Guild Wars 2

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.

:)

one [BUG] encountered was when the invite mode was switch, the commander cannot switch it back even if he disable the squad and create a new one, the setting is struck for good. GG.

other feature missing is the subsquad has no leader which make arranging subsquad somewhat pointless.

lastly it just very very hard to drag the windows size, of the dragbox is abit bigger, or self sizing it would be great.

but it definitely a liked feature, so cookies to the development team.

Good stuff. May be worth copying to: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Enhanced-Squad-UI-Feedback

As a dev said they’d be watching that thread specifically.