As the title implies I'm not quite fond of the current nameplates in Maniaplanet especially while playing Shootmania.
In SM and also in TM the nameplates are a two edged sword, because while you want to know who you are currently fighting/racing against, the nameplates are always on top of everything and they can be a distraction/obstacle not letting you see what's in front of you.
In TM you can easily turn it off when the server gets too crowdy and in some SM modes you also dont really need the feature. But in other SM modes you heavily rely on the nameplates, for example Elite where you can always see the opponents nameplate even through walls, when one of your teammates has a clear view on him, or in Speedball where you need to communicate clearly with your teammates for passing and maneuvering.
So personally, in both SM and TM I have the nameplates on, in the second most smallest setting, which looks pretty much like this on my 17'' display at 1280x720 px:
It works more or less as people tend to have different avatars and differently coloured nicks, but when you play against three guys from the same team, same tag, same avatar maybe (I have P2P deactivated so playing vs 3 german or french flags is nothing unusual for me), it is really hard to distinguish them. Or your playing with your team yourself, same problem.
Obviously Maniaplanet can't change my low resolution and small screen but taking a closer look at the nameplates (this time in the biggest setting) shows:
Only 1/3 of the nametag is actually the name!
That means that in the first picture, the nametag is 14px and the name is 5px... 3mm and 1mm...
So from all the stuff that is actually in the way blocking your view, 2/3 don't even serve any purpose, so to maximise the readability and minimise the in-the-way-ness of the nameplates, I would really like to see a redesign of those.
Obviously, what would make the most sense to me first of all, is making the name (almost) as big as the nameplate instead of 1/3, so one can choose smaller nameplate sizes without it being unreadable.
Another idea would be to throw away the background of the nameplate completely and just have the name floating around with some smaller indications of the team etc.
Maybe somewhat in this direction:
PS: I don't know why we need Echolons in the nameplates...
