Guild Wars 2

Ok so im gonna assume this has been suggested before… But rather than digging up old threads that the search function fails to find for me, ill suggest it again.

One of the biggest problems facing open world content today is how each is presented to the player base. Alot of players rely on third party applications like gw2hub to deal with this.
This is something anet acknowledge themselves. The LS updates have even included UI elements to point players towards content, something I believe is clunky and actually counter productive to the community. I think of it like the difference between a auto LFG tool (similar to WoWs) and the gw2 lfg tool we have today. Both are highly useful, yet one promotes the community while another makes it all too easy to forget a community exists.

So to help alleviate this problem, sometimes the simple ideas are the best.

Arenanet should implement a World Chat Channel for players to co-ordinate for events. This would greatly improve the community experience and help players maximise on potential event opportunities. WITHOUT needing pointless and obstructive UI elements or relying on third party applications/websites.

A few requirements for this would be;

- Chat would work across the entire server, no matter whether players are in wvw, pvp or any other server based instance. For obvious reasons this doesn’t include overflows.
- Chat must be restricted somehow, to discourage spam and vague chat. I’m thinking commanders ONLY, with a cheap item on the gem store (‘megaphone’) in which will allow players who cannot afford the commander book to help the community. My suggestion for this item would be time limited, cheap as chips (100 gems each, cheaper when bundled). Not only helping the poorer players to get involved but increasing gem store purchases at the same time. Obviously every player can view the chat channel, while broadcasting is restricted.
- Filters must allow players to choose to show messages originating within wvw, spvp and the open world. A simple colour scheme system would help players filter these themselves, without needing to hide some.

Everything else is already set up within the games chat architecture anyway (like join group and wp links), with this channel implemented, it would make it extremely easy to request players to join the boss event your currently camping, help defend stonemist you just captured or even promote mini-tournaments and spvp events. The best thing about this is it would be all fed through the community, rather than a faceless mechanical ‘point players here’ system.

Thoughts and opinions?

Right now invasions will be indicated through a notification on the middle of your screen and chat interface. Which works fine for informing players, why not use that mechanic to not only notify about invasions, but world boss events and temples?

Right now, people will only move in when someone transfers from the world boss map to Lion’s Arch to yell in map chat which boss is up, and surprisingly, not a lot people do that cause that’s busywork, but it does help gathering enough people or scale the event up to a higher level of fun. A simple notification like that would take such busywork away, while informing every player about it.

I understand your idea of a world chat, but I see problems in the application of it: we already have the map chat for everything within a certain map, which is used for casual chat, world boss chat etc. If people want to even have more coordination and control, they use squads or even voice applications. To add another chat version, even though the difference is that it’s universal, might make things even more clunky cause people will continue switching more and more through different channels, making a simple idea at first another obstacle in achieving a simple, effective interface.

I will be honest that I speak more from a PvE perspective, which doesn’t synchronizes with your arguments with pvp and WvW. Using it for WvW might be nice cause coordination would be server scaled. But I also see a problem of hundreds of people talking at the same time. Even filtered it could be a mess.

Alsatian.6307:

/snip

Thanks for the feedback

But thats what im saying though, moving maps to get other players in is busywork. For high pop servers, it isnt such a problem because alot of players are everywhere in peak times. And you do get the fair few now using dragon timers etc to work their way through world bosses. But thats a problem right? Gw2lfg did a fine job, but anet still wanted to give the player tools in game after all.

If you had a channel you would see something like this (or at least this is what i envision)

[timestamp] Commander A: Teq about to spawn <teq wp>
[timestamp] Commander B: shatterer pre event up <wp>
[timestamp] Commander C: Our BL is being over run, NEED players
[timestamp] Commander Champ farm in orr, lfm <wp>
[timestamp] Commander E: INVASION!!!! NEED HELP! <wp>

I see something like that as a FAR better solution than a one time yellow tiny message that just feels like funneling players into content and by the state of some invasions recently, not even achieving that. Or some clunky and cluttering UI like the LS one. I understand your point about another chat channel doing the same, thats why i suggested filters though (being able to show or hide pve or wvw, while colour coded so players who like both can distinguish easily) . Players would be able to turn the tab off completely if they find it obstructive. As for player spam and mess, with it being commander only itll be alot easier to just ingore or block certain commanders spam and id even predict alot of commanders would see it as a privilege and ‘community honour’. I mean look at how many commanders link WPs and directions in invasions etc…

Personally, if I saw the above (albeit just examples) id not only use it as a content guide when im not sure what to play or when friends are busy. Id actually feel better going into content this way, as Id feel like im contributing to the community just by answering their call for help – while on the flip side, Id definitely put a message down if i saw just 5 people in GBL trying desperately to defend our last keep, or 3 people showing up for jormag as the pre event is almost done…