actual visual identification is not possible. This bypasses that, and therefore, no realism is lost, and everyone is happy.

[Sgt. Mahi]

+ How would you ever identify a smacktard/griefer??? Some guy could bother you a whole round and you wouldn't have a chance to report him to an admin because you wouldn't know what his name was.

[SilverJohn]

Good points Ninja, cant argue with that as i dont know what the newest tech out there is. So you have convinced me for now !

Mahi has also got a good point about the name tags and not beeing able to find a greifer. Had issues like this playing veteran mode on armed assault, when you dont have name tags you lose alot of awareness as to who people are, ended up at rallys we had to ask every mintue who's this, who's that who are you who's he? It was hella annoying!