See friends and guildies locations on the map!

Do you think its possible to display the locations of friends and guildies on the continent map?

For instance, if your in Tyria and you have 4 friends online and 2 are in Tyria too. You open up the map, zoom out and it will show little red circles where your 2 friends are.

The same going for guildies, and alliance members. All being different colours to reprosent different types.

Obviously they have to be on the same continent to see them.

But if Anet was to ever merge maps and allow you to move between them likes pages, this would benefit from that too. A quick and easy way to find friends and allies.

It would benefit for forming parties, if you're looking for something to do, and you know a friend or guildie is in a certain outpost you need.

It would also benefit when trying to form parties and your waiting for someone. You can quickly open the map and see where they are.

The obvious issue is if someone is inside an instance....

...you cant expect it to follow them in real time. It would just a dot next to the instance name to indicate their in there. It would only change if they move into another instance or outpost.

You would options in the interface to turn them off if you wanted too. You could also have an option to stop people tracking you, incase you get stalked by an abusive player.

LOTS of info for a server, I see it creating LOTS of lag. Besides which, if it is for Guild/Alliance members only, then you can just simply ask in Guild/Alliance chat where people are, and what they are doing.

Now, a bigger problem. If I am in a guild with 100 members, and an alliance with 9 other guilds, each having 100 members, how would it display all that? Even if each of the 10 guilds only had 10 people on, in the same continent, that is 100 icons to display. People with active guilds/alliances would possibly have even more.

If you add in Friends list, it becomes a total nightmare.

You already have Guild/Alliance chat, use that.

Maybe limit it to only 10 people of your choice, if they added a window to enter names into 10 fields! Give them all 10 distinctive icons.

Then top 10 people you want to play along side!

Is whispering really that hard for you? Or is it more likely they hide from you...


EDITED due to reading the WHOLE OP

An interesting idea. Lag would result for people with a lesser connection.

Meh, I'd rather it just be in the Guild/Friendlist where when you open either the friends list or guild list next to their name it would give the Outpost and District the person's in, rather than having dots all over my map which would probably lag out even more people.

And have it sort of like the search function thing where you can Click on them and "Join Group" and you are warped to the outpost/district that the person is in.

/notsigned
This was suggested earlier (about 2 weeks ago) on these forums. It was shot down because it breaks privacy. If your guildies don't want you to know where they are at, they don't have to tell you. Also, since there is no way to limit who is on your friendslist. I can add anybody I want. It's too easy to "cyber stalk" people this way.
I don't believe a feature like this would really create any lag.

"You would options in the interface to turn them off if you wanted too. You could also have an option to stop people tracking you, incase you get stalked by an abusive player. "

You've never been in a party in an outpost and someone has said "wait I have a friend coming to join us"...

....30 minutes later "where is this person?"....

....10 minutes later "where are they?"....

Now imagine you were able to add them to your marker list for the map, you could see exactly where they were (assuming their on the same continent)!

I had that exact situation last night. The guildies had said they would come help me in Zen, but it took about 45 minutes for them to turn up. Had I been able to see where they were, I could go to them or tell them to get a move on.

I would think a better method would be a little bit next to there name (in guild reg. and friends list) that simple says where they are including missions, towns and or Explorable areas etc. Sort of like a improved Status eg.

Sophitia Leafblade...-online........-Gyala Hatcheries (Mission)
Nee San Heart........-Busy..........-Guild Hall (Scrimmaging)
Heidi Knight............-online........-Observer mode (match x)

getting 1000 numbers (gw locations) through some wires might have been a problem 10 years ago... it shouldn't be now.

privacy is not an issue if you can just disallow it like stated in the initial post.

making it so you can turn it off yourself - so your map will not be messed up with all the dots - would help, too.

it can easily be combined with displaying the locations next to the names in friend list and guild tab, since the information is being sent anyways. how it is displayed is just a client interface thing.

/signed

I don't see a problem with this as long as it follows Freeked's guidelines.

/signed.

great idea.and would help alot in explorable or trades.