Guild Wars 2

So in the latest ‘mini dungeon’ where you fight Canach instead of telegraphing boss mechanics clearly with animations, sounds, or voice lines, messages just pop up in your chat box tell you exactly what is going to happen and exactly what you should do.

Oh boy.

There are a number of things wrong with this, for one, it’s just lazy game design. Games should teach you via game-play, that’s just an inherent thing about games. If you have to have a text box pop up and tell the player what to do and what is happening you’ve failed somewhere in your design. Video Games are a visual and audible medium, you can hear things and they give you a picture.

If they want to communicate things more clearly to players(Which I assume is why they added these chat messages) there are plenty of better ways to do that. Animations, sound, and voice clips should give a complete understanding about what is happening.

Another big problem with this is that figuring out the boss mechanics and discovering the way to beat them is PART of the game. This new mechanic just completely throws that out the window.

Now you might think, fine, but of course they’re not going to use this for real dungeons in the future right?

Well…

http://youtu.be/Vd-rfwSoADI?t=3m30s

In that video they mention that that they plan to use this mechanic for all boss fights going forward.

Molten Facility improved on a lot of things Arenanet has done wrong in the past with dungeons. However with this new mini dungeon it seems to be one step forward 2 steps back.

…but maybe I’m alone here and everyone else loves the new text box telegraphed mechanics. I would appreciate some other people thoughts on the matter. What do you think of this new mechanic?

tl;dr: Telling the player how to do boss fights with magical chat messages is a poor way to do boss design. I think they should focus more on natural in game ways of telling the player what is happening like animations, sound, and voice clips if they want to make things more clear to players. Chat messages don’t need to be there.

The deaf people of the gaming community would disagree with you

Ema.4953:

The deaf people of the gaming community would disagree with you

I’m pretty sure deaf people can see animations, or read NPC voice lines. Which would obviously appear in chat, but is a lot different then the game just telling you how to defeat the boss.

It was so easy, just the solo with a few more mechanics. Only thing I saw in the chat box was me being criticised for running about when I was taking 100% of the aggro!

I agree, it is poor and lazy design. It’s an example of why the people that made the Flame and Frost end boss need to be the people that make all end bosses. Whoever made this end boss, clearly didn’t put in any effort.

I’ll be honest here, I didn’t read your full post, so I didn’t see you mentioning the part about text in dialogue etc. I assumed (my bad – sorry for that) you meant to remove all text altogether.

So you’re telling me you haven’t seen how Canach crouches down (uses the staff channel animation..) when he’s charging the bomb to explode, and he spins around (greatsword whirl animation..) when he’s re-arming them?

If an npc suddenly stopping to move, taking a very visible stance for 5 seconds is not obvious enough to you, then I have to question why you would not like the chatbox sending you a warning, it’s here exactly for this reason – for those who can’t see the obvious (to be blunt).

The fight is boring and underwhelming, but the mechanic functions well.

Chatbox methods may work for solo instanced stuff but I can see how spam trolls can make that hell easy for grouped content.

Bragdras.9572:

So you’re telling me you haven’t seen how Canach crouches down (uses the staff channel animation..) when he’s charging the bomb to explode, and he spins around (greatsword whirl animation..) when he’s re-arming them?

If an npc suddenly stopping to move, taking a very visible stance for 5 seconds is not obvious enough to you, then I have to question why you would not like the chatbox sending you a warning, it’s here exactly for this reason – for those who can’t see the obvious (to be blunt).

When did I say I didn’t see those animations? Did you even read my post?

I’m arguing for a stronger use of visual and audible elements and for these chat messages to be thrown out. An intelligent player should be able to understand what the implications of an animation is without reading a chat box. Spinning around in a circle has nothing to do with resetting mines. Why not have him throw the mines all around to reset them and play a mechanical ticking noise and the mine set noise from engineer. How about having him play a voice line too? All of these are easy in universe ways to inform the player about what is happening without putting a big blatant immersion-breaking, hand-holding message in chat.

I didn’t have any problem with the fight in this patch, it was very very easy. I just don’t want arena net to lean on these chat messages for future game design, because it’s lazy, and more importantly, not very fun.

My main point is: If they want to communicate things more clearly to players(Which I assume is why they added these chat messages) there are plenty of better ways to do that that make sense within the game and are more fun than reading the chat.

Before GW2 launched there was a big deal made about watching what happens on your screen instead of playing the UI and watching skill bars. This is what happens when you rush content and lower the bar because it’s not permanent. Instead of Canach having unique audio and obvious animations and visual cues to indicate what is happening, we have a yellow line of text which dictates the entire fight.

I don’t understand what anyone is talking about with this chat box nonsense. Canach is increadibly easy to deal with and telegraphs his movements rediculously. I never even noticed anything in chat, therefore it was completely superfluous. If it was done for the deaf community, good on ANet. If it wasn’t, whatever.

There is only one move that makes any difference, then he crouches down and holds his arm back he is about to blow up the mines. At no other point during the thing does it make even the slightest difference, just run away from him and switch mines from red to green the kite him through them until he loses. Done. Quit complaining about things that don’t actually have an effect on the game.

Keil tells you specifically how to beat him right at the beginning of the instance.

Sukor.1236:

When did I say I didn’t see those animations? Did you even read my post?

Sukor.1236:

-snip- Canach instead of telegraphing boss mechanics clearly with animations, sounds, or voice lines, -snip-

That would be where. Right at the beginning of the OP. You say Instead. You then say animations. This means you are saying that these extremely obvious animations intended to telegraph an action don’t exist. If you think they don’t exist you must not have noticed them. Don’t know how you missed it, cause it’s extremely obvious, but there is your answer.

I did not read the text box at all and defeated Canach, I don’t think it was necessary for the fight.

All I did was read the skill tooltips and ran in

instead of telegraphing boss mechanics clearly

He didn’t say that they were not telegraphed at all, just not clearly enough. And I totally agree. His animation for detonating the bombs – kneeling down – looks pretty much the same like his blocking animation. I confused the two at first.
Also, I don’t remember clearly, but did he have any in-fight voice at all? Felt that this was totally missing.

Apart from whether his actions were telegraphed or not: The progress of a fight, especially of a boss fight should never be influenced by the chat. Unless you’re deaf, you should not be forced to read. And there should not be any messages dictating the fight at all. If it was intentionally made for deaf people, fine. But make it an option you can turn off, because personally I do not like it. It is distracting, and it is bad design.

If I want to read text, I’m going to play a text based RPG. We have audio and video for a reason. So use it.

RoterFuchs.9216:

instead of telegraphing boss mechanics clearly

He didn’t say that they were not telegraphed at all, just not clearly enough. And I totally agree. His animation for detonating the bombs – kneeling down – looks pretty much the same like his blocking animation. I confused the two at first.
Also, I don’t remember clearly, but did he have any in-fight voice at all? Felt that this was totally missing.

Apart from whether his actions were telegraphed or not: The progress of a fight, especially of a boss fight should never be influenced by the chat. Unless you’re deaf, you should not be forced to read. And there should not be any messages dictating the fight at all. If it was intentionally made for deaf people, fine. But make it an option you can turn off, because personally I do not like it. It is distracting, and it is bad design.

If I want to read text, I’m going to play a text based RPG. We have audio and video for a reason. So use it.

Audio and Video were used (well Video 100%, I had my game muted), but so was text. The animation was close to a shield, but it only took a few seconds to learn the difference. “Why is he blocking, he is invincible? Oh all of the mines reset, what? Oh look at that text in the bottom left explaining everything”.

It’s a good design to use everything possible to communicate. They gave the visual cues and added text to give more explanation if you were unable to figure it out via the video cues. Again I cannot speak to audio as I had the game muted when I did this.

Ema.4953:

The deaf people of the gaming community would disagree with you

They’re called “Subtitles for the hearing impaired” bro.

Jemmi.6058:

“Oh look at that text in the bottom left explaining everything”.

It’s a good design to use everything possible to communicate. They gave the visual cues and added text to give more explanation if you were unable to figure it out via the video cues. Again I cannot speak to audio as I had the game muted when I did this.

I think at this point it comes down to personal preference, but communicating via chat is not good and should never be used. Seeing and hearing what your enemy does is rather easy (as long as the animations and sound fit), you’re focused onto him anyway. But if you have to divert your attention away from the fight to the chat (or are distracted by it, since it appears in yellow so it seems to be somewhat important), then the flow of the gameplay is broken at this point. It is not intuitive, it is distracting and can lead you easily to make mistakes.

Compared to everything else in this game, especially Molten Facility, this is very very bad gamedesign for the reasons I have already named.

Try looking at it from another angle: When fighting the dragons – Jormags Claw, Tequatl the Sunless and the Shatterer (also when taking back Claw Island, which of course is kinda like Tequatl), his attacks and moves are called out by npcs. While this also kinda dictates the flow of the fight, it is also immersive, because the npcs who are fighting with you are calling it, which makes the world feel alive.

So at the very least they could have used the npcs who you teamed up with to communicate his actions. Give them a little voice and let them tell you what Canach is up to. This would have been way better than yellow messages (System anouncements anyone?) and not so immersion-breaking.

RoterFuchs.9216:

Jemmi.6058:

“Oh look at that text in the bottom left explaining everything”.

It’s a good design to use everything possible to communicate. They gave the visual cues and added text to give more explanation if you were unable to figure it out via the video cues. Again I cannot speak to audio as I had the game muted when I did this.

I think at this point it comes down to personal preference, but communicating via chat is not good and should never be used. Seeing and hearing what your enemy does is rather easy (as long as the animations and sound fit), you’re focused onto him anyway. But if you have to divert your attention away from the fight to the chat (or are distracted by it, since it appears in yellow so it seems to be somewhat important), then the flow of the gameplay is broken at this point. It is not intuitive, it is distracting and can lead you easily to make mistakes.

Compared to everything else in this game, especially Molten Facility, this is very very bad gamedesign for the reasons I have already named.

Try looking at it from another angle: When fighting the dragons – Jormags Claw, Tequatl the Sunless and the Shatterer (also when taking back Claw Island, which of course is kinda like Tequatl), his attacks and moves are called out by npcs. While this also kinda dictates the flow of the fight, it is also immersive, because the npcs who are fighting with you are calling it, which makes the world feel alive.

So at the very least they could have used the npcs who you teamed up with to communicate his actions. Give them a little voice and let them tell you what Canach is up to. This would have been way better than yellow messages (System anouncements anyone?) and not so immersion-breaking.

Yup, I can definitely agree that the visual and audio cues could be improved. I just don’t think the text should be removed. It is out of the way, so it’s not getting in your way. If you want the extra information it’s there. If you don’t, then ignore it. However, I 100% agree that the audio/visual cues could be improved on this boss fight.

I agree with this.. also sometimes it is hard to tell if there is new text or not because there is nothing separating the old text.

I do agree. Prelaunch they advertised a lot that they put a lot of effort into the combat visuals to make sure that the player does not play with the UI (bc they learned from that mistake from gw1) and rather can always pay attention to what actualy is going on.
I can imagine many ways how they could have made it visualy clear that the boss is detonating the mines without resorting to a plain text in the chat. that’s just boring and actualy the fight (5-man) is very frustrating. Not bc it’s hard, it’s exactly bc you can’t really recognize what the boss is actualy doing at all time and when you look at the chat you find yourself easily walking into a mine.

Arenanet.. I don’t know how you got on that train to rush out content so frequently. But I’d rather wait 1-2 months longer and have higher quality stuff.

Jemmi.6058:

I just don’t think the text should be removed. It is out of the way, so it’s not getting in your way. If you want the extra information it’s there. If you don’t, then ignore it.

Here I really beg to differ. Especially since it is “out of the way” it becomes a distraction. As I said, you have to focus on it, making you ignore the actual battle. Also since it is yellow, at first I thought it was a system message.
Now you also say ignore it. But to ignore it, I have to know what it is in the first place. So I have to read it once at least, making your argument invalid. I cannot ignore it, because it could be important. I do not know what it is if I do not read it.
Also what jazzllanna said. This was confusing me, too. “Is it a new message or not?” For people who have turned timestamps off this hurts even more. And for those with timestamps on, they have to do the additional check of comparing timestamps with the actual time, distracting even more.

Don’t get me wrong, I get that on a personal level you seem to like these messages. But on an objective level, there are just too many facts showing that it is bad design. It’s just screaming BAD everywhere you look.

RoterFuchs.9216:

Jemmi.6058:

I just don’t think the text should be removed. It is out of the way, so it’s not getting in your way. If you want the extra information it’s there. If you don’t, then ignore it.

Here I really beg to differ. Especially since it is “out of the way” it becomes a distraction. As I said, you have to focus on it, making you ignore the actual battle. Also since it is yellow, at first I thought it was a system message.
Now you also say ignore it. But to ignore it, I have to know what it is in the first place. So I have to read it once at least, making your argument invalid. I cannot ignore it, because it could be important. I do not know what it is if I do not read it.
Also what jazzllanna said. This was confusing me, too. “Is it a new message or not?” For people who have turned timestamps off this hurts even more. And for those with timestamps on, they have to do the additional check of comparing timestamps with the actual time, distracting even more.

Don’t get me wrong, I get that on a personal level you seem to like these messages. But on an objective level, there are just too many facts showing that it is bad design. It’s just screaming BAD everywhere you look.

El curioso, how fast do you read? I read it during the battle and it did not distract me nearly enough to be negatively affected by it. By the time I read it, it was pointless, because I had already learned the fight. However, if I was distracted due to the yellow text, it wouldn’t have taken me away too long. It’s what, 8 words? That takes like 1 second. Once you’ve read it once, you know what it is and you can then choose to ignore the next time it pops up.

I also agree that timestamps would be useful

EDIT: I just wanted to note that I have no personal feelings on the matter. I do not care that the text messages were there, or if they weren’t there. However, from an objective stand point, I thought that it was a good design. I thought it was a good design because a) it provides extra information which may help explain what is going on and b) it does not appear in a way that is obtrusive.

I read pretty quick. But it’s not about that, and you should not use this as measurement, since there are probably a lot of people who read slower. Your 8 word argument, well, there are different messages to read, so there are probably more than 8 words. But that does not matter either.
It is not about for how long you are distracted, it is about being distracted in the first place. And since they said in that video which was posted earlier that they want to keep using this mechanic, you might expect an increase of stuff that you have to read, depending on the complexity of the enemy mechanic.

Also not having to read it again once you have read it, this is just a dummy argument. The point is that no matter what, you’re at least distracted by it once. It breaks immersion. It breaks the flow of the gameplay. It distracts.

And by the way, I think you misunderstood me. There are timestamps afaik, as long as you have them enabled for the entire chat in the options. This is also a big NO. Elements that influence combat and gameplay should never be so blatantly reliant on a setting a player can choose.

It might be helpful to some people, but it is nevertheless bad design. It should not be encouraged. There are a lot of other, better ways to communicate with the player. It also does not need to be communicated on all channels, because some will be distracting. Clear visual and auditory communication is the best and most sufficient way.

Apart from all this, people probably fear that ANet is shifting to less quality and more content in a short time, so that in the long term visual and auditory communication might be replaced entirely with this text nonsense.

RoterFuchs.9216:

I read pretty quick. But it’s not about that, and you should not use this as measurement, since there are probably a lot of people who read slower. Your 8 word argument, well, there are different messages to read, so there are probably more than 8 words. But that does not matter either.
It is not about for how long you are distracted, it is about being distracted in the first place. And since they said in that video which was posted earlier that they want to keep using this mechanic, you might expect an increase of stuff that you have to read, depending on the complexity of the enemy mechanic.

Also not having to read it again once you have read it, this is just a dummy argument. The point is that no matter what, you’re at least distracted by it once. It breaks immersion. It breaks the flow of the gameplay. It distracts.

And by the way, I think you misunderstood me. There are timestamps afaik, as long as you have them enabled for the entire chat in the options. This is also a big NO. Elements that influence combat and gameplay should never be so blatantly reliant on a setting a player can choose.

It might be helpful to some people, but it is nevertheless bad design. It should not be encouraged. There are a lot of other, better ways to communicate with the player. It also does not need to be communicated on all channels, because some will be distracting. Clear visual and auditory communication is the best and most sufficient way.

Apart from all this, people probably fear that ANet is shifting to less quality and more content in a short time, so that in the long term visual and auditory communication might be replaced entirely with this text nonsense.

Really? I’ve wanted Timestamps for so long, I am going to look for this right away when i get home! Thanks

I am all about immersion, and I do not think reading some extra information for a second or two breaks immersion.

We clearly disagree about a big thing, and that is information. I think that having more information is better, where you think quality information is better. Ah well.

Thanks again about the Timestamp note.

I guess we can leave it at that.

You can find the timestamp option in the menu that pops up when clicking the cog in the top left corner of the chat window.

I generally agree with the OP. This was distracting and poorly thought through. A simpler and more elegant choice would have been better animations regarding his two main actions (resetting the bombs, and exploding them). That, possibly accompanied by some kind of vocal cue (ticking time bomb for resetting the bombs or C screaming "DIIIIIIIIEEEEE! when he’s about blow them up) would have worked much better. It just struck me as lazy to rely on the dinky chat window instead of using more immersive methods that would require more serious coding. Look to the MF and current boss events worldwide for much better ways to do this.

Wait…what?

Is that what was happening? I did the instance last night and, while I was successful, I had no idea what was actually going on. I don’t look at chat. I don’t even have most of it visible (the combat tab and one specifically for whispers is all I have). There should at least have been some sort of warning…

Because it’s hard to make a notification on the screen where it tells you a new build is coming out to say “THE BOMBS ARE EXPLOADZING”

I like the idea of cues that are connected to (but not replacing) enemy animation cues, whether they be text or audio. 100% kudos to ANet on that. I do agree, however, that maybe the chat box isn’t the best place for them if they’re going to be text only.

Why not just have the mines give audio/visual clues when they’re being manipulated by Canach/Null? They’re all around you, so it would be easy to pick up on, and far more immersive than yellow lines of text in a box that most people keep tucked away so it doesn’t distract from playing the game.

Why does Anet keep making things easier? If things are easy, nobody spends time doing them. If you are going to put forth the effort to make content and spend manhours on it, make it worthwhile. Make it something that people will play more than once, not solely because of drops, but because it is inherently difficult and fun. Also, I don’t mean the difficult by adding more HP and damage to the boss. That’s simply annoying and encourages a gear based play style rather than one based on positioning and actually making use of the dodge mechanic.

And for the people who need these chatbox ques, don’t ever play a game like Monster Hunter.

Only reason why there are so many downed players after Dwayna aoe attack is because 90% of those players never saw her doing attack animation due to skills lightshow. Most of people can barely see statue.
In moments like those chat notice would be nice, since usuall tells are immpossible to see.

Focusing on animation tells for boss attacks is fine, but what concerns me is those times when there’s so much going on onscreen that you can’t see the animation.

Putting text messages in the chat box is a bit off though, what about spoken dialogue choices that warn of the attack without spoiling what it is that can be seen on screen.

I wish there was an option to display the messages as a banner across the top of the screen.

I had to turn off guild chat to do the fight. Not a problem but it is an unnecessary frustration that I shouldn’t need to do.

I don’t know how people can see his animation, when I go in the instance there is this horrible white haze that makes everything pretty much impossible to see.

To telegraph moves should just be the character saying somethings.. if indeed the fight calls for clearer telegraphed abilities etc.. A “say” that appears above their head.. simple as that. Wont exclude deaf players and is the best place for it (ie where the boss is.. where you should be looking)

In chat as well is fine and with an animation is fine also with audio from the character is also fine.

When completing the fight I did pay attention to the chat and saw the tells there and agree that it is not the best place for them although I had no trouble with it.

Comes back to why GW2 never implemented the system of showing the ability beneath the mobs healthbar etc.. You really need that to put these advanced mechanics in the game. I can understand the reasoning’s of “you should be looking at the boss” which is true so I think a “say” is a good compromise. You can see it above the lightshow and its where the boss is on the screen.

Convert Mines = Spins like a top

Blows up mines = stands still for like 30 minutes in a crouched position

If you couldn’t figure that out… well… you may want to get your eyes checked, they were pretty obvious…