Improve the clarity of location pings

[SupplyDepoo]

Just look at this screenshot from my game yesterday:

chat-pings.png (242.24 KiB) Viewed 1090 times

Can you understand who's pinging where? (There were more pings that aren't shown in the chat window when I took this screenshot.) It's not made easier by the fact that clicking on the chat link automatically hides the chat, and that the map moves and changes zoom level instantly (that last part is more of an issue in regular games with big maps, because you have not enough context at that close zoom level). This isn't even one of the worst examples, it's just the most recent before I decided to make a suggestion post about it.

I have three suggestions to address this (in my opinion) rather obvious UX problem:

• When hovering over a chat link with the map already open, add an extra highlight outline to the corresponding map marker, and vice versa.
• When hovering over a chat link with the map closed, show an arrow at the screen edge toward that direction, like you've done with alerts.
• Add an interface option to disable automatic zoom and automatic closing of the chat window, or some modifier key combo to prevent it.

[Dmytrozern]

I have no problems with functionality, but the graphics of the marker itself could be updated to something nicer. Even just removing the circle is better.

[ickputzdirwech]

+ 1. Maybe there could be some way of telling which player made which ping and in which order. Different colors and a small counter for example