Guild Wars 2

Good day. Today I decided to post a suggestion on how to fix the horrible, HORRIBLE!!! Hero Panel – Builds. (Sorry if this should be in another part of the forum, I couldn’t find anyplace that would fit this topic).

I’ll get to the point, this is what you guys need to do to fix the panel. The letters corresponds with the letters in the picture.

A – Replace the Trait tab with the Training window (make it into a tab). We don’t need the circular representation of the skill training progression, just replace the current trait icons in the tab with the skill icons, and tie them together in the order we can learn them. Simple, elegant and compact.
That and we don’t need the traits in the tab since everything will be in the main window (explained bellow).
B – Increase the height of the Hero panel so that you can fit all the trait lines into the window. This way we don’t need the Traits tab (see above).
Highlight the selected trait lines and gray-out ones that aren’t. Should have been like that from the start.
C – Allow us to save Build that we made, so we can easily switch between them. Maybe even allow to re name the Build tabs for easier navigation. What would make this better if we could combine this feature with our equipment. switching builds made easy.
D – Tool-tips, so we know what the trait-line is all about. I just copy-pasted the virtues description from the GW2 wiki. I’m utterly surprised there are no tool-tips for the trait-lines, I mean WTF was the UI team thinking?

I’m no programmer, but I’m fairly sure these changes can be made fairly easily if you know what your doing and what you want.
PLEASE MAKE THESE CHANGES A REALITY FOR THE PLAYERS SAKE and for the dev teams reputations sake.

PS: If your hiring, long distance consultants, I’m wouldn’t mind the job (not joking).

Honestly I don’t mind the new windows or layouts (kinda like them actually) The part of your suggestion that I do WISH A-net would do is C…

People have been begging for that from beta till now:/

Now try to add in 3-4 Elite specialications and see how your B design works…

Same thing with A, your idea might not be very expandable and does not include all the unlocks that the training wheel includes: Traits, Abilities, The Specialication line, Skins (yes we will be getting skins with Elite Specs).

C is something we have asked for since release and they have said they are looking into it and have heard us.

Are.1326:

Now try to add in 3-4 Elite specializations and see how your B design works…

Same thing with A, your idea might not be very expandable and does not include all the unlocks that the training wheel includes: Traits, Abilities, The Specialization line, Skins (yes we will be getting skins with Elite Specs).

C is something we have asked for since release and they have said they are looking into it and have heard us.

Sorry I didn’t get into the beta, so I have no idea how specializations work. As far as I know its about choosing 3 trait lines that are requirements for the specialization and then you press a button to “activate druid mode”. If nothing else, just create a tab for it or something (as I see it Anet’s UI team like Tabs and sub menus).

When I see how the specialization looks, I’ll post a suggestion on how to fix that too.

So far what we have now is an abomination of layout design.

Ragmon.6350:

Are.1326:

Now try to add in 3-4 Elite specializations and see how your B design works…

Same thing with A, your idea might not be very expandable and does not include all the unlocks that the training wheel includes: Traits, Abilities, The Specialization line, Skins (yes we will be getting skins with Elite Specs).

C is something we have asked for since release and they have said they are looking into it and have heard us.

Sorry I didn’t get into the beta, so I have no idea how specializations work. As far as I know its about choosing 3 trait lines that are requirements for the specialization and then you press a button to “activate druid mode”. If nothing else, just create a tab for it or something (as I see it Anet’s UI team like Tabs and sub menus).

When I see how the specialization looks, I’ll post a suggestion on how to fix that too.

So far what we have now is an abomination of layout design.

No elite-specializations work as follows.

Currently there are 5 lines and you pick 3 of them to make a build. Zeal, Radiance, Valor, Honor and Virtues. Now imagine a 6th one called Dragon Hunter. You would replace the 3rd line with dragon hunter (the 3rd slot is the elite specialization slot). Boom you’re a dragon hunter.

Dinks.2478:

No elite-specializations work as follows.

Currently there are 5 lines and you pick 3 of them to make a build. Zeal, Radiance, Valor, Honor and Virtues. Now imagine a 6th one called Dragon Hunter. You would replace the 3rd line with dragon hunter (the 3rd slot is the elite specialization slot). Boom you’re a dragon hunter.

Well then they could just add it onto the end as an extra trait-line and allow us to scroll up/down. As they add more specialization lines, they just add it to the bottom.Tada, solved.

Ragmon.6350:

I’m no programmer, but I’m fairly sure these changes can be made fairly easily if you know what your doing and what you want.

…

PS: If your hiring, long distance consultants, I’m wouldn’t mind the job (not joking).

This sums up these forums nicely:

• I have no relevant expertise in this field
• But you’re bad at it
• Consider paying me to jot down a few notes and scribble on a screenshot in MS Paint
• (Will not take the time to gain the necessary work experience, visit your careers page, find an appropriate job opening, apply for said opening, accept the position, and relocate.)

What I want Anet to do, is to kitten fix traits and that 2 shot kitten in PvP.

timmyf.1490:

Ragmon.6350:

I’m no programmer, but I’m fairly sure these changes can be made fairly easily if you know what your doing and what you want.

…

PS: If your hiring, long distance consultants, I’m wouldn’t mind the job (not joking).

This sums up these forums nicely:

• I have no relevant expertise in this field
• But you’re bad at it
• Consider paying me to jot down a few notes and scribble on a screenshot in MS Paint
• (Will not take the time to gain the necessary work experience, visit your careers page, find an appropriate job opening, apply for said opening, accept the position, and relocate.)

They only hire for in-house work. So the my plea wasn’t meant as a serious by default.

I love how besides 1 guy, every one only left utterly negative comments, here and Reddit. The people on the Planetside 2 forums wont believe me when I tell them is possible to be more negative then they are.

It’s not negativity for the sake of negativity. Your design ideas have huge issues. For example, fitting all five trait lines might work on 1080p monitors with small UI size, but what about 768 px with large UI? Would that even fit?

Build templates are an obvious suggestion, but why just three in the UI? Also, GW1 had build sharing, your system makes no indication of it.

I could list some other criticisms, but my negativity is a response to your attitude.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to be negative, and I don’t think most of the posters here do either. When you make a suggestion you have to take the good and the bad, some people will like what you suggest others won’t and may offer ideas on what they don’t think works.

With what you are calling A-nets idea of a good ui layout, " abomination of layout design" I would expect you would be open minded about people criticizing your idea equally harshly.

Any way, back on topic; any ui design that includes saved builds would be the best ~

Aside from the ability to save builds I prefer everything about the current layout to your suggestion. And I’ve seen much neater ways to incorporate build templates into the UI, which also allow each player to have as many or as few as they want, not a fixed number for everyone.)

A

I don’t understand how this could be “simple, elegant and compact” whilst also being squashed into a very limited space and scribbling over the current design doesn’t make that clear.

Where would you put the information on how many hero points are needed to unlock the next trait? And how would you join them together in the limited space available?

How would utility skill training work? Presumably that would have to be crammed into the side bar too, and divided into the different skill types which would mean losing the differentiation between healing, utility and elite skills. And where would racial skills go?

Overall it seems like you’re trying to fit a lot of information into a very small space, just for the sake of removing one tab from the hero panel.

B

This one just seems to be based on a lack of information. As other people have said part of the reason for the recent re-design is to allow Areanet to add new specialisations (and possibly new skill types) in future updates. They can’t possibly keep expanding the window to fit them all on screen at once.

But also (again as someone else has already said) on some monitors the Hero panel already fills most of the screen, so making it bigger isn’t an option for everyone and Arenanet has to consider all their players, not just those using large, high resolution monitors.

C

This has been asked for repeatedly since launch. As I said earlier I’ve seen much neater ways of presenting it, the simplest being something like GW1 had with a single save/load build button which allowed you to save as many builds as you wanted under custom names as files on your computer. I suspect a half measure like allowing us to save builds and then restricting everyone to just 3 would make a lot of people angrier than not offering it at all.

But also Arenanet are well aware that players have asked for this option repeatedly. Since they haven’t done it (in spite of re-designing the whole trait system twice now) I assume there is some reason they can’t or won’t, and asking for it again isn’t likely to change that.

D

Isn’t it already evident what a trait line is ‘all about’ from the traits themselves?

A summary made up of a few snippets of the individual traits descriptions doesn’t really add anything, players will still need to read the description for each trait when choosing which ones to use and that will let them know what the line as a whole is about better than a short summary possibly could.

Finally please try not to confuse your own opinion on your idea just after you’ve thought it up (I assume that’s the case from the 2 minute Paint illustration) with the desires of the entire playerbase. The fact that you think it’s a good idea is clear from the fact that you’ve posted it, that doesn’t entitle you to speak for the rest of us.