Hi there,
those who followed GW2’s development may remember that when the game was first showed at Gamescom and other conventions it used a red aura (or green for allies) around your target. (example : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je0mT7AHKqI )
Some people then complained that it was, according to them, ruining the aesthetics of the game (I will agree it was slightly too large) and it was later changed for the current, more traditionnal, ring on the ground (which I personally find aesthetically worse but that’s not the point).
Strangely, the aura remained for targets you hover on (I’m ok with this one) and for targets that are in the direction you’re facing (this one isn’t really useful and does not disappear when i hide my UI to take screenshots
This ring has too major problems :
-It’s easily hidden by either the terrain (grass, holes…), other people or the usual rain of particle effects.
-It doesn’t work underwater, which is probably part of the reason why some people have been complaining about underwater combat being messy (not being sure where and what your target is certainly sounds like a big problem).
The only plus side I can find to the ring is that it helps getting a better sense of distances with flying creatures (since they don’t touch the ground), and that isn’t worth much compared to the two issues above.
The problem of ennemies being hidden behind clouds of particle effects (and thus not being able to see a boss’s attacks coming for instance) has been discussed many times on these forums and I think giving us the option to use auras instead of rings would be an extremely simple yet very effective solution to this since the aura would be visible through skill effects, allowing you to see animations (if they are done well enough seeing the silhouette of your ennemy should be enough to understand what it’s doing, or at least this is what I learn in my animation school :p ).
And from a purely aesthetic perspective, I think the rings tend to make things look smaller. A character with a ring at its feet looks like some sort of pawn in a RTS and, more importantly, you have to look at the ground to see the rings better. Having your camera constantly pointing downward isn’t the best way to deliver the sense of scale this game has. Well, I’ll agree this is rather subjective.
So being able to chose to have auras around my targets instead of rings would make me (and probably other people) happy. Thanks !
(edited by Tauril.8504)