Guild Wars 2

In GW1, players had a great deal of control over their UI. They could toggle on/off virtually any part of it independent of the rest, resize individual elements (within reasonable limits), and position nearly every element anywhere on the screen.

I can accept not having that degree of control over the UI in GW2. However, I don’t think it’s asking too much to be able to toggle on/off individual elements. Currently, we can use CTRL+SHIFT+H to show or hide the entire UI; but that’s it. Unfortunately, there’s no middle ground (that I’m aware of) for toggling the individual elements on a case-by-base basis.

For example, if I want to hide the the notifications of events, the daily achievement tracker, and/or personal story tracker in the upper right corner of the screen, I can’t do this. I can roll them up so they’re a little more compact; but I can’t hide them completely. Same with the mini-map, chat box, and party interface.

I like that – compared to other MMOs – GW2 has a fairly clean and compact UI. But I’m not comparing the GW2 experience to other MMOs; I’m judging it on its own merits. As minimalist as it may already be, I’d like to remove some of the elements so I can view even more of the game world without the current limitation of an all-or-nothing approach as exists with the CTRL+SHIFT+H toggle.

Thank you.

You raise an interesting element and yes, I agree that this would make the interface much more dynamic. I also wish to propose a modification and that would be to allow the concealment of the users avatar (character) and the turning off of the UI (so both are off at the same time) so that it is possible to take video and make still images of the truly amazing landscape and characters in Guild Wars 2 without your character being the relative center of every image. At the moment I get around this little problem by placing my character as close to a surface (a wall, tree, etc.) as possible and then sitting down. Most of the time this acts to conceal your character and allow the taking of an image.