Guild Wars 2

So, one of the things ANet said back in the day is that they want you to play the game (watch your enemy’s moves, etc.) instead of playing the UI (watching your enemy’s HP bar, etc.). Right now, the way GW2 displays Conditions is directly against that philosophy. I think the whole system needs an overhaul.

First of all, the icons of conditions are really small and well, awful. Black on dark red is not a good combination, guys. I can barely see what’s what and have to constantly hover my mouse over those tiny icons just to see what Conditions my enemy has. In GW1, Conditions had much better icons and visual indicators not only next to your health bar, but also on it.

In addition to that, Conditions are centered under your enemy’s health bar. This is bad, because they’re constantly moving around. If they had fixed positions, figuring out if your enemy is on fire or not would be much easier. Theoretically, there are visual indicators like the “icy” effect of Frozen, but it’s hard to see them when you can barely see the enemy.

This is just one of the issues that plague condition builds. It’s really annoying and has to be fixed ASAP, especially because fixing it shouldn’t be that difficult. To a lesser degree, this is also a Boon-related issue, but you tend to know which boons you have and when.

Yeah, something needs to be done about the movement of the icons on the targeted enemy’s part of the user interface. Whenever I try and hover over an icon to figure out what it is, other things are applied or have worn off, thus changing the position of the icon I was trying to look at.

Expanding on the enhancements for the UI, it would be awesome to have a part of the user interface keep track of the skills the enemy is using. Much like in GW1, so I can learn the skills that the enemies use and generally play the game better.

I think once you play for a long time you just sort of get used to them. With the improved Hero panel at least we can see specifically what stats are what. You can also see what they do with the gw2 /wiki and I believe Enjin Overwolf app has an app that has a calculator for boons/buffs and an explanation of what they do.

I actually kinda like the way UI is in this game…actually scratch that, I LOVE it.
I work as a graphic designer and from my purely designer standpoint, I think the design team did really well in creating these condition icons (GW1 icons were really more…abstract). They are brilliantly straight to the point that I’ve never had to scroll them over to understand what they stood for and what the dark red hue meant, even when I had just started playing.

I think Boon icons on the other hand could use a little more work though. Specifically Vigor and Stability.

The only time I look at conditions on an enemy is when I’m testing a build to see my own stacking effectiveness. Otherwise, I’m watching the fight or glancing at cool downs. However, I would like to be aware of this information, but not the way it’s currently displayed in the interface. If there was a way to make it part of the combat, I’d risk the clutter to be able to view it center stage.