Guild Wars 2

I have trouble with knowing whether 5000 or 10000 range teleport skills are out of range. Portal Entre and Shadow Trap are examples. When you activate them out of range, they have an unintended effect: Portal summons a portal that can’t be interacted with, and Shadow Trap teleports you in the right direction but only up till the first obstacle, such as a building.

Although distance units on the minimap would be ideal, like you can see on this map, they could also just make these skills unusuable outside of the range. Same for shorter-range teleports like Shadowstep. Since these distance units are arbitrary and we can’t even get a little indicator on the minimap of where we’ve left the entrance, something should be changed. This isn’t buffing the skills, just a QoL change.

It would be an extremely nice change to just make the skills unusable when you go out of range.

Qol..

Making ST Unusable when not in range is a nerf.

i think anet maybe wants players to take care when to use it and not just spam it until it is usable

maybe a good solution would be that portal and shadowtrep also show a red line in the skill bar like every other skill with range indication when they are outside of range

I have to mention that we already had a dev answer (in the mesmer forum I believe) saying that for some reasons, it was complicated.

Silverkey.2078:

I have to mention that we already had a dev answer (in the mesmer forum I believe) saying that for some reasons, it was complicated.

for some reasons lol, thats code for $*&T programming, Why do teleports in the first place if they couldnt get someone who could do it.

Highlie.7641:

Qol..

Making ST Unusable when not in range is a nerf.

Yeah actually you’re right, I use it as a stunbreak too. That wasn’t my top suggestion, I think that distance units on the map is the best way to go. Because right now “5000” or “10000” means nothing to me because I can’t actually see how far away that is so I can’t estimate it. I know how far 600, 900, and 1200 are instinctively.

Silverkey.2078:

I have to mention that we already had a dev answer (in the mesmer forum I believe) saying that for some reasons, it was complicated.

AFAIK that dev was responding to a comment to display a portal marker on the minimap, not to showing a red bar or disabling the skill when you are out of range.

Even just adding a note that says ‘to far’ would be great (it doesn’t need to change anything except saying us, it’s to far)

OriOri.8724:

Silverkey.2078:

I have to mention that we already had a dev answer (in the mesmer forum I believe) saying that for some reasons, it was complicated.

AFAIK that dev was responding to a comment to display a portal marker on the minimap, not to showing a red bar or disabling the skill when you are out of range.

Yeah I highly doubt that the 3 solutions I proposed are all technically complicated. The portal marker shouldn’t be hard though, in PvE there are all sorts of markers on the map. The technology is there, I think what’s difficult is that Anet doesn’t put much resources into sPvP development in the first place.

No the portal marker on the minimap was definitely one of the things that the devs said would be a ton of work to implement and not at all worth it. I just don’t remember if they said the same about marking the skill icon when you went out of range

OriOri.8724:

No the portal marker on the minimap was definitely one of the things that the devs said would be a ton of work to implement and not at all worth it. I just don’t remember if they said the same about marking the skill icon when you went out of range

Oh yeah I believe you when you say they said it, I just don’t believe that they’re being truthful. Anet doesn’t put much resources into sPvP development, and the only skill in this category which would actually be useful in PvE would maybe be Portal Entre. Shadow Trap isn’t used at all, and even if you use Shadowstep, it’s unlikely that you’ll be pressured enough to forget where you put it. This is largely a sPvP issue and that’s why they say it’s too much work; because relatively speaking, the benefit outweighs the burden on their limited resources.

Huskyboy.1053:

Yeah I highly doubt that the 3 solutions I proposed are all technically complicated. .

Never say that about anything programming related.
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/tasks.png

Crinn.7864:

Huskyboy.1053:

Yeah I highly doubt that the 3 solutions I proposed are all technically complicated. .

Never say that about anything programming related.
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/tasks.png

Generalization is general. I love Xkcd but I don’t use it as a reference point for reality, it’s humor. Randall is popular because he panders to programmer’s feelings and experiences, not their facts. If you want to be realistic, nobody outside of Anet knows how much budget, how many employees, and how much time are being spent on PvP-related fixes, so that comic could either be completely on-point, or this could be a simple fix that nobody at Anet cares enough to fix. Based on the current ToL team population compared to past numbers it’s clear that interest in sPvP is waning and that can only be attributed to Anet’s decisions.

At this point I’d at least like to hear/read the explanation for why nothing has been done about this, Shadow Trap is somewhat obscure but Shadowstep and Portal Entre are perma-meta. You’d think there would be a solution by now, these are all core skills.

Let me be more specific in meaning.

All but one of your ideas for the teleport problem assume that the location of a teleport are constantly checked in the same manner that a player’s position is checked.

But as far as I can tell by observation they are not. Player positions can be easily displayed on a map because the game has to constantly check the player’s position for obvious reasons. However with teleports there is no indication that the game bothers tracking the teleports position until the player actually calls the teleport. And it makes sense that teleports would be implemented in such a way since it would cut down on the amount of work the game has to do.

Crinn.7864:

Let me be more specific in meaning.

All but one of your ideas for the teleport problem assume that the location of a teleport are constantly checked in the same manner that a player’s position is checked.

But as far as I can tell by observation they are not. Player positions can be easily displayed on a map because the game has to constantly check the player’s position for obvious reasons. However with teleports there is no indication that the game bothers tracking the teleports position until the player actually calls the teleport. And it makes sense that teleports would be implemented in such a way since it would cut down on the amount of work the game has to do.

Perfect, thanks for clarifying. While you are correct that the game is constantly logging where a player is, as even other players need this information in an MMO, is that not also true of ports? Shadowstep and Portal Entre’s exits are constantly visible even before they’re called, it’s a small white ring for Shadowstep. And other players can also see these. So on some level they are logged, although it might not be handled the same way as a player’s location, as the latter is more dynamic. As to whether the server is re-checking the location of the portal or simply logging it at the time the exit is created and then continuing to display the exit’s location based on that single initial log, I don’t know. However clearly the game has some sort of record of each of those skills’ exit location, as that’s necessary to continue displaying the graphic that’s shown. Shadow Trap also has a generic thief trap graphic shown on the ground.

Crinn.7864:

Let me be more specific in meaning.

All but one of your ideas for the teleport problem assume that the location of a teleport are constantly checked in the same manner that a player’s position is checked.

But as far as I can tell by observation they are not. Player positions can be easily displayed on a map because the game has to constantly check the player’s position for obvious reasons. However with teleports there is no indication that the game bothers tracking the teleports position until the player actually calls the teleport. And it makes sense that teleports would be implemented in such a way since it would cut down on the amount of work the game has to do.

Thats interesting, did not think about that aspect of it.

Seems to me then that the best way to implement this QoL change to portal may be to just have Portal Exeunt not work at all if you aren’t within range. The game obviously knows if the exit portal is out of range when you try to use it, so simply change that check to when you use the skill. If you are out of range, have yellow text popup saying that, and the skill shouldn’t go on cooldown. I don’t know enough about thief to know if this would be a good change for their skill or not.

Huskyboy.1053:

Shadowstep and Portal Entre’s exits are constantly visible even before they’re called, it’s a small white ring for Shadowstep.

I would hazard that the scripts that govern abilities probably tell the graphics engine to “render this pink crap on a loop at X until I tell you to stop.”

Obviously the scripts are storing the location somewhere, but storing the location and calling/checking it are two different things. And for your ideas to work the engine would have to be actively checking it.