Guild Wars 2

please remove the feature!

Ok so from this post anet you should realize this isnt a good feature..the changes to pvp are great and highly appreciated. This one is a no go.

jonnis.2946:

Soloq: This has the potential to be a massive bonus by breaking down the barriers posed by limited communication to open up the possibility of better play, here to me it makes perfect sense.

reposted 4 emphasis

it’s very much appreciated – improves the game experience a lot in soloq

gj

for now its nothing more than a minor mesmer buff that only comes into play with multiple mesmers in the game anyway so no big deal – kinda fun for mesmer actually

tichorum.2415:

This is a horrible QoL improvement. Team coordination? That’s PART OF THE GAME that you have to communicate. You’re just making it easier for teams to NOT talk and call out numbers because you see it on the map yourself now.

Teams almost never communicate in solo queue. This feature is a better than nothing QoL improvement that adds more strategical depth to solo queue matches.

Overall a good change. Still needs a bit of refinement though.

I strongly disagree with the suggestions that it decreases team queue skill though. Really how hard is it to tell people who you are fighting? Removing this need reduces the noise clutter allowing other things to be coordinated instead. There is a definitive limit to how much information can be sent over voice chat. Now we have information of enemy positions + increased ability to coordinate skills and discuss strategy = more information available for a player to make use of → Higher skill cap. People just need time to adjust and for the game to have more skills that rewards coordination.

Now with Mesmers it could use more refinement. Eg. Depending on the number of mesmer clones summoned the size of the icon shrinks. Should make it much easier to discern number of players without giving away the mesmers position.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Mesmer’s initially just showed on the mini-map as the Mesmer himself. I felt this was unfair to them exclusively because their class mechanics rely on deception. It made it so you basically ALWAYS knew which one was the real Mesmer because you just had to simply look at the map.

If you guys can provide a reasonable and better solution in terms of what we could do for Mesmer’s feel free to lay it on the table and we will consider it. Clutter is definitely an issue in itself; one we haven’t really solved in other areas of the game either.

Seeing opinions are divided , might be best to put an on/off option in it somewhere. So folks can chose.

And reducing the size of the icons could help clean up the clutter a bit.

but i have to say , I love the feature

just to make it clear: I like this new feature but not with the current cluttering that makes it useless and maybe even worse than it has been before.

To be honest, I haven’t had cluttering problems yet.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

It’s not my place to be giving design reasoning behind changes so I can try to get one of the guys to give a statement on this but the way I see it is that this change helps lessen the gap we have in player skill level. It’s an awesome quality of life improvement to team coordination and it’s going to help matches remain more competitive across the board. Team’s using voice comms will still have an upper advantage but I think that reducing the amount mal-rotations happening is a positive change.

Like I said in my original post, I actually think this was a fantastic decision in terms of Soloq, not bothered about it in hotjoin, and I think it takes away the skill level in Teamq, but aside from that, I do have a suggestion for a different improvement.

If you couldn’t see the characters fighting within say, 1500 range of you, on the minimap, then it would prevent mesmers deception being affected, but it would also prevent other people from seeing people trying to disengage that they might otherwise not have noticed.

If you implemented this change, you could have only one icon for the mesmer, as it doesn’t matter that you know which mesmer it is on another point, unless you take into account the fact teammates might communicate that to their team, but most points are normally such a mess theres no time to coordinate that in tPvP.

I outlined this suggestion in more detail having fully analysed the way the system works in this Post

I actually agree with you in general that the negative impact of having mesmer clones on the map is far outweighed by the downsides but I do think a different system needs to be in place.

Edit: Also completely agree that icons need to be smaller to reduce clutter, perhaps down to 2/3 size or so. That would help massively with generally interpreting the map. The players icons still showing up when dead is a slight issue, but I assume that is something you are looking to fix, given that downed allies/enemies already show up on the minimap

DiogoSilva.7089:

tichorum.2415:

This is a horrible QoL improvement. Team coordination? That’s PART OF THE GAME that you have to communicate. You’re just making it easier for teams to NOT talk and call out numbers because you see it on the map yourself now.

Teams almost never communicate in solo queue. This feature is a better than nothing QoL improvement that adds more strategical depth to solo queue matches.

Who cares about solo queue? I’m talking about team queue. Team queue should be priority over solo queue every time.

kirito.4138:

5x memser = woo WvW ZERG lvl

Haha lol!!

Good change, now fix condi bunkers, hotjoin is already flooded with them.

tichorum.2415:

Who cares about solo queue? I’m talking about team queue. Team queue should be priority over solo queue every time.

There are a bunch of free voice chat programs (eg. Teamspeak, Ventrillo, Mumble) out there that your team can utilize. They provide great 3rd party support and give you a better edge then minimap dots.

To re-state; the best suggestion I’ve seen about this topic is as follows:

Remove the class icons for players from the other team as this creates clutter.
Replace the icons of opponent teams on the map with dots with a color which corresponds with the class. (Like the ones you see your mini have)
Keep the class icons for team-mates. (Maybe make them a little smaller).

Problems solved:
1. Less overall clutter on the screen. All of the information is readily available and easy to read.
2. Mesmer clones cannot be differentiated from the real mesmer and they’re all visible on the mini-map.

I think this would be a great change.
It would take time for people to get used to the colors but that’s just a temporary issue.

some people like it some other not…maybe you could make this an option to choose in the option panel?

Revoke.1425:

some people like it some other not…maybe you could make this an option to choose in the option panel?

This isn’t a ‘preference’ change. This is completely different than team color options. This inherently changes the level of communication and knowledge about the game that someone is expected to have when playing the game. I can see certain iterations of this feature as positive, such as in soloq where it is unexpected that players are voip’d. However, in competitive team play this change requires less communication between players. In essence, it lowers the skill cap and raises the skill floor of the game. Additionally, certain professions benefit more while others are punished more by having their precise placement known.

On the whole, this patch was positive (and it seems upcoming patches concerning PvP will be as well). However, this is the kind of feature that deserves some sort of developer communication; it is a big change to throw out without making clear its intentions.

All this being said, I think there are ways in which this can be positively implemented. I, for one, would love to hear a developer’s thoughts on the subject and if this is acting as they designed.

No need for it in tpvp. It’s nice addition in soloq.
About mesmers: decent players already know which one is real so it really doesn’t help them. Bad ones wouldn’t even look at map probably anyway.
Oh, and it clutters the map a bit too much.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

It’s not my place to be giving design reasoning behind changes so I can try to get one of the guys to give a statement on this but the way I see it is that this change helps lessen the gap we have in player skill level. It’s an awesome quality of life improvement to team coordination and it’s going to help matches remain more competitive across the board. Team’s using voice comms will still have an upper advantage but I think that reducing the amount mal-rotations happening is a positive change.

I do think it has accomplished this purpose in solo queue, at least somewhat. Would it be difficult to add a hotkey/quickchat system? I’ve seen them in most games I’ve played and they’re really useful. For example,

Shift+1=help close point
Shift+2=help mid point
Shift+3=help far point
Shift+4=getting focused
Shift+5=applying CC
Shift+6=hold side points
Shift+7=take secondary objective 1
Shift+8=take secondary objective 2
Shift+9=regroup
Shift+0=split up

Just off the top of my head. Maybe other commands would be more useful. This type of system really helps pug coordination in most games and I think it would be a good addition to GW2.

cymerdown.4103:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

It’s not my place to be giving design reasoning behind changes so I can try to get one of the guys to give a statement on this but the way I see it is that this change helps lessen the gap we have in player skill level. It’s an awesome quality of life improvement to team coordination and it’s going to help matches remain more competitive across the board. Team’s using voice comms will still have an upper advantage but I think that reducing the amount mal-rotations happening is a positive change.

Here’s my simple suggestion: Put a single Mesmer marker at the average position among all visible copies of the Mesmer. So, if the real Mesmer was at (1, 5), and there were 2 clones, one at (2, 7) and another at (3, 3), it would show the Mesmer marker at ([1+2+3]/3, [5+7+3]/3) = (2, 5).

If the feature stays in, this seems like the best solution possible. You got my vote.

Edit:

I have another possible solution, maybe a better one (you be the judge). Every 3 seconds, the game puts the icon randomly on either the player, or one of his clones.

Sometimes, it may be right, other times it may be wrong, just like attacking the mesmer. Even a new player with no knowledge of cues to look for may accidentally attack the correct mesmer, or the wrong one. The same things applies here, sometimes the game gets lucky and picks the right one, but still, a player would be foolish to rely on it

I say keep in SoloQ/Hotjoin, remove from TeamQ.

A nice addition for soloq since voice comms come harder to come by but a terrible addition for teamq. The major arguments against this change are all stated in this thread.

• Lowers communication skill
• Forces players to pay more attention to their UI to get information they could get * from their team members or from the battle field. You have to find your enemies, not have a minimap tell you where they are…
• Some professions benefit more from this (mesmers) than others (thieves)
• Heavy clutter on the minimap (3 mesmers, small node icons compared to profession icons, dead bodies still appear on the minimap, when it’s a 4v4 on a node, you can only see 2 or 3 professions..)

I’d fight for this change to be optional to the players. I’d probably activate in soloq and disable it in teamq.

I’m getting more and more lost in the minimap in every update.

I thought that the whole idea in this game was not to look UI most of the time. I supose this is just one of the firsts steps towards same kind of minimap as in GW1.

jonnis.2946:

First of all, this was a pretty big change to the way that Solo q and Team q work, and I’d be interested to know in what parts of PvP this has been implemented, for now I’m going to presume its across the board.

Hotjoins: I feel like this just clusters the map in an 8v8 and makes it very hard to see where you can actually make an impact, in 5v5 its mostly fine and makes sense for new players to see that kind of thing.

Soloq: This has the potential to be a massive bonus by breaking down the barriers posed by limited communication to open up the possibility of better play, here to me it makes perfect sense.

Teamq: At this level, I feel like its too much pandering to the game. Communication of who and what is where is a crucial part of the team arena, and if I for instance know that the thief is at far point, I’ll quite happily come to mid as the homepoint bunker. The thief himself might be being cautious and my team mate might not even have noticed him at this point, I feel its reduced the skillcap in this area of play.

Now for my gripe: I went into my first Solo queue game since the patch and I was rushing far on Forest. I looked to see what was happening across the rest of the map, and I couldnt tell at all what was happening on mid. Considering I had 2 people with me on far, I swore I could see at least 5 people at mid, which really confused me. Turns out that mesmer illusions showed up on my map as separate entities, hence me thinking there were about 4 on their team when in fact it was only one.

I’m not sure if this is working as intended, but if so it clouds and already hectic UI tool that you no longer even can zoom in to reduce the clutter, making it much harder to discern where the enemy are, but more importantly where your team mates are if they are fighting across all points.

I feel it was in a better place when you knew exactly where your team mates were personally, than this confusion, but it would be good to get some feedback on this!

Have not played since patch, are you saying there are CLASS ICONS on the mini map telling where everyone is now? No more sneaks on the creatures etc.?

i really love this feature but I NEED a hotkey for this to turn it on/off or better when i hold a key i see this and when not its off

yesterday i was often very irritated where my team and whats enemys and often had to check which colour i am^^

so plz let me hold down hotkey (shift, ctrl or alt) to show this feature

Divinity.8041:

Have not played since patch, are you saying there are CLASS ICONS on the mini map telling where everyone is now? No more sneaks on the creatures etc.?

Not quite no, that would be absurd. Provided the enemy player is in line of sight of your team (which i presume means in combat as I’m not sure how else this would be implemented) they show up on the minimap

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Mesmer’s initially just showed on the mini-map as the Mesmer himself. I felt this was unfair to them exclusively because their class mechanics rely on deception. It made it so you basically ALWAYS knew which one was the real Mesmer because you just had to simply look at the map.

If you guys can provide a reasonable and better solution in terms of what we could do for Mesmer’s feel free to lay it on the table and we will consider it. Clutter is definitely an issue in itself; one we haven’t really solved in other areas of the game either.

Don’t show friendly illusions on map.
Don’t show opponents until 1 minute into the match.
Show opponents only within, say, 3000m of player.

This reduces clutter, keeps opening strategies viable, and still leaves room for some map play.

The current minimap will make teams depend on swiftness and mobility even more, as any play for a node can be seen and delayed, if not countered outright.

Color code icons based upon profession. Allies are circles, enemies are squares.

Void.4239:

people can still count to 5 cant they ?

Some would require either playing one handed or taking off a sock….

Color code icons based upon profession. Allies are circles, enemies are squares.

Very reasonable suggestion to cleaning this up a bit.

Oraith.1732:

I say keep in SoloQ/Hotjoin, remove from TeamQ.

I also disagree with this.

Not all team queue parties will want to use VOIP, especially randomly organized ones. Sure, top players must use it, but those who use it won’t need this new UI addition in the first place. Meanwhile, this change adds more incentive for less serious teams to join team queue, as they’ll be at a less severe disadvantage now. Keep in mind that team queue is not only for the elite players. More incentives for other players to join = better.

This new feature has some cluttering problems, and there have been some nice suggestions made to fix it. But other than that, this is positive to the game.

I really don’t see how it dumbs down the game either. Part of the strategy in conquest mode is knowing where and when to go to a certain place, and that demands communication. That communication can be done through VOIP, or through other means, like pre-made chat commands, which do not yet exist, or this UI feature, which was finally added to the game.

This doesn’t dumbs down the game. Quite the contrary, all non-VOIP conquest matches have been “dumbed down” until this feature finally came. Reacting to your opponent’s position adds a new layer of depth that hasn’t been present in non-VOIP matches.

you could generally tell who was fighting where by looking at player health bars/conditions and positions of friendly players on map.

Oblivion.8307:

you could generally tell who was fighting where by looking at player health bars/conditions and positions of friendly players on map.

It was always a bit vague, though.

An example out of my head:
Player’s A health is being depleted quickly. Is he being bursted down by a thief? Being targetted by two opponents? Or three? Should I go there help him out, or would that be suicide and be a waste of my time? With VOIP, that player could simply tell me, “there’s a thief here” or “I’m getting gang banged”, and I could either help them our, or approach carefully or run to another point. This new UI change will be important for that.

Another example:
Player A is fighting against a burst thief, Player B is fighting against a burst warrior. My build happens to be good against the thief, but bad against the warrior. I would probably want to avoid the warrior through the match, especially in a 1v1 situation. The best way to know the position of both, without any playing telling me with a voice program, is to use this new UI feature. Both my allies could be close to death, perhaps defeated by the time I reached the point, but I would know beforehand that I would have an higher advantage holding or getting back one point and would probably suffer a defeat at the other point.

The only concrete problem with this feature is the Mesmer issue as stated above (and the color-based solution seems perfect to me).

Complaining about “reducing team communication skill” seems ridiculous to me:

• In Solo queue you do NOT have time to type while fighting, nor to read what other writes. Since this game has no built-in VoIP, this feature is a must.
• In Team queue you are most likely using a VoIP program to communicate so you don’t need it at all because you are speaking which provides better and faster information. Should we nerf VoIP programs to improve “team typing skill”?

PS: If you are not using a VoIP program for team queue then you are playing in a soloqueue-like environment. So what is the point of playing team queue? The biggest advantage is the higher communication between members.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Mesmer’s initially just showed on the mini-map as the Mesmer himself. I felt this was unfair to them exclusively because their class mechanics rely on deception. It made it so you basically ALWAYS knew which one was the real Mesmer because you just had to simply look at the map.

If you guys can provide a reasonable and better solution in terms of what we could do for Mesmer’s feel free to lay it on the table and we will consider it. Clutter is definitely an issue in itself; one we haven’t really solved in other areas of the game either.

Hey Tyler, as an answer to your request.

Step 1: Make ALL icons smaller or change with colored dots according to profession
Step 2: Only show enemy icons 1 minute into the match
Step 3: Only show enemy icons in soloQ and hotjoin
Step 4: Make an option to show or not show enemy icons on the map(default = shown)
Step 5: Make your own icon more visible(for example another color like green)

Not directly related to this issue but could also be a nice addition:
Add a quickchat voice system that helps communicate people without VOIP

I’m sorry to put this in steps instead of just text, i didn’t want to sound rude or anything. I don’t think i need to provide any reasoning behind these steps, they are straight-forward.

EDIT: altered step 1 and added another step
Please respond

Oni Link.4621:

PS: If you are not using a VoIP program for team queue then you are playing in a soloqueue-like environment. So what is the point of playing team queue? The biggest advantage is the higher communication between members.

Team Queue is currently the only rated queue that allows you to play with friends. Also, in addition to this, there are foreign players who might shy away from speaking and trying to understand english speakers in VOIP, but enjoy a good organized team match nonetheless.

For those reasons, I’d say team queue should offer as many features to compensate for the lack of VOIP as solo queue does. And for those who use VOIP: nothing will change for them, so outside of UI cluterring, why complain? :P

..The justification for the multiple Mesmer icons seems a bit silly, imo. First off, now we can’t tell whether there are one, two, three/etc mesmers at a given point on the map provided there is more than one on the enemy team. I’ve already had to open up the match menu to recheck the opposing team’s roster just to know whether it was one mesmer or multiple mesmers.

Secondly, the amount of time it takes to “find the real mesmer” without the minimap is extremely short. The deception portion of the class isn’t much of deception, it’s, “Here; have fun trying to click or alt-tab target me through AI spam.” That only applies to a few builds anyway; a lot of mesmers don’t spawn enough clones to even come close to decieving anyone.
The point is that that targeting difficulty remains whether you know where the real mesmer is or not via looking at the minimap. Even if there was one icon for the mesmer on the minimap showing, meaning I knew he was somewhere in my line of sight, I’d still have to click/tab through the clones just to target it.

Let’s not forget to mention that the icons on the minimap are so large that a mesmer will rarely be so far away from their clones that you’ll be able to discern them by slight minimap positions.. Especially fighting on a point.

The pros vs cons for this are just too one-sided.

The issue with the number of Mesmer’s at a given point doesn’t take into account how rare it is to have more than one Mesmer on a single team these days…

Terrible change for team queue.

Pls remove it, at least for team Q.

In solo q, It’s a good addiction.

Love this feature, would be nice if the icons were a bit smaller so you could actually discern how many enemies there are at a point which is arguably the most important information.

Re: mesmers – I think that reducing the size and/or color coding will go a long way toward addressing people’s clutter concerns. The current mesmer icon is so large that one mesmer on point with clones will cover everything else going on there. Smaller color coded dots would be nicer (6 dots on a point, but 4 of them are purple… probably 3 real enemy there)

Also its worth mentioning that enemy icons are only visible if they are in combat and within LOS of your team.

I do not think this dumbs down the game in teamq or anywhere else. If anything it frees up some voice com airwaves to discuss more interesting tactical information.

Also as someone who sometimes does teamq with people that do not speak the same language, I vote to have this feature remain across all sPvP formats!

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Mesmer’s initially just showed on the mini-map as the Mesmer himself. I felt this was unfair to them exclusively because their class mechanics rely on deception. It made it so you basically ALWAYS knew which one was the real Mesmer because you just had to simply look at the map.

If you guys can provide a reasonable and better solution in terms of what we could do for Mesmer’s feel free to lay it on the table and we will consider it. Clutter is definitely an issue in itself; one we haven’t really solved in other areas of the game either.

If making the icons smaller across the board isn’t an option, then how about the Mesmer icons “hops” between each illusion and the real player each, say, 500ms-1sec?

The idea behind the change was great. However it still needs a lot of improvement because right now, when there’s more than one mesmer on a 1vX or 2vX or XvX scenario, the icons overlap each other, all I see are butterfly masks making it rather difficult to actually figure out how many, who and what classes are fighting on a point.

Oraith.1732:

I say keep in SoloQ/Hotjoin, remove from TeamQ.

remove this feature.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

…the way I see it is that this change helps lessen the gap we have in player skill level.

That’s a pretty sad comment to make. With a game that has to much auto play and very few ways to distinguish yourself as more skilled than the next, the last thing you should be doing is lessening the gap between skill levels.

If allied mesmers clutter the screen (I don’t know, haven’t had the opportunity to check it out yet), they shouldn’t. Likewise, dead opponents should instantly disappear from the UI. I agree that the icons could be slightly smaller, at least for the opponents, but one thing that confuses me, is the colors. Sometimes I forget which team color I’m in, and in the slight second I take to watch the mini-map, I have some difficulty reading it. If anything, I would prefer if all opponents had a neutral icon color (grey?), and only our allies had the color of their team.

Pyriall.5027:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

…the way I see it is that this change helps lessen the gap we have in player skill level.

That’s a pretty sad comment to make. With a game that has to much auto play and very few ways to distinguish yourself as more skilled than the next, the last thing you should be doing is lessening the gap between skill levels.

I think what Tyler meant, is that this feature lessens the skill gap between VoIP users and non-VoIP users.

tbh showing where enemy is kind of kills whole purpose of having big map and steath… people can see mesmers/thieves etc. comming from miles away

Justin ODell.9517:

As a Messer, I love that my clones are cluttering up your UI and annoying you.

As a programmer, I want to apalogize from players for this comment.

This change promotes the lazy play. Being able to see where the enemies are is just wrong. Now you don’t need any map awareness at all.

I like it for Hot Join. It’s kind of like training wheels.

For Solo Queue, it’s also pretty decent since you typically aren’t well organized.

For Team Queue however, the training wheels should be off.

Here’s how I’d change it overall:

1. Remove profession icons and replace with circles (friendlies) and squares (enemies).
2. Color-code per profession.
3. Only show enemy Illusions
4. Remove opponents from mini-map in Team Queue
5. Solo Queue Only: Delay appearance of opponents in until ~1 minute into match.
6. Solo Queue Only: Opponents within X meters (3000?) are shown in minimap.

This reduces the clutter and provides a “training wheel gradient” for players when progressing from Hot Join —> Solo —> Team.