Game visibility improvements

In recent months certain scenarios of gameplay have highlighted that Warcraft III has some visibility problems. In particular the Banshee’s Anti-Magic Shell and Possession spells have been noted as an issue.

As a result of this, we’d like to make some changes to our maps to improve visibility of some effects in the game to help both players and spectators read the visual language of the game better.

Below we have prepared a list of concerns that we will seek to improve:

Highest Priority

Effect	Proposal	Reasoning
Banshee - Anti-Magic Shell	Increase transparency Match the colour of the effect to the players colour	The effect is so opaque and uniform that it totally clouds the unit’s silhouette. A specific issue is in battles where opposing sides use AMS and so it’s especially difficult to tell which side the unit belongs to.
Banshee - Possession	Add a direct line between the Banshee and the unit being possessed Add an indicator on this line to show the progression of the channelling (how long before it is done)	Often the player hears the Possession sound effect, but is not able to find the unit or the banshee involved. This can be incredibly frustrating, especially considering the high stakes of the spell. This should allow both players to make more informed decisions on how to react to Possession, if the Banshee should be coiled, the unit should be staffed, etc.
Dark Ranger - Silence	Make the silence effect on the unit more visible.	Silence’s effect is usually covered by always-on healthbars, something that was not a feature when Warcraft 3 was originally made. Updating the silence effect to be much clearer should help with this.

Med Priority

Effect	Proposal	Reasoning
Troll Batrider - Unstable Concoction	Add a line indicating the target of the spell (similar appearance to Raven’s seeker missile in Starcraft 2)	When batriders use this spell they become locked onto a target, however the animation change is very subtle, and the target is not always clear because it often targets a clump of units. This should help counterplay.

Lowest Priority

Effect	Proposal	Reasoning
Building placement grid	Show simple adjacent squares to the building Show adjacent squares + color squares live where building cannot be placed	One of the player suggestion. This could help new players to learn distances of placing expansions and learning distance between goldmine.
Minimap icons	Create new icons for neutral building Change shapes for camp difficulty	Currently it’s impossible to tell what building it is on map. New icons for creep camps could be more saturated, it’s problematic to tell difference between small camp and medium camp.
Minimalistic HUD	Create or modify reforged UI to be possible to use. This should be implemented as option in launcher or game menu.	Some people enjoyed minimalistic Reforged UI.
Differentiate item icons	Create new icons for Claws of Attack and Ring of Protection to differentiate stats given. This could be fully new drawn icons or simply adding some text on it with +stat.	All items with +stats are the same, creating new icons would help to read what item it is, without hovering on it.
Map timer	Add time to the map with triggers. You could toggle this by -clock command. This was a thing on w3arena.	Helps new player to learn timeings of various things.
Hotkey shortcut visibility	Add in-game option to see hotkey shortcut without hovering on it.	Most of the people are visual learners. This helps learning new hotkey setup easier.