Guild Wars 2

I think adding quickchat would bring a new level of competitiveness/communication to PvP. What do I mean by quickchat? Implemented in games like TF2 and Runescape. Quickchat is a pre-existing list of commonly used phrases accessible in a tree-like structure.

Sounds a bit wordy. So how about an example. Say you want to tell your teammates 3 enemy members are incoming home. As it is now, you could press enter, move your off hand the mouse, type in “3 inc home,” move your hand back onto your mouse, re-align your keyboard hand, and then continue playing.

Problem: What if a player wants to give their team important game information without taking their hand off their mouse? Given a pug situation where TeamSpeak/Skype/etc is unlikely. How can a player relay game information in action-heavy scenarios, such as when they’re being chased by an enemy player?

Now let’s look at the earlier “3 inc home” example, but with Quickchat. First, the player would press their quickchat hotkey, say ‘X’ for example. Next, a lightweight menu or list of options would pop up:

• 1. Combat
• 2. Enemy Location
• 3. Need help at
• 4. Map specific
• 5. Etc.

We press ‘2’ since we’re trying to send an “Enemy Location” message:

• 1. Incoming
• 2. Enemy Position
• 3. Incoming Class
• 4. Enemy Position and Class

Now we press ‘1’ to select “Incoming,” another menu:

• 1. Home
• 2. Mid.
• 3. Far

Finally, we press ‘1’ again to indicate incoming home, enter ‘3’ as the amount. And Quickchat spits out a “3 inc mid” message. What did we have to do to send this message? After pressing the Quickchat hotkey ‘X,’ we entered the memorizable combination: 2, 1, 1, 3, and hit enter. This combination can be done very quickly, and possibly even in the middle of combat.

For another example. Suppose you were considering going far but changed your mind after seeing a bunker ele there. Rather than stop to type. You can quickly hit: X, 2, 4, 3, 9, and enter to send an “elementalist at far” message (Extra ‘9’ near the end being for elementalist).

Of course there are some problems with this system. It could get abused by spammers/trolls. And it removes part of the human aspect of team communication, which can be seen as a con. Overall I can say this is something I would definitely use if it was in the game, but not sure if it belongs in an MMO like GW2.

Your thoughts?

“I have an item: Wet Pipe.”

How else am I going to learn about yolo swaggins’s wet pipe without quick chat.

Anet pls.

Edit: On a more serious note though, I was only thinking of adding this for PvP. So no wet pipes

I actually really liked the map ping system implemented in Heroes of the Storm, and wished there was a similar implementation for conquest on GW2. I think this sort of system - with notification sounds to draw attention to it - would be better than predictive text.

Edit: I should probably elaborate since not everyone will know of it. When you would ping the map - hold a key and click on the minimap - instead of just a circle appearing, a small interface appears tightly around your cursor inside the bounds of the minimap. This interface consists of five buttons: one where you clicked which will close the interface, cancelling the ping, and one above, below, to the right and to the left of the cursor. Each of the other four buttons would create a ping message and a notification sound alerting allies of the message on the minimap. On Heroes of the Storm, these messages are "danger," "retreat," "defend." There is also a general ping, but if that general ping is made over an objective, it automatically becomes an "attack" message, alerting allies that that player wants to attack whatever it is. A player would create the ping for the act they want to perform.

In addition to the minimap symbol and alert sound, for pings that contain a message (attack, defend, retreat or danger), the ping would also create a small message, saying which player made the ping, and what they want to do, for example - moving into a GW2 PvP scenario now - if I anticipated crossers on the beach of forest, and I pinged "danger" on the beach, a danger symbol would appear on the beach, an alert would sound, and in small text it would say "Impact warns of danger."

This would be awesome to have in GW2, especially the sound so allies can respond to the ping. Often, pings go missed.

I like the draw feature GW2 has for its minimap, because it can more accurately display what you want. For example, if you want to push a point, drawing can be used to indicate who you want to go there or which point to rotate from. Unfortunately, drawing alone can be easy to misinterpret. Following a good ping system with drawing would be very good for communication.