Guild Wars 2

In a recent interview, there was talk about having larger groups in the game, for large scale content. I like the idea of this. I have a suggestion for a useful UI for this that would not overly clutter the screen. The idea would be that you would need to know the full details on your primary group, but less so for the outer fringes of the raid UI.

The way I would see it, you would have the standard four face icons for your own party, just as there is now. Then, below those in the UI, you would have a series of small rosettes, five small icons in a pentagon formation that is, together, roughly the size of a current face icon, or perhaps slightly larger. These could be class icons, perhaps, or even just circles if necessary. Each would of course represent one character in that sub-group of five. The way it would represent these characters is that the icon would be green when they are at full health, yellow when they are below 50%, red when they are downed, and gray when they are defeated (optionally, “blue” could represent 100% health/out of combat to give some distinction from “fighting but fine”).

This allows you to get a strategic sense of the battlefield at a glance, without overloading you with conditions, or exact health bars, or anything like that. If you see a lot of green dots, then you’re doing fine. If a lot of those dots are yellow, then things aren’t great. If a bunch of them are going red/gray then it’s something of a rout, get moving.

The UI is much less of a concern to me at the moment, although I see where it would be a big deal for some folks. Honestly Myself and many others would really like to see a Raid group Ability. My guild does alot of WvW roams but we want to do our own thing. We focus on quick tactical strikes and dropping small parties trying to do the same thing. Its tough when you can only See 4 of your other teammates. We shouldnt need to rely on 3rd party chats and spend more time locating eachother. The Commander Icon is great but In the Upper tiers of WvW you really dont want the whole map to see where you are. Good servers wont use Map chat at all let alone advertise locations before a strike. >>>>> We need 25-40 man Party ability.<<<<<<< Please.

I think a raid UI could easily work without having to create any new design. Simply force raids to use the “Simple Party UI” and you could easily fit 20 people on the left hand side then

I think a raid UI could easily work without having to create any new design. Simply force raids to use the “Simple Party UI” and you could easily fit 20 people on the left hand side then

Maybe, but that’s still a lot of data to be juggling, a ton of moving boon/condition icons, health bars, etc. I think there’s some value in highlighting your core party members, 4 other people to whom you’d have some personal responsibility, but then giving you “bullet point” details on how the rest of the raid party is doing. Maybe it could be an optional thing though, choose which one works best for you. A back line commander might find the expanded view more useful, while a front line fighter would just want the general overview.

Completely agree more focus is needed in a grouping system that meets all players and guilds grouping styles. The easiest solution would be for commanders to be able to create guild or private squads which could be used for ANY type of player numbers or uses.