Guild Wars 2

All other issues aside with this game aside…does it just seem to be getting more and more screen cluttered? I know I’m getting old but after having recently been in some other mmo betas I came back to gw2 and was amazed at how messy it felt. I don’t feel like I can ever see whats going on in many circumstances due to the akward ui, spell graphics, bad camera, and just overall clutter. I see people on here talking about looking for cast animations and things like that but I don’t reasonably understand how you can see i minute gesture through all the rest of the mess. Then with the terrible optimization it just seems to make the issues all the worse. Can other people really see these things?

i just spam my skills and collect the bags!

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

i just spam my skills and collect the bags!

Sounds legit.

You must not have played World of Warcraft

The obscuring of target models by particle effects in this game are the worst I’ve seen. There’s a megadestroyer in there somewhere, you can sort of see his leg. This is with the option selected to make targets more visible.

Shifu.4321:

You must not have played World of Warcraft

I didn’t know they made a text-only version of WoW.

Shifu.4321:

You must not have played World of Warcraft

Omg! Are u kidding me? How could u possibly play with all that stuff on ur screen? OMG lol never seen anything like it.

IndigoSundown.5419:

The obscuring of target models by particle effects in this game are the worst I’ve seen. There’s a megadestroyer in there somewhere, you can sort of see his leg. This is with the option selected to make targets more visible.

Well for a start u could improve that a bit by turning player names off, but yea have to agree with bad visibility. Its especially bad in those invasions when Aetherblades spawn, coz there are so many of them and they all spam those stun skills in addition to all the player spell effects, its just a jumble of mess.

IndigoSundown.5419:

The obscuring of target models by particle effects in this game are the worst I’ve seen. There’s a megadestroyer in there somewhere, you can sort of see his leg. This is with the option selected to make targets more visible.

What he ^^^ said.

I remember when Total Biscuit brought this issue up on his video cast during beta, saying it needed to be toned down.

I quite agree.

And unlike other games, there is no way to turn it down to a reasonable level or off.

Guild joke since beta: apparently ANet believes the “skill” required by players is finding the target. :p

This has been stated, with suggestions for fixes, about 5 billion and six times. It’s especially notable since they marketed GW2 as “play the game, not the UI”.

What’s worse is that the dev’s response, on the (extremely rare) occasion they acknowledge it, is; “get used to it, we’re adding more stuff! But you’ll like this stuff, we promise! MOAR STUFFS!”

One of the biggest QoL things from GW1 missing in GW2 was the universal changability (that’s not a word, but should be) of the UI elements. If you didn’t like where something was, or how large it was, or even it’s existence, it could be resized, moved or outright hidden.

WTB the dev team that did GW1, since they were competent.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

Shifu.4321:

You must not have played World of Warcraft

Omg! Are u kidding me? How could u possibly play with all that stuff on ur screen? OMG lol never seen anything like it.

Meh, that’s a paladin running Healbot. If he’s healing he doesn’t need to see the boss any more than he already can, just the raid’s healthbars, which are helpfully front and center.

That looks very similar to how my screen in WoW used to look back in the day. I consider gw2 to be far more of what I call a “twitch” game than wow ever was though. By this I mean its less about timing skills and more about dodging and real time twitch reaction. This is what I was looking for when I came to gw2 but now given how badly it performs in practice I see why many other mmo’s don’t do it. Its really kinda a shame too because the art team for gw2 seems very talented but you rarely get to enjoy there work. I was playing in the labyrinth yesterday fighting the lich and it occurred to be I had killed him about 20 times that day and didn’t know what he looked like because I could never see him.

Shifu.4321:

You must not have played World of Warcraft

That was TBC, my favorite part of WoW. That particular screenie is from BT, which I never managed to do. Now I’m sad. :-(

One skill does more to screw up my vision than any other and that is the active burning of the Guardians Virtue of Justice. Activating that virtue is basically grants party wide blindness for the length of the effect.

So essentially gw2=virtue of justice while standing behind 2 hunters with windserpent pets, in karazan while corner tanking the final boss.

kailin.4905:

So essentially gw2=virtue of justice while standing behind 2 hunters with windserpent pets, in karazan while corner tanking the final boss.

Lol! Brilliant post. Thanks!

Shifu.4321:

You must not have played World of Warcraft

That’s just bad player UI management along with low resolution screen. Not really the same clutter we get in gw2.

IndigoSundown.5419:

The obscuring of target models by particle effects in this game are the worst I’ve seen. There’s a megadestroyer in there somewhere, you can sort of see his leg. This is with the option selected to make targets more visible.

Hahah if you did not tell it was the megadestroyer I would have thought it was the fire elemental.

GW2 clutter is from obscene amounts of particle effects rather than the UI. I quite like the UI we got actually.

One thing that could be nice tho is for the collapsed items of the right hand sidebar to stay so. Rather than unfold at their own whim (in particular that “personal story” item up top, as i am not going to run the Arah dungeon any time soon!).

I wonder if perhaps they could fold to a 2 line entry rather than a single line entry if they have any kind of progress counter/bar. In the case of the daily/monthly, fold it so that it shows the highest percentage incomplete entry.

There should be an option to remove particle effects apart from ‘significant’ skills such as Time Warp, Portal etc in PvE.

A fully-customisable User Interface.

The option to tone down or turn off the particle effects.

Surely that’s not too much to ask for?

Shifu.4321:

You must not have played World of Warcraft

OMG, my eyes are bleeding!! How is that game even playable?

Shifu.4321:

You must not have played World of Warcraft

shudder

I never got this bad with all the mods and stuff for WoW, but I’ve seen worse than that. It still hurts to look at though.

Ill take the partical effects from the image in the post below yours any day first. (Although I have no issue seeing the boss in that screenie….)

HUGE difference being warcraft is heavily modable ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZlBA-jfPBk&feature=player_detailpage#t=45 )
That has anonther bar to side & top, invis` until mouse over.

You can bind to show/hide more UI any time you want to.
UI can be clicked through. Try that in gw2 on enemy target ui etc & you end up aiming in a completely different place altogether.
You can`t do any of that in gw2, which is sodding awful even compared to Guild Wars UI. Combine that with the worst camera in any mmo.
Warcraft wins completely in the UI stakes by a long shot over gw2s.

Special effects overkill. The biggest joke in the game is the LOD effects checkbox, which I thought was supposed to be the fix for this.

The massive UI doesn’t make things any prettier. GW1 had lots of windows, but everything was nice and small. At 1920×1080, the UI feels like it is made of Duplo.. And if you set it to small text, the font becomes unreadable if you have antialiasing disabled in your video card drivers or the game settings.

we need to have more zoom out options

I see no issue with the UI, personally. Doesn’t seem excessively large or obstructive at all. Not to say some size sliders for individual UI assets wouldn’t be welcome (I could do with shrinking the skill bar down a bit, and target health indicator too, without shrinking my text in my inventory and such), but its far from “OMG I can’t see anything”.

The spell effects, on the other hand… yah. In larger groups, those get downright silly. Fighting something like the Labyrinth bosses in the zerg, there’s really no chance to react to enemy attacks because you can’t see them (especially when the strategy seems to be “stack stack stack”). Its one of the major reasons I dislike zerg combat and avoid it whenever possible.

i agree, and another aspect that adds to this is the lack of mana or resource that limits your spell usage. As long as a spell is off cooldown there really isn’t a reason not to use it, which adds to the crazy mess of spell effects on targets.

Shifu.4321:

You must not have played World of Warcraft

That is indeed the worst UI ever made, but WoW doesn’t look like that lol.

It’s a shame ANet refuses to put a particle effect slider in this game, because it’s way over the top. Even the small things like sigil of flame lights up my screen in a blaze of fire on bigger mobs.

Mathias.9657:

Shifu.4321:

You must not have played World of Warcraft

That is indeed the worst UI ever made, but WoW doesn’t look like that lol.

Yeah, honestly i liked that about WoW, you had the power to make your UI as cluttered or non cluttered as you prefered. Some people see that UI as a mess, but i see it as personalized.

Less fuzz in large scale events would make my 635m in my ultra book happy… ^^

Not only the UI, but within the game itself.

This is an action game, so dodging enemies and knowing the tells are important.

It’s hard to do this when there is a light show happening on the enemy’s body, even in 5man instances.

Guardian F1 has been a thorn on everyone’s side due the the huge effect it covers

Honestly, I’d love to be able to turn off certain effects.

Like turn-off effects that are outside of my group (or the mob). While this would need some though behind it about WHICH effects this actually turns off it would be helpful. There are some effects, like Wall of Reflection, that are nice for an entire zerg to see/use, but an Ele’s comets, or a Guard’s F1 burn on the mob are completely useless to me and they obscure the mob. Hell…in fractals on my Guard I sometimes skip F1 so that I can see the mob and dodge at the right time.

This game is a “twitch-game” insomuch that you have to know when to dodge. It’s difficult to know/learn when to dodge when you can’t even see the mob underneath or behind all of the spell-effects.

The “clutter” is not the UI imo it’s the spell-effects that fill your screen and would give an epileptic person seizures.

Thanks Colin!

I love the simplicity of the UI the only change i want to see is to be able to lock the minimap on my location. Too many time I’ve tried to turn around only to be moving the minimap in some random location and then die because I had lost track of where on the screen my cursor was.

And others might like the option to turn off the personal story location tip if they never plan on working on it.

saden.6942:

The “clutter” is not the UI imo it’s the spell-effects that fill your screen and would give an epileptic person seizures.

I agree, unless you consider the camera and enemy outlines/target indicators part of the UI (which i do).

While I appreciate the info about the UI, I was disappointed that Colin made no mention of a fix for the particle effects issue.

IndigoSundown.5419:

While I appreciate the info about the UI, I was disappointed that Colin made no mention of a fix for the particle effects issue.

Yeah… that happens a lot. Last time they acknowledged it was the completely useless reduced particle effect option we now have. It literally does nothing.

custom and resizable UI pls

that huge and unnecessary portrait and enemy hp bar when selected is annoying as hell, it covers up the enemy if large enough or flying

Bread.7516:

custom and resizable UI pls

the UI is not the problem, it’s the overload of particle effects that makes it impossible to see.

others compare it to wow, but wow doesn’t require you to see the target, wow is a follow your rotations kind of game, while in gw it is imperative to be able to see your target’s movement.

IndigoSundown.5419:

The obscuring of target models by particle effects in this game are the worst I’ve seen. There’s a megadestroyer in there somewhere, you can sort of see his leg. This is with the option selected to make targets more visible.

That megadestroyer should have suffocated and burned up like a shell in about 5 seconds with all those waves of fire.

Hey Colin,

I would like to see Anet address the insane particle effects.

I can never anticipate when to dodge the statue of dwayna attacks because of this. You can barely make out the enemy model. Particle effects are nice and all, but in gw2 they are overly done. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this issue in any mmorpg I’ve played.

Aza.2105:

Hey Colin,

I would like to see Anet address the insane particle effects.

I can never anticipate when to dodge the statue of dwayna attacks because of this. You can barely make out the enemy model. Particle effects are nice and all, but in gw2 they are overly done. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this issue in any mmorpg I’ve played.

if the enemy outlines stood out more that would help a ton. I would put that one under UI improvements.

ColinJohanson.2394:

One of the projects we’re working on in preparing the game to release in new regions is trying to make the game easier to learn. While a lot of that work is in the area of better tutorials, better level up messaging guides, and unique tutorials for specific mechanics we’re also evaluating UI complexity (and system complexity) to try and make information easier to see/consume.

Cleaning up the existing UI systems to make them less cluttered, more-stream lined, and better unified is part of this project and absolutely something you’ll see in the west as well, likely around or possibly even before we release the game in our next major world region.

And to get ahead of the next question: No, we have no solid dates! We’re still in beta in China and are testing and developing all of these new systems to make the game is easier to learn. We haven’t announced timelines for development any other major regions other than being in Beta in China at this time.

I think it can be reasonably argued the current state of the game is extremely unhealthy. There have been promises made that never come to fruition.

The developers have upset the entire community at large on several occasions. I can think of two such incidents right off the top of my head the comment about charr and how since they where basically the least played class fixing there armor was a low priority. What happened to putting heart into what you create? That kinda answer just screamed yea I work here I get a paycheck that’s about how much I care.

Then there was the incident with a developer telling people there not playing the way it was attended so now where getting Guild Vs Guild competitions.

This is just my opinion but maybe it would be better to spend time and resources on markets your already in. Trying to polish the game instead of dedicating millions of dollars and countless resources to port the game to another region. Things that seriously need polishing are UI, game play mechanics, skill balance (pvp skills need to be separate from pve skills), bug fixes, end game content.

I am really glad your company’s been trying something new with the living story content but its not working. The events are not dynamic at all there just fillers for when you decide to release the next arc for the main story line. I have heard countless times them be referred Naruto/Bleach Filler episodes.

There is nothing wrong admitting some of the designs the company had are not working. I think at this point your either going to have to start work on a expansion that you can push out by July that adds a trinity system. Once again there is nothing wrong with trying something new but what separates good company’s from bad company’s is admitting when they make mistakes. Then working hard to fix them instead of milking them until they lose there player base (a la Blizzard).

Aza.2105:

Hey Colin,

I would like to see Anet address the insane particle effects.

I can never anticipate when to dodge the statue of dwayna attacks because of this. You can barely make out the enemy model. Particle effects are nice and all, but in gw2 they are overly done. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this issue in any mmorpg I’ve played.

Thank you for posting this! Temple of Dwayna event seems bugged because the effects are 1000000000000x it’s normal size and flashes on the screen at an obscene rate, I’m really surprised no one has had a seizure.

Shifu.4321:

You must not have played World of Warcraft

90% of the crap on there is not needed and could easily be wiped away if the user didn’t want them… but obviously, he does want them because it makes his dungeon running and raids easier. Get a picture of a normal-looking WoW screen and then bring it here.

Anyway, I never had any trouble seeing anything in WoW, but I have trouble seeing much of anything in dungeon runs in GW2. Not to mention the very large boss fights….

Lunar Sunset.8742:

Aza.2105:

Hey Colin,

I would like to see Anet address the insane particle effects.

I can never anticipate when to dodge the statue of dwayna attacks because of this. You can barely make out the enemy model. Particle effects are nice and all, but in gw2 they are overly done. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this issue in any mmorpg I’ve played.

Thank you for posting this! Temple of Dwayna event seems bugged because the effects are 1000000000000x it’s normal size and flashes on the screen at an obscene rate, I’m really surprised no one has had a seizure.

I know its bad, when Anet told us about the new option that will limit particle effects I was excited. But when I actually tried it, I found it no different than it was before. Its quite disappointing.

There are no casting bars in gw2, so anticipating when to dodge is done by looking at the enemy’s animations. Unfortunately this is proven to be impossible when you have particle effects on bosses like the screenshot I posted.

It would be nice if all the player effects were severely toned down – think transparency in powerpoint graphics – while the boss remains brightly ON TOP off all of this. so that the tells are still visible.

“Dodge when you see a symbol on the ground” Yeah, right ……..