Map Comments

So I was watching the first Tone+MTF combo stream a few weeks back, and listening to them repeatedly strategize aloud so they could collaborate brought more than the usual planning talk to the forefront of the conversation, through which I noticed the occasional potential for manual map comments to be helpful.

This is actually a potential feature I've brought up here before, and there's been a bit of support for it but not enough to justify actually building it yet, not with so many other higher priority features on the list.

Well, I added it this week :P

Doing this actually took forever, and in the end I don't believe it was actually worth adding in terms of dev time vs. how useful it'll be, but whatever I felt like working on some kind of interface QoL feature and this topic happened to pop into my head again, so now it's a thing...

Comments by You

Here we have the activation of map Comment Mode (Shift-Alt-c, later to also appear on the special commands menu) in order to add a new comment to the map:

Even when not in the mode, the map will remind you about comments you've made by intermittently highlighting those cells (interval adjustable in the options, can can be turned off entirely if you prefer). You can also hover your mouse/keyboard cursor over a single comment position to show that one comment, but on entering the mode they all appear at once and remain visible while in that mode. Right-clicking on an existing comment (or 'r') deletes it.

As with other labels, of course we need support for showing indicators for those not currently within the map view area. (You can probably start to see how this "little" feature was actually a whole lot of work--I did end up piggybacking on the existing label architecture, but the style is different, and it has a dedicated mode plus a way to interact with the labels etc...)

Using Tab to cycle through existing comments is a thing as well (in map mode), as you can see here in this demo which also edits a comment in order to update its comment.

Questionable Usefulness

As mentioned before I'm not yet convinced this will be a very useful UI feature, primarily because not only are the use cases somewhat rare, some of them are even already covered by other new features in Beta 11, for example item searching and log notes.

One more widely applicable use for map comments would perhaps be leaving notes if pausing/saving in the middle of a session, though technically a good portion of that need is already covered by log notes, with map comments only adding the potential for more accurate spacial info where it matters. Same with item searching--less desire to leave map comments about the parts available in a particular area if it's already possible to easily search up anything.

A handful of people will likely want to use map comments as a built-in system for annotating screenshots for others, though of course this functionality is already something for which those people are used to relying on a more flexible external solution to address anyway :P

Overall the uses seem pretty niche.

One potential issue I'll be on the lookout for here is whether map comments actually add tedium to the game, mainly in terms of optimal play. Like marking known Sentry/Heavy defense points? Behemoths? It's true people can theoretically use screenshots as a recording tool for this sort of optimal play, but that requires enough work that it's not something players do in practice--we just rely on our brain instead :P. Once you give players a tool that reduces the cost of some form of optimal play, one that was previously safely beyond the threshold of reasonability, there's always the danger that this new tool will invite tedium.

Or maybe seeing how people use this will instead just suggest areas where we could use other forms of automated QoL, like intel? (that can get really complicated though...)

Anyway, enough speculation, since it's now implemented and we'll just have to wait and see what people actually do with this! As long as it's not excessive or only used when the player thinks it might really matter, that's fine, too.