Guild Wars 2

I do not know how challenging the raids are going to be, but I would like to put this idea out there. I think it would be fun/interesting if raids had a challenge mote that would active a raid with a higher difficulty level than whatever is settled on as “standard”. The higher difficulty could have better drop rates as a reward for it, maybe. Something like that.

Anyways, just tossing this idea out there.

I’m glad the suggestion got it’s own post. +1ed

I posted this elsewhere, but it was suggested to repost it here so here is my feedback:

SQUAD UI
What I wish for, what I need, and what it shouldn’t do – aka „What I think the Squad-UI should be. “

This Betaweekend (BWE3), the Squad UI got shown off, and while I was really longing for it – I definitely was able to figure out what it was meant to be, what it actually was, and how I would like it to be…. In some cases.

Sub-Parties
So, as we all know, a Squad can contain multiple parties (sub-parties, sub-squads, however you want to call it). This (possibly) should/could/ought to make it possible to get rid of the old party system completely.
Having a Squad with 5 or less members would make it possible to enter a dungeon, PVP or any of the content available in core GW2.
Having a Squad of 6 or more people would disable that. Having a squad with exactly 10 members makes the entry to the raid available.
Squads housing a max. of 5 players would make use of the standard kick/votekick system. Squads housing up to 10 players could make use of a votekick system for sub-parties and require commander-confirmation. Squads housing more players would solely rely on the commanders vote (aka totalitarian decision)

Inviting, Visibility
Oh well, I don’t really know how it was SUPPOSED to be working and how it actually was working, here I can only say what I want from such system.

1. It should be possible to invite any player located at the same datacenter, not restricted by map, ip, homeworld, relation.
2. Add the “invite to squad”-context entry consistently to all context menus at all username/nickname/charname* occurances.
3. Add a “join squad” button consistently to each occurance of a commander’s username/nickname/charname*
4. Change the Commander’s Green/Orange rectangle, which shows up when you mouseover a person’s name or which is located in the friendslist from the rectangle to the shape of a commandertag, indicating this person is actively commanding a squad.
5. Change the “Commander” in front of the /d- chat to a colorized icon of a commander (if possible) – this is not purely cosmetic but also makes a better visible distinction
6. Make the Broadcast/Ready-check window more transparent.
7. Allow the head commander to see each targeted enemy from all subgroups. Allow him to reset that target (could be a more complicated key combination too, because it wouldn’t occur that often)
8. Under no circumstances add the faces into the little boxes of the squadmembers, like how it is with parties right now.
9. Add a button to either the Guild-UI or the Squad-UI saying “Invite all representing Guild-Members”, which should show up if you are active commander.
10. Add a game-message in chat when a commander invites you to a squad.
11. If a commander is on your blocklist this game-message in chat should be the only thing indicating that you got invited.
12. If a person who wants to join your squad is on the blocklist, a game-message in chat should be the only thing indicating that.

One last thing about that: As long as people are “in range” of each other (when it comes to showing up as “green” in the squad UI – add a distance number somehow. If a person is low on life, but is 1400 units away, I would probably love to run there faster. This would make it easier for supporting classes (guardian, tempest, druid, herald) to see if they are positioned perfectly.
*Could be friendslist, whisper, party, guild roster, etc…

Well, this is all right now – I don’t know some of this stuff is actually implemented, or planned, or if there are good reasons not to do this – if so, I am perfectly fine with that. This is just a compilation of how I think the squad system could or should work.

(from: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Squad-UI-aka-This-is-what-I-would-love/first#post5566513 )

Please implement the ability to assign waypoint markers on a sub-squad by sub-squad basis. Just as commanders currently have access to four icons they can place on the map which can be seen by all squad members, simply extend this functionality to all the sub-squads.

In this way, the commander can mark on the map specific objectives for each sub-squad. For example, sub-squad #1 might be given an icon tasking them to defend point A, sub-squad #2 an icon tasking them with attacking/capturing point B, sub-squads #3, #4, and #5 an icon indicating to rally at point C, etc.

I d like to have the normal ui for raid for be able to see the life bar and boons and conditions

I didn’t really like the design of the squad UI. 10 vertical bars in a box, also redundant with the bars in your party and very very confusing.

This is a simple suggestion for a redesign of the interface.
EDIT: this is designed for raid. You make a squad, you enter raid and the UI changes.
As the screen shows, there is a waterfall of 10 small bars for each of your members. If that mamber is also in your party the bar gets the bigger face icon.

Pros:

• No huge square box
• No vertical bars
• Your party bars are displayed once and not twice
• 1 place to look at, not 2
• Priority to your main group

Also by default the current squad UI is small, but if you want to actually see stuff (and not just profession icons, that are great but not very useful) you have to manually enlarge it all the time.

This solution actually takes less space for prople who want to see the bars and not just the icons.

There is an existing thread about the squad UI.
Anyway some of the cons of this design.
1. Useless face picture of the characters.
2. Does not scale past 15 or 20 characters.
3. Poor in realising if players are down or dead.
4. No idea of subgroups.

Incinerate.5876:

There is an existing thread about the squad UI.
Anyway some of the cons of this design.
1. Useless face picture of the characters.
2. Does not scale past 15 or 20 characters.
3. Poor in realising if players are down or dead.
4. No idea of subgroups.

1. Face can be already disabled in options. The small bars are taken from there. The same option can be used to make them even smaller. It’s just an example.
2. It’s designed for Raids. You make a squad, you enter Raid and the UI changes.
3. Why? Works like the current party ui. Red bar = down, empty bar = dead. What’s hard to realize?
4. In raid you only have your party and the rest of the squad. No subgroup.

Made a thread with a suggestion for squad UI in raids: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Raid-Squad-UI-Suggestion/first

I don’t really mind this ui for wvw, but for raid we can have better since it’s limited to 10.

Kidel.2057:

Incinerate.5876:

There is an existing thread about the squad UI.
Anyway some of the cons of this design.
1. Useless face picture of the characters.
2. Does not scale past 15 or 20 characters.
3. Poor in realising if players are down or dead.
4. No idea of subgroups.

1. Face can be already disabled in options. The small bars are taken from there. The same option can be used to make them even smaller. It’s just an example.
2. It’s designed for Raids. You make a squad, you enter Raid and the UI changes.
3. Why? Works like the current party ui. Red bar = down, empty bar = dead. What’s hard to realize?
4. In raid you only have your party and the rest of the squad. No subgroup.

Please do not make a post if you do not understand the game. Squad (not raid) UI is required for raids but is used in many more areas. For example world bosses, map meta events and most importantly WvW where you will want about 6 subgroups.

Please don’t reply if you can’t understand a post.
When I say “this is designed for Raids” I’m referring to my suggestion. For WvW and other game types the current UI si fine. Once you enter a Raid however it can swap to something more fitting.
What’s the reason for using a UI designed for big teams in a content that requires only 10 members?

the upper part with the explanation was way too big.
i mean the “all ready?” thing and the screen notice was good but why did it need a gigantic explanation text? I’m currently playing on a 15’ Laptop with 1366×768 resolution and it covered like 35-40% of the upper left side.
so a small chat line with a (i)-icon to mouse over would be enough

Branden Gee.2150:

Hey!
We’re going to be monitoring this thread for Squad UI Feedback. We’ll look at the other threads about squad ui as well, but this one is our favorite (tell your friends). I can’t say what feedback will and will not make it to the actual release of the Enhanced Squad UI, but it’s all appreciated!

While you make the changes associated to the release of the Enchanced Squad UI, any chance you can make a Toggle in the UI options for showing all Friendly Health Bars?

I find it interesting that this option is not currently in the game. I can always see enemy health bars above their character’s heads when they take damage, but It is really difficult to tell if the friendlies around me are taking damage, or need healing. Sometimes the Green Bars show above their heads, and sometimes they do not show. There is already a Toggle switch in the UI options for enemy Health Bars.

This would make it a bit easier to notice where the injured player(s) are, instead of looking up to the left and then trying to find them in the thick of the action. This would be especially helpful with the introduction of the more healing focused specs/professions.

I am not sure how it would affect the PvP crowd since it could either be a positive, or negative, feature depending on how you look at it.

Yeah, I agree.
We also already have a “raid oprion” in the current ui.

i disagree, commander tend to develop a standard style of organisation, and having 2 different UI not only means more work for development but also increase the complicity of command.

the UI does need work, however it shouldn’t be duplicated…

For those of you who are stuck in the squad UI and can’t leave or kick other people:

1. Log out of beta character and log on to normal character.
2. Join party on normal character.
3. Log back on to beta character and leave party.

Hope this helps!

I d like to have simple ui for all the party so i m able as supporter to see boons and conditions on my ally

Is this possible?

As far I can see, you can’t invite people on friend list if they are in a different map.

And if they are in same map, but different ip, someone has to leave squad to party and taxi them. Repeat for everyone.

This is kinda of annoying when trying to organize for a raid.

this is what raids UI look like there is no condi UI like in a normal party where i can see all the boons and condis on my allies, as a healer, i stretch this entire UI box to see the names and hp and everything better but to see if they have condi on them so i could cleanse them or not i cant see
SO I SUGGEST
there should be a box i could check to see boons/condi/etc
on the green square itself

i like the overal look&feel of the UI; i’m just a bit sad it disbands your existing party. I like playing around with guildies. Maybe you could keep the party also, but display it in a different colour or something?

Got to add another reply in support of a split party (subgroup) and squad UI, at the least for squad members as opposed to squad leader. I like how this is shaping up initially from the squad leader/commander end, but as a member, I need to be able to see my group’s boons/buffs/condis to react accordingly in WvW. Right now we have traded this highly useful functionality for the marginally useful functionality of being able to see just the HP bars of up to 50 other people.

Also, how is boon/buff/utility effect sharing now prioritized? We were playing with the squad system in WvW last evening, and could find no rhyme or reason as to how and why boons were being spread. We had people in subgroups standing right next to one another not sharing out boons in a predictable manner, and at another point had a guardian Empowering (at ~1200 range no less) giving Might to people who were not in his subgroup, and were not in his party prior to the formation of the squad.

They mentioned that this is a temporary UI, and the UI folks are still putting together the final interface. So it should get better and now is definitely a good time to make suggestions

I main necro, and I must say.. The fact that I cannot see who in my party is being bombarded by conditions is atrocious! In fractals and dungeons , hell …. Any game content, when I’m in a party I watch my party UI, and if my party members need removal im there to help with them with many of my skills. But with this new squad UI I cannot do that! I can only see their health! So how do I know if I should throw well of power on them or hop into DS and heal with #4???

We totally need Buff/Debuff aviable, it’s like playing without UI at all right now.

I have tried the Squad system in Raid at beta weekend and in Tequatl battle. I find the idea of sub-groups perfect. However, I find extremely difficult players in a sub group to be able to move together as a group away from the total squad.
Players in a squad see only one colour, “Blue”, and as a result each player can’t keep track of the other players’ movement in the same sub-group easily. They have to keep reading the name of 4 or more players all the time while in battle to move together and take seperate actions from the rest of the squad.
I believe Anet could fix this by adding more colours per sub-group created. What do you think?

My concerns so far with the Squad UI, especially in WvW:

No Boon/Condition Indicators
Absolute gamebreaker for me. Raiding without visible stability-timers and condition-indicators is straight up impossible. Clearing conditions “when you feel it’s the right time” is kitten. you need to see, when your teammates are under condition-pressure, and you need to react on time, which is not possible with the current implementation.

More than one Tag
Would be nice, if subsquads could have their own tags, or something comparable, so you can see, where they are around you as well as on the mini-map.

The black bar
the bar at the top of the squad-ui (only for the commander) is horribly distracting.

What in my opinion should be addressed about the squad system for better managment of guild raids and open raids with 50+ people:

-Add a subsquad target for 5-men subsquad members only and change it’s color (for example keep it red or purple/blue)
-Add a squad target pinged by the commander of a different color as well (one of the 3 above)
-If the 2 sub-targets are not gonna be implemented add a internal cooldown of 5-10s for switching target because 50 people spamming it f**ks up the chat and the minimap
-Less blue dots in minimap – impossible to see if the group made orange swords on a gate/by jumping off a zone because of too many dots covering it
-Add a subsquad tag for ranged groups (eles tag, necro tag, focus party)
-Show the party boons for the own subsquad
-Officer for party managment of the subsquads because commander can’t manage 50 people by itself while commanding on ts and fighting
-If the suggestion above can’t be implemented let people be free to switch between subsquads for self-party managment
-Don’t show up the annoying message of ready up

So far this is all i found is missing that is kinda important (the most is the party boons, targets spam and second tag).

PS: I know the actual UI isn’t the final one but i’d prefer leave my feedback over here, if you got anymore suggestions post below and i could edit mine too.

Another thing the could add is in the UI, make it more obvious that a character is in shroud for example. The colors are to close to each other so sometimes you think they are down, when really they are just in their shroud. I feel like this would be such an easy fix.

Raid UI got no option for showing the conditions the partymembers might have, so its pretty much useless for small organized groups in wvw.

Would love to have that changed.

cheers

during raid test, my commander ui kept resizing it self. i had changed the size of the winonw before hand. but it kept going back and fort between the two sizes. if anything is distracting, that deff is.

One thing I really like about the UI so far was it flashing for a player on low health; it got my attention easily to see when a player was about to go down. I would just click on their square and call target for everybody to rez. Ready check and squad wide messaging a nice addition as well.

My question is do I always have to create a squad with the new UI when I just want to pop a commander tag for a short while to show people where I am on the map?
Example: today I was in a party with a guildie in wvw, trying to take a keep but just the 2 of us weren’t managing so well, so I called on some people to come and help us take it and I popped my commander tag to show them where I was, where the hole in the wall was, where I was going, etc. But this meant that my party stopped existing and became a squad, and the guildie I’d been partied with got kicked out the party and had to rejoin the squad. Then when we’d capped the keep, I said thanks to the people that came to help, they went back to what they were doing and I tagged down, but then the squad disbanded and my guildie got dropped from the squad and had to request a party join again.

It just seems rather annoying when you’re not really wanting to plan a proper squad setup, but just needing to pop a commander tag for a short while. Is there a way we can have an option to not to always start a squad with the new UI, but just be able to show a commander tag and keep our party together so there’s not this dropping party, joining squad, dropping squad, joining party thing going on?

Rich Fuel.7253:

this is what raids UI look like there is no condi UI like in a normal party where i can see all the boons and condis on my allies, as a healer, i stretch this entire UI box to see the names and hp and everything better but to see if they have condi on them so i could cleanse them or not i cant see
SO I SUGGEST
there should be a box i could check to see boons/condi/etc
on the green square itself

Yes, for the purpose of raids at least, I would like to be able to see my squad’s boons and conditions. Makes it a bit difficult to decide when to use a group condi cleanse, for example. I don’t really like the blockiness of the current squad list- I would prefer just the simple party UI (Name, health bar, condi/boons).

Don’t get me wrong, i liked doing guild missions tonight with it, it was super handy.
Is it a permanent feature from now on? Since the beta is gone and the ui still is useable

When breaking my squad up into smaller sets I found the drag and drop system a bit wonky. For example, after I’d drug 3 players into set B, moving them into sets C and A to match what I intended resulted in squads numbered 1 & 3, with no squad 2 in sight (as it had no members and had automatically been deleted). Besides the poor sorting algorithm work there, the real problem was that dragging a player down to create a new set had an unreliable snap that resulted in some players not moving or moving too far.

What I’d prefer is a selection interface with multi-select capability. It would be much easier to Cmd-click the players I want in a specific set to select them, then click an “add squad” button or “+” to create the set. This would also be quicker and more accurate than a drag and drop interface that has to account for latency and pixel distances within a dynamically scalable window. Such an interface would also be more intuitive because it mimics the selection of desktop icons in a way that has been standardized for decades now.

Did anyone else find breaking a squad up to be more challenging than intuitive?

Also, having a separate squad chat box was great; but, not being able to move it from appearing over squad icons was annoying. Giving players control of the placement of their windows (as was the case in GW1) would solve this issue, obviously.

No idea if anyone has mention this at all, but wouldn’t it be even better to be able to change colors when assigning groups when in raids?
Like having
2 Blue-Healers
3 Red-DPS
3 Purple-Condi DPS and so on.
And maybe not just the squad UI but also changing the characters name color when assigned to a specific part? So they all don’t simply see a blue name and know where to be, not get confused and mistake another group for their role they are suppose to do.

I was in a raid group this morning when we entered the raid and the leader had no idea how to make sub-groups no matter how much we told them to just drag the person around… I did it, without knowing, and reading the small, not-obvious text, on my first try. To be fair, I am good at figuring things out… but, for the sake of everyone (maybe they are drunk, sleepy, not a native speaker of English, etc.) it needs to be made easier to create sub-groups. Someone suggested trying to right click the person… I would agree with this. A right-click menu to then assign person to group 1-10 or w/e.

Also, in agreement with the others, I wanted to be able to place colored tags over specific people in each sub-group I made. It would really help to coordinate efforts for the Vale Guardian, and likely similar encounters, if we had a nice contrasting color over our heads as a reminder… I mean, we have the tags, we can expand on them further. Then we can have a red, green, and blue group, for example. This would be true in squads as well as in raids for subgroups and for lieutenants.
Another example would be a raid party for all the defenses of Tequatl… You could make six sub-groups. Each hills/boat/turrets would have a lieutenant with a color the rest of the group could hover around. Then the raid for the zerg.
In WvW, you could have sub-groups by role, and better coordinate multi-pronged attacks with each sub-group having a colored icon to follow rather than having to guess, in a sea of effects, who to follow.

I was also frustrated to not see condi’s & boons on my teammates and know if I needed to pull/cleanse a condition or if I was forgetting a boon type (say my duration is longer than theirs, etc). There are numerous ways to display such things. Other games/mods I have seen evolve around different colors for such things… like dark green for poison, neon red for bleed, orange for torment, blue for chill, and x over their block for immob… etc, etc. if you do not want to jamb all the zillion icons in there.
Alternatively, only show boons and condi’s. We really do not need to see what signets folks are using or which banners/food they have active. In the midst of a fight, you do not care. Of course, before a fight, you might want to check to make sure everyone is set up right… but then we are getting into tricky things with right-click to enable/disable features.

When I created sub-groups, the window did not automatically expand… so I was freaking out that I removed them from the party! It should expand to auto-fit the quantity of people and subgroups (then let us manually re-size after). I never looked but is there a restriction on how small or large it can get? You could use the size of the blocks to determine how much information is showing if you wanted to make a super snazzy UI.
if (area of block > X) show boons & condi’s
else show hp only

Otherwise… I do like finally having squads mean something other than an icon over our head for folks to follow. It means they will have more of a purpose outside of WvW

Used the Squad system today for WvW commanding. Initial impressions are very good and this is easily going to be a favourite feature of mine. Some things I think could make it even better:

1. If the squad UI is set to the maximum possible size, the UI size could dynamically adjust as players join/leave to ensure all squad members are visible
2. At the maximum width of the squad UI, I’d love to be able to fit up to 10 rows on the visible UI (I felt 6 rows visible was not enough for a large group which I wanted to break into more small subgroups)
3. I’d love if a second squad member could be granted permissions to manage subsquads, so that the commander may focus on other tasks when needed.
4. Naming of subsquads would be useful for organisation.
5. Horizontal re-ordering of the members of a subsquad by drag-and-drop.
6. A “default” subsquad for new players joining the squad who have yet to be allocated into another subsquad. (Currently this is doable by moving everyone out of subsquad 1, but a cleaner approach would be nice)
7. Targeting per subsquad, rather than per squad
8. Subsquad commanders. Ideally the ability to have an icon (commander icon or something else) over their heads and on the map, because this can be useful for organised WvW teams where more than one commander tag is often used.
9. Allow squad members to toggle between seeing the full squad (like it is now, all players but no buff indicators) and seeing just their subsquad (something similar to minimal party UI with visible buffs, but hiding other subsquads from view).
10. For WvW only, an indicator of the # of supply carried by each player in the corner of their icon would be a neat addition
11. Clearer distinction between A] players who are in the same map but far away and B] players who are in a different map. Perhaps different background colours?

Looks like I got carried away… hope something there is a useful addition

I got to use the Squad UI a bit more today and noticed that the broadcast box width is a bit too long for my laptop screen and that this UI element is not adjustable in height and width — like the squad and subgroups are themselves.

This really cuts into my field of few and I can imagine a number of people would appreciate this either being less wide, or be adjustable. Thanks!

The Squad UI was really buggy for me. No one could accept my invites and barely anyone could manually join my squad.

i will post part of a thread i have as this is being watched.
please…PLEASE… instance raids. the idea that you have to have a commander tag to form some elitest super tuned raid team is just not very fun. anyone should be able to do a raid without spending hundreds of gold on a tag and if raids and dungeons functioned on a instancing system(not sure i’m using that right) i.e. raid teams formed the same way pvp teams do. click on a raid menu icon. click on the raid you want to do and bang. you are in que for that raid. then alot of the “zerker only meta group” harrasment would cease to be a part of this content. this was acknowledged by anet a while ago as a “known problem with dungeons” in that article (if i am remembering this right as the article was taken down) anet said “when one rune/build becomes the only acceptable build/rune. that is unacceptable” and anet said they had a goal of “every player/class/build accepted to every group every time.” this would put raid content a step closer to that goal. am i remembering this right and does this seem reasonable step towards that goal?

Warlock.7136:

i will post part of a thread i have as this is being watched.
please…PLEASE… instance raids. the idea that you have to have a commander tag to form some elitest super tuned raid team is just not very fun. anyone should be able to do a raid without spending hundreds of gold on a tag and if raids and dungeons functioned on a instancing system(not sure i’m using that right) i.e. raid teams formed the same way pvp teams do. click on a raid menu icon. click on the raid you want to do and bang. you are in que for that raid. then alot of the “zerker only meta group” harrasment would cease to be a part of this content. this was acknowledged by anet a while ago as a “known problem with dungeons” in that article (if i am remembering this right as the article was taken down) anet said “when one rune/build becomes the only acceptable build/rune. that is unacceptable” and anet said they had a goal of “every player/class/build accepted to every group every time.” this would put raid content a step closer to that goal. am i remembering this right and does this seem reasonable step towards that goal?

They already said they will have leaderless raid parties so you do not need a tag to raid…

Warlock.7136 says “when i tried a partial quote post it said i couldn’t post a blank post. partial posts not working for me when using the quote system unless i quote the whole thing.”

Pompeia.5483 said “They already said they will have leaderless raid parties so you do not need a tag to raid..”

Warlock.7136 says ok ty good to hear. i had not heard that yet. the second and more important part of my post remains the same. if the goal is “every player/build/class accepted to every party every time” and “when one rune/build becomes the only acceptable rune/build that is unacceptable” then assembling raid/dungeon teams the same way pvp teams are formed, alot of harrasment could be bypassed and a step taken towards these goals.

Not really squad UI related, but for the love of Rytlock please….please allow us to toggle on and off player health bars automatically instead of forcing people to mouse over players to see their health bars. You want people looking at the fights don’t you? You don’t want people playing the staring at UI game, right? So please add this. Thanks.

Back to the old UI! Yay!

The non-ability of commanders to be in a party (or even have multiple commanders in a party) was super-annoying. Please say not letting us do that was a belated april fool’s joke?

Ok so here’s my feedback:

-The squad commander needs icons to put on people’s head or mobs head. Right now we have only 1 thing, wich is target. That is not enough for raids, and even other gametypes can benefit from it. (Example, when we did the quagan guild challenge, where you have to escort them to safety from the krait, we had to split up in party’s, and then rejoin the squad after, while marking a few people, and just dividing groups would help this.
-Wich brings me to: big open world squads need the same ammount of group sorting tool as raid squads. At the very least we should be able to move people.
-There needs to be some kind of condi indication for raids.
-Atm i can’t invite people outside of my own map, i hope that’s a bug, if not, that should be changed.

I had one small issue with the squad ui:

I couln’t see how many players we currently have in the squad without counting the player boxes. The boxes scale and become smaller/larger to fit the open window.

How about adding a black box for the empty spots?

What I really loved was the ability to create specific subgroups. Now people could manage boon share. A Mesmer who shouldn’t have priorities at boonsharing gets his own group. Nice!

Excellent addition to the game
My two suggestions are mainly related to showing conditions and boons
1. Increase the size to have more space for boons.
2. Consider only showing boons your character can apply and conditions you can remove

Yes, I’d like to see:
The Ready Button and the black header. – Should be able to minimize that if your just tagging up for general use.
When sub squads are made. – There Target should be separate from commanders or other squads.
Would be nice to chose the colour of the dots on map for each sub squad.