[Suggestions]QoL (Quality of Life) Ideas [Merged]

[kharmin.7683]

37 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Artificial scarcity, in the sense of a limited time offer, is supposed to trigger our lizard brains to get scared that the SADPants are going to disappear soon, and it may be months or years before we can once again buy those SADPants that are the epitome of winning FashionWars. If we do miss it, then we wait eagerly over the months, and snap them up the next time ArenaNet decides to put SADPants back on the BLTC, because we feel the desperation of all that time without them.

 

This.  Artificial scarcity "forces" a player to log in daily just to see if the item(s) they want are available in the store.  If Anet were to implement the suggestion in the thread, players wouldn't need to log in if the store updates are emailed to them. 

Those daily logins might be a certain metric that Anet uses for other financial incentives with their stakeholders.  Regardless, this marketing tactic must work to a sufficient degree since it is widely used.  /shrug

 

 

[Gibson.4036]

I'm just not sure "log in daily" and "artificial scarcity" are part and parcel of the same strategy, to the point that they can't be separated.

If I get a notice when something is available, they can still have it for a limited time so I'll be sure to buy it.

And I'd think daily completionist and daily limits on ascended crafting or rich nodes and the like do a lot more to incentivize logging in than "I wonder what's on the BLTC today".

But, as you definitely know, ArenaNet has more info on this than we. So perhaps they'll weigh my suggestion and see if it makes sense to get more money from people like me who miss sales often, or whether there's better return from making it a little more difficult to figure out when the things we want are on sale.

I do know that it's a regular feature of these forums for people to post "When does X show up on the gem store" shortly after X was just on the gem store. That's money ArenaNet missed.

Edited November 4, 2021 by Gibson.4036

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

It's not the first time the suggestion has been posted.  If ArenaNet thought it was worth the ROI, they probably would have implemented it by now.  I'd guess they think the player-provided Sticky serves the purpose well enough.  🤷‍♂️

[Gibson.4036]

Just now, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

It's not the first time the suggestion has been posted.  If ArenaNet thought it was worth the ROI, they probably would have implemented it by now.  I'd guess they think the player-provided Sticky serves the purpose well enough.  🤷‍♂️

Ah, I fail at forum search, apparently.

Maybe it just hasn’t floated up to the top of the list yet? 

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Probably in the 'QoL Suggestions' Sticky.  🤷‍♂️

[AgentMoore.9453]

Compared to the randomness of the current gem store schedule? Sure, gimme a catalog. I get the concept of artificial scarcity (retail's been doing it for decades) - it's just that ArenaNet is very bad at it. Want Halloween cosmetics? Expect them to drop after Halloween ends. Wintersday? Wait for March - that's when everyone's thinking about Tixx, right?

It really does feel like nothing's ever in the shop when you expect/want it, and that's a huge problem for an MMO that's made cosmetics its end game and breadwinner. Near as I can tell, impulse purchases work best when a product is timely, and gem store releases very often are not.

[Astralporing.1957]

On 11/2/2021 at 11:20 PM, genjonah.1253 said:

I would love to have more reward tracks, similar to drizzlewood or PvP/WvW in a PvE setting. I also don’t mind locking it behind mastery points. The difficulty is how it would work- just ‘getting experience’, wherever you are? The issue of that is map locked currencies, and potentially more. Idk. It would take nuance, but I think overall this is a good idea

You could just use the currently existing map reward tracks, and allow you to select which one you'd use (with the current option - "use current map track") being the default. Perhaps unlocking a track for manual selection might require doing a full map completion for it at least once on account - and in order to still encourage actually playing on that map, you might make it so the default option would advance faster than manual selection one.

Not a fan of locking it behind additional mastery points though.

[Harak.8397]

The outfitter's outfit too while we're at it. AS IS... so for once something on the Gem Store will have to be jury-rigged to fit on humans instead of the other way around 😛
 

(Seriously though, all the races have NPCs with outfits that are unavailable to players)

 

As for backpacks, how about they bring back the original Engineer kit packs as skins ? There was like 4 or 5...

[Gharuda.7805]

This a feature that I think will help for a new player who don't know about spamming join world click to join the world if the world if full.

Current system : Join world full popup

Rather than having a feedback message saying that world is full, as a new player I would prefer to have a queue system, like spvp matching system.

Requested: Join World queue popup or auto join popup info

It will show a popup message for joining world queue, and have a cancel button to cancel queue.
If the world is available to join, then popup window will show join button available with a timer, if timer end player will join immediately..

Edited November 23, 2021 by Gharuda.7805

[Kerbezena.3804]

mastery system: unlocking through story missions, "ability is fully trained" popup and training bar covering XP bar
This thread is about the mastery system:

1. how it presents itself to max. level players who activate an expansion on their accounts for the first time,
2. how it is unlockable and how it tells players (only a subset of options of) how to unlock it,
3. how it conceals what happens with gained XP once active but not unlocked, and
4. how it "reminds" (or in other words: "annoys the living joy out of") players of fully trained abilities ready to be mastered

The topics covered in this post have been brought up many, many times before, for at the time of writing at least four years. Workarounds for all of them exist, but this is an issue of bad new player experience, so these do not really solve the problems at hand.

ad 1.) After level 80, if no expansion is activated on an account, experience is put towards gaining 1 Spirit Shard per level. When an expansion is activated on an account the experience bar of level 80 players is replaced with the mastery ability training bar,
ad 3.) ... which covers the normal XP bar, obscuring what happens "under the hood":

Spoiler

The first abilities of all Central Tyria mastery tracks Pact Mentor (635,000 XP), Revered Antiquarian (1,270,000 XP) and Follows Advice (635,000 XP) will be trained fully. All XP earned beyond that point will reward 1 Spirit Shards per 254,000 XP again. But 🤫, we cannot see that before unlocking the system!

On the left end of the bar the UI will display the mastery rank (🎇0 ) and on the right side the icon of the currently train-ing/-ed ability (Pact Mentor in the beginning - which the player can't know/identify/recognize if only going by in-game information, not checking the wiki).
The bar will fill up (to 635,000 XP for the first ability "Pact Mentor") and upon completing the training of the ability, a friendly message will appear, notifying you of the fact that "Your current ability is fully trained and ready to master!" (more on that later)
When the player clicks either of the buttons on either end of the ability training XP bar or accesses the bottommost tab in the hero panel, they will be presented with their mastery rank (🎇0 ) a list of their collected mastery points from the various mastery regions in the game
(🔒(‼) Central Tyria, 🔒 Heart of Thorns, 🔒 Path of Fire, 🔒 Icebrood Saga),
(I had accumulated 26 mastery points from various achievements which were listed in on this tab, when I activated the expansion packs)
ad 1.) The panel does not, however, provide any information about the mastery tracks and abilities.

ad 2.) Players are rather presented with this:

( 🔒 )
Locked
Masteries
Journey to the Heart of Maguuma and complete the story
step "Torn from the Sky," or journey to the Crystal Desert
and complete the story step "Sparking the Flame," to
unlock mastery tracks.

There are multiple problems with this:
It leaves out The Icebrood Saga Episode 1 (Whisper in the Dark): Silence and some other more obscure methods of unlocking the system. It tells players to skip ahead to a story step that potentially contains heavy spoilers. This affects every player whose character has reached level 80, even if they have yet to finish the core personal story and/or Living World Season 2. A player who has not had the time to experience the story leading up to Heart of Thorns and activates it on their account has a really bad experience with this, I'd argue. The most frequently suggested route - and incidently also the one I took after some deliberation - is to just play through PoF mission 1 "Kindling the Flame" and thereby unlock the mastery system (and the raptor mount as an added bonus), while not paying attention to anything that happens storywise. What a great new player experience!
"Wow, ArenaNet seem to really appreciate me as a new customer and care for my experience in the game. I'd like to support this game by making purchases in the gem store and tell my friends to join me in Tyria!" is the new player probably not going to think to theirself. They will more likely go on the forums pray to ANet: Unlocking Central Tyria masteries should not require skipping ahead [official forums]

 For most players who were in the same boat as me, this is an annoying hoop they have to jump through once and then they don't think about it anymore and go on spending money on the gem store, which is probably also the reason ANet ignores the issue so diligently.
If someone, however, happens to have maxed out the training of an abilities and have not enough mastery points to master it, they get reminded by the popup mentioned in the beginning:
"Your current ability is fully trained and ready to master!"
This well-meant message appears every time any amount of XP is gained, obscuring the chat box in its default position and nagging players. There seems to be no way of deactivating this popup and it has irritated players for a very long time as evident from a great many forum, wiki and other posts:

2017-06-05: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Talk:Mastery#.22Your_current_mastery_is_fully_trained.22
2017-06-10: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Disabling-ability-is-fully-trained-reminder
2017-10-07: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/6726-mastery-popup-will-not-go-away
2017-10-24: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/9434-your-ability-is-ready-to-train-message-mastery
2017-11-16: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/12396-your-current-ability-is-fully-trained-and-ready-to-master
2017-12-08: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/7ibk4v/how_to_disable_your_current_ability_is_fully
2018-02-17: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Talk:Mastery#Popup_should_be_mentioned.2C_since_it.27s_annoying_as_hell.
2018-05-10: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/28541-constant-harassment-from-mastery-popup-after-hitting-level-80
2018-07-11: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/33895-your-current-ability-is-fully-trained-and-ready-to-master
2018-10-04: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/40538-ability-is-full-trained-and-ready-to-master
2018-11-08: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/42527-your-current-ability-is-fully-trained-and-ready-to-master
2018-11-12: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/42756-mastery-hint
2020-03-16: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/69465-your-current-ability-is-fully-trained-and-ready-to-master
2020-10-29: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/85760-mastery-point-hint-your-current-ability-is-fully-trained-and-ready-to-master
2021-02-05: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/91102-central-tyria-mastery-popups
2021-09-14: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/101453-mastery-notification-constant-popup

So, what should be done about it?

1. Unlock the mastery system on every account as soon as an expansion pack is activated!
   There is no good reason to lock the Central Tyria mastery tracks behind completing expansion content. The players have purchased and activated the expansions on their accounts. That should suffice!
2. Add a checkbox option to the settings panel that disables the "ability fully trained" popup message!
   The bottom left corner that displays the mastery rank (🎇#) could have an unobtrusive highlight, when a mastery is ready, but nothing more. If a player has been notified of a fully trained ability once, and the message was dismissed that should be respected. 
   A good alternative to a bespoke checkbox only for this message would be an option to only display every tutorial popup only once per character and mastery ability. You can show me that Pact Mentor is fully trained once, no more, then later show me that Productive Downtime is trained, again, once.
3. Make it so, that the experience bar at the bottom of the screen always displays the pool that currently earned experience goes to.
   Always display the correct icon in the bottom right corner at the end of the bar: the (auto)selected ability from a mastery track or a spirit shard. In this way, players must never worry that they may be wasting gained experience points and can play unbothered at their own pace.

I have written this forum post after I had filed a ticket with support that was promptly (within less than 3 hours) answered in a friendly but dismissive way.

This is the text of my support ticket (newly added comment in italics😞

Spoiler

 

tl;dr: Please, for the love of Dwayna, add a checkbox option in the settings panel to deactivate the mastery training notification popup!
also: make the mastery system unlock when an expansion pack is activated on the account AND a character hits level 80 (whichever happens later).

When Path of Fire + Heart of Thorns are activated on a GW2 core account, the mastery system is initially locked and for level 80 characters, the XP bar at the bottom of the screen is replaced with the mastery training bar. As soon as this bar is filled (I do not remember if it was filled immediately after activating the expansion packs or if I had to earn 635,000 XP first), a popup message stating "Your current ability is fully trained and ready to master!" (see attachment (<a picture of the filled ability training XP bar from before unlocking the system with the popup visible>) pops up every time XP is earned from any source.
There seems to be no option in the game to turn this notification off.
This popup message has annoyed players for at least four years, going by these forum posts:
< the same list of forum posts as above >
 

I am sure that this list is not exhaustive. It was compiled only from relevant forum threads that had the words "mastery" or "master" in the title. Sadly it seems that no nobody from ArenaNet has answered in any of those threads.

Consider my situation when I activated PoF and HoT on my account (a GW2 digital edition - preordered):
I was a returning player who departed from GW2 during the early days of Living World Season 2 and in the process of playing through the content of LWS2 with a friends. When I activated the expansions, the mastery training bar covered my XP bar and the popup constantly reminded me of the fact that my ability – which I could not even see at that point – was fully trained and ready to master. I did not know whether my XP was going to waste or if I maybe got spirit shards from it. Or maybe some abilities (the first of each core Tyria mastery track) got trained – invisible to me – and afterwards I would continue to gain spirit shards.
I was prompted to play one of the first missions of the expansion to unlock the mastery system, but I was only in the middle of Living World Season 2 and I care for continuity and dislike spoilers. People suggested all kinds of solutions, chief among them to just go through the first mission of PoF, unlocking the mastery system and the Raptor mount at the same time – which I ended up doing begrudgingly. There are some other possibilities that involve only minor spoilers like using a "Teleport to friend" and accessing an expansion map that way, which apparently unlocks the system, or doing an Icebrood Saga Strike mission which awareds and IBS mastery point: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/nmnfpg/unlocking_mastery_system_without_doing_any_story/
These solutions appear, however, hardly as suitable to provide a nice new player experience.
I asked myself – and members of the community – why the mastery system could not be unlocked when you had at least one expansion activated, a character at level 80 (and maybe (but better not required) the personal story chapter "Victory or Death" finished). There is actually no good reason why unlocking the mastery system, which includes Core Tyria masteries, should only unlock by playing expansion STORY missions.

I sincerely hope that you will look into this issue as it has been a continued nuisance for new players for years and at least an option to disable the obstinate popup message should be a relatively easy to implement fix. I love the game you made and care for it!

Yours,
BM (gave my full name originally)
Kerbezena.3804

on the second topic in my original ticket:
https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/101203-unlocking-central-tyria-masteries-should-not-require-skipping-ahead/
There is no good reason why masteries should only be unlocked after a player played through a mission without significant story spoilers.
Many players will reach level 80 long before they finish the core personal story and living world season 2. Even if a player hitting level 80 and finishing the personal story perfectly coincided (not very likely at all), the issue would persist at least throughout Living World Season 2.
The issue is only circumvented if a player only activates an expansion on their account after finishing Living World Season 2, after which playing Heart of Thorn would be the next chronological step in the story, but LWS2 is sold as an optional addon, when purchasing HoT+PoF from buy.guildwars2.com. I don't know if you get separate keys if you buy it that way, but I doubt it.
<attached a screenshot of the mastery tab of the hero panel from before unlocking the system>

 

 

The quick answer from support read:

Spoiler

 

Hello,

We understand your frustration with not being able to permanently close the in-game notification about Masteries, and appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts. We have found that the best way for the Development team to gather and review player feedback and suggestions is through the official forums. We ask and encourage players to post their ideas in our forums: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com

Please post your suggestion in the forum most relevant to the subject at hand. Members of the Development Team read the forums daily, and while they usually cannot respond to individual suggestions, the fact that team members can review those suggestions in a public forum helps them gauge the level of interest in a particular idea, and also allows other players to discuss and offer feedback of their own.

The team looks forward to reviewing your input.

 

Regards,

GM Mikberly
Guild Wars 2 Support Team
http://help.guildwars2.com/

 

... so I did.

Edited November 8, 2021 by Kerbezena.3804
added the title of the orginial stand-alone forum post, removed some line breaks in the BUGS sub-forum that got lost, when the post got merged in here.

[medivh.4725]

BACKPACKER'S BACKPACK
This backpacker's backpack? https://ibb.co/RhwHvqn
Color changable please....

MILITARISED BACKPACK
Make anyone running around with the rifle look good  https://ibb.co/cT21XXB

SLEEK STEALTH BACKPACK
A darker sleeker all-black version for the theif for stealth? https://ibb.co/sVG7dVy

[Sixcross.6824]

Today I was playing through some of the core story/whispers story again as it has been a few years and in a couple of the missions you see the original gw2 lions arch. It reminded me of how much I missed the old design and complexity of it. Then I realized something. The map is still in the game data - Anet should capitalize on that nostalgia and offer a sanctuary pass that would take us to the old lions arch. It would be an excellent way to be able to relive the early days of GW2 and enjoy the beautiful city again. I would easily drop some $$$ for this as I know many others would.

 

Who else misses old LA?

[TristisOris.2165]

add preview option for more chests, recipes books and other stores. It's hard to check what u need for some collections.

[Gibson.4036]

Gotta love the post salad that is the QoL merge thread.

My QoL suggestion is to maybe not merge so many things into the QoL thread, where it becomes impossible to discuss them.

[Aelius.1624]

I'm new to this game still, so this suggestion might have been added in this thread, or otherwise.

I think there needs to be a revamped version of Friends List/ Contacts. 

The design on the UI is a nice touch, however the contact list is really difficult to use in the sense that it does require you to pay attention to who you interact heavily with because you can easily get anyone in your friends list / contacts. Because people who add you are directly made as Followers, there is no notification or whatsoever, my first encounter to this mechanic made me feel really bad because i didn't pay attention to the mechanic of the contact list, thus ignoring someone without knowing that he added me.  

That means, your contacts list is living up to its name, full of contacts. However it should be at the consent of the other party by giving them a notification on request. Then, it would be better for both parties as people won't forget who is this on the contact list and such. Yes i think this happens often in the long run because you have added too many people

I understand Nickname is a very useful tool to seperate who you know and who is this. But, it doesn't provide a category list for the Contact List. It just renames the contact, which is very bleak. If there's a category, it would help if there's a category creation option. it makes organising the contact list thousands of times easier. Definitely. 

People who add you are directly made as Followers, there is no notification or whatsoever, my first encounter to this mechanic made me feel really bad because i didn't pay attention to the mechanic of the contact list, thus ignoring someone without knowing that he added me.  

These QoL updates would not only help bring the community to a better state, but make this game presentable to new players like me. Thank you for reading

[Kerbezena.3804]

if this problem annoys you, please consider leaving a reaction on a post I made about it - among other issues with the mastery system:

 

[Entropo.1524]

some icons on all of them are incredibly nice to look at ,  i realy wish we could transmute them just so we can chose some pretty icons , and well ofc give us more insentive to collect skins 

[Linken.6345]

Well they dont have skins per say so probabely not.

[Aszanthi.8460]

Hey, is there  wayto disable the tooltips you get when you hover over a skillbutton? 

 

I don't want to discuss why i am clicking, i just want to disable (and reanable of course - for ppl who love them ^^)  the tooltips because they are way too big. 

[Danikat.8537]

I know it wouldn't make much difference because it would only change the icon (and maybe the flavour text) but I'd like this too.

 

Firstly it could be a way to (sort-of) keep using the Hero's Band after my characters get to level 80, but also some of them pick up trinkets which I really like and are meaningful for them but they can't use because the stats are all wrong, and then get stuck using something which that character would never choose. I'd like to be able to swap them around and give them trinkets which suit them without messing up their builds, the way I can with weapon and armour skins.

[Danikat.8537]

As far as I know there's no way to do this.

 

It's been requested several times over the years but nothing's ever happened with it.

[Linken.6345]

Nope stop clicking get a mouse with extra side buttons if it to much trouble useing the keyboard.

[Rogue.8235]

I support anything that will allow me to have The Shiniest Shiny. Shinies are great.  Shinies are Life.  

[Aszanthi.8460]

Quote

8 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

As far as I know there's no way to do this.

 

It's been requested several times over the years but nothing's ever happened with it.

Really? Nothing happend, did arenanet answer to any of this requests?

It can't be so difficult to add an optionfield to a game ^^

 

[Betadelta.2570]

Totally agree. This would make daily ascended crafting for me waaaay more convenient.