Showing Posts For Distilled.9041:
I had this problem in the final boss battle, I got “seen” but didn’t lose stealth. The enemies were still hostile but I had no skills to kill them, I’ve had to quit out of the instance and lose all my progress.
Kotaku is now reporting that Anet is planning to change in response to the outcry:
http://kotaku.com/guild-wars-2-players-angry-over-currency-exchange-chang-1649519173
Update: ArenaNet has responded with plans to update the Currency Exchange so players can use it as they wish. They offered the following statement:
“It’s clear that quite a lot of you would like to have greater flexibility in using the Currency Exchange. Our intention when we designed the new interface was to streamline large volume purchases, which make up the majority of transactions.
In light of your feedback, we will update the Currency Exchange so that you can decide how you want to use it. We will keep the new streamlined system and also offer a new “Custom” button on the panel that you can use to exchange any increment of gems or gold.
We anticipate rolling this out soon. Stay tuned!"
Has there been any word of this on the forums at all?
I can’t find a single source to corroborate the claim on Kotaku – no reason for them to lie particularly, and its not beyond the realms that they would contact ANet directly. Still, probably take it with a pinch of salt.
On soldier’s runes: Does the “shouts remove conditions” feature effect just me or allies as well?
Concept sound very formulaic: there’s mini-celebration (Southsun tourism / DragonBash), then not-really-dangerous outlaw bad guys show up (Molten Alliance / Canach’s wildlife / Aetherblade), then we fight them in a dungeon that goes away forever in a few days (MF / Lair /AR). What do we get? Expensive, very random drop skins. If you’re lucky.
After the last few months of Living Story, this isn’t really exciting anymore, even though I was pretty happy with F&F and Southsun. But some novelty is needed. Random interlude-events where we defeat a mediocre outlaw group are only interesting so far. What would really get me excited is a story arc that goes back to real big threats to Tyria or that expands on the lore about some races, especially Sylvari or Asura. And remember, we’ve only defeated 1 dragon thus far and have no idea what drives this menace.
One thing that is interesting though, is the new movement. No idea what that could involve. Climbing?
The Zephyr Sanctum aren’t bad guys. In fact they’re almost Zen-like in their approach to life. They’re mysterious, but not necessarily dangerous.
Evon Gnashblade is the one you want to keep your eyes on.
The Living Story element of the update is concerned with filling the now open space on the Captain’s council – it’s got nothing (at the moment) to do with defeating a giant evil – its about negotiating a trade alliance between LA and the Sanctum.
http://guildmag.com/four-winds-living-story-primer
I wrote the BotFW guide for GuildMag so I can address your concerns for you:
The personal node isn’t the only way to get quartz.
Quartz is also rewarded on completion of the Sanctum Sprint race, mine-able from nodes across the Bazaar of the Four Winds, dropped from the Zephyr Sanctum Supply boxes and countless other likely sources (such as quest rewards, achievement rewards, etc).
Have you skipped a couple of chapters on the Living Story?
Just need a bit of a top up?
Not really sure who Evon Gnashblade is, and why you should care?
Or simply want to see Ellen Kiel’s fancy new outfit?
You need GuildMag’s Living Story Primer:
http://www.guildmag.com/four-winds-living-story-primer
Get completely up to speed with ANet’s Living Story before jumping into tomorrow’s Bazaar of the Four Winds update!
I don’t farm due and I got abyss dye in the first week.
You need help with analogies apparently. It takes coders to make content, it takes coders to fix bugs, it takes coders to balance classes, it takes coders for about everything in a game world. So, in your analogy, if you had an IT guy upgrading the register at your work cafeteria, instead of fixing your work comp, it would work better.
The teams may be doing separate work on different things at anet, but they all contain people who can fill many positions. I don’t think anyone expects the voice actors to fix bugs, but I could be wrong.
Although they definitely should fix some of the dialogue and pronounciations… When i heard the word ‘quay’ pronounced in game as ‘kway’ i was shocked and confused. Maybe it’s something to do with American dialects but in the hundreds of dialects of English i’ve come across i’ve never heard it pronounced any way other than ‘key’.
True dat, plus the erroneous pronunciation of wrath as " rath"
If you go south west from there, towards the glade, there is a dynamic event top escort a sylvari to the spiral to restore it.
My brain is now bleeding.
Q8 – If you could have one additional feature to the interface, what would that feature be?
The feature requested most was the ability to access the character inventory from the main UI. This was often expressed through a “consumables tab” which would give the player access to their player-boosting food and potions without having to open their inventory: “I would like a consumables bar, for ease of access to food, potions, minipets, etc” (Participant 242).
Participants used this space to emphasise the need for greater customisation of layout, resizing and hiding/removing certain UI elements: “possibility to move every part of it, and choose to display/not display every single part of it individually” (Participant 221). Participants felt they needed the opportunity to move parts of the UI which they felt were more useful, to the centre of the screen.
[WordCloud for Feature!](http://i.imgur.com/L3nU8w0.png)
It is interesting to note that when given the chance to perhaps add a new feature entirely, the most oft-requested functionality is to have more control over the existing elements of the interface.
In Conclusion
The majority of participants rated the UI positively in terms of practicality, distraction, aesthetics and clarity. There was, however, a correlation between total number of hours played and a number negative opinions of the UI.
It might have been easy to explain these negative opinions by stating a number of gaming culture principles such as “burnout” (Syncaine, Hardcore Casual Blog, 2008: http://syncaine.com/2008/06/26/breaking-down-mmo-burnout-and-ways-to-avoid-it/) but when “total hours played” is compared against “frequency of log-in” the data shows that 92.5% of 2000+ hour participants also log in every day.
Instead, perhaps there are elements of the UI which are less useful for veteran players, but are more useful for players who are newer to the game. In a recent interview, Colin Johansson (ArenaNet Lead Game Designer) stated that assisting and guiding new players is an important element of the game and this ethic has been instilled even into the design of the UI (demonstrated by their reluctance to allow players to hide the quest log which might guide new players to their next objective, but which become distracting to more experienced players) (William Knight, GuildMag Blog; Community Lunch with Colin Johansson, 2013: http://www.guildmag.com/community-lunch-with-colin-johanson).
Nielsen’s 10 heuristics for good interface design (1994) suggest that aesthetics and minimalist design are important. One element in which a significant amount of conflict arose within the data is on the aesthetic appeal of the UI – in the first half of the survey participants rated the UI very highly in terms of aesthetic appeal, but when given the chance to state desired changes, a number of participants requested the opportunity to turn the “painterly” artwork off.
In terms of a number of Nielsen’s other measures (visibility of system status, consistency and standards, recognition rather than recall etc) the UI held up very well under examination as participants rated it very highly in terms of practicality, clarity and level of distraction.
Neilsen’s heuristics also suggest that “flexibility and efficiency of use” and also “user control and freedom” were paramount in designing an efficient system. This is the one main sticking point which users felt the UI fell down on – given greater control over the customisability options, the UI might have fulfilled these criteria to a fuller extent.
Here’s a link to the graphs, tables etc: googledocs
TL;DR – We need to move kitten about.
The open questions section of the survey afforded the participants the opportunity to expand further on any ideas or opinions they might have had about the UI.
Q5 – If you could change one thing about the UI, what would it be?
One of the most oft-requested changes was to allow the movement, resizing and hiding of UI elements to suit user needs. Currently the customisability of the UI is relatively low. The word cloud below demonstrates the importance of movement, options, sizing and resizing and, perhaps most importantly, customisability.
[WordCloud for Changes!](http://i.imgur.com/WQsuYZT.png)
Some participants expressed a frustration with the art design. ArenaNet press-releases have always stated that they want to present their game in a “painterly” style (ArenaNet, MMO Manifesto, https://www.guildwars2.com/media/videos#vlb/bKtGxVj3msM, 2010), but some participants found the design to be overly distracting or simply unappealing: “Remove all the unnecessary black outlines and stylish splash arts; it reduces the already abysmal field of view and makes for an unpleasant experience after you’ve played a lot” (Participant 98).
Some other more specific suggestions included adding further bars to allow quick access to items in the inventory: “I would add slots next to the skill bar for food, potions and maybe a mini-pet. Having to activate these items from the inventory means I often forget to use them” (Participant 596), changing the health “orb” to the standard “bar” format, or allowing the introduction of 3rd party programs to expand the options available with the UI.
Q6 – Which is the most useful part of the interface?
The answers for this particular question were so numerous and varied it was difficult to bring them together to identify salient trends in the data. This, in itself is an important point – almost every participant felt that there was a different part of the UI which was most useful. There were, however, some prevailing trends which cropped up more often than others:
[WordCloud for Most Useful!](http://i.imgur.com/51uszuv.png)
Participants often stated that they liked the simplicity of the interface, they found that this kept everything out of their line of sight and helped them concentrate on the gameplay: “None particularly. Everything’s pretty out of the way, which is good in a way” (Participant 522).
The mini-map in the bottom right side of the screen was the feature which gained the most praise. Participants liked being able to zoom in and out, they liked the way it allowed them to read information from it, but also interact with it by clicking certain elements within it: “The mini-map. Quick waypointing and movement across the entire zone” (Participant 543).
Participants also liked how the health orb was centered in the screen: “Health bar. It’s extremely clear and placed nicely in the middle.” (Participant 665). They felt that this allowed them to focus centrally, and not get too distracted away from the action in the middle of the screen.
Q7 – Which part of the interface do you use the least?
As with the results for the previous question, participants gave very varied answers to this particular question, however, there were some salient threads to pick out of the data.
[WordCloud for Least Useful!](http://i.imgur.com/lQV95yE.png)
Participants felt that the menu bar in the top left of the screen was relatively unimportant, particularly once they knew the assigned keybinds to access each of the functions: “The shortcuts in the top left. I just use the shortcuts on my keyboard.” (Participant 401).
Participants identified the experience bar which runs across the bottom of their screen as being superfluous once they’d reached the maximum character level: “The XP bar? Everything else I use regularly for combat, navigation or socialization. The XP bar just takes up some extra space imo.” (Participant 325).
Participants were not impressed with the inability to hide or remove certain elements, like the quest tracker: “Personal story reminder I can’t turn off” (Participant 246).
continue…
Over the course of Sunday I collected responses from a lot of you through Reddit related to your opinions across a number of parameters regarding the GW2 User Interface.
I asked for your opinions on the UI in terms of practicality, distraction, aesthetics and clarity. And then went on to ask you more open questions about possible UI changes, most and least useful elements and finally any additional features you’d like to see.
In total I received a staggering 710 responses. Frankly I only expected 50, so managing to get so many was absolutely fantastic, so I am truly appreciative of all your help. Below I’m going to post a summary of the results – it is hugely long, so skip to the end for the TL;DR if you aren’t interested.
Q1 – Practicality
41.1% (292) of participants felt that the UI was “somewhat practical” with 22.3% (158) of participants feeling it was “very practical”. In total, only 6.3% (45) of participants responded that the UI was “very impractical”.
Interestingly, 23.8% of participants who stated that they had played for more than 2000 hours also felt the UI was “very impractical” – the highest value for this variable across the total hours played groups. Conversely, participants who played the most hours also scored the lowest for “very practical” (4.8%).
24% of participants who reported the smallest number of total hours played also reported that the UI was “very practical”, which is higher than the other groups for this variable.
Q2 – Distraction
45.1% (320) of participants felt that the UI was “not very distracting” and 24.1% felt that it was “not distracting at all”.
Conversely, only 1.8% (13) of participants felt that it was “very distracting”. Overall, participants felt very positively about the UI in terms of its level of distraction.
Again, participants with more than 2000 hours played in the game reported that the UI was “very distracting” with a higher frequency than all the other groups for this variable, they also reported that the UI was “not very distracting” with a lower frequency than the other groups in the variable:
The chi-squared test produced a p-value of 0.009 for Hours vs Distraction, again suggesting that the relationship between the two variables is statistically significant.
Q3 – Aesthetics
Again, participants selected the second from top option “somewhat pretty” with a higher frequency than all the other options (42.5%). Only 11 out of the 710 participants selected the “very ugly” option.
Unlike the previous variables, the chi-squared test did not produce a p-value suggesting that there was a statistically significant relationship between total hours played and perceived aesthetic appeal. However, when the frequency of log-in data was compared with the aesthetic appeal data there was found to be a p-value of 0.01 – suggesting that there was a statistically significant relationship between the two pieces of data, whereby players who logged in more often felt that the UI was more aesthetically pleasing. It is important to note, however, that the vast majority of the sample logged into the game “at least once a day” (68.9%), and participants who logged in “less than once a month” or didn’t play the game at all anymore made up only 2.7% – so this statistic is not necessarily representative of the population.
Q4 – Clarity
Participants responded with the second to top response most frequently: “Somewhat clear” (45.2% – 321 participants), the least selected option was “very unclear” with 2.1% (15). 74.9% of participants selected the top two options, suggesting a very positive opinion of the clarity of information in the
The chi-squared between hours played and clarity produced a p-value of 0.015 – suggesting a statistically significant relationship between the two variables. Participants who played for more than 2000 hours were more likely to state the interface was “very unclear” – 14.3% compared to the 1-500 hours group who only selected this option 1.8% of the time.
There was no statistical significance between regularity of log-in and perceived clarity.
continue….
There would be literally thousands of ships clogging up the harbour. I can’t really see any way to have something physically in the game like this, it would just be unmanageable. If they introduce guild halls/housing then yes, it would be cool if it were an airship/boat, but it will definitely be instanced.
The bloated sense of entitlement surrounding these threads is absolutely astounding.
A game is performing a task under a set of specific rules for specific rewards – deal with it.
I’d love to see some variant of the Ritualist come back – maybe include some ritualist-like traits come into the final realisation of the “chronomancer” from Utopia.
Either that or a Paragon (complete with throwing spears, OMG PLEASE).
Btw – those of you asking for a playable quaggan, I think there is a post somewhere where Ketaki Kokai says that it was so nice to design stuff for the quaggan because you didn’t have to ever think of them as a playable race – so you were free to do what you want.
/agree
I would turn this + bork bork on for ultimate comedy value.