Driftpaws.2031

With the nascent coming of GW2 on Steam, I thought I'd offer some insight from someone who's already testing that setup. A quick primer on myself, I've had experience with MMOs since 2004, although I've only come to GW2 around two weeks ago. Currently I have 5 toons, all of them at or around 20 so I'm relatively new to the scene, so my experience isn't colored by years of traditionally doing it one way. Today I'm going to share my perspective as someone who plays GW2 on mobile. Included are thoughts and suggestions over how to improve the usability of controller based inputs, but some of these observations will be applicable to the traditional interactions. Also included are some ux tweaks that I believe could reduce the cognitive load of certain user interactions. This is done with the intent to give devs more headroom in order to create content that's more taxing and stimulating at endgame. My controller of choice is a Kishi, with a Pixel 4a attached (an adequate, but not flagship phone). This essentially uses the same layout as an xbox controller with a custom hud. https://i.imgur.com/ymYKdGS.png Anyway this is all my opinion, and should only be read in the context of trying to provide players with greater accessibility. But fair warning, I'll admit this UI stuff is going to be pretty dry in the abstract. Hopefully a dev might see this at some point. Now with that out of the way... I'd like to break this up into three sections. Movement, Touch Focused HUDs, and Game UI. MOVEMENT Joysticks on controllers have a reputation for being less accurate than their desktop counterparts. I've found this is only partly true, and highly contingent upon the game. First person shooters and other highly tactical genres tend to fare far worse than more methodical and slower paced titles like open world RPGs, and other titles with a forgiving autoaim. There's two types of movement that Joycons are in direct control over. The camera, and the player character. But while the former often suffers from a lack of precision, the latter can actually be more accurate than the on/off state a keyboard allows. For example, ESO transitions between at least 4 states of movement depending on how far the joycon is pressed, from the simple walking animation, to jogging, running, and sprinting. These animations are blended into one another in such a way that the player won't notice unless specifically looking for it. Also this effect is done on both mounted and unmounted characters. As a possible stopgap one could play the same animation at different rates, but this presents its own set of issues. Currently there is a bug in ESO on a keyboard and mouse (instead of a controller) where one can manually toggle their mount to the walk state, but it'll play the run cycle. This visual discrepancy is odd, but not game breaking. GW2 on the other hand only has a walk and a sprint. It was never designed for these intermediate stages and so when using a controller player motion feels slightly inaccurate and floaty on a subconscious level. As a player there's an expectation that isn't being fulfilled. Admittedly adding in new animations is not a simple fix, and is easily the problem in this letter that would require the most resources to address. The numerous amount of skeletons made for the variety of mounts would make the effort in fixing it arguably not worth the cost. But I strongly suspect that unmounted characters would see a benefit from this change in movement puzzles and potentially mechanically intensive encounters like fractals. Moreover giving the player a greater amount of control over their speed would address the run-and-stop nature of characters in escort quests that frequent Tyria events. Conversely one can mitigate some of the camera issues relatively easily by having a slight bias towards the horizontal axis, reducing the speed of vertical movement. Making these values independent of one another grants greater precision both in list based menus, and overworld questing. JUMPING There's an obtuse piece of knowledge that isn't being conveyed to new players. Simultaneously jumping and dodge rolling will produce a higher and longer jump. This is an effect that shouldn't be hidden. Controllers bring their own issue, as dodge rolling often shares the same button as jumping in an effort to streamline the user experience. Making it a dedicated corded press (if not already done so) would simply bring the action on par to keyboards. While this animation cancelling might have started as a bug, there are many in the community who have come to appreciate this and treat it as a feature. I'd prefer to see it given a slight rework personally, but at the very least it should be highlighted as a legitimate input method on controllers. RADIAL MENUS Pie menus are a fantastic way of declaring states, and pulling up UI elements like windows. However they are terrible at direct player actions like skills which require split second decisions. What I mean by states is choosing which weapons a player might use, like a rpg or pistol; or fighting stances. Things that effect gameplay on a strategic level instead of a tactical one. Typically with a long cooldown. Drawing a menu with 4 or 12 options presents a greater cognitive load than a simple button press or an always on screen hud element. And it's little wonder that opening one in other games will slow down or even pause the gameplay in other titles. This obviously isn't an option here so it should be reserved for interactions for when the player can have time to read and understand both the options and their position. If placed on the screen as a UI element, actions like viewing the inventory or looking at the map are best positioned on the side that's directly adjacent to the closest screen edge. In other words, if you extend your right thumb to press and hold the on screen button, it's naturally going to want to pull back to the right side. Conversely the left will go the opposite direction. So the lesser used options like Story Journal would make the most sense in an even further extension of the digit. So for Rangers pie menus can work with great efficacy. They change their pets state, and the limited number of options make the muscle memory an easy thing to pick up. And the smaller profile of an on-screen button gives a greater amount of real-estate to move an offset cursor via thumbs without accidental presses. The other side of that are Engineers, and any other class that has a lot of directed skills one places on the ground itself. This is the worst case scenario because unlike two simple button presses, the user needs to first move their thumb to the correct space (which doesn't have a tactile cue). Then they need to hold, and pull to the correct side. Lift. Move the thumb back to aim via a joycon. Move the thumb a third time, again to a place with no tactile feel. Press and drag. And lift. This all takes a considerable amount of effort. It's an order of magnitude slower, and while going through these motions you're likely to miss something on screen. As I see it, there's two options which could improve this. Option One, give the player an option to add in a slight timer to line up their shot before autofiring their selected ability. Essentially the player could turn aimed skills into very quick channels. 350ms maybe, you'd have to do some testing to see what's comfortable. Or in an ideal world a slider with some very stringent parameters could work just as well. Option Two, make the keypress down, and keypress up independent actions for aimed abilities. For those who play MOBAs this should be familiar, because I've just described quick casting. If a player has gone through the motions of selecting a skill, it stands to reason that they have every intention of firing off said ability. Removing the skill check of doing it twice just streamlines the process. And does so in a way that levels out the playing field between keyboards and controllers. I am aware of Arenanet's stance on multiple key presses for single actions, but this is a case where implementation by the devs themselves could be a worthwhile change to policy under these very specific circumstances. It seems the game already has quick casting, it just needs to be enabled under the ground targeting dropdown menu. ON SCREEN KEYBOARDS Let's talk keyboards for a moment. As devs, there's no direct control over what style of keyboard a person uses. However, in my testing I've found that since the chat window is offset to one of the corners the best utilization of space is actually a floating keyboard docked to the opposing side. Any keyboard that's docked to the bottom is either opaque, or translucent to a degree that it's difficult to read the chat underneath. Whereas keyboards that are transparent enough to see through makes gauging the position of individual keys inaccurate. To be sure, typing with one thumb is slow, but it's the best bad solution since it leaves open the space to see what one types. UI TWEAKS I've made my thoughts known about the lack of menu keybind in an earlier thread. So I'd like to focus on some low hanging fruit. I often toggle between the action camera and direct cursor control several hundred times a day. In my setup there's two ways in which I can simulate a mouse move. Using a joycon, with the left-mouse button bound to another key. Or using the trackpad method in steam link, moving my thumb anywhere on screen to shift the mouse position relative to where it was. Rescaling the size of commonly used buttons would be a good step to lessen the amount of time spent in menus. For example, widening the "Compact" and "Materials to Bank" buttons would make it easier to press. Not just for me, but likely for anyone with a physical disability. To be clear, the UI is at the largest resolution and it still takes a bit of doing to align things up properly. Adding a lock position option would be a welcome change. If I've set up menus in an exact way, retaining the ability to change their position is actually a net negative. Accidental movement is just a distraction at that point. Also having an option to automatically close windows when a new one is brought up would be a nice way to keep things clean. With the possible exception of previews as you often need both. None of these are make or break, but they're just QoL changes that can enhance player immersion by reducing the amount of time spent in menus instead of playing. Speaking of immersion, there's a relatively famous skyrim mod that comes to mind. iHud which collectively has around 1.5 million downloads. It'd be nice to see some of that functionality in GW2. Essentially it's a context based version of the "display only in combat" option currently available. So for example one could set visibility of the xp bar to only show when you've recently gained experience. Or toggle the menu bar up top off, unless your mouse cursor was hovering over the area. Or even fade the skill bar to mostly transparent until in combat or hovered over. A state that's in-between full off or on. To reduce the amount of visual noise while adventuring. Again, being able to toggle floaters would be lovely, but I won't harp on that too much except for this one mention. But while some of these options do exist in a limited form, the lack of customization for up and fade time are made all the more apparent on menus at their largest size. AFTERTHOUGHTS I'm sure there's a few things I've missed, and I'll try and post an update when I get closer to endgame. When I nail down the hud in its final form I'll send an update. Right now is a lot of experimentation, and I wanted to get my thoughts down as I was in the middle of the process of doing it. Granted things are bound to change between now and 80 but I'm relatively comfortable in claiming the things in this thread to hold true. If you've made it this far I'm impressed. Any question I'd be happy to answer. Happy gaming.

Well that clears up one or two things. The chat panel in "hide" mode is much cleaner. Thanks for that. Usually when something's hidden in other games it means that it's completely invisible so this is a good solution. I see the map legend you're talking about now. I'm not sure why that isn't just toggled out of its fly menu by default. I just assumed an eyeball in the lower left corner would toggle all the UI elements on the map, not open up a literal key. Honestly as useful and small as it is it should always be out imho. Maybe it's a failing on my part but I'd have never thought otherwise. It really should be a key, or at least a caret pointing upwards. But as far as the compass goes, I'm not talking about the Minimap. I meant the arrow that spins around assorted quest icons which actually looks like, well, a compass. The devs needing a special name for it is just begging for confusion! But that's small potatoes ma'am/sir. 😄 Anyway, I've already spent way too much on gems, but the larger point is that new players shouldn't have to jump through those hoops with support. I can only imagine that point of friction stops quite a few people who just won't bother taking it further. I do appreciate all the help. Thanks for taking the time to let me know. There's a lot to unpack here so every bit of institutional knowledge helps.

The trick to getting any MMO control scheme to work on mobile is to be able to quickly toggle between cursor and action camera on the fly. This is even true with ESO using add-ons. In my case I'm using Steam Link with Steam Overlay and a custom built hud. While you can still use your finger on the touchscreen to drag and select things on the face of the device itself, using a control stick is often faster (if slightly less precise). https://i.imgur.com/hLMa9KW.jpg Since the phone is naturally a touch screen, I can supplement easy actions like pulling up menus with Radial Menus to activate their associated hotkeys. Note, this is only single button presses. https://i.imgur.com/isaotU8.jpg I'm not lifting my finger when pressing the button, I'm merely dragging it slight from the centerpoint of the original button and it's selection is offset on screen. https://i.imgur.com/IwNxxKu.jpg

Thanks for the tips, friend. I'll be sure to come back to this once I get a better footing on things in game. I was completely unaware of the collection stuff that heart vendors give, so I'll definitely give that a second pass. 🙂

Just for fun I thought I'd offer the perspective of someone who's just recently come into the game. This late in an MMO's lifespan it can be a bit unusual to see someone's first impressions and it might prove illuminating to the devs who are undoubtedly trying to court more people into playing. The tl;dr is the world feels highly creative, but also impersonal; the combat's mechanically complex but overall mostly satisfying; and I can already tell inventory management is where most of the friction is going to come from. BACKGROUND A bit of personal history before I start. I've spent the past year getting deep into Elder Scrolls Online so my opinion's going to be colored somewhat from that experience. Before that I frequented City of Heroes. Months ahead of the closure I'd purchased the base game of Guild Wars 2, but didn't get very far because my computer at the time couldn't run it. So I have the 5 character slots in GW2, but that's about my only current advantage. Occasionally in the intervening years I dabbled in Champions Online and Star Trek Online but neither really took. So while I've had experience playing other MMOs before, there's no doubt it's not as comprehensive as some others here. The sunsetting of CoH 7 years ago is what swore me off to ever giving NCsoft any more money. To be frank I didn't trust them to not pull the plug on another title, and was a little bitter towards the publisher. Recently with the lack of crackdowns on fan servers I've eased up on my stance and decided to give GW2 another chance. As such, my perspective is from someone who joined the game without friends or a guild pressuring me to do so. I'm currently flying solo, apart from all of you wonderful folk. Also for anyone curious I'm freely switching between my gaming rig and my phone with a Razer Kishi attached. With all that out of the way, the Living World giveaway is what first drew my attention to coming back. STARTING OUT I'd decided to start with a Sylvari Elementalist. Thinking that the profession was as close to a pure DPS as one might get, and thus an easy role to learn on. I'd soon come to know this was a lot to take in for a first character. Along with a fair number of options that I chose with a semi-random inclination. Honestly I've still no idea how important some of these choices are. But steeling myself against the uncertainty I pressed on. Overall impressions of the character creator were quite good. There's a seeming lack of dyes at the start, and I spent far too much time customizing the colors of the armor, only to learn that there's an entire unlockable system. My first mistake, oof. So off we go to kill a tree dragon. Dodging, no global cooldown, weapon swapping. Okay, all pretty digestible. Even though it does all come at you pretty quickly. I couldn't help but feel that I was missing and overlooking a ton of information. The overly detailed tooltips were something I wish I could par down to their concise core elements. If the interface defaulted to simple tooltips, which you could then change manually after you got a better feel for the skills it'd have made life for my green-friend a lot easier. Maybe even with a bindable toggle if some kind dev was feeling generous. The first big plus, there's a cat in the starting area. Okay, I can work with this. He's pretty cute; the termites and grubs decidedly less so. But the world is shiny and gorgeous and that's enough to keep my attention. And I'm reminded of the fact that the game released at the height of a trend where designers cranked their bloom to ridiculous amounts. Why create highly detailed textures when you can just blind your audience? Brilliant. Note for later, I might need to install reshade to tone some of this down. Anyway, I'd have to worry about a proper rotation later, for now keeping things off cooldown would be the best I could manage. Hopefully this will be a little more forgiving than Dark Souls. And it is, but still... as soon as I get comfortable with the skills, they change on me! What I'd not known before jumping into the game should be obvious to all of you. Weapons change your skills. But there was a gap in my knowledge, it doesn't make intuitive sense for a dagger to change skills based off of elemental magic. Hmm, maybe I should rethink the logic of having a flammable plant be a pyromancer. But I quickly place that thought aside realizing that people are flammable too. I appreciate the depth and complexity of the system, but if I'm just getting my feet wet that's a little much to throw at a player. If the devs staggered that information over more time, it'd have felt like more of an achievement unlocking that level of progression. Each new weapon feels like a new way to play. Yet each time my bar swapped it felt like backtracking. The entire experience let me hesitant to explore new gear apart from simple stat boosts. And ultimately, exhausted. Exploring the valley was a visual delight. Rescuing some plant dogs from spiders went fairly well. What is it with fantasy games and spiders anyway? Visions of Skyrim briefly cross my memory, and I wonder with amusement if I'll get some frostbite venom. Keep in mind at this point I'd never even heard of a Norn. Capping my first Vista was an unexpected treat. It's surprising how the little things can be their own reward. In other games movement is considered empowering. So it doesn't take long to gain the ability to fly or run at superspeed. But rarely did I feel accomplished just by being somewhere. Moving, sure. But just standing and taking in the sights, rarely if ever. That said, man I really miss having a mount. Someone else is riding a dinosaur or something, there's a flying manta-ray, I'm totally ready! Where's the stablemaster? Oh wait... So that's a bust. It's probably for the best. I might have been tempted to drop a few gems towards one. THE STORY Around level 9 I have to reassess things. It's a nice enough world, but it's a bit lonely. The NPCs only have barks, and they don't even ask me directly for help. Heart quests just feel kinda there. And my impact with their story doesn't exist. Even if I didn't help someone else would. I can't shake the feeling that they're quest-givers, not people with their own lives and their own stories. That lack of connection makes it hard to care. Is that all this game is? It's not made clear that the tutorial encompasses the first 10 levels. And the Personal Story essentially starts shortly thereafter. Clearly narrative isn't going to be a huge draw, but I do appreciate the general worldbuilding in the most ubiquitous sense of the word. I truly believe someone somewhere wrote a history of the setting, and there's a lovely charm to it all. Time to put this salad aside. Time to roll someone new. Stepping aside and doing a bit of research for myself I decide that the class that will tax my control scheme the most is a Mezmer. If I can tackle that with a controller it should hold up to anything. I decide on a human this time for a different flavor. Oh she's fine, I love seeing clones and causing them to explode on cue. It's just the world is so dull! Farms, fields, and little fishing villages as far as the eye can see. It's so rural. Where's the political intrigue, the cutthroat backstabbery. I long for the macabre while trapped in the shire. The Sylvari had an alluring alien aesthetic, this is just rote generic township #17. At level 7 I've had enough. Screw it, if the game wants to keep my attention it'll have to do better. Maybe one of the higher leveled zones will flex and impress. Oh wait, I can actually go through the gate to the giant city? It's not locked? Hmm. Holy smokes, this is what I'm talking about! Over the next hour or two I just walk around like an abandoned kid on the Las Vegas strip. There's circuses and arenas, aquariums and arboretums. Kids chasing and playing with one another; something so rarely seen from bethesda. There's neighborhoods on the walls. On the walls! For the first time I feel a little bit of that magic you find when visiting a new exotic country. I wish I could take in the scent of the spices at the marketplaces, and I'm so thankful I can't smell the sewage that comes from medieval cities. So many people. So many players! And they all look so creative. There's an unrestrained-ness to them. I see an immodest woman made of starlight. A cat person with a pet golem in toe. There's music playing on the bridge. Wait, I know that melody. It's Jurassic Park! How the hell is someone playing the theme to Jurassic Park? This city doesn't just have bards that strum emotes, it has buskers. How amazingly creative and cool is that. And that's when I know... My wallet's going to hurt soon. THE STORE There's a decision to be made. Games like this, that is to say free to play MMOs, have a reputation of being designed to be inconvenient. Already I'm reaching the limits of my modest little bag, and inventory space will surely be a problem soon. I could and I should look into fixing that as soon as possible, if at a reasonable price. On the other hand, buying the expansions will cost about as much. New lands to explore and the level boost would open up a quick way to reach endgame. But here's the rub, I know myself. And in the hours I've sunk into this, half have been working on the UI. The truth is, I'm still a scrub at playing. At this rate I'd probably be a liability to team fights. And although it pains me to admit it, getting to 80 the long way is probably the smart move. So I break down and get 4000 gems. 1400 go to 2 shared inventory slots. 1000 goes to the Passkey to the mist-station. 800 to the Copper-O-Matic. Which leaves just enough for glasses and cat ear cosmetics. Because cat ears. Come on, I'm not a monster. Instantly I am rich and poor in equal measure. The last 99 gems get exchanged directly to gold in what I can only assume is a bad deal. Yes, it's not a good look, but it nets me around 25 gold to play with on the market. And oh boy, I'm ready to spend. By now I have a full roster of toons. For anyone keeping score that's a new Sylvari Ranger girl that I've decided to keep as my main, an Asuran male engineer, a little Norn who has some serious Kitara vibes, and the two you already know. And you know what? They're all looking kind of darb. The most expensive dye I get is Celestial white, but everything else is quite reasonable. Even the blackest blacks are only 1 gold each. Yes, I know paying market rate instead of properly waiting for a deal is a good way to get ripped off. But whatever, these aren't for resale. And some seller's going to make bank so everybody wins. At the end of my shopping spree I'm left with around 14 gold to expand the inventory on everyone. That knocks me down to earth again with 55 silver. Less than what I started with at the beginning of all this. Well, easy come easy go. I chat up a few kind veterans and they let me know the easiest way to get gold is to work on your dailies. Sage advice if I weren't under leveled by 65. It might as well be 65 thousand. But I file it away like a taco; food for thought later. And I stay there high above the world for a while. Just watching people come and go. There's an active community here. All manner of beast, shape, and creed. Everyone with an opinion and somewhere to be. A monster with their name on it, a craft that needs crafting, or the call to explore. I decide I like Guild Wars 2. Sure it might not be everything I want. What I look for in a game can be very persnickety. But clearly there is something here that people love. I might not stay, I might not even stay long. But I'm glad that I came. Imagine my delight when I return the following day and am rewarded with actual story. Even a campaign! At this moment all I can write is my excitement. The details will come in their own time, but it's something to be appreciated in the now. All I can really say is good fortune to you and good luck in your own journey going forward. A FEW TECHNICAL ISSUES Story and gameplay are one thing. Support problems fall into their own category and I don't mean to bore you with the less interesting minutia. This is more for any developer who might happen upon the post. Floaters: --Floating numbers work well on large screens, but are horribly distracting on smaller devices. I don't need to see a flood of 3s to know I'm doing damage. --Even less important than combat floaters, are experience floaters. They're just more visual noise that keep me from seeing the action. --This is only made more of a problem with scaling issues. To show menus properly on a tiny phone/tablet screen the elements need to be scaled to their largest which consequently makes the numbers huge as well. Keybinds: --There's no bind for Journal. A fantasy game where your quest log is buried? That's unwelcome. --There's no keybinds for any tab! Some of that I can understand like on the guild window. But for more common actions like Dyes and Achievements? Really, achievements? --Admittedly this is more of an issue on mobile as controlling a mouse cursor is less precise than on a desktop. Typically you'd be forced to use radial pie menus and other controller based solutions. And honestly I wouldn't ask you for that. Middleware like steam link works just fine in handling the details, so long as I could directly pull up tabs with a keypress. --You can't toggle the music or the sound on and off with a keypress. Not many games do this, but MMOs are grindy and users often play while watching other media. Having a quick assignable option is just another way of making things convenient, as these actions will probably have to be repeated a few times during each extra long session. UI Elements: -The chat box background should automatically fade after a period of inactivity. It really does help with immersion and to a smaller extent situational awareness. Togglable would be good since some people dislike this feature. --The map is going to take some getting used to. It's not clear what services exist at certain levels of elevation in some of the cities. --Being able to toggle certain services and landmarks off and on is more useful than you'd think. A blinking icon is far easier to find than a static one. --The fog of war is a very cool effect, but it's also slightly confusing. I'm not sure how I feel about it. --The compass is fine. Just fine. Not great or terrible. Having an option to center that bit on the upper part of the screen would be a nice QoL thing but I'm not shedding any tears over it. Gem Store: --Something that's not communicated well is that a Total Makeover pass grants the player cosmetic options that are previously unavailable to them at their inception. For quite a while I didn't know there even were other hair styles and colors! --Fix your payment options. I had to go to Amazon for gem keys. Twice. Highlights: --The action bar's excellent. Clearly laid out, easy to read. No complaints there. --There's no crazy typefaces. Simple can be good, and I'm cool with that. --The main menu fading at the start screen is a nice touch. I wish more elements did this. --Showing what professions you have on each toon at the start screen is fantastic. That's some wonderful foresight.