Abnaxos.4305

Using controller in FFXIV, I've got 48 actions at my fingertips at any time and these sometimes aren't enough. This is not a controller problem, this is a serious usability problem, even with keyboard and mouse (I'd even argue that controller users are better off than K/M users, some PC players actually switch to controller for combat). FFXIV's issue isn't controller support – job design in general is the issue, regardless of input method. With just 18 actions + weapon swap, GW2 is far from running into such problems. My GW2 mapping is inspired by FFXIV, but it's a lot simpler: I just need L2/R2 for the "cross hotbar", no need for double-L2, double-R2, L2+R2 and R2+L2. ---- Back to topic: I'm playing GW2 with controller. The one important idea that basically saved the game for me was to use the gyro as mouse. Now I have such a close-to-perfect controller configuration that I'm unsure whether I really want ANet to implement native support for controllers. If they did, I'd probably stick with my current mapping. 🙂 There are a few issues, though. I think it's fine to leave controller-to-K/M mapping to players, because it works fine (provided that action cam keeps being supported), but there are some things that ANet could do to support players in doing that: Movement is one of the most annoying issues with a controller. Mapping the left stick to WASD (just 8 possible directions and only 1 speed) feels very clunky. For a stick to feel good you'd need about 3 movement speeds and a lot more directions, like 32. This would require reading the stick, however → not gonna happen. But if ANet would add a hold-to-walk key binding (even better from a controller mapping perspective: a walk by default option + a hold-to-run key), so we could map that to the inner/outer ring of the stick. This simple feature probably wouldn't be too much work for ANet, but a huge improvement for controller players. Another issue is that GW2 hides the mouse pointer when turning the camera or character preview. Since Steam uses the visibility of the mouse pointer to determine whether we're in mouse or action mode (which are two completely different bindings), this is a problem for controller users. An option to keep the mouse pointer visible at all times (except in action cam) would be great. It would basically be a feature specifically for Steam Input (tough some K/M players might enjoy it as well). You see the general idea: add some small features that support mapping the controller to K/M, without actually adding native controller support. This would be a nice middle ground. Then, ANet could leave it to the community to publish their mappings. Maybe provide some space in the wiki or something to encourage players to actually publish it. I've put hours into my mapping and I perfectly understand anyone who says "nope, I'm not gonna go through this", because it's truly a PITA. So, we controller players need to organise and share our work. ANet might be able to help a little with that.

I've mapped the Gyro to mouse, problem solved (using a DualSense, but SteamDeck/SteamController also have a gyro). 🙂

That's an extremely annoying issue. It actually drove me to spend my mastery points for things I didn't want (yet), instead of waiting until I've got enough points for the masteries I did want next, just to get rid of this message. I googled and saw that people are complaining about this for years. Well, let's hope another thread about it finally puts this a bit more prominently on ANet's backlog. It's a major usability issue IMHO, because the only way to get rid of this message is to spend your mastery points on something I don't want (yet). It's extremely annoying and intrusive, so the game basically forces you to get that mastery, whether you want it or not.

It's a choice the developer has to make. GW2 chose to scale the player to the map, so mobs stay aggressive and a threat (rather a minor annoyance in low-level maps, really), others – I'm going to use FFXIV as example – chose to leave the player in peace. Both choices have their pros and cons, you can't say this is better or that is better. In FFXIV on the other hand, the open world is mostly irrelevant anyway and the fact, that you don't get attacked once you outlevel the map, is probably one contributing factor to this (the main reason will be that FFXIV's open world is mostly empty, there's simply nothing to explore). Another thing: how would GW2 decide whether mobs attack or not? This decision is easy in FFXIV, mobs don't attack players who outlevel them by 10 or more. Because of GW2's horizontal progression, you can't apply this logic – it would only affect a few core maps. I can understand the sentiment, I sometimes feel the same way and wish that the mobs would just leave me in peace. However, in GW2, the open world is the core of the game while in FFXIV, it's the space where you relax between instances. GW2 would become very boring, if the player wouldn't get attacked anymore, it would remove all spice from exploration. Now, why do I prefer GW2 over FFXIV? Two main factors: I'm so tired of the gear treadmill, horizontal progression FTW! I love roaming in the open world, I love exploring it, it's what I wanna do primarily in an MMO. You see, the reasons why I prefer GW2 over FFXIV and the reasons why mobs have to stay aggressive are exactly the same. I have to revise my initial statement: it's better this way.

A way to rearrange weapon skills. Sometimes, skills fulfill a certain role, like this is my AOE skill, that is my skill when I'm in a clinch etc. However, they're often in different skill slots for different weapons, e.g. Phantasmal Swordsman is skill 5 on sword but Phantasmal Berserker is skill 4 on the greatsword. This can be confusing. There's no one "correct" arrangement, it's very personal and also situational, so ANet can't do it "right". Therefore, we should be able to choose the slots for the skills ourselves. In this example, I'd move sword 5 to slot 4 or greatsword 4 to slot 5, so the phantasm skills are on the same button for both weapon sets.

I'd like to add another aspect here: Steam & controller play. I'm using Steam input to map the controller to keyboard/mouse. I'm primarily playing in action cam. Steam can switch controller mappings depending on whether the mouse cursor is visible or not, which is extremely useful in GW2. I switch to a gyro-mouse mode for inventory management, hero panel, map, etc, which works very well. It's almost perfectly supported by GW2, the way it shows/hides the cursor is sensible and I never have to think about switching controller mode manually, it just works. Except these exceptions, when GW2 unnecessarily hides the cursor during drags. This also affects the character preview. In my scenario, the character preview is actually the more annoying situation, because I don't usually move the camera with right-drag, I'm in action cam anyway. Regardless of this admittedly quite specific scenario, I completely agree that hiding the mouse cursor is one of the worst things you can do from a UX perspective. The user has to know where the mouse is at all times, never hide the cursor (except for action cam of course). Note that there's also a bug which sometimes causes the mouse cursor to flicker for a frame or two when dragging items in the inventory. This is probably unnoticeable for "normal" players, but it becomes very noticeable and annoying when Steam switches controller mapping for a split second (because cross is the left mouse button in mouse mode and space/jump in action mode, it drops the item randomly and the character jumps).

Same here. I had this message from time to time before, but it's on a new level since yesterday's update, popping up constantly.

I wouldn't expect the balance patches to stop, ever. In every MMO alive, the balance is being tweaked constantly. It's the MMOs heartbeat, no more balance patches is maintenance mode.

I'm interested in joining. I played before, took a break, forgot everything and am now levelling a new character, so consider me a new player. Late 40-ies, FFXIV background, playing in my couch with gamepad, PC hooked to the TV, feet on the table. 🙂 I like both having some me-time in the game as well as doing stuff with other people.

The effects whenever you gain experience (which is basically for everything you do) are driving me crazy. Please add an option to turn this off. I disabled UI sound effects, which removes cash ringing sound, so the game doesn't sound like I'm playing a casino game anymore. However, this also mutes other, potentially important sounds (e.g. alert target). I also have an immersive HUD, i.e. everything but chat off (skill bar on during combat), which disables the animation of XP floating into the XP bar most of the time. So, there are workarounds. Still, there should be an option to make this more discrete. I don't play the game for its dopamine shots every few seconds, but for the game itself, and I know that I'm gaining XP for everything I do. These effects are extremely annoying.

Please add an option change the walk key to a hold binding instead of a toggle. This is mainly for gamepad users, though it could also be useful K/M users. A hold-to-walk key would allow gamepad users to map it to the inner ring of the stick, so pushing the stick slightly would walk, pushing it fully would run. This would greatly improve the feel when playing with controller, especially in jumping puzzles.

Where's the fun in using a premade outfit? I'd never do that, I wanna make my own unique outfits. That's why I think we really need something like custom outfits. I can agree with that. There's something to being dressed like an idiot while levelling. 🙂

What about custom outfits, similar to FFXIV's glamour plates? Changing a custom outfit would cost transmutation charges, but applying it would not, so there would still be plenty of transmutation charges to be earned and spent. There would be multiple outfit slots, so players could easily switch between them, e.g. for role playing. One or two slots would be free, more could be bought from the gem store.

They probably don't consider it optional. As I wrote, I'd simply prevent people from playing until they enabled it. This is my technical perspective, but from a customer service perspective, you can't do this. So, ANet does the next best thing: they let you play, but keep nagging reminding you to enable 2FA every single time you log in. FFXIV has (again) a wave of compromised accounts due to people re-using their passwords on multiple sites. The attackers are using passwords fished from other sites to take over FFXIV accounts, often successfully. Not only is this annoying for all players (those accounts aren't people you wanna play with, they're gonna spam, RMT, steal in-game assets, ruin the economy, etc), it's also expensive for Square Enix because of the additional support volume. All these accounts need to be manually checked and blocked by SE, and when the player contacts support, they need to be re-checked and restored again. SE even states: "Should we continue to experience rising numbers of unauthorized access attempts, a password reset for all Square Enix accounts may be initiated." That would be more than 20 million accounts reset because some players can't keep their account secure. There's a simple way to avoid such situations: have all players use 2FA. This is what ANet tries to achieve.

OK, I didn't know about the e-mail, because I just enabled 2FA as I always do. 🙂 In this case, you're right, 2FA is actually already forced (provided that you couldn't play on the other machine until you verified it). Password + mail + SMS/authenticator is overdoing it, two factors should be enough.

Let me speak plainly: when it comes to 2 factor authentication, "no" is not an acceptable answer. Not having it enabled is reckless. If it were up to me, I'd lock everyone without 2FA out, period. In 2022, passwords alone just don't cut it anymore. I perfectly understand that you don't want the give your phone number to ANet, neither do I. Therefore, I use Google Authenticator. It's a one-time thing: enable 2FA, log in once and mark your computer as trusted. After that, it won't ask for the second factor on this computer again. You'll just start the game as you do now, the only difference being that behind the scenes, your account is now secure. Just enable it already.

I think that's the wrong approach. It's the sum of all the little things the players can do, that helps the game. If only a fraction of players actually do a certain activity, that fraction of players is happy nevertheless, let's say 10% (I've just made up some number). Now add another such little thing and you've made another 10% of the players happy. Add 10 and you've made 100% of the players happy. If you only add things that a majority of players will actually do, you'll end up adding nothing and consequently making no one happy(er). MMOs are different from e.g. CoD in that people don't log in to do one specific thing like shooting each other. They log in to hang out – therefore, MMOs need a large variety of things to do. If you want millions of people hanging out in the game daily, an activity that 10% of the people do is a success. Judging from the ever recurring housing discussions in these forums, I'd say that some sort of housing would be absolutely worth the effort.

Some people can't, they'll drink it. Moreover, these are exactly the people who really shouldn't drink it, because they can't say "no".

Well, I guess you wouldn't run around "Hey, want a beer? … sure you want … common, try it … just one … it's free! … pretty please? …" That's basically what the game's doing with the loot boxes. There's a difference between providing something to those who want it and constantly trying to force it on them. There are places where anyone who wants can gamble and that's fine, I wouldn't want to take that away. However, it's not something one should try to press on everyone this aggressively. (Edit: added quote for context)

I tried, it crashed immediately on my machine. Then I bought a dedicated Windows gaming PC, but that was probably a good decision. I'm not sure, what "Steam release" entails, but if they want the game to be runnable on Steam Deck, they'll have to add support Proton, because the deck runs Linux. Considering that it already has a very good rating on WINE-HQ (except on my machine), this doesn't seem completely unrealistic. I'm hoping for proper controller support, that's my no. 1 wish. Then again, after I put hours into my controller configuration, I'm more or less fine. 🙂

@Gibson.4036 basically covered my response, thanks. 🙂 So, who's the target? Certainly not the people who just shrug and throw the boxes away (that's probably the majority of players). The target are those who might have a hard time to resist and the game further weakens their resistance: it throws more boxes into the inventory than keys, it lowers the barrier adding a free key from time to time and it constantly reminds the player that these things exist by keeping this up. It won't work with those who just shrug. It works with those who are already weak.

Addiction has nothing to do with necessity. If this doesn't scratch an itch for you, you're not the target, as simple as that.

OK, but people shouldn't be driven to gamble using shady methods. The game gives us about 5x as many chests as keys. It does give us some keys to bait us into buying the keys for the 100 other chests we got. It's no accident that we receive so many chests but so little keys, it's very intentional, predatory. The game doesn't just give us the option to gamble, it tries to drive us to. If you have enough self control to destroy any BLC unless you have a key for it, that's great, so do I. It's about those who don't, and it's not their fault that they don't. The game targets them specifically and actively exploits their weakness, possibly with severe consequences for them. If the game isn't a safe space for susceptible people, then it should be labelled accordingly. I hope legislation catches up soon in this area. I'm sure, if given the choice between labelling GW2 as "18+ contains gambling" or removing the loot boxes, they'd rather remove the loot boxes. Better: don't wait for legislation, just remove them because it's decent to do so.

I had a look at it, perfect. The biggest failing is that it isn't advertised. Even knowing what I'm looking for and consulting the Wiki, it took me quite a while to find it. Are you guys complaining about missing DPS meter aware that you've probably got the best built-in DPS measuring tool in the MMO world? This! The UI/UX is in dire need of a complete overhaul. For new players, the whole UX is just baffling. You get used to all the quirks, but there are still many no-goes like requiring the player to use the mouse in many situations. LFG is pretty much useless its current state.

I think we all agree that DPS meters are a double-edged sword: on one hand, they can be a useful tool to gauge oneself's DPS, on the other hand, they're a very common source of toxicity. ESO (without add-ons) has a nice approach: when the player starts hitting a target dummy, the game starts recording. When the target dummy is down, it shows a summary of the DPS in the chat. This way, players can gauge their raw baseline DPS and the effects of equipment/build changes. For more realistic numbers, people can team up: one hits the dummy and others give the boons. In the actual encounter, the players "just" have to keep that DPS up while also doing mechanics. This is of course easier said than done, it's the core of the game. 🙂 Figuring out why the group wiped, even though everyone's baseline DPS is good enough in theory, is the fun part. I think, ESO's solution effectively provides the useful part of the tool, the one we actually need, but avoids everything else. It's very pragmatic and elegant, IMHO.