More Pings!
This may or may not have made it onto the forums before, so if it has I apologize--but I think this would be really helpful, once you got the feel for where the new pings were!! What do y'all think?
58 Comments
During the development of the radial menu, it become pretty clear that many people had issues with any more than 4. You couldn't reliably hit the action you want and describing the motion became difficult.
I also fear that this is taking advantage of the menu in ways that could better fit in a different form. The ping wheel offers quick communication and positional communication. It's also a pretty big stick at the problem space it's solving.
A different direction to look at this is: What if there was a different way of using chat to quickly communicate these other ideas? Does placing it on the radial menu offer any benefits over that route? What if there was just a binding that let you communicate some of these ideas in a directional manner? One neat idea that other MOBA games have done is being able to modifier + click on an ability to post the cooldown of it into chat.
Fo' reals though: We've poked at different ideas before (in experimentation, not anything that can be player delivered), and there's definitely a lot of great opportunities here. I don't think anyone is looking at the problem space at the moment however.
From a different perspective, imagine all the music we could make with more pings.
The only additional pings I want are "Warded" and "Place a Ward Here". I'm a support main, and more than once I've died, or let someone else die because I was frantically trying to type out "Jungler there's a ward there don't go in!", especially when the jungler doesn't use the "On my way" ping to let us know he's not just coming down for the Golems. Plenty of options for space on a ctrl-R.click radial and ctrl-L.click radial.
One other thing, I have Ctrl-R.click to do the Quick Alert Ping (Target or Request Aid) while Ctrl.L-click is Quick Retreat Ping (Fall Back or Be Careful). Obviously holding it down opens the radial, but using Ctrl-R.click for Quick Alert forces me to move, same as if I had simply Right Clicked. I do NOT want to move, but I DO want to be able to use both mouse buttons for quick pings.
Oll right, so now weve got 6 pings basically. Two standard retreat and 'pointer' with just mouse click + key modifier and radial menu with 4 pings. That means we have one 'negative' and one 'positive' key modifier for a normal mouse click when it comes to ping. Why not elaborate on this idea and create two separate wheels with 4 pings on them? One of the wheels would be 'enemy related' and the second one would be 'ally related'. This is a simple and logical concept and we need to use simple and understandable ideas when it comes to UI.
This is the basic idea: http://imgur.com/2RE2eIc
So now we have 8 options. Let's start with getting rid of the 'caution' ping to which I, ofr this day, could not find any purpose honestly. :P Put it on the enemy wheel and make it "enemy spotted" ping (with MGS-like sound! :D). Now we've got something useful, even without changing the icon. It would help in tracking enemy jungler and in the mid-late game informed about enemy movement on the map without being 'in your face' like the orange "GET THE HELL OUT' ping is. Oh do I smell improvement here? Let's leave the 'missing' ping. It's good. Now we need two more. Lets go for the most requested ones, like 'warded' and 'no escapes'. I think these are the most typed interactions with the junglers in my opinion. We need to make them simplier and quicker for sure. This would also let laners inform thej jungler in advance of any wards placed and escapes down, improving overall map awareness.
Now we have the enemy ping wheel complete. Moving on to the ally ping wheel.
"On my way" and "Assist me" are useful pings imho and theres no need to replace them. What can we do to fill these two empty spaces in though? My idea is to go for "cooldowns down". It would hover over a life bar of your character for a second letting the ally (suppeort, jungler, anyone) know that you arre not ready to engage yet, so they need to wait a bit. This is my choice as that kind of things need to be typer out quickly and pings let you do it in a blink of an eye. The last spot would be then filled with requested 'Please ward here'. Lane wards, dragon, baron, crucial areas. They need to be warded and players often foget about this. Let's have it a quick way.
Also, some improvent may be done in terms of placing it on the wheel, althout it would require to move the existing pings placement from the places they take now on the single wheel and moveing them over, causing some issues with muscle momeory for some time. Like, ward pings 'warded' and 'place ward here' may be both in the same place on the 'enemy wheel' and 'ally wheel' and so on, to make things a bit more logical.
Let's not forget about sounds as well. For me, most of the sounds are ok, but the 'caution' one is... strange. I dont have any feelings related to it actually, maybe because it is used so rarely. On the other hand, "Get away" standard ping is getting into my soul and under my nails anytime it is spammed. Like my brain being electrocuted.
anyway. What do you think of the double wheel idea? It will not neccessarily caouse confusion with too many pings as long as they are logically placed and implemented in my opinion and 10 of them is the amount that maybe breaching the simplicity barrier, but does not compromise so much on the informative side of things. Which is the compromise to be taken at some point. Along with timers I think it can greatly improve the UI of LoL and eliminate the need of using the chat to communicate in situations where every second counts.
Worgslarg, I agree with u that it might be a little cluttered--it could definitely be shifted around and edited to make it more optimal, but I would also rly love to see more ping choices. Pings are so important, I prefer ppl to ping over alert me through chat.. I pay more attention to pings anyway
what about being able to ping the potential ward placed by enemy team, something that stays on the minimap for 2-3 minutes, so that way we can warn our teammates about the dangerous areas that they are coming and going into. I understand that people can also abuse this, but if you make it so one player can only ping 1-2 ward spots, then it encourages team work and giving that information (right or wrong information) is valuable to multiple players. also adding special ping notices to dragons/baron/towers that last would mean people can priotize certain things easiar, like say 4 people ping baron then everyone would know the gameplan and what everyone wants
what about being able to ping the potential ward placed by enemy team, something that stays on the minimap for 2-3 minutes, so that way we can warn our teammates about the dangerous areas that they are coming and going into. I understand that people can also abuse this, but if you make it so one player can only ping 1-2 ward spots, then it encourages team work and giving that information (right or wrong information) is valuable to multiple players. also adding special ping notices to dragons/baron/towers that last would mean people can priotize certain things easiar, like say 4 people ping baron then everyone would know the gameplan and what everyone wants
whats the difference between **DANGER **and RETREAD? why is there no **ATTACK **option **enemy marked **== attack enemy
Hi guys,
I think the ping "Assist me" is better like here it is now because when i use this ping, i "Put my flag down", so i think it's more realist.
I think there's definitely more map-contextual communication that could be added in additional pings (pinging a time on a spot on the map, for example). I also think any more than four swipe-directions per wheel will make it harder to utilize efficiently and effectively. But right now, you've got two buttons bound to basic pings that both open the same ping wheel. Other games have made good use of 'z' 'x' and 'c' for fast communication (I'm thinking TF2's dialogue menus specifically) and think you could probably get up to 3 wheels out of them or other configurations, without heavily impacting muscle reflex or mental load.
Make 2 ping wheels with 2 different hotkeys
At least put the Wareded Ping. Thats the one that i consider most important, me being a jungler espcially.
We need more pings for sure, at least a Warded ping. But you can't change the directions of the classic pings.
Kinda sad to see a Rioter just trying to BS around the topic, reminds me of how they reply whenever someone talks about the all too neccessary 4th ban per team in draft.
and that got ignored http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=4683975
Riot, come on, really? All you have to do is put a 2nd page of 4 pings on the other key, ctrl for one, alt for the other. Have one be one category of things, such as the current ones, and the other be another category of additional but less critical information to communicate, such as ward locations and other things. This isn't rocket scence, just put a 2nd page on the other key - and keep the ctrl alert ping working as it does. Also, make the "mia" ping louder, the first sound back when smart ping was first added, was way better than the current sound, which you can barely hear and has no sense of immediacy. No one noticies it unless it is spammed, and if a fight or engagement is happening, no one notices it at all.