Communications Manager
Guild & Fansite Relations; In-Game Events
ArenaNet
Our development team reviews play input on a regular basis. They are aware of this suggestion, but have not yet reached a decision on what changes, if any, they will make to targeting.
There is a lot going on right now with the upcoming event, but after that, the team will take a look at a lot of different game elements, and may make some changes in the future.
Sorry I don’t have more specific information, but you can be sure this is not being ignored or rejected without due consideration.
Thanks for understanding.
Humble suggestion, ignore the event and fix things like targeting / bugs / class issues / bug-gated dungeons first.
At least add an option to toggle this on and off. I myself will turn it off immediately, because its really costly to lose targets in tpvp.
An even more humble suggestion, get that event out (I know I love new content). While this targeting issue is a real pain, it has not stopped me from playing and having a great time in Tyria. So I figure I can hold out a couple more weeks, party with the new content and then see what ArenaNet has to offer for this issue.
Humble suggestion, ignore the event and fix things like targeting / bugs / class issues / bug-gated dungeons first.
Yeah, that’s not even a possibility.
The event is likely bundled with the mid-November patch that includes massive number of bug fixes and other changes. That patch will be going through the final stages of polishing and testing at this point, to ensure that all the separate fixes bundled in it work with each other, and will work transitioning from the live version of the game.
They can’t just ignore the event, because the event is a necessary part of launching that patch, which introduces a new area and a new dungeon. To decide not to focus on the event means going into the patch and removing it, which is even more work than just continuing to polish the build as it stands.
Finally, why exactly are you assuming that the exact same people who would work on targeting would work on other fixes? Assuming GW2 operates like every other game, it’s managed by development teams with varying roles and responsibilities, some of which might be shared between them, managed by their lead designers.
So just ignoring one aspect of development doesn’t mean much. They probably have people actively looking into different options when it comes to targeting, but none of those even matter until they can do more testing, and it’s definitely less vital than making sure the patch doesn’t break the game.
If you want to go in-depth with targeting, that’s ok. But an option to disable right-click targeting would be a greatly appreciated ‘quick and dirty’ fix to this issue that affects quite some people while they ‘review play’.
How hard can that be? Just another boolean value saved in the options in the gw2.dat, a small change to the general options panel’s layout, a single line of localization, and a simple change in the client to make it ignore right click over entities, so it works just for camera, and ding, no more problems with right click targeting solved in a week or less.
I don’t think it is going to be quite as easy as just ignoring right click events. Because there are lots of things that currently use right click; like preview gear, equip/unequip gear, activate drop down menus on player/team/guild/objects, etc.
ArenaNet will need to sort out every possible trigger that run from any right click done in the game and figure out which ones to ignore and when to ignore them. Just turning off all right click input would cause some serious game play interface issues.
I agree, there needs to be some way to disable right-click targeting. Like others, I also thought I was suffering from some odd targeting bug for a while until a saw someone mention this right-click behavior. Until then I didn’t even know right-clicking could be used for targeting.
It seems pretty clear to me that if a lesser known feature (which also exists in a better way elsewhere) is commonly being accidentally invoked and perceived as a bug, then that’s a good sign it needs to be removed or revised.
impliment a toggle-able mouse-look so you don’t have to hold down the right mouse button at all (essentially the combat-mode mod).
Defintely agree. I hate it when I lose my target because an ally decided to stop by my mouse :/
I don’t think it is going to be quite as easy as just ignoring right click events. Because there are lots of things that currently use right click; like preview gear, equip/unequip gear, activate drop down menus on player/team/guild/objects, etc.
ArenaNet will need to sort out every possible trigger that run from any right click done in the game and figure out which ones to ignore and when to ignore them. Just turning off all right click input would cause some serious game play interface issues.
Is there any reason those couldn’t just trigger on release instead? That seems to be a much more common and less annoying way in my experience.
Ah so that’s what causing my targets to drop/change! Here i was thinking it was either me or a bug :O This has been the source of a lot of confusion/aggrevation for me.
A fix would be most most welcome!
Our development team reviews play input on a regular basis. They are aware of this suggestion, but have not yet reached a decision on what changes, if any, they will make to targeting.
There is a lot going on right now with the upcoming event, but after that, the team will take a look at a lot of different game elements, and may make some changes in the future.
Sorry I don’t have more specific information, but you can be sure this is not being ignored or rejected without due consideration.
Thanks for understanding.
On a slightly related note; please make it so when you clear your target (untarget something) auto-attack stops firing. It’s so annoying when you accidentaly target something far away, you untarget it, and your character keeps firing and then you get in range and you pull the mob.
Our development team reviews play input on a regular basis. They are aware of this suggestion, but have not yet reached a decision on what changes, if any, they will make to targeting.
There is a lot going on right now with the upcoming event, but after that, the team will take a look at a lot of different game elements, and may make some changes in the future.
Sorry I don’t have more specific information, but you can be sure this is not being ignored or rejected without due consideration.
Thanks for understanding.
You would consider making no changes to how it works currently? You guys play this game right? I lose target all the time due to this, an option to disable right click targeting would go a long ways to fixing it.
Thank you ArenaNet for answering!
I play Guild Wars 2 as my main game, and i like game a lot. Last Mad king Event was great and im pretty sure that next one will be too. Thanks! Very good that new events are made. Very good!
“They are aware of this suggestion, but have not yet reached a decision on what changes, if any, they will make to targeting.”
Hoping that right click targeting option will come. After that targeting in this game would be Stable. You dont lose target accidentially, you dont waste you skills to NPC of friend, Engineers wont lose their turrets (i have heard, my own engineer is lvl 10 so i dont have own knowledge about that) etc. You can consentrate on game then, not controls. Very very good if this will come. I would play even more GW2.
(if some other improvements may come… Option that mouse cursor stays visible, when right mouse button is pressed. This would help targeting too.)
My suggestion to this thread is, that we players will keep posting examples, what right click targetin has done to the game. True stories, videos etc. So development group has also material from forum to think about this.
In our guild, everyone who know this issue, dont like it. But this is not known by everyone, they are just wondering why target has changed. This would be a welcome change.
Sry my bad English. Ty for the Great Game!
For the love of god yes please.
Yeah this issue is annoying for the non keyboard-turners out there.
A toggle would be greatly appreciated. <3
Yes, I have a problem with accidentally shooting at things I didn’t mean to. I’m fighting some veteran or champion and what happens? I accidentally shoot at the wildlife and draw them into the fight.. It’s real annoying.
Humble suggestion, ignore the event and fix things like targeting / bugs / class issues / bug-gated dungeons first.
agreed! WE WANT FIXES! Content is nice, but fixes to important issues like this are what is going to prevent your game from being something that people try for a while then put down.
I have already lost two friends to other games because A) they hate the zerg, re-spawn nature of pugs in dungeons and the target system in this game. They can not stand it. I can’t either, but the wv3 and spvp keep me here. Not for much longer though if every-time I try to target something and pan my camera it switches to a friendly screwing up my rotation, reaction times while trying to fight.
If you play this game, and you haven’t figured out if this needs to be changed then you aren’t playing pvp.
(edited by Koroz.5294)
[…]
I meant my thread. I believe I was the first one in these forums who made a thread to complain about right click targeting and activation.
I was just trying to emphasise your point about nobody seeming to notice by saying how can anyone (who doesn’t use keyboard turning) NOT notice such a basic flaw in the game design.
It really is the single most infuriating ‘feature’ in the game right now for me at least. I love playing thief with dual pistols and literally running rings round my target with improved run speed (signet) and lots of dodging (enhanced through traits). I know it’s not the most effective style but I just love the play style. Losing my target or picking up a stray moa really, really annoys me.
I constantly keep getting wrong targets because of this right click thing.
Not to mention we really really should have option to auto-target players (or clones) only. And for the love of god I do not understand that when I am banging righteously some target it suddenly switches into something else only because it happens to be closer. I call this pet-targeting syndroma.
So that’s why I keep losing my target and start firing at other foes! I don’t understand why we can’t edit the mouse button controls or do combinations with mouse buttons and keystrokes.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/targeting-system-overhaul/first#post717150
I think these kind of threads also are connected to right click targeting problem.
Thanks for the aswer Gaile.
I agree with this suggestion too. Can’t count the times when I ended up selecting targets while moving camera and not understanding why.
If necessary, make it an option in the menu, but it would be just easier to deactivate it altoghether.
Also… right now most player would like a more polished game and improvement to what already is there, NOT new content.
Yes, I wholeheartedly have been wanting this since I started playing in the beta weekend events.
It still aggravates me that my targeting, etc. is screwed up very easily by me using right-click to move the camera … it’s how I turn, etc.
It’s how EVERYBODY turns. I can’t believe it was ever designed this way to be honest. You’d have to be legally brain dead to even consider binding targetting to the right mouse button in a game that uses the right mouse button to steer your character. even more so given the amount of movement they require during combat in this game.
I play as a warrior as my main character. When using skills like Rush (warrior GS), its going to waste when you have accidentially picked wrong target with right mouse button. Could happen, that you run out of cliffs and else. In a video, every target is “taken” with right mouse button. Video is example, but this could happen in a real game.
(edited by Patu.9827)
This is a huge problem.
I just recently got into upper levels. Before that, I could ignore the problem. In higher level areas, however, there are tightly packed, fast respawning mobs, and right click targeting is making sure I’m constantly targeting adds until I am surrounded by aggroed mobs.
I’m adaptable. I used to play holding down both mouse buttons to move forward and turn, but I changed for GW2 to the standard of using the mouse for turning only because of the ground targeted abilities.
The problem is, I can’t figure out how the developers were expecting us to play this game with right click targeting! The only other option I can figure is keyboard turning, which isn’t really an option, especially in a game that emphasizes never standing still and, of course, PvP.
If the game designers feel that right click targeting is a key part of how the game works (so they aren’t going to let us turn it off), it’d be great to at least hear what they were shooting for as the optimal controls. Are they all keyboard turners?
If I was allowed to choose the most important things that need to be addressed in the game, this would be at the top of my list.
Yes this is. This is my top of my list, number 1 of suggestions.
Last one time event, this problem was still there. Got many loss target because of right click targeting. Gameplay in this game is not good right now And gameplay is most important thing in games. :/ There is now a clear problem. Please just fix it.
Of all the things that need fixing in this game, this needs to be one of the first.
I agree. I use wasd to move, left click/tab to select stuff, and right click for camera. However, to move camera during a fight, I have to be really careful else I switch targets because of that.
I really expected this to be fixed quickly, as it can become incredibly annoying. We shouldn’t spend our gaming experience fighting against the controls…
EDIT: simple fix: add an option “Mouse target selection button” with the following options: “left and right”, “left”, “right”, “keyboard only”. Quick, easy, and everyone is happy!
(edited by Kelovar.6319)
Wanted to add my name to the list. Just purchased and installed the game yesterday, and I am very impressed with everything I have encountered so far, except for the camera movement. I made a Necromancer, and I believe I am now level 6 with 3 pets. Every battle I am accidentally targeting my pets during the fight, have to hit tab, re-attack, accidentally target pet, waste a skill cooldown, hit tab, re-attack, accidentally target pet, waste a skill cooldown, hit tab, re-attack… Quite frustrating.
Other than camera movement, I am very pleased with this game.
The reason this hasn’t been fixed yet is because left and right click function identically in-game, and they both serve 2 functions: select target and pan camera. The only distinction is the direction of “forward” when moving. From a code standpoint this is a nice abstraction.
Given that, the way selection currently works (based on in-game testing) seems to be as follows:
For left click this works great, because if you accidentally panned the camera when selecting the target it will still be selected. But the inherent implication is that the default behavior is selection, and the secondary behavior is panning the camera. This is true for left click but wrong for right click. And this is where the abstraction falls apart.
In order to fix the abstraction, a flag needs to be set to declare which behavior is primary. However, panning being primary means selection must be disabled. Why? If the camera moves then clearly the intent was to pan, thus no selection.
However, what if the player simply clicks. Surely that means selection? Here it’s not as clear cut — sometimes a player will right-click with the intent to pan, only to immediately release with the intent to take another action instead (e.g. select the enemy that just appeared on the screen). Thus in this last case enable an option to disable selection on right-click, allowing the user to state his most common intent (instead of the game trying to guess it).
/signed
This really needs to be implemented.
And on a related note, when the development team is prioritizing what to work on next, I’d agree with those above that bug fixes should have an inherent higher priority than new content or enhancement requests.
Our development team reviews play input on a regular basis. They are aware of this suggestion, but have not yet reached a decision on what changes, if any, they will make to targeting.
There is a lot going on right now with the upcoming event, but after that, the team will take a look at a lot of different game elements, and may make some changes in the future.
Sorry I don’t have more specific information, but you can be sure this is not being ignored or rejected without due consideration.
Thanks for understanding.
Just a small, humble request:
More focus on fixing bugs and balancing, less focus on bringing in new content to a game that needs fixing to its core mechanics.
I’m not sure that this is a ‘bug’ as such, more of an extremely unwelcome ‘feature’. I don’t think I’ve ever played another game where the mouse left click functionality was doubled up onto the right click also. It is counter intuitive based on all my (and apparently pretty much everyone else’s) previous gaming experience.
It’s seriously pissing me off and it is spoiling my overall enjoyment of this game.
This has been driving me nuts. Fix it. It is a major problem for pvp.
haha i just thought targeting in this game was horribly broken and was designed to switch around at random.
And FYI, making the developer team responsible for UI interactions is to ask for stupid stuff like this, please get someone that understand interaction to decide upon these matters.
I just recently learned this is why I get random target switches, and have since run into several people who hadn’t realized it until I told them.
This is a huge issue, and it would be appreciated if a developer could comment about it directly. If more people understood that this is what was causing screwy targeting I bet this thread would be much longer with people chiming in.
I’m very glad the development team is aware of this “suggestion.” Frankly, this is one of my pet peeves about the game at the moment, and I have seen this commented on a number of places (I also made a suggestion thread on this once, I think).
Why I put the quotations around suggestion? Because like a few others, I believe it to be quite a no-brainer. If whoever coded the in-game-Options Menu gave it but a few minutes, they would probably be able to fix this easily. Yes, fix. It’s a problem.
Yes, please fix this, I’d love an option allowing us to decide whether we wish to target with right click or left click or to disable either or just keep it the same.
This is one of the biggest annoyances with combat in GW2. Please fix this issue or give us an option so that left mouse click is the only action that can change target.
Gaile Gray, I think most people agrees that right click target selection is a big issue. Anet should review this asap. I think is not that hard to make the improvement and it would benefit greatly the gameplay experience.
We should all take a moment in game to make sure we do a bug report on this as well. That way it can go into their official bug tally, rather than be just another suggestion thread among hundreds of others.
It needs to stand out from “It’d be cool if we had a ninja monk vampire profession.”
I’ve had enough of this targeting fiasco for now. I’m going to take a break from GW2 until after Christmas methinks. Hopefully when I do log back in something may have been done to fix this. And maybe Scotland will qualify for the World Cup too….
I suppose it’s a good thing that I know I can take a break without that feeling that I’m paying a sub fee and getting nothing for it, nor am I worried that I might fall behind in the gear grind
I cant believe that this issue hasn’t been addressed yet. All the useless stuff added to the game lately while its core mechanics are still broken… (talking about fov and this)
Just add one little toggle to the game menu, this can’t be so hard to implement. I would go without all the festival crap and events for one year if you just use your resources to fix some of the major flaws in your game-core. Please let me finally enjoy gw2!
Go home right click targetting you are drunk
seriously … at least we should be able to disable it in the options, nobody asks for it to be completly deactivated, everyone should play the game the way they want to.
i’m not sure but i feel that there already was a option to disable right click targetting in beta.
Agreed, I’m still having issues mouse turning my charachter. wish it was a option to right click pan or turn as well
Thnx for bumping this thread, I also thought it was just bugging out on me or my missclicking or something, moving the camera and losing target or selecting something unintended.
in PvP scenario’s this is very annoying, moving the camera to follow a mesmer, only to lose target half the time, or it selecting a darn clone.
Dear ANet, this is one of the easiest to fix problems, simply add a checkbox in the options menu to turn right click select ON or OFF.
It is so annoying. Also when i try to move my camera sometimes i right click onto party UI and the menu pops up. Those interaction should on “mouseup” not “mousedown” its a simple fix and the final solution tho.
+1 Really hate this targeting system. Arena told us to be a good guild wars 2 player you need to never stop moving and dodge and jump a lot and to be aware of your surrounding, How can we do this and not move the camera? really needs to be fixed asap. Never played an mmo that used right click as targeting with no option to turn it off.
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