Guild Wars 2

TotalBiscuit released this video that started talking about one game’s struggles, but (as usual) he meanders off to discuss design principles and visual clarity. I was having a game with gf the other day, and the sheer amount of questions she had made me think hard. Does Guild Wars 2 need better visual clarity? Based off the thoughts in the video, what’re your reactions?

Without even having to look at the video, I can tell you right now that GW2 is visually noisy because the concept discretely opposes itself at different ends of the player count scales.

Skill effects are purposely loud, because the speed of this game requires easily spotted signs and projections for PvP. And we can all agree, having easily read attacks is critical to agency in any type of competitive game mode. However, when you scale this up to 15 or more players…. problems start. As the number of sources for effects increases, they start to drown each other out. But you can’t simply cull that information, because the visual indicators are supposed to be the main way to know the status of a target. On some levels, the use of the Target status icon on the top is actually counter intuitive, as it draws attention away from the target and its animations.

Splitting the animations between modes would actually make this mis-identification problem worse, because you’re breaking consistency on what is considered the strongest intuitive tool at your disposal.

There is no easy answer to this problem, since MMOs are notoriously reliant on large amounts of skills and effects to accomplish their mechanics. If anything, GW2 consolidating as much as it can into Boons and Conditions, is among some of the most visually and mechanically efficient implementations for an MMO of this type. But even then, having to decode upwards of 15 states with visual overlaps is hard…. most competitive games try to keep under 4, with a visual hierarchy for prominence. If visual clarity is a primary goal, you’d have to design the whole game around it. And if we were targeting a level of clarity as good as something like Team Fortress 2; well over half of the things this game is doing would have to be cut.

So for the question of “does it need better clarity?”, its an emphatic Yes. But as how to accomplish it without hindering the game play…… thats the million dollar question.

The ludicrous amount of visual noise in this game is the only thing that’s keeping me from T4 Fractals and Raids, so yes, I absolutely agree. The game also desperately needs a way to change the color of red death rings.