Guild Wars 2

I made a post irritated that mesmer clones were showing up as individual enemies on the minimap, at the time wondering if this was a bug or working as intended. I had a think about the possible upsides and downsides to the current system, this is what I came up with

Upsides:
If the mesmer clones are there, and the mesmer stealths, the mesmer icon would disappear on the map as you do not have “line of sight” to the mesmer. This ruins the illusion of any clones and stealth that the mesmer has, and people know to wait for someone to pop out of stealth.

If the mesmer is attempting to disengage, and you notice a mesmer icon running off the point, where you might not have noticed the disengage otherwise, then this is a negative, not totally certain how the line of sight feature works yet, do they just have to be in combat? A player can get out of line of sight by hiding behind a pillar, so I’m not basing anything off that description before some confirmation

I find it very hard to believe that someone who can’t identify the real mesmer normally is somehow able to in normal combat from the minimap, especially given the lack of zoom on the map, and the small space that the clones are confined to, so while a minor point in my opinion I suppose I had best include it.

Downsides:
You can’t see exactly who is on the point as the points are now cluttered with endless clones.

Now when I voice the arguments like that I can see that Anet may have taken the decision to go for Clones being visible on the map. I also already stated that I think this is a massive boon to soloq, but that the cluster on the map interface makes it a lot less useful for movement.

I’m not sure how difficult it would be to implement, but I would much prefer a system that completely hides any enemies that are within a certain range of you. Why should you know if for instance on TotSS someone is on the roof at Gate without looking up there, regardless of class.

Obviously, in this system (certainly in solo queue) there would be no need for mesmer clones to be shown. This would mean that you could get a clear idea of the numbers fighting at each node you were not at, while not being able to gain any advantage from seeing where enemies are. I also use the minimap occasionally to identify a downed ally that I’m sure was near me but is no longer in sight, and the clustering around you is of detriment to that, though this is a rare event.

Given the choice though between the new system and the old, its difficult. Sometimes it offers very good information, especially when no mesmers are present. But even without them a node with more than 6 enemies on it becomes difficult to pick out now. Honestly, I’d probably go back to the old system myself relying on class knowledge to identify who and what is where by the condis and health bars on my team mates.

I do like the idea, just don’t agree with the way its been implemented.

They should make them visible unless they’re in trees #mobagames