Make it optional ... 1st person for the REAL MEKKAS ... Third Person for the others.
I hate the Third Person view, it makes me think of being dragged behind a Metal Duck!

Or better make a small player/window inside the cockpit showing the back/side/top of the Mech and where it is heading towards ... nearly like a follow-the-missile-camera-mode.

p.s. Defender whats that about someone abusively treating their Grammar/Style?
p.p.s. Defender U K W I S ...

An interesting idea.  I'm only 98 pages into the book Way of the Clans and that is the first battletech book I've read so I haven't run into this concept yet.  However I'm still in favor of first person with a third person option that you can use to take screen shots with as long as it can't be used as an advantage in other words cheating.

Who said there will be such thing in MWLL? Many consider that an unfair advantage.

So basically, 3rd person is here to stay, as default regardless of the fact that most people prefer 1st person. With the justification being that you guys want to be able to see the models of all the mechs you worked on.

I personally think you are dicing up a significant gameplay element for aesthetics. Information is a vital part of any shooter. With your 3rd person view I could use a scout mech to report on enemy movement while hiding behind a hill. I don't need any UI, or even weapons enabled, to give an advantage to my team. You could tweak the 3rd person views such that they become very difficult to use in such a way, but then, they're also less useful for looking at your mech. [Which is apparently more important than the effects on gameplay.]

I'm taking a hard stance on this one because I vehemently disagree with your reasoning. If you want to incorporate the 3rd person view into the gameplay, and design around that, I don't have a problem. But adding 3rd person view just because you want to look at the models...


To me the options are thus:
1st person is more realistic, and confines a players view while in the mech. However, screenshots of a players own mech are not possible.
3rd person is less realistic, but allows the player to take screenshots [and even make movies] to cinematic effect. The downside is that it is open to abuse in multiplayer, unless specifically guarded against.

I agree, third person should be OFF by default. There's absolutely no reasoning where it should be implemented as Default when there's clear advantages. Yes we put a lot of detail into the mechs and the artists work hard so you can enjoy them, but this is a combat game and as such you won't be focusing on looking at your own mech THAT often. You can already view the mechs in third person from the cockpit of your mech while you roll out with your Lance/Star.

I don't disagree with it's implementation, I just don't agree that it should be on by default.

I definitely agree it should be a server option and something you can filter by. If we can't end up changing it so it's something filterable in the browser, then it should be off by Default.

Why?

Because there are plenty of FP players that didn't want or feel like they should use third person but ended up joining servers where it wasn't in the name. Sure you could always leave, but do you really want to punish the majority of players? Why give an unfair advantage by default just because everyone can do it when most people don't/won't/didn't? There's no way to implement a Third Person camera and not have the advantage of height and view unless the camera is at Mech waist level unless of course you add enough depth of field, things become indistinct.

I'm not going to argue Pop-Tarting because that was a major MW4 issue and I believe (and sincerely hope) that we're going to be doing it differently.

Just because everyone can do it, doesn't mean the majority will enjoy doing it or even prefer to do it against the few who will take full advantage of that fact. I don't think it will be THAT much of an issue because most ToA maps will have aerospace..


 

I think a problem with the JJ's in MW 4 was that there wasn't much use to them, beside the obvious popping over a hill.

I'm thinking perhaps increasing the movement speed in the air while jump jets are engaged, depending on the tonnage of your mech. So a Shadow Cat zooms by with JJ's, while a Timber Wolf plods along at a ponderous pace. I advocate faster JJ speed, so as to make mechs with JJ's harder to hit while using them. By the same token, the player who is using JJ's should find it almost impossible to aim at anything as the reticle on his mech bounces and jiggles around due to the motion.