Ragarth

Join Date 11/2003

Feedback: Minimap is needed - Heres why

I love the zoom feature but we still need a minimap...

1) Without a minimap we have NO idea where our teammates are in the map, this would make any kind of coordination incredibly hard in larger maps.

2) Without a minimap, I am forced to stay zoomed out much more than I want, just so I can see enough of an "area" around me to see enemies approaching from all angles (although they do tend to always come from the direction of the creeps in this map...sometimes they come from the side).

3) Without a minimap, I have terrible map awareness. I can't see when creeps are pushing another lane against my tower, etc. I have to constantly zoom all out and zoom back in to see whats happening in the map. Extremely annoying.

-Drexion

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/SIGNED x500

Minimap is a definite must

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The lack of mini-map makes another issue more prominent - the lack of distinguishing features between the allied and enemy demigods. I don't mind zooming out quickly to make a strategic opinion on the state of the war, but having to manually mouseover each demigod to verify whether they're on my side on not... PITA. A very simple minimap, with color-coded blips for demigods and faded blips for troops would do a world of good in some situations.

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Have none of you played supcom?

If they put icons above teamates ead then you'll see them when you zoom out.

The thing is there are no strategic icons with the strategic zoom like in supcom.

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The zoom works for me. The only valid point (imo...) is the dearth of ability to immediately tell a friendly Demigod from an unfriendly one. Otherwise the scale of the game, being less than that of Supreme Commander, is quite conducive to reliance upon zoom for keeping up with what is going on.

I want less screen clutter, not more. Demigod works for me - just my vote.

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I like to know the strategic state of the game at all times, so with the zoom method I need to zoom out every 5-7 seconds. Thats annoying . Icons would help, but not really solve the problem. Minimap would stop me from having to do that...

-Drexion

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Regarding the screen clutter, make it an optional widget or some such. It doesn't have to be a huge minimap. Heck, shrink the current menu a bit and you can easily fit it into a corner.

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I think it should be an option...it does help to visually notify you of global occurences (flags captured, friendlies, etc). It must be removable.

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Almost forgot: the other thing a mini-map is handy for is quickly catching pings during multi-player.

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Pings can be done with a piller of light thing from the point and an arrow pointing to it. Much more exact that way, anyways. =]

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I think Strategic zoom icons and a minimap should be there. But only as options. I think a player's preferrance depends on play-style.

Perhaps having a colored icon for Allied assassins/generals can make a big difference.

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how about a little arrow plus a teammates heroes icon thats pointing in their direction at the edge of the screen ?

i would also love to see a a coloured circle around enemy and ally heroes when zoomed far out

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they shoud try the mini-map in beta 2 and get feedback if people like it, then they will decide

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Quoting jeffwads,

reply 7

I think it should be an option...it does help to visually notify you of global occurences (flags captured, friendlies, etc). It must be removable.

I agree, it is useful, but I also like being able to see the entire screen. I think It should be an option.

One idea i read elsewhere mentioned making the map like Diablo II style, so you can dim it and see through it. That could be really neat.

Another idea I was thinking about might be to make a hotkey to view a minimap. In the options you could set it to either toggle the map on and off, or you'd have to hold the button down to see the map.

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I think a SupCom-style minimap would be excellent. If you keep it zoomed out, you will of course see colour coded icons, pings, and the like. When you zoom in, you can keep tabs on the action (which helps in a small map like the beta map).

tl;dr Implement a SupCom-style map, with ping. The ping should be visible zoomed in or out. (with different animations, of course, for each)

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Yes definitely, being able to ping the minimap is huge...

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I want strategic icons minimap, and then all is fine.

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If at all, something that is by default destroyed (i.e. Off). I do not have any difficulty whatsoever pulling out to view the landscape... this should be especially painless for alumni of Supreme Commander. To me a minimap is redundant given the utility of this game engine.

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with respect to point three; when i first started playing SupCom (oh so many a year ago) i had zero map awareness. my case was terrible, but i rather quickly picked up the use of the scroll wheel and things looked up from there.

trust me, you'll get there in due time.

it'll take a bit of learning but i'm sure learning to look down at the minimap took practice too.

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If they add one I just hope it's very light weight, and not some big box/circle taking up a large part of my screen.

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+1 for minimap.

I don´t want to zoom out, just to know where the enemy is. Is just circuitous. One single look an a minimap and I know exactly where my mates are. The same with pings. We have the ability to create a ping for allies. On a minimap I will see the direction of the ping instantly and I will not have to be forced to zoom out just to locate the ping.

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Just make it an option like it is in supcom. The few that use, will be happy. Those that don't wish to, can simply turn it off so there is no clutter.

A flick of the finger is less disruptive than moving your eyes to the corner of the screen to get a global view. Using the strategic zoom to get a strategic view is also much more accurate than little icons on the minim map. I predict that many asking for it will find that once they have it, they will rarely use it since the strategic zoom does so much better. It will take a little time though since it does take a little getting used to. I was one of "we need a mini-map" people on the supcom beta. I don't know when, but at some point I realized I was never using the mini-map once I got used to the UI. It is now always off .