[Edited for clarity]
I’m not sure where to post this, but as an amateur game dev myself, I consider these to be broken game elements.
Both the orbital laser and the air strike have woefully inadequate audio-visual cues to warn the victims to move out of the way.
It’s incredibly frustrating to hear air strike warning sound come from a random direction and not have a clear idea where it’s coming from or where to hide from it. The tiny line on the ground is often very difficult to see and much smaller than the actual blast radius. Moreover, the air strike warning signs often appear behind some other object or corner, causing even more unavoidable deaths. This is neither fun nor is it fair. Without clear visual cues, sometimes the only response is to try and guess where the optimal target would be and avoid that for 5 seconds.
Possible solution: one you have used already. The coloured flare gas from previous games was perfect; use that. The GUI needs to big and showy to be fair.
Similarly, the orbital laser is even less clear. By the time player sees the laser, it’s usually too late to dodge it.
The solution here would be two laser modes: a harmless warm-up mode that lasts 1 second, and an exaggerated death ray mode. A clearer audio queue wouldn’t hurt either.
====Short and Sweet List of other GUI gripes====
- It is difficult to tell mines apart from one team to the next --> more coloured dots
- Objective GUI often obscures enemies --> lower transparency if person is aiming at objective, or elevate GUI on y-axis
- active GUI objectives need emphasis to mirror audio alerts --> complementary objective GUI on top of screen, highlight when active
- Redundant objective video in stopwatch mode, robs players of strategy chat time --> allow veteran players to opt out.
- Objective videos lack geographic context --> have camera speedily zoom from one objective to the next instead of cut.