Guild Wars 2

Would be great, and really helpful, to have an option that displays the distance of a target, party members and certain immobile object skills like ranger spirits… portals… and such stuff that are distance dependent for use!

Thank you for reading this super suggestion on how it would be great, and really helpful, to have an option that displays the distance of a target, party members and certain immobile object skills like ranger spirits… portals… and such stuff that are distance dependent for use!

I strongly suspect that the absence of this is a deliberate design decision, rather than anything else. Not that I object: actual distance would be amazing.

I’d also be happy if there was some “here is the border of your effect” marker that I could see when it cast, giving a precise edge, not the kinda-sorta-fuzzy edge that animations have, so I could learn to better estimate if I was in range and all.

A lot of skills talk about units, but I don’t think there is anywhere in game where that range is really explained. Even in the PvP lobby, where it has short, medium and long range, it doesn’t really explain how far a unit is. Give me a ruler somewhere in game, and I’ll be happy after that.

All skills have in the skill icon bar a marker, that shows you already, if you are with a skill that you want to use in the range of your target, or not. But as i see right now, before sendign the posting, Chase mentioned it already ^^

This being said.

The only option that I’d like see see getting improved in regard if “distance” is a marker, which exactly shows you how much units of distance a marked target is away from you.

If I mark a target for example with a right mouse click, then should appear in the chat as system message for me, how far away that target is actually at that moment from me.

> Right Click Target Player
> System Message: Your marked Target is in the moment in a range of 1355 away from you.

By reading this then you will instantly know, that you have to wait for a moment, until you can for example shoot at your target with Rapidfire to hit it if you don#t want to stare at the Skill Icon for that.

Or what Anet could do also instead as a solution to show peopel visually simply if a enemy is in target range is by changing the Mouse Cursor on Targets that are in range of your Skills into a crosshairs, that way you will instantly see by hoverign your mouse cursor over something, if it is in range for you, or not.

Rognik.2579:

A lot of skills talk about units, but I don’t think there is anywhere in game where that range is really explained. Even in the PvP lobby, where it has short, medium and long range, it doesn’t really explain how far a unit is. Give me a ruler somewhere in game, and I’ll be happy after that.

Distance (range)in gw2 is defined in terms of units, which are essentially equivalent to inches
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Range

Robban.1256:

Rognik.2579:

A lot of skills talk about units, but I don’t think there is anywhere in game where that range is really explained. Even in the PvP lobby, where it has short, medium and long range, it doesn’t really explain how far a unit is. Give me a ruler somewhere in game, and I’ll be happy after that.

Distance (range)in gw2 is defined in terms of units, which are essentially equivalent to inches
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Range

Within the game, a range of 300, 600, 900, or 1200 isn’t intuitive to most people; in particular, it’s hard to know if something is at 550 or 650 until you are actually at 550 or 650 units. The OP is saying they’d like to know the range at any given time, not just if they are queuing up a skill or happen to have skills with various ranges included in their build.

Regarding the wiki’s claim that

Distance is defined in terms of units, which are essentially equivalent to inches.

The source is from a 2011 developer AMA — many, many things have changed since then. The relevant Q&A was #31, which reads:

Question #31: “How far apart can the portals in the portal skill be set? and can allies use them?”
Answer: “Radar range, which is 2500 units, so 208.333 ft., so 63 meters if you use a sensible system like the metric system.”

In those terms, sure, 2500 units would equal 2500 inches, i.e. 1 unit = 1 inch. However, how does that translate in the game? How far is “an inch” in Tyria? How far is that on your monitor? They could just has easily have said that 2500u = 25 meters (i.e. 1u=1 cm) and it would have just as little value to me as a player.

tl;dr the OP doesn’t need to know the conversion rate of units to inches or feet; they want to know how far to a target within the game