Map Clarity and Determining Squad Cohesion (QOL improvement)

grey275

One of the questions that I need to answer when SLing is which squads are effectively organized and are actively contributing to the game, and what their intentions are.

Whether or not a squad is cohesive is not always immediately obvious from a glance at the map, because, for example, a full squad dilligently covering a defense objective might look indistinguishable from a mix of random blueberries and an SL with no mic from a 2 man leftovers squad, which might wander off the point later.

You can find out what's actually happening by mousing over each individual player near a point and asking about the other SLs intentions in command comms, or I could click on each of the members of a squad in the command menu individually, but this is time consuming and cumbersome(try doing this while flying a heli or driving a vehicle through a forest). I think we can do better.

Suggestion:

When hovering over an SL, the icons for any players in his squad, and any vehicles that is carrying players in that that squad, should be highlighted on the map. That highlight effect should be distinct from the one you get when clicking on a single player in the command menu.

This will let players determine at a glance whether a squad is combat effective, and could possibly be relied on to accomplish a task like defending or attacking a cap point, or could be ready for transport by another squad in a reasonable amount of time.

If anyone has any parallel suggestions, please share!

Thanks

RackEmUp187

I feel like this is a useless feature because in the beginning there should be a plan about unit cohesion and coordinating amongst the other SL's.

I play in my clan server and we know exactly how teamwork is supposed to work with the random blueberry SL's. Sometimes they command and we have to have SL's that have mics in our game. It's one of the requirements and before we go to the next point, the squad leaders communicate with each other about who's attacking or defending.

I'm not saying my clan server is any different from the other servers but we each communicate with the other Squad leaders. Most of the time that people lose it's because they're not communicating and not defending their points!

grey275

What a squad leader says their squad is doing, and what it's actually doing, are often two different things.

Maybe they say their squad is going to be defending, but 2/3 + of is squad is actually wandering towards the offense cap.

Maybe they've requesteda heli pickup, and insist that their squad is ready, but actually it takes a full minute to get everyone into the helicopter, by the end of which you take an RPG.

To be clear, this is all information that every player already has access to, but the interface for doing so is very cumbersome.

Where a particular squad is, and what it's roughly doing seems like a basic thing that should be communicated clearly by the map, and knowing where the SL is does not fully convey that, for the reasons stated.

In terms of game design I would actually be in favour of vastly reducing the amount of information accessible from the map, and this change increases the amount of info at all. It just makes getting the info I and other SLs need faster and less frustrating.