21:9 Support [Solved]

[Myrthrac]

While I personally do not mind playing the game in a not 21:9 ratio (running it windowed borderless helps in my opinion) I only found out about the problems with aspect ratios after I bought the game on steam, where as far as I know no mentions about missing 21:9 aspect ratio support are made. I for one am quite confident in saying that I am unlikely to be the only one who bought the game not knowing that support for 21:9 is missing. I am playing the game as is and enjoying it so far, I'd just like better clarification for people who haven't followed the games development and thus knew of this problem, I for example just bought it because it looked interesting to me.

 

[BunglingLummox]

missing

This is not missing. It just isn't there. There's a big difference. Did you buy Overwatch and complain that the single player campaign was missing? At no point did HBS promise us 21:9 at launch, and in fact they openly stated the opposite on these forums.

Failure to research a game before purchase is entirely the fault of the buyer.

 

[UberMunchkin]

Failure to research a game before purchase is entirely the fault of the buyer.

Agreed, but as these widescreen format and extra sized monitors become more popular it would be nice if they could be supported by developers and platforms. For example my monitor runs at 3440x1440 but I have to play Battletech in a comparatively tiny window either in the middle or off to one side, not being able to play fullscreen at my native resolution is disappointing, but not unexpected.

 

[Myrthrac]

While I agree that I failed to research this beforehand I would expect that a game released in 2018 would have support for 21:9, besides as I wrote above I am enjoying the game, but I would have liked to know that not all resolutions and aspect ratios are supported without having to be active on the forums, as I for one made my decision to buy solely by the presentation on the steam store page.

 

[BunglingLummox]

I'm not disputing that it'd be nice to have ultrawide support, but the clue is in the name. Ultrawide monitors are not the established norm, and as such it's unreasonable to make assumptions, especially as BattleTech was never a triple-A title with a bottomless budget.

That's why I objected to the use of the word "missing". It implies that the 21:9 aspect ratio is somehow mandatory, when it's actually only relevant to a small slice of the market. It's a cool thing to have rather than an absolute must, and I've seen too many posts on here treating this like it's some kind of shocking failure not to cater to all possible aspect ratios.

 

[UberMunchkin]

I know exactly what you mean, for me it's annoying but not unexpected. The vast majority still play on old school 1920x1080 because the middle tier of GPUs is what is affordable to most people, 3440x1440 support would be a most welcome addition but it is not a must have.

The only annoying thing is that the game worked for me just fine in 3440x1440 windowed/borderless for about a week and then the first update stopped it from working at that resolution and now I have to play it at the base resolution in windowed mode.

 

[UncleGamer]

During Beta the game worked in 21:9 aspect with the exception of the setup windows for the MP aspect. The only real flaw outside those setup windows was the UI scaling was a bit off but the game did work and the resolution was seen in the setup. So to say they never planned to support it would be incorrect. Further in beta they acknowledged the issues in 21:9 so they knew that the issue was there.

While UW monitors may not be the established norm it is a growing segment. In fact the two major UW resolutions combine to make up a HIGHER percentage of Steam users than 4K and yet 4K has proper support. Plus we now have a 4th large hardware company jumping on the 32x9 bandwagon. While Samsung and Philips might be dismissed from the gaming world for PCs, Asus and MSI cannot be so easily brushed off. They see enough interest in this monitor style to put in the cost for development and marketing so the interest must be real.

As for the time anc sost to do this, Haemimont Games was able to put proper support into Surviving Mars. While it could still use some tweaking the game works well in 21:9. Both are smaller studio's with smaller budgets. Even Piranha Games, generally regard as a fairly poor game developer, managed with a small team and budget to have UW supported properly in MWO from the start. Even HBS thenselves have supported 21:9 in the past with the game Shadow Run Hong Kong having near perfect 21:9 support.

The frustration for many of us is that the game would work fine with 21:9 with some simple changes to the UI in some areas. Limit the cutscenes and menuing screens to 16:9, many companies do this and it is an acceptable practice. Once you do this then 21:9 support is not all that complicated as you are just increasing the area of the rendering engine which there are hooks for built into every API. Now provide some scaling of the in game UI, again something that most every game has done for many years and you have 21:9 support working.

In certain games a lack of 21:9 support makes sense. In Esports for example where it can be considered cheating during a competative level match. In fact in Overwatch they had to design the game to NOT support 21:9. Makes you wonder how hard it is to add it if the game dveloper had to actively create code to limit it.

In strategy and RPGs however 21:9 shines, the wider aspect ration gives a more immersive feel to the game play and opens the game vista's to the player.

Again let me be clear I can accept that they need time to work out all the kinks. I however am frustrated as an early backer that a feature many of have have been asking for since BEFORE the Beta has been put on the back burner and the official responses have been a brush off of the UW community.

I would love if they released a patch today that gave us UW support, but would be almost as happy if they would provide a real, substanstive official post on position and current status of UW support. Provide us some real answer and not a brush off. After all you took our money and knew what we wanted. At least talk to us.

 

[BunglingLummox]

[snip]

Most of this post is beside the point (I have mentioned before that "someone else did it" is not an argument for doing it yourself. Neither is "I've done it before").

Nobody is arguing that 21:9 wouldn't be a good thing, it just didn't make the cut. You clearly care deeply about this. I get that.

After all you took our money and knew what we wanted

This is still uncalled for and patently false. There's no way HBS can possibly know what we want when we buy the game. We can't even deal with them directly, having to use one of several storefronts to purchase from a third party (or Paradox, who're very recently no longer a third party). What were they supposed to do, stick an alert on the store page that says "Wait! Don't buy this if you want ultrawide support!"?

The information was there for anyone who was interested.

 

[Rifter]

Dont worry guys im sure the ultrawide DLC will be along shortly.

 

[UncleGamer]

This is still uncalled for and patently false. There's no way HBS can possibly know what we want when we buy the game.

Again I refer you back to the beta when a number of us expressed the need for 21:9 support. Also again as I noted it was basically working in beta just needed to limit menu and cut scenes to 16:9 or even 1080P and allow for a bit of UI scaling.

Your position is true going forward but there was an awareness during the beta process.

 

[GUmby_Aaron]

Also again as I noted it was basically working in beta just needed to limit menu and cut scenes to 16:9 or even 1080P and allow for a bit of UI scaling.

those scenes were drawn up and animated in 2.39:1 (uwqhd) than HBS permanently bounded boxed them to fit a 16:9 window so if this game get the scaled to allow proper resolution support you will now have all those scenes tiny & centered on your display surrounded by quad black bars.....

 

[BunglingLummox]

Again I refer you back to the beta when a number of us expressed the need for 21:9 support.

If you had beta access, you were a backer, and that means you paid up at a time in the development process when nothing was certain and everything was at risk. The rhetoric is no more valid than it is for someone buying today.

 

[ArvidF]

This is not missing. It just isn't there. There's a big difference. Did you buy Overwatch and complain that the single player campaign was missing? At no point did HBS promise us 21:9 at launch, and in fact they openly stated the opposite on these forums.

Failure to research a game before purchase is entirely the fault of the buyer.

I bought Overwatch at launch and realised it didn't support 21:9. Me and many others complained about it to Blizzard and eventually they added it. Blizzard were against 21:9 in their games for a long time, but they came around on it since people kept asking for it. That is why forum threads like these are so important.

 

[MajorPrankster]

I bought Overwatch at launch and realised it didn't support 21:9. Me and many others complained about it to Blizzard and eventually they added it. Blizzard were against 21:9 in their games for a long time, but they came around on it since people kept asking for it. That is why forum threads like these are so important.

I postulate tone and delivery of message are also important.

Some people demand while others ask.

IMO, there is no logic in the the view that a software company 'failed' simply because they chose not to add something a set of users desired.
Tearing into the developers and other players is not the answer to getting things added.
Rude customers should never be coddled, only ignored.

 

[Havamal]

Greetings Mechwarriors,

Except in this case the Devs said they're working in it on one hand, and on the other;

Please consider: Expressing one's criticism or opinion in a respectful manner is appreciated as it helps inform the entities of community interests as they make decisions going forward, even when the respectfully phrased criticism or opinion reflects an unhappy feeling. However, it's not the same behavior as consistently posting the same negativity repeatedly in the same thread or especially across threads. Thats what would lead to such being either opinion spamming, or trolling others depending.

Also: Community members are welcome and encouraged to express respectfully phrased criticism and negative opinions, but not to make it personal or wage a campaign in doing so.

Opinion spamming can't speed the development process...

If your perspective has been posted and documented, please consider taking break rather than hammering at it leading to opinion spamming.


Thank you.

 

[ArvidF]

I postulate tone and delivery of message are also important.

Some people demand while others ask.

IMO, there is no logic in the the view that a software company 'failed' simply because they chose not to add something a set of users desired.
Tearing into the developers and other players is not the answer to getting things added.
Rude customers should never be coddled, only ignored.

I agree, no reason to be rude or threaten the developers. We should keep expressing our desire for this feature, the more people the better, that will make it easier for HBS to justify it as a priority feature.

 

[BunglingLummox]

I bought Overwatch at launch and realised it didn't support 21:9. Me and many others complained about it to Blizzard and eventually they added it. Blizzard were against 21:9 in their games for a long time, but they came around on it since people kept asking for it. That is why forum threads like these are so important.

Please explain how that has anything to do with my objection to the use of the word "missing".

There is a distinction between "not present" and "missing". Saying "but if we complain it might get added" is a non sequitur. It's not wrong, it just has nothing to do with my point. Missing implies that it was supposed to be there in the first place. This is demonstrably false. If HBS had said "we will support 21:9 at launch", I'd accept that it's missing. They never did. They in fact confirmed that it would not be supported at launch. The lack of 21:9 support in the current build of the game is both deliberate and documented, and as such using the word "missing" is entirely inappropriate.

 

[ArvidF]

Please explain how that has anything to do with my objection to the use of the word "missing".

There is a distinction between "not present" and "missing". Saying "but if we complain it might get added" is a non sequitur. It's not wrong, it just has nothing to do with my point. Missing implies that it was supposed to be there in the first place. This is demonstrably false. If HBS had said "we will support 21:9 at launch", I'd accept that it's missing. They never did. They in fact confirmed that it would not be supported at launch. The lack of 21:9 support in the current build of the game is both deliberate and documented, and as such using the word "missing" is entirely inappropriate.

The game clearly supported 21:9 at launch, but it didn't work so they disabled it.
Also your definition of the word "missing" is rather narrow. If I taste a dish and say "this is good, but I feel it's missing something", that doesn't mean the recipe for the dish lacked a certain ingredient to be complete, but that in my opinion the dish would be better by adding it.

 

[Havamal]

The game clearly supported 21:9 at launch, but it didn't work so they disabled it.
Also your definition of the word "missing" is rather narrow. If I taste a dish and say "this is good, but I feel it's missing something", that doesn't mean the recipe for the dish lacked a certain ingredient do be complete, but that in my opinion the dish would be better by adding it.

The game never officially supported 21:9.
This information is contained in this very thread.

Support has been added to the post launch queue however.

Thank you.

 

[ArvidF]

The game never officially supported 21:9.
This information is contained in this very thread.

Support has been added to the post launch queue however.

Thank you.

I'm aware and I'm not disputing that in any way. The game did however at launch list 21:9 resolutions in video options among all other resolution choices. In fact the game defaulted to 3440x1440 for me the first time I launched it. I was just responding to @BunglingLummox comment to @Myrthrac. Since he wasn't aware of the 21:9 issues since the beta I think it was perfectly reasonable for him expect it to be supported. After all most games today do support it.