Player ability to 'ping' the minimap
StixNStonz
Join Date: 2006-11-06 Member: 58439Members, Reinforced - Shadow
<div class="IPBDescription">both teams could use this</div>Its just a small feature, but i think it could help. If any player could place a 'ping' on the minimap to simply help him describe something happening.
Maybe if the player pulls up the minimap, THEN hits +use (not the other way around), it would let his cursor go over the minimap, and he could place the ping. Maybe the team would hear a small blip; but their minimaps would show a quickly-collapsing circle on the point, only for about 4 seconds.
It would really help for precise communication; an alien telling the team where the TF is in a siege; where a mine is; marines explaining where to boost or where an SC is; there would be any number of uses.
Of course, it would mainly be used in conjunction with voicecomm.
Thoughts?
Maybe if the player pulls up the minimap, THEN hits +use (not the other way around), it would let his cursor go over the minimap, and he could place the ping. Maybe the team would hear a small blip; but their minimaps would show a quickly-collapsing circle on the point, only for about 4 seconds.
It would really help for precise communication; an alien telling the team where the TF is in a siege; where a mine is; marines explaining where to boost or where an SC is; there would be any number of uses.
Of course, it would mainly be used in conjunction with voicecomm.
Thoughts?
Comments
And yeah, aliens too.
Oh yeah, the commander already knows where you are when you use your hud to speak to him, so is this just for telling your teammates stuff?
It streamlines communication and prevents misunderstandings.
Scenario 1
Alien 1: rines incoming to cc hive west side.
NSPlayer Alien 2: Where?
Scenario 2
Alien 1: rines incoming
*minimap ping*
NSPlayer Alien 2: coming
'Guys watch out, theres a marine with an hmg up on that platform... er... it might be East Junction? I'm not really sure, its between overlook and Dbl siege, north of System Waypointing?'
would really be useful
NSPlayer Alien 2: Where?
Scenario 2
Alien 1: rines incoming
*minimap ping*
NSPlayer Alien 2: coming<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So it is for use WITH a mic then? As states above: "Alien 1: rines incoming to cc hive west side. NSPlayer Alien 2: Where?" So after you say, hey they are coming, then you can hit the ping button or whatever? I just mean thats kinda cool I guess, it gives people the option of either learning the names on the map, or just quickly hitting a button on the keyboard as a quick X marks the spot. Still a ping alone does nothing so everyone would be like "whats that for?" So, you would have to use the mic then with this right? Or would you have good/enemy pings? Good mabe meaning RT/hive open, enemy being obvious...
Corpsman, I'd still see marines using just the Mic and location names for RT requests etc. It would be used mainly for everything from Marine to Marine, Comm to Marine, Aliens to Aliens. I would think that it would only occasionally be used for Marine to Comm, such as 'place the tf here for the best siege', 'ping here please', etc.
It doesn't ping the minimap.
Usually its just for rts, but especially with the mic it can be used for anything. A good example is exactly what you're talking about; i'd simply say 'comm, gonna need a med in a second here [hit request button], watch me pls'
To add to this I think anything he says should override the mic as well. So any messages sent by the comm using the voice mic or his "ping/waypoint" messages [get to the waypoint soldier], are auto played over anything else someone says on the marnie team.
I like your idea, it could have it's uses, helping with info. The aliens should also have a simple deal as well. So instead of a electronic system [human technology], they could say somehow plant phermone waypoints or something. It would last for 10 seconds or something then die out [just for a cool effect]. When "sprayed" by any alien, it would also send some sort of scent noise in the air, like ants do. A sonic hissing sound would work, just a quick one for a second.
I do like the alien voices a tiny bit, it was a creative idea, but I always wished it was more creature like, instead of a crackled human english speaking voice... When the aliens are using the system to "speak", they should be telling their buddies where something is happening using noises and instincts of some sort, not like "were under attack." It sounds kinda retarded still.
Right now when I want to attract attention to something I do some random taunt and spam the flashlight, so I guess some sort of thing to attract other players' and the commanders attention could be really usefull.
As i stated i don't really know why, it's just a feeling that goes something like this:
NS i sure about strategy, and many RTS games, uses this feature.
But still... I remember when I started to play NS, one of the main things I enjoyed was to learn the different location names of the map.
I surely, as you guys, see a huge advantage in this, but maybe I'm afraid that it is a bit to big an advantage. Instead of "forcing" people to use more teamwork, by talking, typing, what ever, you can now just ping, and people will know what is going on, without a word spoken. (This is assuming that a ping at hive building, playing as alien, would make it clear that a marine is in it.) In this way I'm afraid some of the communication, and dereby teamwork, to the team may even suffer from this.
Looking at it, as how it would fit into NS, I think that i would make perfect sense that marines have the ability to send information (as a ping) on the minimap, to share with other marines.
The aliens however... The hivemind would surely be able to do this, (considering it is the hivemind that "creates" the minimap for the aliens.) But if an alien player, has to transfer his "data" to the hive, before the the ping could be initiated it would be useless in most situations.
This is however, as I see it, a feature, that requires that both sides can draw advantage of it if implanted.
Love discussions with myself? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/nerd-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="::nerdy::" border="0" alt="nerd-fix.gif" />
The reason to why, I'm not really exited about this, is the fact that i see these drawbacks from it.. probably not the only disadvantages, but it was the only i could find for the moment.
Technically, any decent comm doesn't "CLICK" anything beside the marines and the minimap. But that's probably beyond 99.9999999% of all ns commanders. (PROTIP(lol): Don't use spacebar to center on requests, meds need highest priority so bind "h" "impulse 125").
I could only wish for an 'ATTN COMM: ALIEN HERE' command which can't get confused with a "Drop me a rt with the 7 res you have by recycling like 3 other marines on the field instantly". But that's probably too much to ask for. (not really)