Guild Wars 2

Now that I’ve played a bit more, I know to look at the red bars underneath my skills and it doesn’t really cause problems. That doesn’t change the fact, however, that the ‘out-of-range’ indicator in this game blends into the rest of the screen more than any of the 15 or so MMOs that I’ve played before. When I first started playing, I was pretty surprised that it actually made it through beta like that, so I’m sure this has been brought up before (I just haven’t seen it, so I thought I’d bring it up myself). It really needs to be improved by something like surrounding the entire skill button with a red border or tinting the entire button red when you’re out of range.

It’s made a little harder to understand for new players because of the unintuitive numbers used for the ranges in this game compared to other, similar games. I still have no idea if there is supposed to be some actual unit of measurement that corresponds to the ranges displayed as 150, 450, 600 or 1200.

I have to agree with this. The little red bar at the bottom of a skill to indicate that you are out of range is simply too difficult to see. Some improvement to visibility of the indicator is definitely desirable, even if it is only made as an option so that we can choose between the current indicator and something more noticeable.

I also find it annoying that targeted AoE skills do not have a range indicator on the skill bar at all. When you have target circles enabled and you do not have your options set to automatically cast at the location of the mouse pointer, then that isn’t as big a deal, but if you are like me and you do use the cast at mouse pointer location feature, then a range indicator based on the mouse pointer location would be highly desirable as well (or at the minimum based on the current target’s range).

I haven’t switched to fast targeting AoE yet, so I hadn’t even thought about that. Maybe a happy compromise for the fast-targeting mechanic of those AoE skills is to have it so that when you hold down the button the AoE target comes up, and the skill is fired off when you release the button. That should still be pretty fast execution and allow you to see the targeting area first.

I’m slightly red/green color blind and the range indicators are sometimes hard for me to see too. Would be nice if the whole icon for the spell just faded out or turned red itself instead of the little line underneath it.

Bonzoso.7014:

I haven’t switched to fast targeting AoE yet, so I hadn’t even thought about that. Maybe a happy compromise for the fast-targeting mechanic of those AoE skills is to have it so that when you hold down the button the AoE target comes up, and the skill is fired off when you release the button. That should still be pretty fast execution and allow you to see the targeting area first.

That isn’t a half-bad idea, but I see a potential problem with it. Let’s say I start to cast such a spell. Then the targeting circle comes up and I notice that I’m out of range. Now I have the problem that if I let go, I still try to cast the spell but get the “out of range” message, otherwise I have to move into range while still holding down the skill button, and only release it once I’m in range. That would be a significant pain, and I’d much rather have an automatic visual indicator like other skills have, so that I can know I’m out of range before I even start trying to use the skill.

Since the target focus is the mouse cursor that’s where the range indicator needs to be, I think. It could change color according to range i.e. 600, 120 etc. or there could be a range ladder. Range is a particular problem on those skills that go off and do nothing when you are out of range – can be really annoying to lose the cooldown.