Customizable hotbars

[StacyX]

I can see both sides of the argument, though, personally, I kind of like that they have it bound this way and you can't change it. It makes it easier, I think, because you don't have to memorize skill names when you're explaining things to people. "Hey, Fey, how do you take down a Necromancer so fast" "Oh, you start out with the 4 skill, follow up with 2 and then 3, then lay into them with auto-attack until skill 4 cool-down comes back up" (that's just a random example, of course). I just think it's nice that every class has the same set (at least the primary skills). That's just my preference though. I can see your point and see why some people would want to change up their skill bars. I can see that many people might want to change the skill orders to reflect their personal play style. If you start out most fights with skill 4 or skill 2 or whatever, it might be nice to put that skill in the first slot and put the skills in the order of how you use them. So yeah, I can see both sides of the argument.

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Since Anet has stated they would be ok with addons to some extent, I'm hoping a good UI mod gets done up real quick like

Wait...what? Where did you read that? Link please. Because from what I've read they have been pretty against addons from the start.

[Vayne]

Anet isn't against add-ons per se, but they're not for them either. Basically anything that doesn't change the code of the game or play for you is okay, so if someone created something that could change your UI externally without changing the game itself, ANet would turn a blind eye to it.

They did this in Guild Wars 1 with a couple of cosmetic mods, that make your UI look different but only function on the end user machine and don't affect the game at all.

They're not "open to mods" though in general. Just the ones that don't give people an unfair advantage in competitive play.

As an example, I'm red/green colorblind and some of the color choices in Guild Wars 1 made it almost impossible for me to see if the map was cleared or not clear...unfogged so that I'd done it. It was very frustrating. Using one of those mods, I was able to get a clearer idea of where I hadn't explored. Anet never truly supported this but they did turn a blind eye to it and said so.

But they never said we'd support mods.

[Don't Panic]

That's part of the challenging nature of Guild Wars 2, isn't it? We don't want to make it too easy now, would we?

Funny post, if you're joking. Worrying post if not.

[Vayne]

Funny post, if you're joking. Worrying post if not.

Pretty sure that was an attempt at humor. lol

[Sang Doré [AARD]]

Wait...what? Where did you read that? Link please. Because from what I've read they have been pretty against addons from the start.

I'm going to see if I can find it for you, I think it was on the official site. They mentioned that if it doesn't alter the game, or the code, and doesn't actually give the played an advantage over any other player, then it was something they didn't mind. If I find it I'll link it.

[Lagger]

I'm going to see if I can find it for you, I think it was on the official site. They mentioned that if it doesn't alter the game, or the code, and doesn't actually give the played an advantage over any other player, then it was something they didn't mind. If I find it I'll link it.

Um, here's lazy people being imprecise again. ANet has never authorized ingame addons at all. They don't even have a system implemented where ingame addons could hook into. Don't worry about that, Stacy. What they did was outline the limits in which out of game programs were tolerated for the moment. Not authorized, not allowed, not encouraged. Tolerated. That post had a definite "We won't stop you, but we're not saying it's right either" vibe about it.

And I think that means combat log parsers, perhaps. TP analysis sites, crawler DBs like the one from gw2db.com etc. Up until now all those websites were in a semi-illegal grey zone and ANet has basically told them that they would tolerate them to this extent.

[Fey]

It makes it easier, I think, because you don't have to memorize skill names when you're explaining things to people. "Hey, Fey, how do you take down a Necromancer so fast" "Oh, you start out with the 4 skill, follow up with 2 and then 3, then lay into them with auto-attack until skill 4 cool-down comes back up" (that's just a random example, of course).

I don't see how this would be a problem. You already have to do this for utility skills and you'd have to know all of those names if you were to talk about them. If anyone's playing any profession seriously and they don't know the names of the abilities, it leads me to believe they may not be very serious and I wouldn't go to them for help. When people ask me about my rotations or how I PvP etc, I always use the actual names of the abilities.

The only reason they order the abilities the way they do is based on cooldown length (initiative cost for Thieves). And I've already gotten used to the new order, but that's not really the underlying issue.

This is an extreme example, but what if one day a year or two into the game, ArenaNet completely redoes the staff spells for elementalists? All 4 elements, 20 weapon skills completely re-arranged. And now everyone has to not only relearn the order of the skills for all 4 elements, but they have to also change their internal clock to help them realize when to swap from one element to the next. Why? Why should anyone have to relearn something like that?

Changing abilities and mechanics based on balance is one thing. Changing where abilities -have- to be, is another entirely.

(Keeping in mind the above is an example and I already know this probably wont happen) But there is literally zero point in restricting where each weaponskill sits on our bars. If you like the default? Then awesome! Keep it the way it is. If you don't? Why can't we change it? I'm not asking for mods or anything of the sort.

I just want to put Leap of Faith back on "Q" without changing Dancing Dagger on my Thief, or Bladetrail on my Warrior. And also being able to move the minimap would be kind of cool too.

[Oenanthe]

I'd also be in favour of being able to move our weapon skill around a bit, but for another reason. I freely admit to being an altoholic and I just play whatever character I like at the time. In other games, if I can, I will keybind skills so that similar skills are on the same key, for example on one character my opening move might be a charge attack, on another it might be a leap in to combat, both skills would be bound to the same key. In GW2 everytime I change character I have to check which skill is on which button and try and remember the right order to press them in. I don't want to have to change the keybinding eveytime I change character, (which for me can be every half hour, I get bored quickly if things don't go right). I also get confused quickly if the keys aren't in sequential order, keybinding the weapon skills to 1,3, 2,7, and 4 for example, would just not work for me it has to be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (or in my case 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, I use an odd keybind system)

[Katzyn]

I'd also be in favour of being able to move our weapon skill around a bit, but for another reason. I freely admit to being an altoholic and I just play whatever character I like at the time. In other games, if I can, I will keybind skills so that similar skills are on the same key,

I wouldn't mind being able to do this as well, since I too have this tendency. But I don't mind the way things are now...provided they don't get in the habit of changing our skill orders around on a regular basis. I totally understand people being unhappy with the change they did make recently, and I would also be very unhappy if they did it to a class I played.

[Vayne]

Yep, it's Vayne here with a reality check.

While it's horribly annoying that a single incident occured where a skill was changed, and yes, it may even happen in the future, changes in MMOs are not only prevalent, but they happen all the time. The worst example of this I can think of was Rift after launch.

For months after launch, I has as much chance when I logged in of having my skill tree completely reset as I did having it stay the same. But they didn't just make a couple of minor changes and reset the skill tree. They moved things around so drastically that it no longer resembled the profession. Skills that used to unlock early on, were moved higher in the tree. Some skills were completely removed and replaced with completely different skills. I couldn't even spec the same way I did because the skills I used most didn't exist anymore at all, and the new skills were interesting, but a completely different look and feel.

Yes, I get the change was annoying but let's look at the change Fey said. Say they did change a staff skill for the elementalist. Because all the staff skills are actually different it would only affect a single attunement.

The thing is, people are still buying Guild Wars 2 and more people may buy it in the future. I'm pretty sure they don't think that the number of people playing now is going to be the most they ever have. So they have to make it as intuitive as possible for people just coming in, which means staying with the pattern they've created for every profession...that is ordering the skills by number.

And from my perspective, a guy who's played most professions but really hasn't started a guardian yet at all, and has never used a great sword, it's a boon.

Remember, even though 2 million people have tried this game, that doesn't mean 2 million people have played the guardian.

Anet has changed something they saw that wasn't working (for reasons that may or may not be correct, in a way which may or may not help) but the change of a skill on the bar, as annoying as it is, is pretty minor compared to what I've been through in other MMOs.

I do, however, agree, that people should be allowed to move skills wherever they feel like, and though I wouldn't customize the bar, I do think that more customization options would be better for the game. I can't imagine why this wasn't more of a priority to them. There may indeed be a reason but I can't think of one.