Improved Partying - opinions needed

[Warrior]

I've had a lot of fun partying on the ironman server (and on the regular server of course) but one of the things that come up quite often is the need for certain improvements to partying.
On our developer site I've now made a ticket for "Improved partying" and would appreciate it if everyone would post here ideas and suggestions for such improvements.

[Emulord]

Sometimes I want to compare gear with someone, and explaining everything through the chat can be tedious. If there was a "show inventory/equipment" command somewhere, it would be nice to maximize a party's gear combination.

[Ashi]

I would like to have all mapping and feature detection effects be shared across all party members on a level, or at least among those who are close to the one who used the spell.

I would like to see some kind of message when monsters cast a spell on a party member. Right now, if you look closely, you can see that grey p using a spell animation on your party member but you don't know who he is or what he just cast.

If possible, I'd like to have a visible tag for the expedition leader when there are very large groups. (See Zal's thread.)

[Warrior]

I'm not sure about that show/compare gear functionality, though I guess it would make sense if ctrl+d actually worked for pm's, as thats often what you'll need it for, but everything that affects the chat system is sort of tricky I think, we're planning to upgrade the chat system in not so distant future versions. I see the use for this though, but a little worried it may automate too much, we generally don't want that, it's mostly got a lot to do with the whole "feeling" of the game.

Mapping and feature detection shared across all party members on a level or more realistically all members in a reasonable closeness to the one who used the spell, for example same radius as ESP or *destruction* or time bubbles. This should be high priority, it does not make sense at all that someone who knows where a hidden trap is placed wouldn't tell a party member. One could argue that maybe the description of the place would logically not be 100% exact, more in "there is a trap down this corridor"... or "there's a hidden door on the south wall of the large room northwest"... etc, but this wouldn't help all that much, in real life MAngband partying, there's never time to read such a message and no one would have time to wait for disarmers of traps to go first. So - 100% realism isn't always the way to go when discussing features. But I just felt like mentioning it anyway. :)

Messaging about monster attacks / other statuses of players would be a very good idea. I'm not 100% sure how this would be implemented, color coding, for example via boxes around the players, similar to the targetting yellow box seems like a good solution but on the other hand I'm not sure if we really want a game experience that .. flashy. Maybe one of the term windows could be turned into a "party messages" or "party status" window.

The ticket I made on the dev site is aimed specifically at making the party leader visible/easily identifiable, I think this, along with shared information about all relevant detection effects is probably the most important features to be considered. The dev team has already discussed a few different solutions to this and one of the options we're considering is "party rank" where the leader can assign ranks to the party members and if he should die the second in rank would be promoted to party leader. Currently when the party leader dies it can cause a lot of confusion when people suddenly can't see each other, etc.

More ideas welcome!

[Agor]

You could perhaps just color the party leader yellow for the other party members?

Also I like the idea with having one TERM converted into a party window, for example (picture this on a black background):

Agor Thorn 123/123
ThorMag 91/620 *poisoned*
Random Someone 90/90 57/101

[#name with the color of either leader status or class]
[#health color changing perhaps green (unhurt) -> dark green (scratched) -> yellow (hurt) -> red (really hurt) -> bright red (nearing death) -> grey (ghost /dead)]
[#mana / Maybe some status coloring also? Not that important, but it might be nice to know if a healer doesn't have mana]
[#other status effects like poison, hunger, paralyzed and such... Color coded as normally they would be]

[Ashi]

The monster attacks don't need to be flashy or anything. I'd just like a message whenever a visible monster breathes or casts a spell, just as we get one when a visible player casts a spell.

I'm not worried about visibility for the party owner so much as for the group leader. I imagine a party started by a Ranger that contains three Warriors; to avoid confusion, they could flag one of those Warriors so everyone follows that one.

Actually, here's a screenshot from the party that spawned this idea:



I like the idea to elect a second in command who can take over the party when the owner dies, as long as only those specified by the leader can become new owners. What if some random person took over for example Korsfarer and logged off forever? Then nobody could make that party again.

Maybe the party owner could also grant recruiter status to some members, so when the owner is offline, the rest don't need to leave the party to dive with other people, since they can add them to the original party.

It would be nice to get a list of party members both online and offline, so we won't need to guess which of Warrior's hundreds of accounts he needs to log in to join us.

[Agor]

You make it sound as if you want to make a guild / clan. I don't think we exactly need anything -too- complex, as you can always delete and recreate a party really fast. Parties are only temporary.

But one more thing to add: it would be nice if each party member could customize their own view of the party members by manipulating the colors they see on their own screen for each member.

(EDIT: Just the next player in experience levels could get hold of the group, if people aren't happy with that, they can just recreate the group. Group atm atleast are in my opinion just temporary bands, not a longer lasting bond.)

[wortle]

As for electing a party leader, I kinda think it might be cool to have several options that you could choose from. Specifically.

Party Commands
(7) Specify party leader

The party leader is ___ :
- [A] The person with the most HP
- Player ____
- [C] No party leader (default)

[wortle]

... and it should be configurable by anyone (not just the party owner). As for color, that's a matter of personal taste, but I like the idea of purple. (Anyone ever hear of Bikeshed? ;P) It should be something that stands out.

[Warrior]

Purple is actually taken for another upcoming feature (time bubbles) but a bird whispered in my ear that yellow is looking hot this spring...

[Agor]

Warrior is eeevil :<

[schroeder]

Something that might be nice is if you could try to shade people in the party. Their is nothing more annoying to me than being the one warrior in a party with 4 mages, having no idea who is who. Different shades of gray, brown, red, green, blue and...cyan? Not sure how that last one would work for shading...