Feedback:User/Morgaine

This is the personal suggestion homepage for Morgaine.

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My suggestions
No suggestions yet. Will read other people's suggestions first, as per rules.

Issues for future suggestions
The following list highlights some problems, solutions, or issues which interest me. One day, one or more of these may lead to proper suggestions being written up. Anyone reading this should feel free to take anything from this list as input to their own suggestions. Please let me know if you do this so that I can provide you with feedback and support your suggestion.

PvE/PvP skills toggle

 * Provide a PvE/PvP toggle button somewhere on the UI to allow a user to choose whether to see the PvE or PvP versions of skills. The setting of this button should affect all skills displayed in the skills window, in all player and hero skill bars, and in skill monitor windows.  The current situation in which PvE players are hampered when creating builds while relaxing in their guild hall because the PvP versions of skills are displayed is most unsatisfactory.

Make 'Sell' the default tab at Merchants

 * Players sell drops to Merchants  vastly  more often than they buy. Why then does everybody have to make that extra click to switch the Merchant window from Buy to Sell?  For improved user-friendliness, I recommend that Sell be made the default tab.

Death Penalty rate limit

 * Limit the rate at which a player or hero/henchman can incur Death Penalty within a single encounter. Because foes in GW target monks preferentially, it sometimes happens that a monk ally emerges from a single battle with 45% or 60% DP while everyone else is fine.  This is excessive because of the long period of recovery from such huge DP.  I suggest that DP be limited to 15% per foe group, or 30% at most, or perhaps 15% DP every 5 minutes maximum.  There really isn't any game merit in making the penalty on death harsher than this in a game which is intended to be fun.

Add campaign maps to the Travel boat menu

 * To the menu available from the Travel boat icon in the M world map, which currently has a single section labeled "Ports:", add a new section labelled "Maps:", and within this new section add 3 entries: Map of Tyria, Map of Cantha, and Map of Elona.  This would allow people to map-travel directly from wherever they happen to be.

Revise Embark Beach

 * Embark Beach is a total failure:
 * Its new functionality could have been provided without creating a new zone at all, namely by adding Zaishen Vanquish as a 4th quest signpost in the Great Temple of Balthazar.


 * The Travel NPCs in Embark Beach are a catastrophe, requiring extra running within an outpost that is inevitably laggy owing to player numbers, and the whole bad situation is made worse by the 4 NPCs being distant from each other instead of side by side. The selection of transport destinations offered by the Travel NPCs is a catastrophe too, replacing the delightfully friendly map travel by what is effectively an extremely unfriendly, multi-level in-world UI.  What's more, only a limited selection of destinations is offered, and very often the outpost most appropriate for gathering a ZV team is not offered because it is not a mission town.  As a Human Interface, it is hard to imagine a worse design, requiring multiple steps to achieve a very elementary function, and it contrasts very badly with GW's friendly map travel.  The Travel agents are truly a total design failure, and if this were not a public wiki I would put this even more harshly.  No, just no.  This is the opposite of player-friendly design.


 * To make the situation with Travel NPCs even worse, the Embark Beach area seems to have been designed for maximum annoyance with its convoluted layout, making it very hard to discern where you are when you teleport in to some random part of it. It's not quite as appalling as Gate of Anguish in that respect, but it does seem to inherit the same desire to confuse.  Why do towns have to be designed as puzzles?  Aren't town designs vetted for usability?  Towns should be designed to be helpful for players, not as exhibits of developer ingenuity nor for maximizing player suffering.


 * I know that any suggestion of this type would be rejected, but I would recommend swallowing one's pride, moving the ZV signpost to GToB, and withdrawing Embark Beach entirely. Since that will not happen because designers don't like being seen to be wrong, I offer the more political suggestion of replicating the ZV signpost in GToB, deleting the Travel NPCs from Embark Beach, and adding menu entries for maps of Tyria, Cantha and Elona to the Travel boat menu as described in the previous section, thus allowing people to map-travel directly.


 * To try to end this section on a positive note, Zaishen Vanquish is an excellent new quest line. It was virtually impossible to find help for VQ before, so this is a huge help for players who do not have a good set of heroes or prefer not to use them.

Trade window width controls

 * The 7-slot width of the Trade window has always been an unfriendly size owing to its mismatch with the inventory row width of 5. I suggest that the Trade window be given four radio buttons labeled 5, 10, 15 and 20, which expand the Trade window to the appropriate size for both participants.

Multiple selection from inventory for Trade

 * Allow multi-select from inventory so that any number of items can be placed in the Trade window in a single operation.

Extend the Quests window

 * What I've always felt was missing from the Quests window is a full list of quests per campaign. After doing all campaigns and all expansions on every profession, I like to complete every last quest too, but it is quite impossible to keep a tally of which quests you've done and which you haven't done on each character.


 * Perhaps two new folders could be integrated into the quest window? Something like:
 * Completed Quests -- quests which this character has completed
 * Unknown Quests -- quests not yet obtained on this character


 * Clicking on a quest in the Completed Quests list could show you the last state of the quest info, with all sections crossed out to show completion as usual. Clicking on a quest in the Unknown Quests window could just give the name of the campaign, zone, and quest giver.


 * I previously mentioned this kind of enhancement for the Quest window on TEF's Quest Log 2.0 page.

Remove unecessary restrictions on equipment packs

 * Remove the restriction on types of items that can be held in equipment packs. It serves no gaming purpose, and just adds an unnecessary annoyance.

Revise Summoning Sickness in Pre-Searing -- DONE!

 * Remove the 60-minute Summoning Sickness from Igneous Summoning Stone, at least in Pre-Searing. It's hard to see the gaming benefit of such a huge cooldown period.  Neither waiting out the 60 minutes nor exiting to start from scratch are player-friendly options.  If some penalty for getting your impy killed is felt to be in order, then just trigger a short (5 mins?) Summoning Sickness when impy dies, as a period of mourning. ;-)
 * Yay! GW devs did this of their own accord in the 5th May 2011 Update, reducing the duration of the sickness to 10 mins everywhere, not just in Pre-Searing.  Well done guys+gals! :-)

Remove irritating UI pop-up

 * Add a "Do not notify me of this again" button to the popup window that says "You are repeatedly ordering your character to attack, when it is unnecessary to do so.". The GW UI has no visible indicator that Attack is enabled (other than in-world animation), nor is there any indicator of which target you are currently attacking (you may be attacking one foe while another is being targetted), so it is no surprise when players develop a repeat-attack technique to remove the ambiguities.  It is extraordinarily irritating to receive a message about attack repetition being used when the UI's missing indicators are the actual cause of this mode of play.

Fix indirect path discovery faults in EotN towns

 * Enable or fix the inoperative indirect path discovery for click-running to trader NPCs in Rata Sum and other EotN towns, especially Asura and Norn. (It's working correctly in Vanguard towns.)  Pathing to the new Zaishen Scout NPC works fine everywhere, and it has always worked everywhere for quest NPCs like Yulma and Lexx and for the Xunlai Chest too, so the lack of indirect path discovery for the original Asura/Norn trader NPCs like the Merchants and Dye Trader was probably just an accidental omission.  Error in town configs?  I bet different developers configured different towns, and this wasn't checked in overall QA.


 * To reproduce the indirect path discovery fault: Go to an affected town, like Rata Sum, and locate a Merchant.  Then find a rock or stairs or other obstacle, and place yourself so that the obstacle is between you and the Merchant.  Then locate the Merchant's tag again using the Alt key, and click on it.  You will run directly at the obstacle and get stuck there, instead of an indirect path being discovered to take you to the Merchant.  As a control experiment, do the same with the Xunlai Chest as target destination, which always works correctly.

Allow skills re-ordering at all times

 * Let skills be re-ordered on the skills bar when in a fighting zone. This needn't affect zone entry config, which can remain efficiently invariant.  The re-ordering can be a client-side effect only, still sending the same events to the server.  This would improve user-friendliness of the UI, as it is rather common to wish that a different order of skills had been chosen when in town.

Reward playing multiple professions

 * It is peculiar that that there are so many rewards in GW for "silly" pastimes like Drunkard etc, yet one of the most important activities in the game is not rewarded at all: playing more than one profession to completion.  It is important because it broadens your knowledge of skills and gives you insight into how each profession really works, and so it makes you a better player.  The Protector and Guardian titles already reward playing a single profession to completion, but each of those titles should really just be the starting point, 1/10 in a corresponding title line spanning all professions.  Possible title names:  Supreme Protector (achieved 3-campaign Protector title in 10/10 professions), and Supreme Guardian in Hard Mode.

Add position coordinates within each instance

 * It is very useful for many reasons to know exactly where you are in a map, as an x,y,z coordinate. It greatly improves the ability to document anything related to placement, including positions of NPCs and especially features that are not marked on the radar. Mapping out some multi-level zones like Wajjun Bazaar is especially difficult when you don't know your z-coordinate (height).  For simplicity, the 0,0,0 origin should be entirely outside the instance map, the '0' value never being reachable on any axis --- this ensures that all coordinates use positive numbers only.


 * Implementation: The GW servers and the client almost certainly already know the character's position in the current instance as a coordinate.  All that's required therefore is to display the current x,y,z values somewhere in the UI, for example on both the 'U' map and the radar.

Allow Guild Hall owners to move service NPCs

 * It is one of the worst aspects of towns in GW that the Merchant and Xunlai Chest have often been placed far apart or even at opposite ends of the district, seemingly to maximize player annoyance. While it's too late to do anything about public game towns now, the Guild Halls would increase significantly in user friendliness if their owners were allowed to move the hall's service NPCs around from their default locations.  This could be achieved in a number of ways, perhaps using a "Start/Stop follow" method, or even better a "Click on ground and I will move to that position" approach.  To avoid extra work on the NPC touch response, this movement mode could be started and stopped using comandline words similar to emotes, for example "/npc-move-start " and "/npc-move-stop ", or alternatively just "/npc-move-start" and "/npc-move-stop" without a name, but followed by a single click on the desired NPC to select it.  If such a mechanism were provided, I bet that the VAST majority of Guild Hall owners would place the Merchant and Xunlai Chest right next to each other.  It would be such an obvious improvement to the existing situation.

Add "Percentage Zone Explored" to zones

 * Cartography is painful enough without the added hardship of uncertainty. I think it would be a good idea to remove the uncertainty factor by providing a Percentage Zone Explored value somewhere, for example in the "U" Mission Map title line.  Any other value which corresponds to the amount of map uncovered would be equally suitable (eg. something related to acreage), as the GW community wikis would soon provide tables listing the maximum value found for each zone.  I obtained the Legendary Cartographer title a long time ago, but I still remember the hardship, and anything that reduces it for players would be worthwhile, making the game more fun by providing better information.  While I hear that there is some kind of add-on program to assist with Cartography these days, it should not be necessary for players to run the risk of using 3rd party software to achieve this hard title.  It would help immensely if the game itself let us know how much of the current zone's map is uncovered.

Anchor the poor disoriented heroes/henchmen

 * When a team of heroes and/or henchmen is flagged half a radar's distance or more away from their leader, and then the flag is removed, they scatter in random directions like headless chicken, sometimes finding their way to their leader and sometimes going right off the radar entirely. This behaviour is very different to that observed when you simply replant the team flag at your feet,which leads them to your position directly.  The difference between these two behaviors is unnecessary, and annoying, and requires you to replant the team flag (after swearing) so that the ones which headed off into the sunset can find their way back to you.  I suggest that removal of the team flag be made equivalent to planting it at your feet when an H/H is distant from you, and equivalent to no flag at all only when they each come within agro circle distance of their leader.

Remove H/H flags from non-UI screenshots

 * When you use Shift-PrintScreen to capture the screen without UI adornments, any hero or henchmen flags that you have placed are displayed in the image as well, which ruins any attempt at composing a nice picture. They shouldn't be rendered in this "just the clean view" capture mode.

Address the worst cases of hero dumbness

 * We don't expect AI miracles from heroes, and even less brilliant tactics. However, it is reasonable to expect that the worst cases of utter stupidity could be avoided, because they create annoyance in the game.  At least three come to mind at present:
 * When a hero has Frozen Soil on her skills bar, she should not recast it when one or more team members are dead. Who's side is she on anyway, the foes'?
 * When a charmable animal of very low level agros and attacks the team, the heroes should not open up their entire arsenal and vaporize it, wasting their long cycle-time power nukes and delaying the gameplay until they have recovered. A good strategy for the hero AI to use might be "If a foe is 15 levels or more below that of the hero, use only plain weapon attacks on it."
 * A Minion Master hero should instantly sense when his team gains agro and send his minions into battle. It is infuriating when the MM continues to blindly nurse his minions out of range of the foes, totally oblivious to the team getting slaughtered because of his absence.  This should not require micro-managing by the player.  If all members of a foe group can instantly sense agro, why can't our MM hero too?  Who's side is he on anyway, the foes'?  (This wasn't a problem until the dreadful update that made MM heros move away from the rest of the team.)

Show the ranger pet's experience bar

 * The heading says it all. When leveling a pet, it's very annoying to not see its experience bar because there is no feedback for the progress being made.  The grind itself is a bad experience (like all grinding), but not seeing the bar grow as a small reward just makes it worse.  It can disappear again at level 20.

Don't lose map travel paths on reconnect

 * Currently the character's red dotted travel path on the mission and world maps disappears when you suffer a disconnection and then reconnect. This is very unfriendly, particularly when trying to do cartography or vanquishing the area.  I suggest recording the dot positions locally on the client computer, and remarking the maps with this data after reconnection.

Allow the Mission Map to be saved

 * It would be very useful to be able to save the mission map with its red dotted travel paths as an image file on the client machine, for future reference by all characters on the account.

Don't forget mapped areas of underground maps

 * Having to rediscover the map details of caves, dungeons and other underground areas each time that you visit them serves no gaming purpose whatsoever and is annoying, to the detriment of the game. Since these areas do not contribute to cartography, there may be no history stored server-side to implement this, but if this is the case then at least record the data client-side.  This is good enough, as those who value that map information will look after it.

Misc Notes

 * I'm loving the 7-hero update! This gives me many months of extra tinkering to find new 7-hero teams with the maximum synergy between them.  Great stuff! :-)