Guild Wars 2

There’s a discussion over on reddit about people not using consumables in dungeons, and how valuable they are (-10% incoming dmg, +10% outgoing dmg!!!) , and why people don’t use them.

One of the reasons why is that they just expire and people don’t notice and forget to reapply them. As is, using consumables is too ‘micro’, as in micro-management required, counter to ANet’s philosophy of ‘Play the game, not the UI’, and spend your time having fun rather than ‘preparing to have fun’.

So, a suggestion for solving this problem:

Add two slots to the H panel, maybe near your gathering tools slots, for food and consumable items (pots, stones, crystals, etc). Drop a stack in there, and it consumes one and starts the timer counting down. After 1hr (or whatever the particular item’s duration is), it automatically consumes the next and starts counting down again. After all stacks are consumed and timer runs out on the last one, you lose the buff and have to refill the slot. Include a little checkbox in the top right corner of each to toggle both the buff and timer on and off, so you don’t have to keep swapping them in and out to enable/disable.

Thoughts?

I would absolutely love this!

Even easier, just make the effect stack duration like most other stuff in the game.

E.G.

I have 5 food in my inventory, I spam double click on it 5 times, then I get the food buff for 2 hours, 30 mins.

This has the added benefit of being a food sink / gold sink, since most people will stack 8 hours of food on their character, than stop playing after 2-3 hours and waste the food.

+1’ed.
I knew there was another thing I was wanting to add when I was putting together my Achievement Tracking thread, but I couldn’t remember what it was.
Great minds think alike

Currently, I completely ignore consumables as they’re an inconvenience. They consume materials (potential cash), and they’re a PITA to use.
This would go a long way to making me use them and should have been implemented from the get-go, along with things like Minipet paper doll slots, a dungeon group finder and other such interface conveniences.

I don’t like the idea of a system that starts eating all my food because I wasn’t paying attention and even though I’m not doing anything anymore it’s still going. It would be much better to have a way to access a handful of inventory items I want from the UI. I’m already using F1-4 for my class abilities, F5-8 would be nice for consumables.

I do like duration stacking though. That would be a really good way to make them more useful.

Kal Spiro.9745:

I don’t like the idea of a system that starts eating all my food because I wasn’t paying attention and even though I’m not doing anything anymore it’s still going. It would be much better to have a way to access a handful of inventory items I want from the UI. I’m already using F1-4 for my class abilities, F5-8 would be nice for consumables.

I do like duration stacking though. That would be a really good way to make them more useful.

You wouldn’t have to. It’s just an option. And you could easily use alt+drag to split the stack. That way if you have a stack of 100 and you’re playing for 2 hours, you can split the stack into 96 and 4, then put the 4 stack in the hero panel slot.

I fully support this idea. I understand not wanting to clutter up the UI, but is it worth it to have to remember to open up your inventory in the middle of a fight/running and reapply food/buffs every 30 min? I vote no.

Chamone.6890:

Even easier, just make the effect stack duration like most other stuff in the game.

E.G.

I have 5 food in my inventory, I spam double click on it 5 times, then I get the food buff for 2 hours, 30 mins.

This has the added benefit of being a food sink / gold sink, since most people will stack 8 hours of food on their character, than stop playing after 2-3 hours and waste the food.

Hmm, doesn’t the timer stop when you log out ? It does for me when I have a timed buff going.

Chamone.6890:

Even easier, just make the effect stack duration like most other stuff in the game.

+1. Simpler, easier to implement, hence more likely to actually get done. Either one would be a huge improvement.