Better interface for character interactions...

One thing I would love to see is a better interface for character interactions, such as right click on a character and be presented with a radial menu with the options: Invite to Party, Whisper, Add as Friend, Ignore, Trade, Follow.
At the moment the interface for doing these things is a little clunky to say the least!

Anyone else agree?

~Shiv

I agree. I think social interaction as a whole is rather "clunky" in Guild Wars.

On the downside, your menu idea might have issues in combat and PvP due to some target functions.

Remember, that Guild Wars is a lean game compared to others you find online. It is true that much has been added to the mix since the game came out, but fundamentally it remains fairly spartan in order to reduce lag that could impact PvP/Combat and overall server performance.

As long as that menu appear ONLY in cities and outpost, the idea is great.

The right click could act differently too if used over some panels, like the Mission map.

Hi,

Good idea! I would add that having this menu from the chat window directly could also be helpful as sometimes it can be tricky to find someone in overcrowded outposts. On the other hand that may be difficult to implement, or some people may not like it?

No! There's already a fast way to do it and it's even FASTER than you're right clicks.

You just click on that guy's name in chat, ctrl + c the name from the whisper window. Then ctrl + c to your party invite/friend list/ignore list.

To follow, you just click on the guy and press space, or whatever your 'do it' function is set to. Or if the guy is not even in the screen, send a party invite, and walk around until the name becomes solid and you can click on the name and press space to walk over.

Actually it doesn't:
1st case
1.1) right click on name
1.2) move to relevant command in drop-down or radial menu
1.3) left click command

2nd case
2.1) left click on name
2.2) ctrl+c
2.3) move to relevant window
2.4) ctrl+v

(step 1.2 is a little bit faster than in 2.2, and move in 1.2 shorter than in 2.3, this is in average as it is dependent on your agility with the keyboard and mouse of course!)

It seems to me that such a feature could improve player interaction (which is good!), but it may add a little bit to the interface cluttering. It would of course require adaptation from everyone, but that's the case with any change!

How much more time does that one extra step going to take you? 2 seconds?

Besides...if you want even faster...try drag and drop.

Euhm actually... If you have to copy paste their name in your friends list... etc...
That does require them to have typed something whereas if they didn't you have to manually type in their name.
Now if it would've been that radial menu proposed by the OP then you can just do it all by a click of the mouse button.

/signed

/signed, if for no other reason that to shut lightblade down, go back to your SV thread and whine some more.

Great idea!! Without too much story telling, it would be easier than copy and paste(sometimes you have something else on that, and typing some peoples names can get highly annoying.

In adition to the OP's idea, I have one small addition, that in an oupost/town/whatever, an invitee/partymember is never grayed out. Just a small annoyance, but constantly there, you're trying to trade someone, and you're both walking around the town....

Ok, so to your first point, let's look at rough numbers (feel free to correct my guesses):
1.1=0.6
1.2=0.5
1.3=0.5
2.1=0.5
2.2=0.75
2.3=1 (I'm generous here)
2.4=0.75
So 1=1.6, 2=3, in terms of numbers we've got an improvement (let's not see the 100% improvement as a huge one, because we're below the 3s bar...).

Shall we try in terms of finger/hand movements and coordination (if we want to be accurate, I guess we shall also examine eye coordination...)?
1.1=middle finger clicks
1.2=hand moves mouse a little bit, simple wrist movement
1.3=index finger clicks
2.1=index finger clicks
2.2=little finger and then index finger of other hand
2.3=hand moves quite a lot, possibly not only wrist movement
2.4=little finger and then index finger of other hand (c and v being close it's like 2.2)
While 2 seems a better use of both hands, it requires (mentally) to change hands, which can be tricky but it's a matter of habits I guess. 1 only asks you to use the right hand, what puts less stress on your coordination abilities (this is what can be experienced with "mouse gestures" radial menues, try easyGesture with Mozilla Firefox and you'll understand the gain for your time and stress on fingers/hands). 1=2 finger uses+wrist move, 2=5 finger uses+hand move. There's also an improvement here.

Oh and to your second point, drag and drop depends on how accurate you need to be, and in many cases it will put some stress on your coordination abilities. Meaning that as a "small" feature (because it's only one part of the dozens of other interaction modalities in the GW interface I guess) it is not really worth it, unless there's going to be a lot of player interaction very often! (but then GW would be a different game I guess )

I may be wrong, because in the end keyboard/mouse use is quite subjective, habits can be difficult to "break".

/signed

I don't care how they do it, but I hope they do improve chatting options. WOW is better. It's so hard to chat in GW I ignore a lot of nice people. Vent/TS are helpful, though.