Crystalline Conflict usability

[Valence]

I wanted to make a little thread about the things that in my opinion could be worked upon and improved to really increase the quality of life in CC games, especially regarding the UI.

Victory Objectives

While those have a pvp guide offline (and in tutorials ingame I think?), the overtime part of games is pretty hard to track especially for new players in the heat of the moment. I don't understand why we can't have a message telling clearly what you need to do when overtime starts, and that stays written somewhere around the game progress header (keep the enemy out of the crystal for 3 seconds, move your progress above the enemy's, etc). I think that should be part of good visual information easy to get at a glance, that people will stop missing. Way too many players don't seem to notice it and I do think that whatever could be done to improve on that, should be done, as it's not exactly hard in my opinion as an addition in games.

[Valence]

Another problem is how overtime begins. It's extremely abrupt and as soon as the countdown reaches zero, overtime starts, which makes sense, but... We again don't have any clear visual indicator except the little clock at the top, and again in the heat of the moment, it's not exactly the place that your attention stays glued on. I'd love if when 30s remain, we get a sound indicator ticking down each second, or each 5s or whatever does the job so that players actually get reminded that the game countdown is about to end. Adding a visual indicator that goes in pair with it would obviously be a must (you need indicators for people with handicaps, the more of them the better, that you can turn on or off at your own leisure). This would also avoid the cases where you're fighting hard, and miss the crystal by one second and due to server ticks, the game immediately ends in a defeat even though you were very close to the crystal. I don't even know how many times this has happened to me that it's depressing and i'm sure i'm not the only one.

Last but not least, server ticks when it comes to objectives (the crystal). This makes overtime especially inconsistent, where when the game countdown ends you can get an immediate defeat without warning, or not get one because you'll get a lucky tick and have time to move into the crystal when you see a big OVERTIME on your screen. I don't think this should be acceptable in any game whatsoever, it's way too sloppy and inconsistent. It also happens when you actually are on point in the crystal, but somebody with pushback abilities just pushes everybody out and depending on the server tick you get, it can end the game instantly or not. Again, this I feel is not acceptable as a mechanic. My proposal would be to add a second, wider soft cap area around the crystal that as long as somebody is inside, the server tick gets refreshed once. Obviously you'll still have lucky server ticks or not (3 to 6s depending on your luck), but at least it would leave a margin no matter what to adjust. Maybe there is more elegant solutions, but that's the best I could come with as least as a bandaid because I know that server ticks are probably never going to change anyway.

EDIT: or just increase the ticks required to get in the crystal by one (+3s). I'd take it, anything really.

[Valence]

End of game respawn

Could it be possible to disable the respawn once the game is complete? This is a more minor thing but actually annoying when it happens as it resets all your windows, the game tally you were probably reading, and generates unnecessary loading times for the sake of it.

Attack telegraphs

I've seen it asked a lot, but I'll ask it again: would it be possible to add a different colour or telegraph to enemy abilities like the Dragoon LB, or the SMN slipstream ability? THe MCH turret and the SGE LB already have it, so there is very little reason for others not to have it as well.

Chat channels

I understand the need to disable any chat during a game, but is this necessary during the loading, the team presentation that you can't skip, and the 30s of pre game preparation where you can't do anything but twiddle your thumbs? You obviously don't need to enable any party chat besides quickchat, but being able to actually talk on other channels like in pve or any instance (FC chat, linkshells, /tell etc) would be really appreciated. The time it takes for every game to start is already pretty huge (almost 2 minutes! That's 20-25% of the length of an average game!), so please, can you do something about it? Again, you can keep ALL channels disabled during a game, but allowing it during loading, presentation and preparation would really be appreciated.