Guild Wars 2

Smaller icons please. I have to scroll for miles.

just noticed under style>armor skins (on the 9 picture preview)… the exo suit combo pack, 3 gliders & a back pack, are listed, but these they aren’t armor skins. A little confusing.

There was no need for this – it’s a little less convoluted and feels good simply because newness, but the old version wasn’t that bad. I’d rather have had EP6 preview, I check every kittening day I have nothing else to do but play this game and spend money but STILL I don’t because I’m disappointed every single Tuesday. Please stop delaying so the gap between xpac seems smaller, nobody cares as long as it isn’t 9 months

I think the current gemstore is a lot easier to navigate, I can find what I need more efficiently now because everything is now sorted (gliders, outfits etc.)

On a different note, I noticed the exosuit + glider combo is only available for 7 days, but does the same count for the individual exosuit or exoglider?

Close to what I recommended.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Suggestion-A-Long-BLT-Co-Revitalization/first#post6642736

really like the improvements. things are easier to find, and the previews are right there. I like how everything in a package is shown very clearly. great job to everyone who worked on it.

only thing I’d like to see added is a gathering tool preview. with all the effects these things bring, I’d like to know what they look like before I buy them, without having to go searching on youtube.

I like the new gems store interface Now what about a faves section, or saved items/want to buy save for later list?? anyway to add that in ?? sure be nice Love it though, looks good
Kymi

• When I click on “shadow weapon sets return… – Learn more” in the “Upgrades” Mega-Menu, it just opens the Upgrades Tab. So maybe there is a dead link here?
• it is still super weird, that even when you click on a single item in the Mega Menu, from anywhere, it does not show the single view of that item, instead it scrolls down to the position in the list. I get that there are items that might not really benefit from a single view, but consistency is key when it comes to UI that is heavily used.
• There is a “Gold Exchange” Submenu Item in the “Utility” Mega Menu. Is there really any reason for that, if you have a dedicated Gold Exchange Tab in the Black Lion Trading Root Menu? Why move it there, when there is even another Gold/Gem related Area on the left top where the prominent C2A “Buy Gems” is? This feels really unneeded?
• The Mega Menu seems to have a fixed height, besides for the “History” Tab, where it has a scrollbar. It would be visually more appealing, if the height of that container would be dynamic, so that the paddings of that box are consistent on all edges.
• You might be aware of this, but your menu-item Label (text below the icon) renders very chunky when its set to bold on an active tab. This leads to the text mostly just being smaller than the inactive tabs. This is rather weird because you use the same style on the Trading Post and there the ChronosPro renders just fine. Are you using an image on the new UI? Interestingly enough, if you hover the filter-tags on the Trading post, they also have this rendering issue!
• The Search/Filter Tags: You already have a pattern for this Interaction on the trading post UI and it is much nicer and on brand than your new one. Why are you promoting this new unpolished style with the plain solid borders?
• The Transition duration on most of your hover effects is inconsistent with the rest of your animations! This is super odd, because it used to not be that way. Right now, it even feels like they have a little input delay, because the animation starts a bit too late.
• because you decided to go with a Mega Menu, you cluttered the interface but with the benefit of adding more navigational capabilities for the users to it. But, the Mega Menu Container would really profit from a dropshadow. Or, because it is very trendy right now, blacken out the main-container while the mega-menu is visible.
• For some reason, there are margins and paddings on containers that really have no reason to exist there. The Call2Action “Buy Gems” looks really out of place with the Gem-Counter next to it, because it has like a 5px margin and because the “Redeem Code” Text creates more spacing. It looks squished into the top, because the whitespace created by that text is bigger on the bottom than it is on the top.

All in all, I think your UI-Design is rather unpolished nowadays – not to throw any shade at someone, but you used to have a very good UI-Designer, that produced very, very nice interfaces. Did she leave the company?

I realize that sounds very negative – don’t get me wrong, I think the improvements add a lot of value and will probably increase conversion a little bit. But I am seeing all those little unattended Details that I actually know this company to not oversee, so I wonder what is going on there :/

Previewing everything in-window is an amazing improvement, for sure. I’ve always hated having to go to the Hero tab to preview stuff like gliders and minis.

The sub-categories are a nice addition as well.

The big criticism I have is with the category pop-up tooltips that show up when you mouse over categories at the top of the screen. Maybe its just something I have to get used to, but they seem kind of clunky to me. I don’t really see the purpose of having them, and it makes it a bit annoying trying to view anything near the top of the list because you might go a little too high and suddenly get that big category pop-up instead. Also, I find it counter-intuitive that moving your mouse cursor outside of the BLTC window doesn’t clear out the category popup, only mousing over the bottom portion of the BLTC window.

The mouse-over technology to show popups with the several choices seems to be outdated: it has the same problem that made modern websites stop doing this – the popups are blocking other content and either move away too fast when you move the mouse, or stay on too long when you want to see something below.

1. I find the navigation non intuitive, and chaotic.
2. The fact I can swap selected objects feeling like purchases just by hovering annoys me really bad.
3. The former point combined by the other changes give me an insecure and jumpy feeling. I want to feel sure and certain when I’m about ready to purchase.
4. The main advertising screen looks clamped and the fact I see (only) a part of the 2 adjacent screens irritates me , the fact it’s swapping on auto gives a very forced commercial like feeling, especially the speed of swaps is the main source of this nagative feeling and experience. I prefer to styay away from commercials in TV and I skip all that crap in youtube and other sites.
5. I like the preview window. (= only positive)

All in all the feeling of this new version of the gemstore is a feeling of:

• WHY did this need to happen?
• HOW did they make these chaotic design choices?
• WHAT has been the though processes leading to the decision to change a fully functional part of the game to a non intuitive mess?

I do not see any advantages above the old version.
3 things which are really clear:

• a BIGGER BUY GEMS button
• smaller prices in actual size, not value
• smaller icons

I conclude:

• I do find the preview window more intuitive and clear.
• I do not think the navigation butons add additional value.
• I do not think I feel more relaxed, more in control or more supported by the new interface.
• I do not think this was a needed update and I do not find the time and effort spend on it worth the money and man hours.
• I really hate the new "home"page most of all. All stuff I could see in a blink of an eye has vanished. And I get a bad commercial. It feels like the animated GIF’s on bad sites. I only miss: YOU WON AN OUTFIT!!!!, click the link here and fill in your blah blah…..

And yes:

• I would have liked some ETA on E6 instead.

Copied from my other thread:

Please explain, what the -bleep- happened in the minds of the people who thought this was an improvement.

Can I get my old and obsolete tradingpost gemstore thing back? PLEASE?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/corr-Gem-Store-is-chaotic-and-innavigable/first#post6642702

edit:
Regarding E6: Thanks!
(https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/living-world-season-3-finale-arrives-july-25/?utm_source=launcher&utm_medium=news&utm_campaign=rss)

Better loading times, more details on bundled items, better contrast on items with quantity/price (such as BLC Keys), Home & Back buttons, History has its own tab; everything about the new interface (to me) is nothing short of stellar.

It’s simple, clean, intuitive, and slick.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

1. The main advertising screen looks clamped and the fact I see (only) a part of the 2 adjacent screens irritates me , the fact it’s swapping on auto gives a very forced commercial like feeling, especially the speed of swaps is the main source of this nagative feeling and experience. I prefer to styay away from commercials in TV and I skip all that crap in youtube and other sites.

This.

Somehow I really dislike the feel of this aspect of the gem store now.

Also the bigger size, while clearer and sharper, makes it seem as though I was zoomed in to the maximum. Something which is super anoying for people who like zomming out as much as possible to get an overview (like myself).

Everything else is just a matter of getting used to I guess.

Not sure I like the “in your face” buy gems button. I think people who enjoy or do buy gems found the old button without problem (like myself). Then again, I have no design research and data on this. If it does make people buy more gems, go for it.

1- The main scrolling Icons on the homepage are huge and should be able to fit 2 icons across the width instead of 1 and 2 images spliced on edges. It’s just visually not very appealing. Also the way it is set up leaves lots of blank grey background, not visually impactful at all. The large blank grey gap either side of search bar is odd makes the homepage feel half finished.

2- The pop up windows on the top menu tabs are totally annoying, they pop up with too many tiny little icons and the pop up windows are quite large, really no need for this. All it does is get in the way of the main scroll down feature. No need for it, it just adds clutter to navigating the gem store and is obstructive and irrelevant as items are all in the lists anyway and the lists is where we want to go. When you want customers to buy do you go cluttered, over complicated, confusing or do you go clean simple easy? adding an additional layer of icons on top of your lists is not helpful. I would say having a small “Info” button in the tab button bar for each category we can click on and read what each category features would be far better than forced large pop up boxes.

3- Preview window is great I really like this improvement bravo, and I am glad the lists make more sense now.

4- I would prefer it if Homepage was given a proper tab on top bar instead of tiny little click button. It’s clearer and to me the Homepage is an important go to page for all new things. The pop up little extra tiny button to return to homepage is just extra clutter. Really you should be aiming to have the improvements you have added but keep the simplicity of your original gem store. Adding in pop up windows and extra tiny little tab buttons are not making it a fluid experience to use.

5- I feel the icon boxes for the items in each category are too big, only 2 items displayed across? making the boxes very wide. That coupled with the fact the Gemstore window is a fixed size means we are scrolling for eternity. We really don’t need the boxes to be so big if we are getting a pop up after highlighting the items (Majority of the boxes are blank space anyway with nothing in it).

If we can use all the other menu’s and other gui functions in game happily and sucessfully I really do not feel you need to give us a over sized gem store interface. It’s just odd and does not fit the rest of the game.

Thank you for your efforts Anet but it’s not quite there for me.

1. The intro page is a mess: Black lion key is not a new item, gliders we have for months in the gem store are not perceived as seasonal and featured items are just random items. The broad advertisement pannel doesn’t feel right, something about seeing the next and previous page is just too much in your face.

2. Style: Looks great, I can filter although Id like to have this option when i click on style instead of hovering over it. Also having the clothing on the left and character on the right is messing me up right now.

3. Utilities: Don’t put outfit packs in this catagory. I dont go to the utility page to buy an outfit the same way i dont go to style to buy a total makeover kit.

4: Toys: This is fine, nothing out of place.

5. Upgrades: So this is grinding my gears a bit but that’s because of my perception. Unbreakable gathering tools do not belong is this category. Upgrades IMO are account wide. A dye is account wide, shared bag slots are account wide, bank slots, character slots are account wide. Gathering tools are not. Unless we can buy gathering tools once and have them on all our characters without the tedious swapping through bank or shared inventory slot it’s hardly an upgrade.

6. History: This looks clean, can’t complain really.

Imo don’t place the same items in multiple catagorys, just because an outfit pack has 1 utility in it does not mean it should also be on the utility page. The primary cause of purchase is the outfit not the utility. Same with gathering tools.

Also good job on not putting the copper fed salvage tool in upgrades, basicly the best utility item in combination with a shared inventory slot.

I like it. I like the categories and the ability to see what’s in a bundle. The buttons to push are still small but overall it’s a better design.

I’m wondering how this page would look if -all- possible buys are listed… think of a week long sale of every possible item ingame…

Would it improve navigation when compared to the previous one or have the same problems?

For an idea what could be listed:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gem_Store
-and-
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gem_Store/storage

I like the new, modernized looks and colours, however, as someone already said, the icons are a bit too big and there’s a bit too much scrolling going on.

Oh, and the new preview in-window is AWESOME. Great job, some fine-tuning and it’s perfect.

I really only have 2 main points:

1) Make it three or four items per line, or at the very least make each row the height of an item on the normal TP. Seriously. The scrolling in the gemstore has always been excessive, and this is your chance to reduce it. Another possibility for this problem would be to give the gemstore the “I am Evon Gnashblade” cheat code.

2) Remove the drop-down menu from each tab at the top, or at least reduce it. If the categories are actually well-designed, I don’t need to see 9 of the items in that category, and the little ad on the side is just excessive when we already have the main page.

My first impression was “cool”, my second was “confusing”. It’s clear a lot of effort has been put into creating some more “modern” navigation, but the navigation itself isn’t really useful to me.

The filter bar at the top for example (I actually needed some while to realize it’s a filter bar and not just a navigation). When selecting categories, e.g. go from “All” to “New Items” in the drop down on the “Promotions” tab, the drop down list continually changes, as the currently selected item isn’t seen in it. I’d rather expect it to work like the filter combo-boxes in the Trading Post – simply keep the already selected item in there and provide the non-filtered entry (“All” in this case) at the top. A continually changing filter list is confusing and actually made me gave up browsing through the categories as I always forgot which I most recently picked.

Then again I don’t find the “tab hover preview popup” useful at all. It provides categories, that’s fine. But the items on the right are too small to immediately grasp all its contents. I think I’ll never use it at all as I prefer to categorize and drill-down first. I mean, the front page should (and does) already show the most important items. The history tab is a good idea, but the preview there is even less useful to be honest.

Another thing I don’t like (because you only get to hear things people don’t like – kidding!) is the “pack preview”.
- You go to the “Style” tab
- You click the Dynamics Exo thingy, a preview opens on the right.
- You click the preview away, wanting the list back, deciding for something different
- But now you’re in a pack preview and don’t really see how to get back to the list immediately – until several tries later you see the navigation bar can do that. It’s just not really convenient to go into the package details just by clicking the main item entry, and not the small “Package Details” button at the top right on purpose.

So far my first impressions. I’ll get used to most of it, and it’s not a bad design, just not intuitivities best hit.

And now a general idea, also because there’s a really bad ratio of content to window size (like the others said, the items are all too big, I have to scroll a lot): Why not make the window resizable? I know this causes trouble with the other two tabs. But really:
- The Currency Exchange might just shrink back to default size since it would look ugly at too large sizes – if you switch from Inventory to Wallet, that window also changes sizes, so I don’t think that happening for the gem store window would be much uglier.
- The trading post needs a resize feature since long anyway…
Of course that depends on how well your browser control behaves with resizing, though it does seem to be a pretty decent one.

Personally I’m not a fan of the new design, the thing that pops up when you hover over the tabs at the top (like promotions, style etc) feels really annoying. The whole thing also feels more sluggish as well, in terms of scrolling and switching tabs etc.

The preview improvements are nice though, it’s nice I can actually preview stuff after searching for them now, rather than only in certain tabs. Being able to preview the harvesting tool animations might be nice, but it’s not really an essential thing.

Difficult to criticise, seems to overall improve functionality without ruining the clarity of the display from before.

What I would say is that the search bar could use moving to the left. When you hover over the categories at the top, the drop down display covers the search bar entirely. It is a minor issue of course (since the drop down displays go when you use the search. anyway), but it might tidy things up a little. Or move the drop down to a side preview since it is a tad obnoxious when it pops up over the main UI

Another idea could be to give the seasonal category box at the bottom its own colour. Currently New is blue, featured is yellow and seasonal is also blue. Perhaps red or purple for seasonal to separate it out a little

Love the preview function and the overall speed improvements.

It seems ok; I’m sure it will feel like the norm in a few months.

One of the things I found confusing was finding Black Lion Keys in ‘New’ Items; they are neither on sale (often labeled as ‘new’), nor a returning item (again labeled as ‘new’).

Preview is nice, but I immediately went to Gathering Tools expecting a preview, and was a bit disappointed. That’s probably the only change I would really like.

Thanks for all the hard work.

Oh, I was really disappointed there was no information about Living World Season 3 Episode Six. =(

Great change. I love the new Gem Store. Please keep on adding new features like this. Thank you for the work.

I don’t care for the new look. It seems to be a bit more “in your face” than the old system. I realize it may take time to get used to it but at this point I don’t care for it. As others have said the pop-ups are a bit too much.

I do like the separate listing of every item in a combination package but will it show those that you have already or leave them out entirely? ie. You bought the glider but not the rest of the items, when you preview it now will it show the glider or will it omit it since you already have it? I’d prefer it to show the item with a notification that you already have it of some sort and to make sure that the gem price is reflected that you had some of the items.

What was bad about the old version? First thing I saw when opening the new one was a big BUY MORE GEMS. Don’t like it.

Gaile Gray.6029:

On July 11th, we released improvements to our Gem Store, as mentioned in a blog post on the subject. We’d love to hear your feedback about the new, improved Gem Store.

Please share your thoughts in this thread!

Really good work Gaile as someone who posts reminders for people on my content page, I’m sure people will appreciate this overhaul of the store – Thank you to the team.

ty so much for the impowerment Arenanet .
can u please add preview or inspecting option for gathering tools too please ? in both gemstore and hero panel , also please update the 1 we have for outfits and mail carriers , ty

I guess the changes are oke… mostly just need to get used to the new navigation

But one thing really annoys me:
The hover-over popups … it is covering the page when i dont want it and blocking the things that i actuall want to click or i accidently go to the wrong page then

Please Anet just make a full mouseclick the requirement for those to show up

I noticed a big advertising splat for the gold conversion rate. Nifty.

…Except that the interface for gems→gold is still the same, where rounding error robs paying players of the gold they deserve. That’s really shoddy, ANet, and it needs to be fixed.

I like it but one qualm. The drop-down menus should be based on if you click them and not if you just hover over them. It can be annoying at times. Overall it feels smoother and loads faster for me so it’s nice.

It is a bit clunky. It looks nice and clean. Good job on the visual aspect. But the drop down menus are too big and are confusing. The preview functionality is good.

It is different, but I wouldn’t say its all that improved. It feels cluttered and its not intuitive.

Its not a horrible change by any means, but I would rather have seen development efforts other places than changing something that didn’t need it.

On first impression it is really easy to get lost trying to look for things (compared to the old system). There also seems to be a lot of overlap with “package” deals showing up in every category any part of the package is included in.

I think I would rather see the hover-over sub categories be something you can select within the major tabs, rather than something that you click ON the hover-over. It seems to hide the sorting features you’ve built in rather than make the gem store more accessable to look through.

Other than the window maybe being able to benefit from being ~20% larger, I really like this UI change. Is nice.

Redoing the User Interface on the Black Lion Market Thingy was both a waste of time and resources that could of been put into adding a ANTI-DDOS routine on your server(s).

PS. Add Custom User Interface scalability and freedom to move any UI object anywhere on the screen.

Shouldn’t you ask for feedback before changing the Gemstore? It’s a cluttered mess and provides a bad user experience, especially for new players. The old design was more simple and clear to navigate through. I have a feeling Anet tried too hard and failed in the process just like when they designed the new PvP lobby. Anet is trying to be something they simply are not.

Hardly an improvement. The general layout is mostly okay, but that’s about it. The popups are a disaster – the UI would have been a ton better without it. And the everpresent adds are not only annoying, but introduce a huge mess to the “purity of purpose” of the site. Seriously, some of the promotion items have been showing up in every category of gemshop items. No, an outfit is not an utility, or a toy, or an account upgrade. It doesn’t belong there, just because you want to promote it.

So, in general, it’s too cluttered and far less clear than before. Too much glitter and ads, that are detrimental to the site’s usefulness. Make it simpler.

The thing I like the most is that you can preview each individual aspect of a package. That wasnt possible before.

AvaAzul.8290:

Redoing the User Interface on the Black Lion Market Thingy was both a waste of time and resources that could of been put into adding a ANTI-DDOS routine on your server(s).

PS. Add Custom User Interface scalability and freedom to move any UI object anywhere on the screen.

…because UI designers are experts at security for something that might not even be related to the company?

Anyway…

Said my piece about the gem-to-gold ripoff, but overall, the new interface is decent. Better preview options, less category clutter so it’s a little easier to find things. If there’s a search function, I didn’t check, because the amount of items currently in stock is decent enough, and the two-column scan makes it easier to see what’s available.

I love that the purchase history is hidden behind a tab now! I’m glad I can’t see how much money I’ve spent on random fluff… XD

New Gemstore is worse for me. Sell lists no longer have equal sized blocks. It’s chaos everywhere, and the promotions tab (only one I care about honestly), it’s much harder to get an easy and quick impression of what’s on sale. Chances are high that i will miss items.

Secondly the top bar sucks. The gem buy button is ‘ugly’ small, in comparison to the bar size, making it look chaotic and disruptive. Add to that, that no longer the squares tabs of style, utility, etc are MUCH LESS CLEAR then in the past. Contrast went down, vertical split lines hidden until hovered over one tab, Text smaller, contrast lower, hard to read on bright background.

I has a tiny more modern edge the store, at the huge cost of simplicity, and ease of use. If you ask me, this was a very bad decision. And even IF it would have been a good make-over, it would be waste of resource. Anet often says ‘we can’t do that, not enough resource’. Sorry but if you take time for this overhaul, then you have time for everything!

I love it! Love the preview window and everything else, it feels new and fresh with the new UI interface!
Glad you updated it!

Horrible and clunky. There was no need to do this – why fix what isn’t broken?
Bring back the old Gem Store!

I think the changes are fine. It doesn’t feel that much better than the original design (seems to load faster, though), but it’s also not worse than the old one. I do appreciate the options to preview gliders and such now.

The new gemstore seems very clunky and cluttered to me. Much preferred the old one.

I use the Mac 32-bit client, in which the gem store VERY frequently fails to load at all. Since the upgrade, it has been loading nicely every time I have gone to look at it. (So far, anyway. I have not tested extensively, yet.) The interface is immaterial to me in comparison to its apparently improved functionality. In other words, Yay, it’s working!

The new gemstore stuff seems nice but there’s a rare glitch.. the outfits aren’t armor pieces, I kind of expected this update to finally make outfits armor pieces!

I guess it’s just a glitch and will be fixed soon.. TM

Please add a check box in the trading post search parameters to “Only Show Locked” and have it checked by default so that it only shows items that are locked.

Examples are locked dyes, locked equipment (skins), and locked recipes.