Currently you can only see other characters and their names when they pop into your screen view, while you can hear off screen sounds like combat or rabbit walking (how can be rabbits so noisy???).
This rises a red flag to me: first of all, your character field of view is actually tied to your hardware, your monitor.
A character in a 4:3 monitor sees differently from a character in a 16:9, which is a problem, since you shouldn't tie a game mechanic (field of view) to a part of hardware (the monitor).
If there is something Albion Online did really well, it was the out of screen nameplate fading, which addresses two main problems:
- It makes the character field of view circular and larger than the actual screen, so that it can match for example the hearing radius, allowing to use attributes as perception to increase or decrease this field of view.
- Gives a little anticipation about who is about to come in contact with you, allowing to chose to run away from gankers, for example, or to detect a players you're farming with when he gets a pixel out of your screen.
Why is this important?
I think issues, when found, should be addressed before they become real game breaking problems, and so far the ganking system seems unfair, since a ganker can walk around listening to someone farming (fight sounds can be heard way before characters can be seen) and can then come from north or south, giving unreasonably little time to react to the gank, since in 16:9 monitors (the majority now, I suppose) your vertical field of view is almost half compared to horizontal one.
Now I know it's not something that should go over red bug fixing and stuff like that, but it's not only QoL either, this is an important piece of game mechanic, aimed at making the interaction between gankers and farmers more balanced (works the other way around too, when bounty hunters will be ganking evildoer).
To prevent some of the more obvious/toxic responses to this:
- No, I'm not ranting because I've been gaked, I'm still under new player protection, but while farming I've noticed how little warning I had when red players came into my field of view, while they were guided by the sound of fight.
- No, "git gud" is not a solution, there will always be someone better skilld or better geared, and unless you want the game to become a wild PvP experience (making new players just stay away), you'll want to address the issue.
- No, go in group is not totally a solution, for two reasons: one is because gankers can move in groups too, two because the game is said to be build around the possibility for solo players to actually play.
- No, play beastman is not a solution either, because if you reason that way you'll end up with two full PvP worlds and one full PvE one, no nice balanced world in the middle.
That said, let's discuss!