Quality-of-Life Requests and Suggestions (New for 2024)

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

As we mentioned in our recent blog post, the Guild Wars 2 Live Team has been working for the past few years to address player problems and introduce improvements to areas of the game, such as the new-player experience, crafting, group encounters, and more. 

Hearing from you, the Guild Wars 2 community, is a big part of this work! I review your QOL requests and share them with the Live Team weekly to keep them updated about what's on your mind, and the QOL thread has been invaluable for that. 

The previous thread recently passed the 10,000 replies mark and that seems like a good milestone to begin a new, less overwhelming thread to collect and track QOL requests. The previous thread can be found here for anyone who wants to read past requests. 

Thank you for all of your input on this topic and please keep the QOL requests coming!

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

FIRST

QoL Request: Balance Team Class Balance 
Weekly rotation of balance development: The main focus on a specific class until its solidified between the balance team, following week, hit the next class, so forth and so forth, come next balance PATCH then upload the changes based on feedback to see how it works.

Thieves one week, warrior next, ele after and etc etc.. more brains better than 1....unless that 1 is a master Asura. 
It will be like a miniature roadmap of action within each week for balance team balancing schedules aside from when they have to work on other projects like raid bosses for example/bugs.

(those of you reacting with confused...its not rocket science, use chatgpt to translate it if you don't comprehend)

Edited April 24 by Lithril Ashwalker.6230

[Vidit.7108]

Add more things to the account augmentation vendor in fractals. Such as a duplicate of agony impedance. An upgrade that rewards a single research note or jade sliver or ancient coin on completion of a fractal. 
Also consider allowing us to exchange a +9 agnoy infusion for some more keys or maybe even add more currency exchanges such as trading 500 relics for 10 blue prophet shards or 10 tales of dungeon delving (nothing that would replace clearing that content)

[Donari.5237]

Excellent timing, I was just coming to re-make a 12 years ongoing suggestion:  Text chat colors!  (Only been asking for this since the first open beta).

As in, please please please give us a brighter color for emote text.  My RP guild just welcomed a new person last night, who was very good at RP but missed a few lines now and then because the dull grey text outright tells the brain to "ignore this, it's inactive."  Besides RP, the NPC text in story episodes is equally hard to focus on.  There could be issues for colorblind people, this is true, so I'm not sure what color to suggest that isn't already in use.  Green?  A different orange from the brownish orange of guild chat?

Even better, give players the ability to pick their own colors for each category of text output in the chat box so it can be tailored to individual preferences and visual abilities.  But I know that's probably a much bigger coding headache than altering one specific color choice on the dev end.

Edited April 24 by Donari.5237

[Kunzal.5640]

Opt out for cosmetic inspection.

Please do not remove this comment and, if possible, respect other opinions without argument. 😞

Recently, many people have been using outfits, which is also a sign... We don't have a problem with the cosmetic inspection feature, but the way some players engage in the RP aspect of the game varies.

[Dreggon.6598]

Please make Legendary Armory weapons retain their stat and sigil choices when unequipped! If I'm on e.g. my ranger and I want to change from melee weapons to a longbow, I have to reselect everything - zerker stats, force sigil, night sigil, wardrobe skin - and if I want to change back to melee weapons I have to do the whole process again in reverse. It's tremendously inconvenient 😞

[Sobx.1758]

25 minutes ago, Kunzal.5640 said:

Opt out for cosmetic inspection.

I'd also like this QoL addition.

 

Other than that, still: outfits/mounts/gliders/gear visibility/whatever other cosmetic option to be chosen per gear tab.

Edited April 24 by Sobx.1758

[Sadie Stikk.4729]

Add more options for controlling the AOE visual effects.   

Maybe something like a slider to effect the transparency of friendly effects so you can still see the enemy AOEs.
Or changing the friendly effects to a single outline ring while leaving enemy AOEs as a filled circle.

Also, make sure that when there is a telegraph shown that it actually matches the damage area.    The telegraph for the wyverns in Knaebalog meta start much further from the wyvern than the damage fields do.

[Sadie Stikk.4729]

In the squad window replace the thin white highlight for identifying both yourself and the commander with something much more noticeable, maybe different colours?

Give lieutenants a highlight as well and a map icon so when a squad is split (like triple trouble) the leader of subgroups is easily identifiable

Edited April 24 by Sadie Stikk.4729

[SweetPotato.7456]

Please move "Inspect Cosmetic" to the bottom of the drop down list.

Please move it to the last on the list because it is interfering with inviting players to squad.

[Katary.7096]

Changes to the systems for displaying the game's various buffs and debuffs on the player character, allied targets and enemy targets to improve moment to moment readability.

[Magus.8152]

Some Quality of Life suggestions:

- Add in the option to adjust the opacity of the chatbox between 0% and 100%, it's very hard in some maps to see the chatbox.

- Add in the option to either custom modify the text chat colors, or make some text chats like the NPC Text and Emote text be a brighter/bolder color, that dark grey is very painful to read on most maps.

- Add in the option for party members to place markers down/on players for 5-man content such as fractals, it would be a huge boon to coordination for things like 100 CM or 97 CM

- Update/fix guild halls to not reset the map when there's 3 or 5 people (constantly forcing a map close every 5 minutes makes using guild halls with larger groups nearly impossible beyond a few in-and-out. // Alternatively, make the map reset not teleport everyone back to the start to reduce the issues caused by this.

[KryTiKaL.3125]

Color-blind Accessibility Options
Just general options made available, but particularly options made available for WvW as the team colors directly make issue with one of the most common types of color blindness; red-green colorblindness.

Changing contrast of the game, or of the monitor, is not the solution to this. It will make everything else in the game look worse, that is not a real solution to something that this game should have had 6+ years ago.

I have played a good number of games that do offer feasible, actual solutions either through options directly relating to selecting a colorblindness type (deuteranopia, protanopia, tritanopia) and it changes the colors of important aspects of game visuals. For instance, Horizon Forbidden West will specifically change important gameplay indicators and only those indicators to be different colors than normal, as well as very specific environment details such as the tall grass where your character can hide.

Another solution is one where you just allow the user to select the colors that are most comfortable for them to use. Planetside 2 does this, where it allows the player to select colors for each of the three factions in the game and how their highlights, territories, markers, etc are all colored.

In WvW in particular I know this may create an issue with how callouts would work in the team/map chats. Such as "10+ red heading to X objective" and if someone has a different color selected for this then it would be confusing. Players would need to get used to calling things out differently, such as abbreviations for server/team names probably becoming more common. I think its worth risking this shakeup to that status quo as it is just a helpful QoL feature to those that have to deal with this. It is annoying needing to physically mouse over an objective to see who owns it if you are like myself and cannot distinguish between red and green, and I have lost count of the amount of times I would accidentally try to glide in one of the borderlands only to realize my team does not own that particular area.

For another aspect of this, I would extend this into enemy combo field/AoE field indicators as they can get pretty difficult to spot or differentiate from others in areas with grass, or just from other certain elemental combo field effects that an ally may have placed down. I'm aware this would probably require the creation of a number of visual effects to select from or just ones that would be applied depending on how this sort of feature were implemented.

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

Enemy effects in PvE are always red/orange with their effects and can always be seen in raids/strikes/dungeons.

so much friendly aoe covers up key mechanics its difficult to see things like the veil guardians blue puddles that port you away in conjunction with specter wells (for example)

[Zera.9435]

Hi Rubi and any dev who is gracious enough to take the time to read my wall of text! I worked hard on it. Here are my QoL requests for this spanking-new thread. I like to think they're reasonable requests. I am at your mercy. 

For any player who does decide to read this post: thanks for reading but please DO NOT @me, react, or get me to come back to this thread. I will not respond here. This is strictly for the devs. If you want me to give you your regularly scheduled verbal evisceration, send me a private message. Let's not do battle here. I'm looking at you... guys who have tens of thousands of posts and insist on having a semantics battle or trying to play forum police. This is not for you.

 

• Remove chat bubble on my character when the comms device is being used by NPCs to communicate with the player. It's in the chat window, and I audibly hear it in my headset. I don't also need a huge chat bubble in the middle of my screen, especially when it's not something my character even said.
   
• On a similar issue, minimize the amount of NPC talking to tell us needless extra information about an event. It is better if the event UI simply states the objective of the event on the right side of the screen that we can simply read for ourselves and know exactly what to do. For reference, go do any random event in core Tyria. Minimal NPC talking, if any at all, and you just do the event.
        We don't need an NPC saying "Wayfinder! I'm so glad you're here. We were making progress here, but those Kryptis orbs have us pinned down pretty bad. If you could get on your skyscale and clear them out, it would really help us out." when all we need is to look at/read the UI for the event and have it say "Destroy the turrets with your skyscale" with a progress bar. That's it.
       NPC speech for event mechanic explanations should be limited to essential info. Spare us the video essay intro about how cookies are enjoyed by basically everyone and how your grandmother used to make you cookies all the time when you were little and just give us the recipe!
   
• If possible, can we get an option to customize the targeting cursor for when we are aiming our skyscale's fireball? A tiny little white dot is hard to see amid all the chaos going on in a fight.
   
• An option to hide the tooltips for basically everything in SotO after having seen it for the hundredth time. I know how to press my color coded utility skill buttons during Amnytas meta. It was helpful the first 2 times, not so much from the third time on. Again, just asking for an option to hide it after having seen it at least once or twice.
   
•  May we get a mastery to enable us to get onto ANY of our mounts while in combat (with internal cooldown like skyscale, of course). I LOVE being able to get on my skyscale during combat in a pinch or for convenience, especially with its fair cooldown. I would like to be able to mount up similarly regardless of my current mount selection. Alternatively, let the current mastery for skyscale apply to all mounts and keep the same global internal cooldown for that mounting ability.
   
• Just a minor inconvenience., but let us interact with banners/food items in convergences while we are waiting for everyone to ready up at the start.
   
• An option to 'skip' the animation when opening more than one BL chest. I want to be able to spam my keys without a delay. I get that the intention is to emulate that 'gambler's addition high' on seeing the bright shiny lights and sounds each time you 'win' in order to incentivize spending more money, but you already got my money. Let me spam my 25+ keys with ease, please.
   
• Alliances just like they were in GW1. A guild of guilds, regardless of the server for WvW. There are lots of small guilds out there that struggle to get new members because most people would rather join an already established guild. How about we get alliances that are headed up by an established guild that allows smaller guilds to join. From there, players can use alliance chat to coordinate guild missions to help the smaller guilds grow.
       As a veteran player without much to do except work on legendaries, I would get more enjoyment out of the game if I could join a guild/alliance of people actively working on growing a guild. I've joined/left various guilds recently with the intention of helping them grow, but not much happens because people are able to join multiple guilds, so they have no attachment to any one guild.  Any guild that isn't immediately huge with 10+ people online and representing at any given time is off-putting to perhaps more players than we realize. Why represent a small guild when you're already in a different/bigger guild? The multi-guild feature is nice, but it is a double-edged sword. I propose an overhaul the guild system as follows:
  • Casual Guilds: These could function as guilds currently do, allowing a player to join multiple guilds.
    • Lack of commitment  or 'ownership of guild achievements'.
    • May not be interested in growth as a guild.
    • Could be just a group of real-life friends that always/often plays together, an RP community, or whatever.
  • Dedicated Guilds: If you join this type of guild, it is the ONLY guild you are in. A player can only join multiple guilds if they leave a dedicated guild and join a casual guild.
    • Only dedicated guilds can join alliances.
    • Ideal for players like me who have no need/desire to join multiple guilds. One is enough.
    • Incentivizes commitment to and ownership of the guild's growth.
    • Representation is automatic and non-negotiable. The only way out is six feet under... I mean 'leave guild'.
  • Alliances: A guild of guilds. There could be a  'leader' guild that initiates the alliance, with all other guilds falling under the same 'banner', if you will.
    • Alliances would have their own agreed-upon name/emblem separate from an individual guild in the alliance, so a player in a guild that is in an alliance can have both identifiers.
    • EDIT: Alliances are created by a mutual agreement of at least 2 guilds. Each guild's leader would interact with an alliance NPC and 'fill out' the same 'application process', to prevent a single guild from creating an alliance with no other guilds already willing to be co-creators of the alliance. This would prevent a flood of alliances with only one guild in them. Associated initial 'cost' can be reduced with each additional guild joining at creation. This would incentivize meaningful alliances.
    • EDIT: Alliances are automatically disbanded if there is only one guild left.
    • Smaller guilds would have easier and more reliable access to other players with common interest in guild-related events. If a small guild wants to do missions but doesn't have enough people for whatever reason, people from the alliance can freely join in and help the smaller guild for their growth, strengthening the overall alliance.
    • Access to alliance chat that would be managed and moderated by various guild leaders/officers, perhaps with varying levels of  'permissions'.
      • Would incentivize careful and meaningful selection of officers.
    • Leaders of individual guilds would have authority to remove their guild from an alliance.
    • If for whatever reason a guild needs be removed from the alliance, there could be a voting system across the remaining guilds or some such.
    • Capped to a certain number of guilds.
    • Not limited by WvW or servers, but can work as a supplement to WvW.
       
• More GW1 weapons and armor, please! I'm still waiting on that Elite Kurzick warrior armor and Elite Druid armor!

Anyway that's all I have for now. I know none of these suggestions are necessarily new, but this thread is and these points deserve a fresh look. Thanks for coming to my TEDtalk.

Edited April 24 by Zera.9435
Added two additional points to alliances and fixed some grammar

[DanAlcedo.3281]

The ability to directly sell items from my material storage to the trading post. 

If I want to check what items have value, so I can sell them, I have the manually double click every single item and need a character with a big free inventory. 

With so many things in the storage, this is currently better done via auto clicker. My poor finger otherwise. 

 

Edited April 25 by DanAlcedo.3281

[Meridian.4983]

These few requests being fulfilled would greatly improve my gaming experience:

- Something to hold all the portal tomes and lounge passes; the space for them adds up and more expansions will most likely have new scrolls.

- A bookshelf/library section in our home instances for all the collectible books we find along the way, maybe it can be unlocked via Durmand Priory side quests.

 - An option to turn off tool tips, they often end up getting in the way.

 - Expanded storage; additional bank tabs, shared inventory slots, and higher material limits.

 - Festival/event and other currencies having a place in wallet or material storage; there are a few that really need to be moved into one of these locations - looking at baubles and especially luck

- Making the guild bank searchable, being able to double click to deposit, and alt-click to withdraw.

- New faces and hairstyles; all races need a refresh (new tattoos for Norn, fur patterns for Charr, skin patterns for Asura, glow patterns for Sylvari, and Humans…?)

- Please stop the camera from auto-zooming when it feels like it.

 - Please stop loading us into maps that are about to close.

I really liked a couple suggestions I read earlier:

 - A place to view our Legendary Armory 

- The ability to use combat mount on any mount, with cooldown of course

 That’s all for now, I’m looking forward to seeing what’s put up in this new thread!

[Nikola.7426]

It's Skin Wars 2 I think WVW needs to get Skins 2 like Custom Guild Towers, Keeps, and camps. SM,  custom siege weapons (different guilds different skin of weapons ).

change the function of Endless Upgrade Extractor: 1st option let it stay like this 2nd  you can use it like savage kits ( to be on your mouse and you klik on items) 3rd  to make it so you can mass extract in inventory.

On-salvage all-box plz make so you can remove items that you don't want to salvage
On fishing plz add some food or items or a special event or place to use to get that random fish ( like from the World Class Fisher achievement I'm trying to finish that achievement for like 7 mounts and spend more than 4k baits to get my last 2 fish ... still missing.

plz, add on LFG  so you can open more tabs at the same time  ( like I want to watch lfg for fractal and raid  or raid and strike at the same time  ) or put check box on what tab to show me.

Edited April 24 by Nikola.7426
i did add lfg section

[Spellman.4719]

Fix Jare Bot Overcharges, because what you've done with them in the last update is definitely NOT a Quality of Life change!

Edited April 24 by Spellman.4719
Edit

[Fueki.4753]

Can we finally have a toggle to hide shoes? The literally rarest item in the game is far too insufficient to replace a toggle.

Also, please give us a client-side option to turn off Virtuoso's floating daggers. Or at the very least, make them disappear out or combat or when weapons are sheathed.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

Please allow players to unlock Fishing without having to get spoiled in story.

Locking a large game feature behind an important lore beat is really lame. Then to have dailies from different expansions that are locked behind masteries that are hidden in those stories. This is why players getting raptor unlocked without having to get spoiled on PoF was a good decision.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

The "Click here to view on the map" feature zooms in way too much on the map. So much so that many nearby waypoints are just out of reach in a lot of dailies and weeklies. Making it zoom just one notch away from full zoom would be an incredible help.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

Can LFG have each category get its own icon so they can be identified with a glance?

Especially with it increasingly becoming more bloated with new categories instead of a much needed overhaul.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

Various long time QoL requests:

Add a confirmation box after pressing "Exit to Desktop". This is so that accidentally clicking on it instead of the "Log Out" button doesn't just close your game.

Recyclers should work on junk trophies from opened bags.

Add the option to hide blocked player effects and emotes.

[NovaanVerdiano.6174]

I'd love to see the wardrobe getting fashion templates as well, with each gear template you have on a character also unlocking a fashion template (to keep it in line with how it is currently); that means I can have e.g. multiple different styles to select along with my gear templates. This might be really difficult to implement though, unless you start treating those slots like outfits and make each change take a transmutation charge instead? I obviously have no idea. On top of that, each fashion template should also track mount-, glider-, skiff-choices etc. and perhaps even novelties, miniatures and finishers? Even just adding the first part (seperating fashion from gear templates) of this QoL would be great though.

Infusions being preview-able is a common request too, having the option to either unlock them for your wardrobe or keep them as they are now (for reselling) would also be great but I can see how that could significantly upset infusion markets.

If you swap out a legendary item (particularly weapons), it should immediately transfer the current stats + upgrades over whenever possible. Maybe legendary upgrades could get their own little slot off to the side so they're unaffected by item switching? I'd imagine that would be one hell of a nightmare to properly check for, though...

Bigger, better preview window with more options and easier dye selection. The current one can be really hard to work with.

I would absolutely LOVE a proper photo mode with zoom, camera angle sliders, emote and skill animation looping, the ability to freeze frames and adjust lighting etc. - The game is gorgeous and allows for great self-expression, but taking good, fitting screenshots can be incredibly difficult, even more so out in the open world.

More visibility QoL - To my knowledge, the hide ally visual effects option still doesn't quite work correctly, frequently hiding mechanics casted by bosses (notably e.g. green stack markers and the like), which naturally makes it kinda unusable in certain cases.

Achievement Panel Updates - There's a lot there these days, including entire Side Quests that may look like normal achievements/collections at first glance and it can be quite overwhelming. Not sure what to do here, though.

A new menu where all portal scrolls are listed, held and unlocked - Self-explanatory I think. Having to carry around half a dozen portal tomes is rough and we all know that number won't get smaller. Having a window that purely exists to show you portal scroll destinations you can go to; split into categories (paid passes, LS3, LS4, IBS...), let us set favorite locations, show all the scrolls you don't have unlocked as greyed out (and in case of story areas, just obscure the menu point with a ???). Might even drive permanent pass sales a bit cause people would be more likely to buy more of them due to it being more convenient.

LFG, Party and Squad improvements - We all know it, I think. Kicked players need to be timed out from re-joining the same group for 10-15min *unless* they get re-invited by the party leader (in case of mistakes). Squad merges need approval from the commander being merged into before they can happen; let the merge attempter add an optional comment to the request. Commander tag should frankly not be a requirement to properly lead a squad anymore or the generic blue one should be mastery-locked/very cheap with all other colours costing extra. More colours and shapes in general. Allow commanders to set their squad LFGs to "request join" only so that, instead of joining instantly, players have to get approved by the commander before they get into the squad. Let join requesters add a comment (e.g. stating their role and such). Keep the current instant-join option as well as this is mainly interesting for 10man strike + raid squads.
LFG itself needs a full UI overhaul and to be detached from Contacts. Less clicking, faster to use and look through. Probably could merge and delete a few categories too. Permanent filter settings for certain strings of text and LFG categories.
Controversial one: Add kill tracker achievements for every raid and strike boss (with seperate trackers for NM, CM, LM each), perhaps even the fractal CMs, then give party leaders the option to set a minimum kill requirement for players to join; this minimum kill requirement cannot ever exceed the kill amount of the player with the lowest amount of kills in the party. It should dynamically adjust if someone with less kills gets automatically invited after the fact. This would be better than the janky kill proof people resort to and be a much better way of tracking.

Fishing QoL - Fishing Party is still a pain and god forbid a forced map change happens. The buff should stay active between instances of the same map and last significantly longer once you're off the skiff, there's no reason not to. Let people be comfy while fishing.

Edited April 24 by NovaanVerdiano.6174