So, after playing some Final Fantasy 14, I was impressed by some of their quality of life elements. Many of which seem rather easy to implement all in all, and I’d love to have them in GW2, as options at least:
- A way to toggle AFK from the chat window. /afk, probably. Turns the Away-state on or off. Bonus points if there’s an option to automatically go back to online when I move or use a skill.
- A castbar for myself, being able to see precisely when my skills actually fire off versus me pressing the button. Yes, a lot of what we do is instant cast but far from all, and it’d be nice to have this additional information available.
- Instead of just “mute when in the background”, being able to select which sounds play when tabbed out. Something rather cool in FF14 is that I can set, say, combat sounds and whisper sounds to play in the background, but turn off music and player instruments and all, yet only while not focusing the window. Really nifty option.
- A way to have shared chat channels independently of being in a guild. All you have in common is a chat channel, that’s it. No tag, no nothing. Good way to stay in contact with a group of friends easily.
- A list which shows participants in a fight, it’s off to the left and kinda small in FF14, but it’s nice to have the option if the main fight is just too much chaos. Good for targeting things which are hidden under larger enemies, 15000 players and a gazillion spell effects.
- Speaking of targeting, a target-of-target window, showing who my currently selected target is now mainly aiming for. This is good for assist-targeting without having to specifically use the call-target marker every time: If I click on a raid member instead of a mob, I can use the ToT-window to retarget easily.
- Manual spell effects settings. Being able to set for: Myself, my party, my raid, my squad, WvW Enemy, WvW Friendly, sPvP Enemy, Others, all individually, whether to show full spell effects, reduced spell effects outside of ~1500 range, reduced spell effects flat out or no spell effects (it’s my choice, give me the option), that’d be really useful. Right now, often combat is hectic and annoying because everything is just a giant blob of colors.
- The inventory icons in FF14 show a set of little dots which clearly mark which slots are occupied and which are not. This is a really minor thing, but it’s very cool to have, and I didn’t know so far, but I totally need this in all MMOs.
Many of these are individually tiny, yes, but they’re nice QoL additions.
And some like the slash-command for afk should be very easy to implement as the UI action already exists, just currently it is an option in a dropdown. So all that remains is to add the slash command, then make it trigger the very same action as selecting Away in the dropdown.
Anyhow, that’s just my 2cp. FF14 is an interesting game for sure, but most importantly I feel there’s a lot of small but also quickly implemented QoL elements GW2 could benefit from.
And I don’t think FF14 has a patent on any of them.
