Guild Wars 2

Is there any scope for the introduction of cast bars?

Some may say it isn’t needed as you can attempt to learn every classes animations and you should know what is coming. Well even if you know animations there is so much going on on the screen that it becomes incredibly difficult to keep an eye on every skill, especially if multiple opponents are on screen.

As an example, today I was fighting an engi, bouncing about all over the place, no problems. I then spotted a rifle warrior aiming at me, but had no idea how long he had been stood there. Was he just starting to wind up his shot or was he a second away. I have no way of knowing without spending the rest of the time watching him and waiting for the shot, during which time I have to try and fight off the engi still.

What is the reason behind not enabling cast bars?

This would be a good balance for tiny asura whose animations you cant see. But I am unclear what “cast bars” are, can you link an example?

Holyonion.6940:

What is the reason behind not enabling cast bars?

This is interesting and I would hope for an official answer. The ones I can think of straight away are for not playing the UI but the game and it’s more realistic that way too. Makes playing require more skill (debatable of course).

Holyonion.6940:

Some may say it isn’t needed as you can attempt to learn every classes animations and you should know what is coming. Well even if you know animations there is so much going on on the screen that it becomes incredibly difficult to keep an eye on every skill, especially if multiple opponents are on screen.

But you don’t see everyones cast bars on the screens either unless you tab like crazy and that’s only bringing bars almost on par with observing animations.

Holyonion.6940:

I then spotted a rifle warrior aiming at me, but had no idea how long he had been stood there. Was he just starting to wind up his shot or was he a second away.

Learning killshot’s animation doesn’t hurt even if cast bars are put in.

Guild Wars spoiled me. I didn’t truly learn many animations because they had cast bars. I didn’t look peoples cast bars either to know what foes were or are going to be doing.

If I recall correctly this style is a design decision so only if it doesn’t work or is in other ways a bad thing they should “fix” this problem by adding bars or something.

i have mixed feelings about this

on one hand i feel like it’d help a lot of people who die quickly in pvp, but on the other hand i feel that if you’re pvping you should already have knowledge of what those attacks look like (with a grenade/bomb engi this is a bit weird since until it actually hits it looks the same, but you shouldn’t ever be standing still anyway)

hamsteak.1368:

i have mixed feelings about this

on one hand i feel like it’d help a lot of people who die quickly in pvp, but on the other hand i feel that if you’re pvping you should already have knowledge of what those attacks look like (with a grenade/bomb engi this is a bit weird since until it actually hits it looks the same, but you shouldn’t ever be standing still anyway)

True but it’s hard to see Asura animations in the middle of aoe fields.

SuperHaze.4210:

True but it’s hard to see Asura animations in the middle of aoe fields.

Just add an race “scalar” in PvP that downscales Norn and upscales Asura to human levels. A cast bar isn’t going to help you against five identical asura of the smallest possible model size, and especially not when they are in an AoE field.

Just add an option to have everyone appear as a human on your screen.

Race imbalance = Solved.

Just throwing this idea out there…

You know how random mobs say things but they don’t appear on the chat log?(OFCORSE NOT NO ONE PVE’S, PVE MAKES YOU BAD GRRRRRRRR- lol jk)

Well what if the name of any skill having a 1/2 sec+ cast time other than auto attack say the name of the skill above the head of the player in the same manner as the npcs do. So it is somthing more visual like the npcs, and won’t be overly spammy.

Yet players should still be able to disable seeing other skill boxes in the options menu, for those who dislike it.

Ofcorse going invisible should remove any skill names above your head, and probably shouldn’t reval you in any way unless you are already revealed or de-cloaked in some way.

I get the inspiration for this idea from Ragnarok online, which gave both cast bars and skill names for most skills. And although in a game with animations I do feel cast bars would spoil you a bit too much, this might be a more fair compromise.

At the very least it gets you to end up looking up and trying to learn skills, and what to watch out for more so than the defeated damage log, which to a new player they could be like “100Blades? What is that?” Or “What’s this Churning earth?” since you inheritly over time can attach a name to a visual till you no longer need the skill names.

Although an inherent problem is some of the best skills are 1/4 cast time and the situation would still reign but I think this would genuinely help people.

I don’t see why they wouldn’t implement it if they had enough time… It’s definitely not a priority now, but in the future, it only has benefits:

- ANet always says that they want the game to be beginner-friendly; the cast-bar would go a long way for that.
- Asuras; need I say more?
- If Obs-Mode comes along, it would help as well to make GW2 a better and easier to understand for Spectators.
- Sometimes it’s hard to see Animations properly, even on bigger Chars, because of all the effects…

I like the suggestion of scaling everyone like in SAB. You keep your race, you’re all the same height.

Cast-bars, while it would be handy. I like how you just have to watch the field/players.

In GW1, along with the cast bar, you had an indication of what skill was being used. This was VERY helpful to learn what a class you never played is doing skill-wise, the actual casting time was a strong bonus.

I really like most of the animations in GW2, and it is a fair point against cast bars, since you’d just divert attention to it. I think that perhaps introducing some form of cast bars might be an idea in hotjoin, where you could get a good idea of other classes’ skills and timings, and disabled in tournaments.

YES PLEASE! That would be a fantastic idea! I honestly don’t think GW2’s animations are distinctive enough to be able to tell what your enemy is doing just by looking at them, and in a lot of team fights it’s impossible to even see them for all the particle effects anyway!

ens.9854:

This would be a good balance for tiny asura whose animations you cant see. But I am unclear what “cast bars” are, can you link an example?

These things: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNLneTubxls#t=0m18s
Not the guy in the video customised his interface and made his A LOT bigger than it was by default.

Shard.4791:

Guild Wars spoiled me. I didn’t truly learn many animations because they had cast bars. I didn’t look peoples cast bars either to know what foes were or are going to be doing.

If I recall correctly this style is a design decision so only if it doesn’t work or is in other ways a bad thing they should “fix” this problem by adding bars or something.

Yeah, it was deliberate, but I don’t think it worked. Casting animations (with a rare few exceptions) aren’t distinctive enough, and the ridiculous amount of flashes and explosions onscreen make it impossible to discern tiny little asura characters raising their miniscule fist to the sky to squeeze out a heal anyway.

I disagree about GW1 though, I think the animations were very distinctive and it was easy to learn to tell them apart. I generally only looked at activation bars if I was trying to interrupt a skill (usually on my mesmer). Otherwise I’d be looking at the decal effects appearing over the caster’s head. Those usually looked similar to the skill’s icon so they were pretty easy to learn, and were generally bold, distinctive designs anyway. Look at the thing appearing over the head of this elementalist lady for instance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L1UvGgpRtM

In the case of defensive skilsl that targetted allies, the decal effect would usually appear over THE TARGET’S head instead of the caster’s, which was also eminently sensible, it let you know exactly what protection your target was under, whether you should try to remove it before bursting them down, or whether it was probably more sensible to just switch targets.
It’s really hard to find GW1 videos on youtube now with all the GW2 vids, but this 55 monk illustrates it very well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50b0zlq3-5o#t=0m57s
Note he’s casting that on himself, but you can see how distinctive they are even with 8 trolls surrounding him. Especially that Protective Spirit effect (his skill 5) – it’s big enough that you can see it even in an 8v8 fight and know not to bother blowing your cooldowns on someone who just got that.

It really was very easy to learn if you had played enough different classes, much easier than GW2’s animations, and it enabled some very deep gameplay.

Although frankly most interrupt skills in GW2 have a cast time or (in the case of mesmer shatters, no cast time but an activation delay until the illusions hit), so there are very few enemy skills you could usefully and reliably interrupt. (Necro is particularly hard hit: warhorn daze is 0.5" cast time, staff fear is 0.75", and the only instant-cast fear is in death shroud so usually requires 2 keystrokes to get to.) Most big heals are in the 0.75"-1" cast time range which already makes them very difficult if you have even the slightest lag, so you’re mostly restricted to stomps, which do have a distinctive animation, to be fair.