Minimal game polish: y u no fix dis?

I've been a player since some years back, and even though ANet has changed and fixed things throughout this time, improving the game experience with each update, there are still things... small things... that sort of inexplicably continue without being fixed.

I don't mean the big changes that ANet has claimed to have in work but will take time (alliances, build templates...), but things that, to my untrained eye, seem minuscule in comparison, the sort of thing that I believe an intern could fix in an afternoon. But yet, year after year, they go unchanged.

What minimal changes/fixes would you very much like to see take place to GW2?

I'll start with the one I can't keep out of mind when thinking of this topic:

Why isn't the mouse cursor hidden when viewing a vista?

The same reason they won't add options to increase cursor size that doesn't involve changing Windows scaling to 125% paired with in-game DPI scaling.

Or an option to disable nameplates from your pets/minions party and squad members. :(

It really breaks my immersion when I am doing dragon's stand and I see 50 nameplates littering my screen. >_<

The texture errors on character models during cutscenes.

Isnt there a fairly significanyt difference between something that is broken, needing a fix, and something that you just wish were different about the game?

@Ashen.2907 said:Isnt there a fairly significanyt difference between something that is broken, needing a fix, and something that you just wish were different about the game?

Hence the selection of the topic title, polish. These aren't necessarily bugs, but things that still make you wonder why they haven't been done yet.... specially since they may seem rather trivial to get done. :(

I still consistently get that bug where my mount doesn't load and I'm stuck in this strange state of kinda mounted but not really where I can wait for it to load and teleport me forward or dismount and stay in place. Might be a numer of characters on screen thing as I get it mostly on crowded meta events. I wonder how does that even looks for other players. Would be cool to have it fixed one day.

New player here, started less than a month ago. Love the game so far. As a fresh starter, two things I found pretty jarring and taking me out of it a bit and have both been mentioned up top. The missing textures on a lot of characters in story mode cutscenes only showing UV's as well as the inability to turn off pet names.

Cheers !

You will never see simple features that make sense added to this game

@wickedkae.4980 said:You will never see simple features that make sense added to this game

Why? Are you ignoring the dozens of features that were added for our quality of life too?

@Astaldos.9672 said:New player here, started less than a month ago. Love the game so far. As a fresh starter, two things I found pretty jarring and taking me out of it a bit and have both been mentioned up top. The missing textures on a lot of characters in story mode cutscenes only showing UV's as well as the inability to turn off pet names.

Cheers !

Missing textures in story instances is a recent bug that the Devs have stated they are investigating.Turning off pet names might be something they will or have considered. No idea.

@Skotlex.7580 said:

@Ashen.2907 said:Isnt there a fairly significanyt difference between something that is broken, needing a fix, and something that you just wish were different about the game?

I suppose.

The game would feel more polished to me if ascended tier gear were removed.

pro tip: if something miniscule doesn't get fixed it's either because the devs don't think it's an issue or because accomplishing it is difficult because computers are dumb

@Zychuu.7294 said:I still consistently get that bug where my mount doesn't load and I'm stuck in this strange state of kinda mounted but not really where I can wait for it to load and teleport me forward or dismount and stay in place. Might be a numer of characters on screen thing as I get it mostly on crowded meta events. I wonder how does that even looks for other players. Would be cool to have it fixed one day.

This happens to me every time during the Dragon Stand meta reset. I'm going to have to die next time to see if it's specific to being mounted when the map closes.

A few weeks ago I got stuck half in and out of the ground after the Raptors tail spin. Only happened once.

@"derd.6413" said:pro tip: if something miniscule doesn't get fixed it's either because the devs don't think it's an issue or because accomplishing it is difficult because computers are dumb

Which makes me wonder just how much of a mess is the ui code. There have been many small suggestions based around customizing it, but we've gotten tons of big overhauls of other game mechanics, yet never on ui customization.

on a similar vein, why I can't get a choice to change the target highlight method? The fine outline can help in identifying the boss during a visual-infested fight, but having the model "shine" when you hover the mouse on it is quite immersion breaking (and unavoidable if using action cam).

@"Zychuu.7294" said:I still consistently get that bug where my mount doesn't load and I'm stuck in this strange state of kinda mounted but not really where I can wait for it to load and teleport me forward or dismount and stay in place. Might be a numer of characters on screen thing as I get it mostly on crowded meta events. I wonder how does that even looks for other players. Would be cool to have it fixed one day.

It's a combination of things, of which the number of players in the map is just one:

• Number of players in the map
• Complexity of the map geometry
• Number of different NPC models in the map
• Number of different textures in the map
• Quantity of RAM in your PC
• Speed of your PC's disks

Note the last two, especially the disk speed. If the file access to load the data for the map is a bit slow, you'll see the undyed version of your mount's base skin if you mount quickly after the map is visible. If it's slower still, you'll see missing "fancy" geometry and generic player models. If it's slow enough, you'll see almost nothing except nameplates and the skybox, but as the map loader continues working in the background, you'll see it all fill in.

Disk-intensive background activity will obviously have a big impact on this, and the most abusive contributor to this, oddly, is not your antivirus (well, mine shuts off its automatic background scans while GW2 is running), but instead various bits of Windows 10's Windows Update, notably the Windows Modules Installer Worker, which seems to prefer working when a game is running. Having GW2 installed on an SSD(1) will, in turn, mitigate this by making the disk access faster.

(1) I have a fast fast fast Samsung EVO SSD in NVMe / M2 format, and I see almost none of these problems, but my previous PC (built in 2011) is much slower and often shows these issues.

It isnt a mystery...The answer to this is resources are finite and issues have severity in development. Minor inconvenient items are very low on the totem pole of resource assignment and likely never get addressed unless a sprint is assigned to do so. However as the software ages and users have dealt with the minor issues or found work arounds there is little gain using resources to address them. When they can be assigned to forward Dev or addressing more severe issues.

In addition some things users think are minor and easy to fix arent so easy to pin down in code. In particular when the original writer of the code is no longer with the company going through anothers code is almost always more time consuming, of course there are times that isnt the case.

Again it comes back to resources, it just isnt a efficient use of their resources. There is also reproducing the issue, is something they cannot do easily or consistently, finding and fixing it is all that more time consuming. It's often users have no concept of the actual time it takes to resolve these types of issues.

@Zychuu.7294 said:I still consistently get that bug where my mount doesn't load and I'm stuck in this strange state of kinda mounted but not really where I can wait for it to load and teleport me forward or dismount and stay in place. Might be a numer of characters on screen thing as I get it mostly on crowded meta events. I wonder how does that even looks for other players. Would be cool to have it fixed one day.

FWIW, using mount skins seems to semi-fix it. The mount will still look janky (no animations, base skin), but it will actually load. Sort of an expensive fix, and a decent reason for them to give at least one skin for each mount in-game until they fix it.

Four tiny things bug the heck out of me, for some reason:

First, why do some lower-level map merchants only sell tier 5 and 6 gathering implements to high-level characters? Why on earth would I buy a mithril or orichalcum pick when the map only has copper nodes? All merchants who sell implements should sell ALL implements (assuming your character is high enough level to use them.)

Second, implements that let you farm too-high nodes. What person (in real life) would use a copper implement on an orichalcum node (if they existed)? Yes, I'll agree that for the first few times, getting ruined ore is appropriate. But, to continue to do it after millions of gatherings by a character is absurd. In a game that's all about immersion, such an obvious defect simply shouldn't exist. Just pop a warning "gathering at this node with this implement will result in ruined materials."

Third, why doesn't /stuck credit you with the cost of the move to a waypoint (or even, the nearest uncontested waypoint)? In other words, why does MY character have to pay to get out of a hole in the code (and the map) that ANet hasn't fixed yet?

Finally, invisible barriers. Why do they still exist after being reported? I'm not talking about walls meant to keep your springer out of areas you shouldn't be able to access. I'm talking about things like the barrier just before you get to Weyandt's treasure. They're all over Tyria. I've reported some, but they never get fixed, so I've given up reporting them. (Correction: one invisible wall was fixed after reporting it. It's memorable to me because it's the only one they've ever fixed.)

@"Vrath.1754" said:It isnt a mystery...The answer to this is resources are finite and issues have severity in development. Minor inconvenient items are very low on the totem pole of resource assignment and likely never get addressed unless a sprint is assigned to do so.

In making this thread, I was hoping that maybe something that is actually trivial pops up and someone at ANet will read this and go "damn, why wasn't THAT fixed? I bet I could do it in my lunch break while having a sammich". It's true that the issues that are complained about time and time again are much more likely to have been recognized by ANet's staff and, as you mention, just don't hit the necessary importance threshold to be addressed.

On the other hand, why must I keep typing /squadjoin and /squadleave when dealing with Squads? I understand WHY these commands are different than /join and /leave, but I don't understand why can't the code be smart enough to invoke /squadjoin if I type /join (character who is in a squad) and invoke /squadleave when I type /leave while in a squad. T_T

It's these small issues that sort of make the game feel less polished than it could be...

I'm a simple man.

I just want the god damn wall corners of desert garri back again. Anet broke them like... 6 months ago? Longer? I cant even remember anymore.

It's like... why are you leaving it so obviously broken? It's missing assets! Do you not see? How could you possibly have missed that? Or are you really so oblivious to WvW?

Here's another one to the list:Why isn't action cam momentarily disabled while the party windows is opened ('P' keybind)? When I open that window, there's a good chance I just want to click one of the buttons rather than type a player name. >_<