Guild Wars 2

(I will break this in several messages since it is not letting me post it all)
I would like to make a proposal on how to improve the combat log chat window. I know that this is not considered a very important feature and that not many people would think it deserves improvement, but I think that is because of the way it is implemented.

I think the game makes an effort to associate colors with how good things are:

• white things are common junk, not valuable at all.
• blue things are fine, have value only in bulk.
• green things are more interesting, somewhat valuable.
• gold (yellow) things are rare, more valuable.
• orange things are exotic, really valuable.
• fucsia things are ascended, they are unique and bound to you and your account.
• purple things are legendary, status symbols, associated with greatness.

Colors are also used to tell you about the environment:

• white is harmless.
• yellow is friendly until provoked.
• green is an ally, someone or something that can help you and you cannot damage.
• red is bad, an enemy.

All these rules are broken in the combat log:

• red is good, the critical damage you make.
• orange is bad, the damage you receive.
• orange is also good, the normal damage you make (!?).
• red is also something that failed, like a skill you tried to use while in cool-down (!!??)
• falling damage does not even appear in the log, making it seem utterly unimportant.
• condition damage is purple (what?)
• white and gray are used to distinguish between your actions and the enemy actions.
• healing applied with reviving does not appear in the log at all.
• heals you make to yourself are green.
• gray is also used to tell you about the experience you gained O_O!
• when you damage something for 60 points of damage or with 15K points of damage it looks exactly the same, making higher damage attacks and attack progression indistinguishable.
• same when you heal yourself or an ally heals you for little or a lot: they look the same.
• crowd control effects are not even noted in the combat log.
• break bar actions are not noted in the combat log either.

The result of all this is that the combat log conveys little visual information and the information that is sent is mixed and confusing.

What I propose is for small things to change in the log to make it much more obvious for the user at a glance, instead of having to make a huge effort and mathematical calculations:

• make all unimportant text gray. If it is not damage, healing, cc, make it gray.
• make all healing text blue. self healing and allies healing should be a different shade of blue.
• make all damage you make green.
• make all critical damage you make orange.
• make all condition damage you make white.
• make all damage you receive red. As a player, I do not care if the enemy critically hit me, all I care is the damage the enemy made. I also do not care about visually distinguishing if it was condition damage or not, I can find that out reading the log later.

That is the low hanging fruit, changes that can be made without a lot of development effort.

Now, for other things that are potentially more involved:

• make the font size proportional to the number, but only for numbers and not the text around them:
  • So, 0 damage made should be the smallest readable size.
  • From there, the higher the damage the largest the font size.
  • This way 52 damage and 15K damage are clearly different at a glance.
• Note CC in the combat log:
  • Make CC the player applies yellow
  • Make CC applied to the player red again, but in text, not a number.
  • i.e.: You <yellow>chill</yellow> [enemy name].
• Note break bar actions in combat log:
  • i.e.: You break the defiance of [enemy name] with <yellow>chill</yellow> (this instead of the normal CC message, not in addition to).
  • [enemy name] defiance is broken!
  • [enemy name] defiance was restored!
• Note auras, death shroud and other profession specific states in combat log using pink.
• Note boons using blue.

After these changes are applied, color would have a consistent meaning and everything that is happening would have a very clear representation in combat log.

Revieweing combat log before and after gear changes would show the differeces between them in a very obvious way. It would also be obvious which enemies are making more damage and receiving less of it.

I am interested in hearing from the community if you think this would be of any use at all for you and if you think this would improve in any way your gaming experience and whether this would prompt you to use the combat log more or not.

I am also interested in hearing from Arena Net whether this is something that is technically possible at all and if it is, whether you think if would improve the user experience in a significant way to justify its implementation.

Please let me know what you think.

(I apologize if something similar to this has been proposed before, if that is the case, please let me know and I will swiftly go away )