Is it too late for cast bars?

[Atmaweapon.7345]

Guild Wars 2 was designed to be a casual game. The devs didn't want people to be staring at bars all day so they tried to design PvE to have super-obvious telegraphs and for PvP to be like MOBAs where you see someone with a certain weapon/loadout and if you learn their animations, you can read what they do without without need for things like cast bars.

I think this goal of eliminating the need for a cast bar failed for the following reasons:

Dodge or Die mechanics:My first encounter with a dodge or die mechanic was against the infamous Lieutenant Kholer in the Ascalonian catacombs and his Scorpion Wire attack. I'm pretty sure this mechanic completely killed most people's enthusiasm for trying to run dungeons. The problem here is that this attack is a complete death sentence the first time you encounter it, you need to know what his telegraphed attack does, from its range, to its exact timing, to the fact that it'll down you instantly if you get by it. In fact, you don't even know what that attack is called unless you have an incoming damage log and get hit by it. More recently, we have the annoying PoF Liches with their sand tornadoes that explode after what seems like an arbitrary amount of time that you have to manually learn the timing to or be downed instantly.

All of things are gigantic turn-offs that require you to face the mechanic again and again until you actually get the timing down. When the timing isn't clear, there's going to be a lot of frustration. This is an MMO, there are dozens of mobs that can one-shot like this spread out across a gigantic world. It would really help to have a cast bar so that I don't have to die and roll around like an idiot the first time I ever encounter these mobs.

Various Red circlesTo combat the problems presented by Dodge or Die mechanics, we have Red circles. Now, we have several different flavors of red circles that all signify that you're going to die if you stand here, from the thin red outlines to the giant red-orange gradient circles for unblockable attacks that also sometimes expand to tell you exactly when an attack is going to go off. Now instead of having these nearly opaque colored circles everywhere, maybe we would be better served by a cast bar?

Visual ClutterThis should be straightforward. There's too much visual clutter on the field and the only way to tell what's going on is to try to read through all of it. This is one of the reasons that Scourge is a blight upon PvP, you can never tell what's going on.

The PvP barrier is too highI want to try to learn the ins and outs of PvP but there's an absurd barrier to entry. This isn't like a MOBA where you're told the name of each hero and quickly learn what each one is capable of, you have to learn what each weapon does for each class, and try to identify what utilities they're bringing as well which is impossible unless you make that profession and research it. It's really stupid when abilities have similar animations like a warrior's GS charge and bullrush or Impaling Lotus/Deathblossom and it's even worse when weapon swaps are instant.

Unreadable animationsPlaying into the similar animations above, some professions just have way too few tells like Mesmer and Thief while professions with really obvious tells like Holo engi tend to also flood the screen with visual clutter. Half the time I'm in PvP I literally don't know what I'm being hit with or what any profession is throwing out between all the clutter and stuff flying from peoples hands with minute animation differences. This is especially bad with characters that spam a dozen instant attacks in the same millisecond.

Nearly all of my gripes would be solved with cast bars. I want them so that I don't have to play a search engine to play the freaking game properly.

Also, if you're wondering how a cast bar would help with instant casts, here's my idea of how it would work.

|__Main__||__Castbar |
++++|_Instant__\+++++|_Instant__\++++++|_Instant__\

Basically, all instants would flash for a second and layer themselves underneath the main castbar and disappear by moving under the main castbar.

[Linken.6345]

Well we already got cast bars the red circles you speak of, either the expand just like a castbar would do and you will see were they will land or the shrink same thing really.

[Swing.6439]

God, no. One of the main reasons I like gw2 over XIV is because you don't have that groggy combat feeling. Everything is faster and feels more interactive. Please don't add any more "castbar" than there already is.

[zealex.9410]

Idk how learning animations abd identifying tells is more casual than watching a bar fill up. As for the cast bar vs orange aoe how are we supposed to know where to stand and not stand if all the tell we have is the vast bar? Answer is we dont. Every mmo has aoe markers to indicate where the attack will land regardless if it has casts bars or not.

[Zedek.8932]

@"Swing.6439" said:God, no. One of the main reasons I like gw2 over XIV is because you don't have that groggy combat feeling. Everything is faster and feels more interactive. Please don't add any more "castbar" than there already is.

Haha, indeed. For me as a Lalafell Blackmage it was really weird to play a game like this: You saw so many bars in the HUD that I thought I sit in a airplane's cockpit.The gameplay was clunky because you literally follow the bar building up with your eyes, might it be my own spells that are being cast or my healer's spells or the tank's or the boss. It was a permanent checking of bars. No, thanks.

In GW2, especially as Thief, the gameplay was so intuitive it felt (and still feels) great.

Excelsior.

EDIT: Hah! I just saw the name of the thread creator: Atma Weapon. How fitting!

[Tolmos.8395]

I mean- they could add cast bars to the ui and just hide them if you don’t want to see them.

Cast bars wouldn’t change the way casting happens; it would literally just visualizing the progress of the cast from beginning to end for folks with poor eyesight or who otherwise have difficulty keeping up with the combat.

I, personally, would never say no to more accessibility options. I have no need for it, and would keep cast bars turned off myself, but I want everyone to have what they need to be able to at least experience the game the way that I get to