The UI is bad, outdated, atrocious, and needed to be updated several years ago

[Nemmm.9120]

Hello,

 

As the title states I need to vent about this horrid pile of garbage that the current UI is.

 

Dear ArenaNet,

 

why on earth is it still the same as it was ten years ago, for the most part? Why is the additional content, like mounts, chairs, the Jade Bot's features, confined to such ... worthlessly tiny, stupidly placed plates? Why are keybinds neither stored locally, nor stored seperately for each character? Especially the latter would help make a game that allows you to switch characters so quickly to fill in the need of a group even more appealing. Why can I not report afk people in PvP if I don't have their portrait, or their name in the chat? Why are keybinds not seperate between different "character states" (i.E. mounted, submerged, on foot, flying) AND locally saved? Why can't we move parts of the UI around to fit our playstyle better? Why can we STILL not tone down the absolute flood of pixelvomit that gets shoved into our eyes whenever we have a party of more than 5 people? Why's the Guild UI feel like you put it in at the start, and then promptly forgot about it? Why is the buff bar such a horrid abomination when it's not compacted (the one in the top left, Group UI, that is. I don't even bother looking at the one above the skills, because it's basically out of view when I focus on the actual fight)? Why is the Trading Post, something so incredibly vital, about as stable as a sand castle facing a tidal wave? Why is the keybinding menu itself so utterly devoid of any semblance of sense? No search bar in a menu so stuffed (and scuffed), and yet vitally important? Why do I have to confirm every little thing? Like when I want to leave the PvP arena AFTER the game is over. What do you think I wanna do? Take a vacation there? Why can I, aside from immediately after the match, not see ANY metrics in the Game History list of my PvP Panel? Why does the "Your (PvP) Match is ready" textbox DISABLE EVERYTHING until I accept or decline? Why is half of your UI so disruptive towards gameplay? Why do SECONDARY keybinds overwrite PRIMARY keybinds when pressed? Why does the Achievement tab in my Hero UI not remember which page I was on the last time I opened it (in the same sitting, not talking about character switching or logging out)? Why is the daily list hidden as soon as I am following/watching a singular achievement? There's enough space below the daily list! Why do you keep adding functions (that are really useful!) to the Pet Bar, yet you do not allow Keybinds per character, keybinds per character state, OR keybinds to have more than two uses at once? Because I am fairly certain "Attack" command could be bound to the first ability of the pet, too, and it wouldn't be a big deal.

 

And this doesn't even cover the complaints I heard from new players (like those coming in with steam release) that almost immediately (latest after about a week) lose interest in your game because your UI is so, so incredibly outdated and bad by today's standards.

 

I would really, REALLY recommend you finally buckle up and update this outdated mess. You're losing new, very interested and willing to pay, players because you refuse to finally get your rear in gear and fix this pile of trash you call a UI.

 

Just allowing Keybinds to be character, or -state specific, would be a ginormous improvement.

[Gehenna.3625]

It would already be a massive improvement if you can hide/unhide certain parts of the UI like the novelty button, template button and whatever the button is called for fishing. Particularly hide them during combat. Also I would like to see that you can move the weapon skills around (1-5), just like the utility skills (7-9). I get that 6 and 10 on your skill bar are dedicated slots but 1-5 would be great if you can move them around. Per weapon set, per character.

[Zaret.1450]

there are some parts of the ui you can hide in combat or choose when to display, also weapon skills are fixed and i personaly like it that way, think that 1 is allwais the auto attack, 2 a medium or high hitting skill, 3 usualy is movility, 4 and 5 chanhe from off hand weapon to 2 handed weapons, making them mobile would be a huge mess for everyone and woukd create tons of bugs.

as for more freedom moving UI elements around in the screen, it could be fine, although im used to how it is now so id prob noy change things.

[ruikarikun.9402]

No.

Go play BDO UI.

Edited October 6, 2022 by ruikarikun.9402

[itspomf.9523]

So ... wait, what are you actually complaining about?  There are like, 20 different things in here, most of which aren't related to the actual interface.

I agree that the keybinds are a bit limited, but I don't know if I've ever played a game where I felt it necessary to have per-character bindings.  Also, not saving them locally means that if you reinstall the game or migrate systems, you don't have to completely reconfigure it every time, which is kind of a nice feature.

[Gehenna.3625]

On 10/5/2022 at 12:28 PM, zaswer.5246 said:

there are some parts of the ui you can hide in combat or choose when to display,

And the bits I want to hide during combat are not able to be hidden at this time. So I really have no idea what your point is. I really don't like to change to another weapon set only to find out that in my haste I clicked a little too low and get a fishing rod instead.

On 10/5/2022 at 12:28 PM, zaswer.5246 said:

also weapon skills are fixed and i personaly like it that way, think that 1 is allwais the auto attack, 2 a medium or high hitting skill, 3 usualy is movility, 4 and 5 chanhe from off hand weapon to 2 handed weapons, making them mobile would be a huge mess for everyone and woukd create tons of bugs.

You can change which of the five skills is the auto-attack btw, so it doesn't have to be skill 1, just saying. And they're not always that logical as you describe.

And all the possible problems you mention are easily solved. You can set it and save it with a build, so as a consequence you won't be able to change the skills in the skill bar directly from the skill bar. Alternatively you can have a skill bar that you can lock and unlock. 

In the end though, I don't think that anything will change in the UI, so I said my piece and have zero expectations.

 

[Zaret.1450]

12 hours ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

And the bits I want to hide during combat are not able to be hidden at this time. So I really have no idea what your point is. I really don't like to change to another weapon set only to find out that in my haste I clicked a little too low and get a fishing rod instead.

You can change which of the five skills is the auto-attack btw, so it doesn't have to be skill 1, just saying. And they're not always that logical as you describe.

And all the possible problems you mention are easily solved. You can set it and save it with a build, so as a consequence you won't be able to change the skills in the skill bar directly from the skill bar. Alternatively you can have a skill bar that you can lock and unlock. 

In the end though, I don't think that anything will change in the UI, so I said my piece and have zero expectations.

 

I said that you can hide some ui things because, well, if it was done with somw things it might be possible in the future to get more options, also id recomend you to at least weapon swap with a key instead of clicking, i have mine in the block mayusc and change target with tab, so i just use the pinky fi get for that while i move around, an advice, you can play however you prefere.

As for weapon skills, all skills can be made "autocast", but not all can become what most people in raid and fracts understand as AA, for most AA is the first weapon skill, that consist of 3 attacks in consecution, and yes not all skills are like i said, but most gs skills for example have a good AA, 2 is for dmg, 3 has movility, 4 is utility and 5 is either more dmg or more utility, ranger, rev, guard, warrior are that way, and mesmer and reaper are diferent from that.

Also if you have to look at skill sets that can swap positions you can look at rev legends, how many bugs and problems have we had for years with that? thats why i said its better to just leave weapons as they are.

You can have some espectations, dont loose all fainth XD

[Xerac.1542]

On 10/5/2022 at 12:13 PM, Gehenna.3625 said:

[...]

Also I would like to see that you can move the weapon skills around (1-5), just like the utility skills (7-9). I get that 6 and 10 on your skill bar are dedicated slots but 1-5 would be great if you can move them around. Per weapon set, per character.

Tell me you did not understand how weapon skills work without telling me you did not understand how weapon skills work. 

 

Serious note: you could always rebind them to other keys. But I'll admit, this being global is kinda hard to get a "better"  setting per class. 

[Gorem.8104]

I still love how games that came out before GW2 had more customisable UI then gw2 does 10 years later. 

In Warhammer online, we could mod the game extensively and adjust everything in the UI, I had multiple mods to track my kills on certain people and add my own effects and adjust the UI to however I saw fit. I think even rift had more options at launch but its been a long time since I played that and I played long time before the current owners. 

 

It would be nice it gw2 had customisable UI and caught up with other QOL things that existed in other mmo's over 10 years ago, but that's apparently asking too much with the small team we have left with this game. 

[Bookah pls.9352]

Honestly one thing i would REALLY love that's probably not a lot of work at all is the ability to move your profession mechanic resource bar.

Like being able to pin stuff like blades/clones to my nameplate would be absolutely amazing.

[Xenesis.6389]

I'll start off by saying, I love the gw2 ui, I even used a mod to get the same layout when I played wow.

 

I don't understand why they keep using half buttons that are practically hidden on the UI. Why use a 1/4 sized button under mount for novelty stuff? why use a little arrow button for the build switch? There's space next to the weapon switch button for another button, there's space next to the mount button for another 3-4 buttons, use it?

There's extra space next to the mount button, use it?

 

Speaking of outdated UI I think it's time they updated the wvw panel and made it more uniform. Why are scores listed by blue/red/green but the tabs to enter maps is ordered red/blue/green, and the scores aren't even laid out in a simple informative form, instead we have this circle graph that probably no one looks at, warscore for skirmish is on the right side as if that's the total score, while the actual victory score is tucked under the server name. You wanna trigger ocd in people?

WvW panel could use an update

🤷‍♂️

[Infusion.7149]

IMO the GW1 UI was actually better in terms of flexibility. You could move the UI elements around and resize them as you see fit.

[Radina.6057]

The GW1 UI was not better, it was perfect. You can move and resize every element you wish.
Want your hp and mana bar at shoulder hight parallel to your character? Sure.
Want to draw out the enemy castbar across your whole screen, so you can see the actually dangerous casts and react? No problem.
Want to resize your buff bar? Knock yourself out.

GW2s UI is the worst I have seen in any MMO. You cant customize anything. You cant even highlight important boons like Aegis, or Stability, or important conditions like blind. Everything is just smashed heartlessly into this tiny bar.

[Cuks.8241]

I would be fine with more scaling options for UI, move frames anywhere, movable and scaleble boon, condi and other effect icons. Both on self and target.