Guild Wars 2

Please place an arrow in the Mesmer portal, pointing towards the other portal.

Then how else will us mesmers screw and troll others by porting them onto suicide cliffs?

If any upgrade is made to portal it should be timer between entre/exeunt and a range indicator… this has probably been said a million times though

Dondagora.9645:

Then how else will us mesmers screw and troll others by porting them onto suicide cliffs?

Add the skill to place a spy-portal (making up the name on the spot). With the spy-portal you can decide yourself what direction the arrow points (there are many skills you point in one direction, so the engine has this ability already) and the best part is.. enemies can use the portal as well and can’t see it’s an enemy portal.

If friendly can see it’s a spy-portal (and so understand the arrow might be false) it up to Anet. But best would be not to, else people will always use spy-portals and so you always know then it’s an enemy-portal (when it’s not a spy-portal). So showing this takes away the usefulness of this skill.

You can still troll, but if you are a nice Mesmer people at least know in what direction they are going.

Zord.6457:

If any upgrade is made to portal it should be timer between entre/exeunt and a range indicator… this has probably been said a million times though

You can use the cool-down as a timer.

If you would have a max distance then yes, that needs to be indicated. But honestly, I would not want a distance indication but a Mesmer portal should have no max range.. or at least it should be able to portal people everywhere within one map but preferably every-where on the world. (this does require a loading screen when using a portal to the other side of the map, and I think the distance is now related to the distance where you don’t need to load).

This would create some interesting game-play in WvW.

Is it possible to add a scripted solution for it in the interim? Perhaps some player variable pulled via API at point of the ability’s cast time to indicate the starting point and distance from that point, then something to clear markers from outside of a certain threshold in case the skill is interrupted?

Just trying to think of something similar to that portal mod cooked up a few months back, but with a catch for teleportation in the interim.

Robert Gee.9246:

Adding a timer buff is simple, but having a range or direction indicator is much more difficult due to how the skill is implemented. Portal is managed heavily through code rather than script due to its unique functionality so adding something like this would likely require changing some of the underling structure of the skill.

At least we now know why it doesn’t. Thank you for explaining it to us.

Robert Gee.9246:

Adding a timer buff is simple, but having a range or direction indicator is much more difficult due to how the skill is implemented. Portal is managed heavily through code rather than script due to its unique functionality so adding something like this would likely require changing some of the underling structure of the skill.

Do you mean “It’s hard, but we could try someday.” or “It’s impossible, sorry.”?

Dude can we PLEASE get a timer and some indicator when were out of range of the entry portal?

Running to go port your zerg only to drop a failing portal is so embarrassing…

Robert Gee.9246:

Adding a timer buff is simple, but having a range or direction indicator is much more difficult due to how the skill is implemented. Portal is managed heavily through code rather than script due to its unique functionality so adding something like this would likely require changing some of the underling structure of the skill.

I obviously don’t know the code but would expect the portal being an object with a coordinate as one of it’s properties and a reference to the other portal object.

Then you have all the information you need to show the pointer in the right direction..

Well I guess that’s not how it works in the code as you say it’s hard.. But that is how I envisioned it to work so I though it would be reasonably ‘easy’.

Thanks for the reply, appreciate it.

I think you misunderstand the problem, Devata. We have other instances of things pointing to other things, so that’s not the issue.

The issue Robert described is this:

• There are two layers to every skill, a “code” layer and a “script” layer.
• Making changes to the “script” layer is pretty easy.
• Adding a countdown to Portal can be done in the “script” layer, because all the necessary information is already being bubbled up from “code” to “script”.
• Adding an arrow to Portal cannot be done in the “script” layer because the necessary information (Entre location, Exit location) is not being bubbled up from the “code” layer.
• Making changes to the “code” layer is difficult and risky.

In general, the people we interact with as “devs” are not actually writing engine/server code, they work at a higher level of abstraction writing scripts. (They may or may not be knowledgeable in lower-level code, but that’s not part of their day-to-day work.)

Making changes to the code that underlies the scripts most likely requires them to loop in software engineers responsible for maintaining that code, as well as going through a long QE process to make sure that the change doesn’t introduce regressions or create new bugs. It’s definitely not impossible, but the software engineering and QE resources required are already in very high demand, so getting them assigned to a small QoL fix is always a hard sell.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Dude can we PLEASE get a timer and some indicator when were out of range of the entry portal?

Running to go port your zerg only to drop a failing portal is so embarrassing…

Can we add this to the good mesmer/bad mesmer list? =P

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Dude can we PLEASE get a timer and some indicator when were out of range of the entry portal?

Running to go port your zerg only to drop a failing portal is so embarrassing…

That … almost … never happens …
+1 for range and timeout indicator

Robert Gee.9246:

Adding a timer buff is simple, but having a range or direction indicator is much more difficult due to how the skill is implemented. Portal is managed heavily through code rather than script due to its unique functionality so adding something like this would likely require changing some of the underling structure of the skill.

But wait, Robert, isn’t this something that you could do through scripting? The entry Portal is placed. As we do so, the player co-ordinates are temporarily stored for its life cycle, indicating its location, then we calculate a radius from these co-ordinates while polling the players movement, to either show or hide the red line, indicating if the player has moved outside the range of which where an exit Portal will be functional?

Never mind this arrow suggestion, what most Mesmer’s has wanted for the longest time, is a indication to tell them if they are running outside the range of which the Entry and Exit will link up, or.. a more surefire way of not dropping a dud. This must be something doable on the scripting side of things, right? The same way a timer would be? Couldn’t you perhaps even use the same timer to poll the movement of the player, store the Entry location (player co-ordinates on placement) and updating the UI, reducing workload?

As a sometimes portal mesmer in raids if you’re in a party your limit is at the point that you can no longer see a party members name. Never been concerned with the 60s.

Robert Gee.9246:

Adding a timer buff is simple, but having a range or direction indicator is much more difficult due to how the skill is implemented. Portal is managed heavily through code rather than script due to its unique functionality so adding something like this would likely require changing some of the underling structure of the skill.

Timer buff will be nice ( also can be made a timer over the icon of portal exeunt skill on utility bar)
As for range indicator, wont be possible to shadow/grey the portal exeunt skill on our bar when it is to far away from the placed portal entrance the same way we dont get the “enter” message when we placed it out of range?

Absconditus.6804:

But wait, Robert, isn’t this something that you could do through scripting?

He literally just told us that it isn’t.

FJSAMA.2867:

Robert Gee.9246:

Adding a timer buff is simple, but having a range or direction indicator is much more difficult due to how the skill is implemented. Portal is managed heavily through code rather than script due to its unique functionality so adding something like this would likely require changing some of the underling structure of the skill.

Timer buff will be nice ( also can be made a timer over the icon of portal exeunt skill on utility bar)
As for range indicator, wont be possible to shadow/grey the portal exeunt skill on our bar when it is to far away from the placed portal entrance the same way we dont get the “enter” message when we placed it out of range?

FJSAMA hit this one where it really needs it; when we can’t safely place the portal. I have a slightly different take on it; we have a lot of skills that state you can’t activate them without an enemy targeted etc. Obviously the code has some mechanism to determine when its too far from the origin point to drop a new portal.

Simple solution: add a case statement or if then statement to the code that says if the range is too great to drop the portal to popup a message to the player indicating they can’t activate the skill because they have gone too far. Its not the most awesome fix method for portal, but it is incredibly more intuitive than you drop it and it doesn’t work. And no, using another player as a benchmark for the starting point is not an acceptable solution so don’t mention bad solutions!!! I swear, some people think pvp with some dude just sitting there for 3 minutes at a time is actually a reliable method…

Another alternative option would be the moment you drop entre, it creates a purple ‘ping circle’ on the mini-map/compass map similar to how we set waypoints or ping objectives to teammates. This could then give a benchmark to the mesmer where its safe to drop exeunt. I would accept both as a solution, maybe even together as a semi-perfect fix.

Any kind of out of range indicator would be nice tbh, like the standard red line below the skill icon for example.

tobascodagama.2961:

Absconditus.6804:

But wait, Robert, isn’t this something that you could do through scripting?

He literally just told us that it isn’t.

And I literally just questioned why not, with a case suggestion.

Again, you click on the skill, it starts the timer he mentions should be doable, and at the same time it stores a variable for your characters current co-ordinates, which serves as your portal location. From these co-ordinates, you can then calculate a radius while polling the updated location of the player character (as the timer updates the text shown on the UI), to see if the Portals will link up (with some minor inaccuracy granted, like everything else in the game), adjusting the UI accordingly (player outside of range, red bar on the bottom of the skill button, player within, remove red bar). If you click the Portal skill again, the timer is cleared, variables gets sent into the memory garbage collection, UI resets to recharge updates. If the timer, times out, the same thing happens, there’s no difference.

There is no reason to have the skill not work if you are outside of range for them to link up, that I understand would require additional code. The same goes for adding an arrow to point between the two, that’s not something local to the Mesmer in terms of UI updates. For that matter, sometimes you may want to throw down a Portal that doesn’t work, as a distraction, without risking some poor soul taking it unaware. It’d be perfectly fine to just have a indication if it will be a dud or not. As well as a timer to show how long you got before you got to place that exit. The skill works fine, this would be QoL UI updates on the local front.

Dondagora.9645:

Then how else will us mesmers screw and troll others by porting them onto suicide cliffs?

… or inside walls and gates?

Edit: range and timer on Portal are probably one of the most requested features in these forums since the start of the game

Robert Gee.9246:

Adding a timer buff is simple, but having a range or direction indicator is much more difficult due to how the skill is implemented. Portal is managed heavily through code rather than script due to its unique functionality so adding something like this would likely require changing some of the underling structure of the skill.

The timer is great.

How about, if you run out of portal functionality range, the skill becomes greyed out or red?

Yeah, there’s some sort of tracking operation occurring at some point in the code, since ultimately it checks whether or not it’s in range. That information just needs to be isolated and brought up to the appropriate level.

I’d say it doesn’t matter in pvp that much because most portaling is done between mid and close/far. What I think Robert’s main issue would be with the pace arrow and portal direction marker would be if the portal is over different terrains or the Exeunt is vertically above the Entre. Regardless, portal is an excellent skill as is, unique in its own right with powerful utility, for its worth I think it has an appropriate skill level to use it properly, just use it more.

Scapper.4236:

I’d say it doesn’t matter in pvp that much because most portaling is done between mid and close/far. What I think Robert’s main issue would be with the pace arrow and portal direction marker would be if the portal is over different terrains or the Exeunt is vertically above the Entre. Regardless, portal is an excellent skill as is, unique in its own right with powerful utility, for its worth I think it has an appropriate skill level to use it properly, just use it more.

Rangefinding on portal isn’t skill, it’s just a ridiculous obtuse problem. How are you supposed to know the range on portal if you’re someone learning? The tooltip says 5000, so what are you gonna do, measure out 10.4 chaos storm diameters to get there?

It’s ridiculous and a problem and needs to be solved.

I agree, it should have a rangebuff. Yet @Fay the crux of this post is not to dwell on what the problems are but how to deal with the status quo, and that is to learn otherwise you aren’t helping yourself either. Keeping in mind there may or may not be a buff around the corner, I am merely providing criticism on why it is seen as difficult to use. Tip to any new players zoom in your minimap completely and voila you have a rough max. portal range to the perimeter of your map, not 10.4 chaos storms. I don’t see how it is used in open world pve, or more so rarely used, and if it is not self taught by a new player in the competitive scene, it is taught by the oh so friendly community.

Scapper.4236:

Yet @Fay the crux of this post is not to dwell on what the problems are but how to deal with the status quo, and that is to learn otherwise you aren’t helping yourself either.

No, that’s not what the crux of the post was.

Scapper.4236:

Regardless, portal is an excellent skill as is, unique in its own right with powerful utility, for its worth I think it has an appropriate skill level to use it properly, just use it more.

You straight up said ‘I think that because portal is a strong skill, it’s ok that it’s absurdly inconvenient to use due to poor implementation’.

This is an awful train of thought, and needs to be stopped.

Okay let me contextualise and reiterate. Reiterate. It’s the crux of my post, and what I’m saying not the post as a whole, and yes, I believe it should have a ranged buff if you did not read that I do affirm to the change but I am still of the opinion that for what it offers it is alright if it has poor implementation/difficult to use because the utility as it stands is great.

Contextualise. Being able to move zergs and guild groups to and from a fight is overpowered and the irony is that 8/10 times you don’t even need to use the max range to do that! So stop fannying about with something so arbitrary because there is nothing else to complain about.

Woah, almost forgot I made a post about this a while ago.. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/How-to-Improve-Mesmer-portals-Add-Arrows/

Could it be possible to change the active portal effect for it to ripple in a single direction(call it up) vs radially? And then when the portals link the effects could be oriented towards the matching portal. Thus at a glance you could tell in which general direction the portal will send you.

As for a range mechanic what about a light pillar effect that rises from an unlinked portal but with a short draw range. If it can be an effect only the mesmer can see then as long as they could see the pillar effect they can be reasonable that it will link.
It may not be perfect as terrain might get in the way but could be a nice improvement

Robert Gee.9246:

Absconditus.6804:

But wait, Robert, isn’t this something that you could do through scripting? The entry Portal is placed. As we do so, the player co-ordinates are temporarily stored for its life cycle, indicating its location, then we calculate a radius from these co-ordinates while polling the players movement, to either show or hide the red line, indicating if the player has moved outside the range of which where an exit Portal will be functional?

While I appreciate the suggestion, this kind of thing isn’t scriptable. Unfortunately I can’t explain the exact mechanical reason since it could reveal sensitive information about our internal systems.

Eh, was worth a shot.

Would it help if I said that I really want it a whole lot and made this face?

If you are having portal time/range problems, that is a matter of experience.

If you are experienced, that is a matter of “oops, hehehe”.

Well, since the portal is teleporting people from one spot to the other, the game obviously knows about the location of the entry point… Why getting that information is so difficult, that remains a mystery shrouded by internal systems.

If there are issues with getting the portals’ positions why not track the player instead? You could create an arrow at the player’s position when they activate portal entre and have it point toward the player as they move, then when they activate portal exit this arrow would stop moving and a second arrow would appear pointing to the other.

For the time being I’d be happy with just a timer. I don’t think direction is important (for the Mesmer at least), and when playing in a group you should ideally be communicating where your portal’s leading to. As for range, would be nice to have an indicator for that too but if it’s too difficult I don’t mind, it’s not as big an issue as time to me.

Just as a reminder.

This topic was about an arrow, not about a timer or range indicator. I would also like to see a range indicator if you would really keep a max rage.. personally I would just not want to see a max range at all. but there are many topics about this already.

But a timer is not really necessary. You start a cool-down when you place the first portal (I usually use Prayer of Dwayna, but you might want to use a skill with a 90sec cool-down), 60 sec later you must have placed the second portal. So you can use the cool-down as timer, when the second cooldown hits 5 you lose the portal.

Back to the arrow. So it’s not something they can implement very fast apparently, it however is something that would be very nice to have.. You could also allow a Mesmer to point the arrow themselves, but this would only be really useful when enemies can use the portal as well (and can’t see it’s an enemy portal). So it’s something to keep in mind when the Mesmer gets some coding done.

Edit: My comment obviously was not very clear, so I updated it. Hope this makes it clearer.

Devata.6589:

A timer is not but not really necessary. Your cool-down starts when you place the first portal, 60 sec later you must have placed the second portal. So you can use the cool-down as timer, when it hits 30 you lose the portal.

Have you ever used portal? You don’t see its cool down while the exit has yet to be placed. Guess, use another skills cd or use an external timer.

Devata.6589:

A timer is not but not really necessary. Your cool-down starts when you place the first portal, 60 sec later you must have placed the second portal. So you can use the cool-down as timer, when it hits 30 you lose the portal.

Yeeeaaaah… I get the feeling you haven’t actually used Portal before.

Justine.6351:

Devata.6589:

A timer is not but not really necessary. Your cool-down starts when you place the first portal, 60 sec later you must have placed the second portal. So you can use the cool-down as timer, when it hits 30 you lose the portal.

Have you ever used portal? You don’t see its cool down while the exit has yet to be placed. Guess, use another skills cd or use an external timer.

That’s the whole point isn’t it. You place the enter portal, then the cooldown starts, so you use that to know how long you have to place the exit portal.

Embolism.8106:

Devata.6589:

A timer is not but not really necessary. Your cool-down starts when you place the first portal, 60 sec later you must have placed the second portal. So you can use the cool-down as timer, when it hits 30 you lose the portal.

Yeeeaaaah… I get the feeling you haven’t actually used Portal before.

It’s my favorite Mesmer skill.

Devata.6589:

Justine.6351:

Devata.6589:

A timer is not but not really necessary. Your cool-down starts when you place the first portal, 60 sec later you must have placed the second portal. So you can use the cool-down as timer, when it hits 30 you lose the portal.

Have you ever used portal? You don’t see its cool down while the exit has yet to be placed. Guess, use another skills cd or use an external timer.

That’s the whole point isn’t it. You place the enter portal, then the cooldown starts, so you use that to know how long you have to place the exit portal.

Are you suggesting that the CD should show when you place the first part of the portal?
Because it reads like you’re saying that’s the way it already works,
Which is why people are arguing

So instead of arrow, portal entrance can have a “non-counting clone” model summoned that has hand pointing “directly ahead” and “face-to” linked to the mesmer While mesmer is running around it is turning as it’s facing the mesmer. When mesmer drops exit, the “pointer clone” stops turning in mesmer’s direction so you get clone pointing at the exit But I don’t know if models also follow same limitations that tracking of actual portal entrance/exit is. Probably does

Isn’t possible to change colours between the 2 portals? or add atleast a diffrent glow, like for example:
Light purple -> entrance
Dark purple -> exit
nothing so big but is still a thing you could pay attention

Spartacus.9743:

Isn’t possible to change colours between the 2 portals? or add atleast a diffrent glow, like for example:
Light purple -> entrance
Dark purple -> exit
nothing so big but is still a thing you could pay attention

For what purpose? The difference between Entre and Exeunt is just the order at which they’ve been placed. It’s a two-way portal.

EnRohbi.2187:

Devata.6589:

Justine.6351:

Devata.6589:

A timer is not but not really necessary. Your cool-down starts when you place the first portal, 60 sec later you must have placed the second portal. So you can use the cool-down as timer, when it hits 30 you lose the portal.

Have you ever used portal? You don’t see its cool down while the exit has yet to be placed. Guess, use another skills cd or use an external timer.

That’s the whole point isn’t it. You place the enter portal, then the cooldown starts, so you use that to know how long you have to place the exit portal.

Are you suggesting that the CD should show when you place the first part of the portal?
Because it reads like you’re saying that’s the way it already works,
Which is why people are arguing

Honestly, I was getting confused myself about what time you guys where talking about and started to mix things myself..

Anyway.. The time before the portal ends is 10 sec after you place it, so use it before the cool-down hits 61.
(putting this count-down from 10 to zero in the animation (please not in a tag above it!) would be nice and useful for other people using it, but not needed for the Mesmer himself)

For the cool-down between enter and finish, I also use a cool-down. I use Prayer of Dwayna what has a 30 sec cool-down and 1 sec cast-time. So use that directly after I place the portal, then use it directly again when it runs out.. Now make sure you place the exit portal before the cool-down hits 5.

In combat you can’t so easily do this, but when I really need to use the max time I am usually not in combat situation.. in combat situations I will always stay within the 1 min easily.

So no, I don’t really need a timer because I use the cool-downs for that. Range on the other hand is a problem, just as people not knowing where a portal, sends them.

Bugabuga.9721:

So instead of arrow, portal entrance can have a “non-counting clone” model summoned that has hand pointing “directly ahead” and “face-to” linked to the mesmer While mesmer is running around it is turning as it’s facing the mesmer. When mesmer drops exit, the “pointer clone” stops turning in mesmer’s direction so you get clone pointing at the exit But I don’t know if models also follow same limitations that tracking of actual portal entrance/exit is. Probably does

The way I envisioned it, the arrow would not show up until the exit portal was placed.

The animation already changes when the exit portal is placed, so now it would simply place an arrow.. the arrow being there directly and pointing towards the Mesmer until it places the portal would also be nice but much harder.

Devata, I have no idea what wonderland you’re living in, but hop into the game and actually use the skill. What you’re saying simply doesn’t occur. Yeah, you can use another skill to keep track of the cooldown, but saying that’s a reasonable way to do it is 12 types of ludicrous.

Embolism.8106:

Spartacus.9743:

Isn’t possible to change colours between the 2 portals? or add atleast a diffrent glow, like for example:
Light purple -> entrance
Dark purple -> exit
nothing so big but is still a thing you could pay attention

For what purpose? The difference between Entre and Exeunt is just the order at which they’ve been placed. It’s a two-way portal.

Yeah indeed, two different colors might in come cases even result in more confusion. An arrow pointing towards each other makes imho more sense.