Visible teammate names

[LuckyOne]

In my opinion the "tactical HUD view" should enable you to see your teammate's names when turned on. It is an "arcade-like" feature but it's still present in many games.

Now this might bother the "immersion purists" but I have a counter argument for that. Since you are trying to achieve a realistic representation of the comradeship of men in a desperate battle, you must remember that many of those people would have trained together for months, and some would have known each other for years at this point in the war...

That means they should easily be able to recognize each other in the heat of the battle. But as we all know technology (and even more, dev time) is really limited (especially in small teams) and having randomized/customizable models for the soldiers represented in game is possible but not really feasible to do. And even with that done you still need to play with the people for some time before being able to recognize them just by looks alone.

For effective communication, being able to recognize who is who, and who is where is a must have. That's why I propose the player name and a small kit icon/text (optional, only if the kits won't be recognizable by the visible equipment carried, then maybe only make it visible for the SLs) be visible when looking at the direction of the teammates with the tactical HUD on.

This would enable easier communication between teammates and would enable the SL to easily find a specific person with the specific kit and easily convey him what he wants him to do. We all know that phrase: "Ramirez, do X with your Y!"
This would also promote teamwork and bring a little personal touch to the game.

Now the only downside of this is breaking immersion, and it does it by two facts:

First, there are no magic floating letters that spell names above/on people in the real world. (but people generally do have the ability to recognize and recall people's names by their looks/personalities/actions).

Second, the naming problem... This is still a game, and as a game people don't always take it very seriously. So you might have players with names like "999|l33t$nip3r|999" and other random characters. This can't really be prevented, one way would be not allowing numbers and special characters in player names, but that might be too restrictive to some...

But if you make the text subtle, yet still easily readable it wouldn't be that bad. Any thoughts?



P.S. Sorry for the wall of text, and if you guys already planned to include it, just ignore this...

 

[Skr13]

Well, first of all, thanks for your time explaining your ideas clearly.

For better communication, surely, visible players names would help a lot, but my suggestion, is that players names should only be visible by own squad members, and not other team-mates, as Squad Leaders must keep an eye on his troops and not in others.

Of course that speaking with a microphone would certainly be the key for teamwork, but I know that the majority of players don't have a mic, plus not every player can speak in English as many of us came from diverse parts of the world, and typing is more easy than speaking.

Indeed, Squad Leader job should be more smooth, if he can look at his specific squad member through nickname and respective kit(no icon/text, just by looking) and tell him/her to go over there to protect the flank or come over here to provide covering fire etc.

There is other point, the soldiers uniform from both factions should be clearly easy to identify at medium range, to prevent team killing just because player can't distinguish who is who.

The immersive feeling is extremely important, mainly when we are talking about WW2, but in the other hand, it shouldn't be the reason to deny basic gameplay aspects, like teamwork, so I "vote" for only squad members names displayed, nothing more is necessary IMO.
Most arcade games out there, also have enemy names visible at long distance, lol.

 

[Koenigstiger]

I would request names being shown at close ranges only, I don't want to see a bunch of names running around all over distracting me while I'm trying to keep an eye out for the enemy

and it is the duty of the player to learn to recognize the enemies uniforms at longer distances as well as friendly uniforms I don't want to have immersion taken away because some idiot or new player wont take a second for simple target acquisition

Hell I got killed just before in Rising Storm earlier today as well as a team mate by this one player

I'm not against the idea but I think HUD and HUD elements should be as minimal as possible

 

[Roughbeak]

Forgotten Hope 2 did it very well, only showed the names if you focused on the player long enough (3 seconds or so). I could see TW doing the same, perhaps?

With static/floating nametags it might get very annoying for the player really.

 

[Pjosip]

Gotta consider in actuall combat, each person looked kind of different, while in a game you use generic playermodel.
So I think it's fair to recognise your teammates if you look right at them, and if you are friends with somebody you can recognise them if you are looking at their general direction.


Also you can recognise your friends in longer distance than squad/team mates.

 

[Koenigstiger]

Forgotten Hope 2 did it very well, only showed the names if you focused on the player long enough (3 seconds or so). I could see TW doing the same, perhaps?

With static/floating nametags it might get very annoying for the player really.

That sounds interesting, and certainly is one way of assisted target acquisition

Getting ready to fire and game says it's a friendly D: NICHT SCHIEßEN!

 

[LuckyOne]

Indeed, bunched up players could be a problem... Still I'd argue that SLs should have an ability to quickly judge the positions of specific squad members. Maybe they could get less delay for name showing, or even a separate button for this action (probably overkill)?

 

[Pjosip]

I'd just say that men that are close to you (few meters) you see their names rather easy, and when they are further away you need to be looking more directly to them and there is delay to showing their names.

As said, people from your friends list show up faster since you recognise them faster due to long lasting frendship.

 

[General Naga]

It's a tricky one, a classic immersion vs. HUD-assistance issue.

Personally I lean towards having Squad player tags available in the tactical HUD all the time. Provided the other player isn't too far away from you. Knowing the names of players outside their squad and on their team isn't of much benefit to the player in my opinion.

I think a separate issue is the other team. You wouldn't know them (obviously) so I personally don't think their name should be appear at all. Whilst I love FH2 I've never felt that using player tags as the way to distinguish the two teams at range is really the best way to do it.

It's tough to make the two teams reasonably identifiable at range on a comparatively small screen but personally I want to avoid having to use HUD-assistance.

Just my thoughts mind

 

[DerJoachim]

Visible tag names should be there, for obvious reasons, not everyone is a professional soldier and have trigger discipline and military like comunication and coordination, so yeah, make the tags visible but they should fade away as your friends get away from you, only visible lets say from 20 meters maybe???

To have ALWAYS the tags visible its a bit immersion breaking and arcadeish, you should kidna work bewteen arcade and realism imho.

 

[Pjosip]

I agree with DerJoachim, it is wierd knowing exactly where your team is even if you don't see them.

 

[General Naga]

I agree with DerJoachim, it is wierd knowing exactly where your team is even if you don't see them.

There is an arguement that in real life your spatial awareness is MUCH better than in-game so you might know they're nearly in real life. Having said that it makes no sense to magically know someone is behind a hedge when you would have no way of knowing they were there otherwise.

 

[Comrade Roe]

I'd say, limit tags only to people in your direct line of sight. I'd prefer only the person you're looking at, and only if they're friendly, can they're name be seen. Like a lot of Source games, you can only see their name if you're looking right at them.

Although, this would also depend on exactly how immersive Traction Wars wants to go. I don't know if the team wants a super realism aesthetic or just a tactical WWII shooter, like if CS was shifted into a different era, with the addition of tanks and higher player counts.

 

[DerJoachim]

I'd say, limit tags only to people in your direct line of sight. I'd prefer only the person you're looking at, and only if they're friendly, can they're name be seen.

Well, technically eyes have a wider field of vision, you can even "see" the people that are in your flanks, imho that would be a wrong idea to just see friendly names only if you watch directly on them with your sight, the best option ()always in my humble opinion ofcourse() is to make your friendly tags only visible from a certain distance, lets say 20 meters (the distance can be debatable) even if you dont directly aim at them, as long your are heading to theyr direction generally speaking, after they get too far away, you shouldnt be able to understand perfectly who is who, unless you comunicate (oh god, i would love some hands signal implemented in the game)


PS: and anyway, dont be so desperate about it, WW2 was also known for the massive amount of friendly fire...i dont mind to get teamkilled ecause the game is too realistic, i actually would enjoy that as realistic challenge.

 

[Koenigstiger]

Well, technically eyes have a wider field of vision, you can even "see" the people that are in your flanks, imho that would be a wrong idea to just see friendly names only if you watch directly on them with your sight, the best option ()always in my humble opinion ofcourse() is to make your friendly tags only visible from a certain distance, lets say 20 meters (the distance can be debatable) even if you dont directly aim at them, as long your are heading to theyr direction generally speaking, after they get too far away, you shouldnt be able to understand perfectly who is who, unless you comunicate (oh god, i would love some hands signal implemented in the game)


PS: and anyway, dont be so desperate about it, WW2 was also known for the massive amount of friendly fire...i dont mind to get teamkilled ecause the game is too realistic, i actually would enjoy that as realistic challenge.

When you rush a point and then get shot by your own team mates >:^(

Shoot that man for being detrimental to the war effort!

also, why not just use names on uniforms?

"IS THAT YOU BILL!?, I CAN'T SEE FROM OVER HERE"

 

[Aufars]

I vote no for friendly tag.

Friendly fire sometimes occur but the next part you will be careful when and who has to be shot.

You see friendly by their uniform and not by their nametag.