As someone that plays large amounts of RTS games, I always felt there is one feature missing in a normal “online” lobby. I am going to assume that people know what I mean by “online” lobby. To be more precise I am talking about the lobby you are in once you found a game to join, but are waiting for the game to start by the host. In most lobbies you will find the map you’re playing on and some info about the map or game type. Most also have the ability to talk to just to your teammates. While this is handy I want to take it step forward. Not only do I want a team chat function, I want a team map which you mark up with plans and strategies or even view other player eggs (which I think is a great idea fyi). The idea is to not only give those written orders or plans but show then your plans. In most rts games, the starting few minutes is key, most people that work in teams have a standard of what they plan to do in the game, key areas of hold, overall plans… one might go just air, one might rush… When you are playing with people you haven’t played before, you don’t have that advantage. If you can communicate effectively, then your team can have a stronger start even when playing with people you don’t know. This can also be used to help noobs, by sharing knowledge effectively at the start. In brief, add in more ways to plan with your team when waiting for the game to start.
Considering there are no "maps" in PA, I don't think it would work. Everything will be randomly generated.
Depends on when it renders, is it right when you join the game, or right when the game is created by the host. If it the latter, the map should be known in some game types.
Instead of a white board in the game lobby, why not allow players to draw on the terrain itself, when holding alt or something? In Dota 2 for example, you can draw lines on the mini-map which all your allies can see. Since PA doesn't have a mini-map, but strategic zoom, it would be cool to be able to draw arrows and stuff for your allies to see. Maybe the "strategic drawings" would only show up at max zoom, when you want to get the complete overview? To be honest, i find the classic "map pings/markers" quite lacking, and would welcome some innovation in this area very much.
I have to say it would be nice to see the planet you are landing on or the planets that your enemies and allies are landing on before the game starts, allowing you to get an idea of what strategy you want to do.
Spring Engine games let you draw on the map and show it to your team, I don't see why PA can't let you do that as well.
interesting..... though people are going to abuse this in public lobbies.... like Duke Nukem (you know what i mean)
It's much better to handle abuse by giving the host controls over the people in the server, than to avoid adding features because they 'might' be abused by idiots.
this is true, I have seen very nice features kicked out in many game types, just because they didn't wanted to deal with or just feared abuse. A more intuitive and flexible communication scheme (instead of just team chat) in lobby and while running the game would be very appreciated. It is something I think has be neglected even or in particular in multiplayer oriented games. Being able to mark points and areas, annotate stuff etc would be something really useful. If I had to design such a system, I would give any teammate a transparent layer laid over the standard map view on which he can draw and write in his player color. Each player would then have the option to choose which overlays of which player he wants to view (from none at all to all at once depending the degree of cluttering), perhaps allowing for a general transparency option. In principle, it would look a bit like the layer system in a graphics software.
