Can we, as a community, eliminate the "Grass" and "Snow" in Alderaan?

[SirMoody]

Can we, as a community, let this thread die?

 

If this Thread reaches 100 pages I'm going to go out and adopt a rescue puppy... better yet I'll adopt 2 and name them Easty and Westy!

[Saltydogg]

hmm... well it appears you misread my post or you're just avoiding the point i made. If you read what i wrote.. i said that Landmarks ARE NOT directions... the Directions are right/left or East and West... even in your response ^^ you used Directions in relation to your landmarks. you can't just say go to the gas station, then go to the mailbox, then go to the wal-mart... ... you need to know which direction to travel in first... not sure how you don't understand that...

 

If someone is in the Middle Node in Civil War, with walls blocking their view to either side, and you tell them to go to snow... they will need to know whether snow is to the west or to the east... (or to their right or to their left) .... you can't just give them the landmark...

 

And I can't help but notice that... Although you said it's stupid to use real life examples when referring to a game, you keep using .... real life examples.. lol... ... It's funny how quickly you show your maturity when you don't have a decent counter argument. In my post i only pointed out that Directions are still necessary even with landmarks... I didn't make it personal, i didn't call you names.... but in your reply you start with an insult.... *I don't know what world you live in but its a new one..." .... and then you end with an insult... *WAIT YOU ARE GARMIN! Come on everyone want to hear your sexy little voice now* ...

 

If discussions are just going to end by trying to insult the person on the opposing argument just because you are to stubborn to see their points of view,,, then why bother trying to discuss anything.

 

Some people just dont get it This is why I love discussions. By the way the Garmin comment wasnt a insult. Just saying I dont have a compass in my car. Soooooooooooooo

 

So lets run a quick experiment. You take a person in a WZ who is in the middle. The are facing whatever direction they are North South East West. Now you tell that person there is incomming to the west. Well they have to look at the compass, orientate according to the stars, put their abbacus away, then type in OMW. Instead that same person who is spatial aware is told incomming to grass. that person because of images flashing in the frontal lobe know exactally where to go because they know one place has more grass then snow.

[Saltydogg]

If this Thread reaches 100 pages I'm going to go out and adopt a rescue puppy... better yet I'll adopt 2 and name them Easty and Westy!

 

If you do I will start a petition on the forums to have the names legally changed to grassy and snowy. Class action too, you harmed two animals in the process of giving them names. More psycological harm to the animals I would have to say

[AboB]

Can't we, as a community, all just agree to disagree here? Or at least all agree that calling them 1, Mid, and A would be stupid and move along?

[vimm]

Notice in Voidstar when a bomb is planted it says east or west, and each door is either on the east or west side of the map? That is with exception to the final room, which has a north door. Edited July 19, 2012 by vimm

[Varicite]

The whole grass/snow aspect is to get rid of the necessity of using a minimap in the first place, because it forces the player to take their eyes off of the action to look at the minimap.

 

I think it instead forces the player to either leave their node to go find which side has the grass on it (if they are at mid), or to know beforehand (unless they can see through walls) which direction is which or the resulting word association game arguably requires more "attention" than a glance at the mini-map for a lot of people.

 

Then again, I have moved my mini-map to the bottom/center of my UI, kinda couched in by health bars (mine / target's), so it's not really a big deal to use my mini-map as it's located in a place I'm going to look during a fight at least once anyway. : P

[ItchyThePenguin]

Wowee! This thread is still kickin', eh?! Awesome...

 

So, here's my take on the whole East/Snow debate. Frankly, I can't understand why people insist on using Grass and Snow. It really is only helpful if you are standing at the grassy node or the snowy one. If you happen to be standing at mid, well, then it's a pretty useless call. If I'm at mid and someone calls Snow or Grass I have to go check which side is which and hope that my first choice was correct. Why is that? Because Snow and Grass aren't directions, plain and simple. If I can't see snow or grass then I'm completely blind and I'm gonna have to waste time figuring out which side is which. That's why it makes infinitely more sense to use East/West. Those are directions and there is no way to get confused about them. All it takes is a quick look at your mini map to make sure you're going the right direction!

[Narflar]

East/West = Universal and impossible to mistake.

[olagaton]

Notice in Voidstar when a bomb is planted it says east or west, and each door is either on the east or west side of the map? That is with exception to the final room, which has a north door.

Ironically enough, in Alderaan, neither turret on the side is called East/West when they are taken (like they are in Voidstar), which is yet another reason that leads me to believe that East/West is not the intended name for those turrets.

 

I think it instead forces the player to either leave their node to go find which side has the grass on it (if they are at mid), or to know beforehand (unless they can see through walls) which direction is which or the resulting word association game arguably requires more "attention" than a glance at the mini-map for a lot of people.

 

So, here's my take on the whole East/Snow debate. Frankly, I can't understand why people insist on using Grass and Snow. It really is only helpful if you are standing at the grassy node or the snowy one. If you happen to be standing at mid, well, then it's a pretty useless call. If I'm at mid and someone calls Snow or Grass I have to go check which side is which and hope that my first choice was correct.

It's disappointing to hear that players can't tell if one side is Snow or Grass from the middle. Unless you are looking directly at one of the walls in the middle, you will be able to see grass or snow leading one direction or the other. And in all honesty, if all that you are doing is looking directly at one of the walls while in the middle, it really doesn't matter if you answer the call to grass/snow or not.......your team is better off if you just leave the game in the first place to let someone else join. Find a good camera position, and you can see grass or snow from the middle very easily.

Edited July 19, 2012 by olagaton

[ItchyThePenguin]

It's disappointing to hear that players can't tell if one side is Snow or Grass from the middle. Unless you are looking directly at one of the walls in the middle, you will be able to see grass or snow leading one direction or the other. And in all honesty, if all that you are doing is looking directly at one of the walls while in the middle, it really doesn't matter if you answer the call to grass/snow or not.......your team is better off if you just leave the game in the first place to let someone else join. Find a good camera position, and you can see grass or snow from the middle very easily.

 

Oh, I know which direction is which if I'm standing at mid. My mistake -- I didn't communicate very clearly. What I meant was that you can't know which side is which if someone calls Snow or Grass when you are at mid (unless, like you said, your camera was in a nice place. Though having your camera in a nice place might prove to be more difficult if you are actively defending the node from an attacker). Snow and Grass aren't directions, therefore you can't know where to go unless you can see the ground. If someone calls out Snow or Grass and you still know which way to go without even looking at the ground (you know, if you were at, I dunno, mid) that means you've already associated Snow or Grass with East or West, respectively. And if that's the case -- why the hell are we calling "Snow" or "Grass"?

Edited July 19, 2012 by ItchyThePenguin

[Ashania]

The argument of 'it takes too long to look at minimap to see which is east/west' is ridiculous. As long as you have some form of education it would take a split second to glance at the minimap to find which way you're facing and which way you need to face/turn/go to be at east/west.

 

Saying snow/grass on the other hand takes a lot longer to determine unless you're at the spawn point and can see out of the window... or if you're actually stood on 'grass' or 'snow'.

 

East/West = Universal and impossible to mistake.

 

Now it's been said a million times, but it's really this simple.

[Jadescythe]

How is this thread still happening???

 

If you have 2 nodes, you should be at one of them (if you're not, shame on you). If someone calls for help regardless of direction, description, or lack of description, it should be pretty obvious where to go or not go depending on if you are currently overrun at your node. Not being attacked? Go to your other node. Being attacked? Why didn't you call it yourself? If you're at mid when your teammate calls for help and don't know which direction to go, try looking for the other green turret and run to it.

 

Honestly, just be happy they called at all and stop worrying about what it's called.

[Pistols]

How is this thread still happening???

 

Apparently this game hosts many helmet wearing derps lol.

[funkiestj]

The great thing about this thread is no one is saying:

• WZ is full of hacks, ZOMG rigged!
  
• class <X> is OP and need a nerf!
  
• if <blah blah blah> doesn't happen in the next <timeframe> I'm unsubbing
  

 

I'm sure you could go on and on listing all the annoying SWTOR forum memes that are not appearing in this thread.

Edited July 19, 2012 by funkiestj

[SeventhGate]

Been busy at work. Glad to see this thread is still going strong!

 

Let me respond to this issue.

 

I will concede, in an absolute vacuum of any knowledge of CV, East/West is the only way to direct someone where to go. But does that really make it the best way? Telling someone to go to the room left of the entrance is the best way to orient a new visitor to a house where to go. After living there a week, you simply say go to the kitchen.

 

Snow/Grass completely removes the element of figuring out which way is which from the equation. Yes, you can label East/West just as easily as Snow/Grass, but then the argument becomes, is East/West the best label vs. a descriptive name of the location??? I would argue it is not, as even the slightest hesitation to orient East/West would make it inferior to an instantaneous reaction to Grass/Snow which by its very nature cannot possibly invoke any momentary recall of which way is East/West. Either you know where it is, or you don't.

 

I propose that humans, by their very, perhaps illogical, nature remember descriptive landmark based locations better than they do directionally or any other method. Snow/Grass instinctively generates a faster response as they are based on the landmarks of the nodes (anyone still arguing one is not obviously snow or grass is simply not paying attention/possibly color blind).

 

But don't take my word for it, take these esteemed researchers in human memory's word for it!

 

"the present findings indicate that humans do not integrate experience on specific routes into a metric cognitive map for navigation but rely on rough survey knowledge from path integration. Rather, they primarily depend on a landmark-based navigation strategy,"

 

- Patrick Foo, William H. Warren, Andrew Duchon, and Michael J. Tarr; Brown University

 

"Many common spatial tasks in large-scale environments require people to use landmarks in order to establish a memory of their location (a place memory). For example, a new visitor to a city may establish a place memory of her hotel by learning the spatial relationships between it and several prominent nearby landmarks. This place memory will allow her to recognize her hotel when she is in its vicinity, and it can be used to guide navigation back to it from distant places (a process known as piloting or landmark-based navigation).

 

...in general, information available during learning about relative distances to landmarks influenced their answers more than information about bearing differences between the landmarks."

 

"For example, Hermer and Spelke (1996) adapted an animal

learning paradigm from Cheng (1986) and asked people to search for a target

that had been hidden in a one corner of an empty rectangular room. The

room had either three or four walls uniformly colored white. Hermer and

Spelke found that adults were consistently able to find the target if one wall

of the room was distinguished from the others in color."

(does this not sound very similar to our use of snow?

 

- DAVIDWALLER∗, JACK M. LOOMIS, REGINALD G. GOLLEDGE and

ANDREW C. BEALL

University of California (∗Author for correspondence: Department of Psychology, University

of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA; E-mail: waller@psych.ucsb.edu)

 

I unfortunately could not find any TOR specific studies regarding CV, but these studies do illustrate the instinctive manner in which humans remember navigation best based on landmarks as opposed to bearings or directions. Just like the army man I previously quoted said.

 

I wonder how these east/west folks talk in real life. When going to the ballpark, do they say "I'll meet you at the stadium east of the LIRR Mets-Willis Point station" or do they say "I'll meet you at Citifield."

 

In summary, for a complete new comer, I will concede East/West is probably better than looking out the window and telling him to remember Snow/Grass. It'll confuse the hell out of him. But AFTER a couple of rounds of CV, Grass/Snow I would argue generates a faster response time than east/west.

 

I find this really cool since it has science and sources in it. Good post!

 

However, I feel like the studies don't necessarily support an intrinsic superiority for labeling nodes as Snow/Grass vs. East/West. From the quotes provided, the studies appear to be talking about how humans navigate by creating mappings between landmarks. This is distinct, however, from the label you use for your destination. Before you can try to go somewhere, you must first know where you are trying to go. In this case, you have received information that you are supposed to go to a node. Which node? There are three of them. You are at one. In order to know which node you should go to, you need to associate the label the person provided with a spot in a mental representation of the map so you know which node you should go to. There are two different descriptive labels used here, one is the node that is east vs. the node that is west, the other is the node with snow on the ground vs. the node with grass.

 

Once you know which node to go to, you have to navigate your way there. The navigation process goes by landmark for almost everyone, since that is how humans tend to navigate (as supported by the articles mentioned). This is a distinct step from identifying which node you are going to, however, which is unrelated to the articles linked.

 

I would submit that the labels used are not important except that you need to know what they are. Personally, I use East/West. When someone says "Inc West", my thought process goes like this:

1) Picture map in head. I should be going to the node on the west part of the map.

2) Find a landmark (usually I am looking at one). Plot paths between this landmark and the node. Note that I don't use ground coloration as a landmark, I use spawn points, walls and nodes, since I likely already know where I am relative to those.

 

If someone says Grass/Snow, the process is exactly the same except there is an additional preprocessing step where I have to map Grass->west Snow->east before I do the node identification.

 

To summarize, my point is this; East/West designation is a descriptive label used to associate a particular node in your mental model of the war zone with the place the person wants you to go, not directions for how to get there. It has no real intrinsic benefit or disadvantage over Grass/Snow except that someone who has never played before and thus has no mental model of the layout of the zone can look at their mini-map and figure it out vs. having to go check the ground on each side (or just being confused as to what it means).

 

As to the Citifield point, I would expect to be given an identifying label I can use to plot directions from my location to its location. Whether the label of the place is Citifield Stadium or the Upper East Side of Manhattan, I can then figure out how to navigate there once I know where I am trying to get to. Just because something has a cardinal direction in its label doesn't make it a bad label.

[BlastingGravy]

It's disappointing to hear that players can't tell if one side is Snow or Grass from the middle. Unless you are looking directly at one of the walls in the middle, you will be able to see grass or snow leading one direction or the other.

What do you mean, "leading"? There is no grass or snow in the middle, just concrete (or whatever the Star Wars equivalent is). Are you are talking about the north and south ends, just below where you drop down after getting off the speeder?

And in all honesty, if all that you are doing is looking directly at one of the walls while in the middle, it really doesn't matter if you answer the call to grass/snow or not.......your team is better off if you just leave the game in the first place to let someone else join.

There's that elitism I predicted. Heaven forbid new players should be able to play too.

Find a good camera position, and you can see grass or snow from the middle very easily.

First of all, no you can't. Could you provide a screenshot proving otherwise? Second, it's ironic that the guy who thinks looking at the minimap wastes time sees no problem with constantly repositioning his camera to point away from the action.

[Darth_Philar]

I should probably point out that allies at mid require no incoming directions, so the argument that you can't see grass or snow from mid is moot.

 

One of these always applies:

1. Your team only has one base - directions are not needed as only one point needs to be defended.

2. Your team has one side and mid - directions are not needed as again only one point (other than mid) needs to be defended.

3. Your team has both side turrets - directions are not needed as you have no one at mid.

 

"Inc #" is all that your allies at mid will ever need as far as information goes. The location call is for the benefit of respawning players and people who are not at a node.

Edited July 19, 2012 by Darth_Philar

[olagaton]

The argument of 'it takes too long to look at minimap to see which is east/west' is ridiculous. As long as you have some form of education it would take a split second to glance at the minimap to find which way you're facing and which way you need to face/turn/go to be at east/west.

Tell that to millions of people who have gotten killed, maimed, or disabled in a car crash by taking a split second to look down at their GPS, spedometer, radar detector, etc. Looking away, whether it be for a split second or not, can have a major impact. That seems rather heartless of you to discredit the impact that such an act can have one a persons life, even going so far as to call it ridiculous......

 

it's ironic that the guy who thinks looking at the minimap wastes time sees no problem with constantly repositioning his camera to point away from the action.

I never said to constantly reposition your camera. Please re-read.

[BlastingGravy]

1. Your team only has one base - directions are not needed as only one point needs to be defended.

Are you implying that attacking requires no coordination?

I never said to constantly reposition your camera. Please re-read.

Again, all you can say is that I didn't read, even though I have proven time and again that you are wrong.

Are you implying that you never look at the enemy when attacking? Because in order to look for the fictitious landmarks you mentioned, you will have to look away from the enemy a majority of the time.

[AboB]

This thread is pretty much Plato arguing with Sartre.

Love it.

EDIT-I am also reminded of the story of the blind men and the elephant.

Edited July 20, 2012 by AboB
Thought of more stuff to say?

[Varicite]

Find a good camera position, and you can see grass or snow from the middle very easily.

 

It is possible to swing your camera around to see the side nodes, but it requires either repositioning or already being part of the way toward one of the sides. Either way requires more work than glancing at your mini-map, imo.

 

And that still does nothing to address the fact that you need to have already learned Snow and Grass prior to them becoming more useful than East and West. You can use East and West even if it's your first time in the WZ.

[Cinthorc]

Such a petty debate.

[Darth_Philar]

Are you implying that attacking requires no coordination?

 

You only call inc for nodes you are defending...

While attempting to coordinate an attack run, there is only one scenario in which you would ever need to identify which side turret to hit, and that is if you own mid only. Of course, in that particular scenario time is also not as vital as it is when calling an inc since as the losing team you have as much time as you want to coordinate before heading out which again makes the "can't see landmarks from mid" argument moot as you need not stand inside the base to plan.

[olagaton]

It is possible to swing your camera around to see the side nodes, but it requires either repositioning or already being part of the way toward one of the sides. Either way requires more work than glancing at your mini-map, imo.

 

And that still does nothing to address the fact that you need to have already learned Snow and Grass prior to them becoming more useful than East and West. You can use East and West even if it's your first time in the WZ.

Not if you don't use East/West normally in your day to day life. You would still need to re-learn E/W, even if its your first time in a WZ.

[Varicite]

Not if you don't use East/West normally in your day to day life. You would still need to re-learn E/W, even if its your first time in a WZ.

 

And this is where we agree to disagree, because I still have not met anyone in the past 30 years that has all of this extreme trouble reading simple directions on a map.

 

Certainly not so much that they need to "re-learn" cardinal directions, whether they play video games or not. Seriously, this is 3rd grade education.

 

If I can expect people to know that Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue, I can reasonably expect them to also know Never Eat Shredded Wheat.