Guild Wars 2

Now that we’ve had a good week or so to play around with the new changes from the April 15th Feature Patch, I’ve come to a few conclusions. One, of course, is that it’s awesome (I actually am rather pleased with Megaserver making it easier to find people to play the game with).

Two? The Wardrobe additions could use a little bit of rework on the interface side. Insofar, they’re stellar as individual components, but they don’t really “work” when added to the whole.

Ergo, a few thoughts on improving the overall Ease-of-Use for the feature:

• Change default view in Hero > Equipment to the Equipment tab at session start, but retain the last viewed tab otherwise (current behavior).
• Fold a copy of the Wardrobe Storage into Hero > Equipment. While having it appear in the Storage/Crafting view makes sense, having to run out to a crafting station or Bank NPC is kind of a pain when you’re suddenly in the mood for a wardrobe change and want to preview a few skins you don’t have (but are itching to acquire). This could appear beneath the admittedly empty Equipment sub-tabs as “Wardobe Storage”, so as not to appear differently.
• Add a quick-toggle between the Hero: Equipment and Hero: Dyes views, similar to the original functionality. This will speed up switching out equipment and manipulating appearances via dyes without additional clicks through the sub-tab chooser.
• Consider eliminating the Transmutation Charge cost display in the Hero: Dyes view and retaining only the Confirm / Cancel buttons. While the cost is always zero (0), it was a little concerning the first time I saw the dialog pop up, and I (albeit briefly) feared that changing dyes would somehow cost me charges — something which might be a bit startling for new players unused to the systems.
• Consider also changing the Hero: Dyes re-dye confirmation dialog options to be “Keep Changes” and “Reset” respectively, to more directly infer their function.

Now, changes to the new features aside, I’ve another proposal to help show off the account-wide dyes:

• Dye Chooser in Equipment Preview Window: consider adding a pop-up dialog for selecting already unlocked dyes when using the Equipment Preview window. This would allow players to preview equipment and skins, as well as dyes, without being forced to find them again via the Black Lion Trader. Moreover, this would allow players to expressly target a single “dye slot” for modification (say, whether Gunmetal Dye makes a better accent than Iron Dye for your new Reinforced Scale armor), without having to fill all previous slots with a dye.

Yeah. In general I’m VERY happy with the new UI, but your first point here address a common irk of mine. I frequently open my Hero panel to check out my stats (because of modifiers like food, party buffs, etc) and the extra click to the Equipment tab can frustrate me.

I think that’s a pretty good sign of solid UI design, though. The biggest complaint I have is a single extra click.

fluffdragon.1523:

• Consider eliminating the Transmutation Charge cost display in the Hero: Dyes view and retaining only the Confirm / Cancel buttons. While the cost is always zero (0), it was a little concerning the first time I saw the dialog pop up, and I (albeit briefly) feared that changing dyes would somehow cost me charges — something which might be a bit startling for new players unused to the systems.

This isn’t entirely redundant, though, as a player can select a new skin for a piece of equipment and then move on to dye it without hitting Apply yet, though I do agree that it probably doesn’t need to come up with that message if no charges have been spent.

On the other hand, some people may prefer to be kept at ease and specifically told that nothing will be spent.

One gripe I have with the Dye and Wardrobe (and indeed a lot of GW2’s selection menus) is you can’t sort it Alphabetically.

If I know the name of a dye, I should be able to sort them in alphabetical order so I can find it quickly, instead of hunting around for it because I don’t know it’s rarity, material, etc.

Tranc.6780:

One gripe I have with the Dye and Wardrobe (and indeed a lot of GW2’s selection menus) is you can’t sort it Alphabetically.

If I know the name of a dye, I should be able to sort them in alphabetical order so I can find it quickly, instead of hunting around for it because I don’t know it’s rarity, material, etc.

Ah! That was something I was thinking of last night when I’d misplaced my Cream Shade dye:

We need a Search function in the Dye panel. Hunting through types and hues is a real pain, and the Favorites section doesn’t really help when you’ve got a dozen or so entries because each of your characters has their own color scheme.

I’m glad someone else has realized the current UI doesn’t flow well. I made a suggestion thread about the same time the patch was released.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Suggestion-Hero-Panel-UI/first#post3908669

I tried to keep it up, but it got buried pretty quickly. Feel free to use any of my suggestions to add onto yours

Also, the dye search function would be awesome.