Broken character creation menu and substitute players

Two issues... the character creation menu and substitute players.

I thought the new character creation windows were supposed to allow you to see and pick your choises directly instead of scrolling through selections. Well, now that advantage has been completely removed by having to constantly scroll your mouse around ontop of the windows before you even get to see what you can select. While it's a fancy effect and everything, it _gets in the way_. Usability before fancy effects, thank you. Also the same applies to the fact that you can not directly see what changes your items make to your attribute points, when the window is faded out. Misaligning the character color selection windows only slows down the character creation, too. The way the character creation menu is set up now can only be characterized as broken usability wise.

I've brought up the other issue twice before now, and it's received support on the forums too. But still nothing has been done about the fact that when you receive a substitute player on random/team arenas, they get put in as the leader. A completely random player drops out of nowhere, after you've played half an hour with the same group and someone has to leave, and they get put in as the leader ? More than once I've had the beforementioned happen and the substitute player just goes directly straight in again without a clue even though the others might want to change their skills and what not. In the future, finally, kindly put the substitute players to the very last slot, instead of the leader spot.

Comments or /signed appreciated, let's keep this thread up and get these things fixed as soon as possible.

- KanRyu

WOW I completely agree. This is definitely a MUST DO. Should have been implemented a long time ago (second part). As for the first part, I think they tried to fix something that wasn't broken and ended up making it worse. Definitely have to agree again. It's completely horrible now and a pain in the ass.

Edit: read that wrong I think. I think I got it this time.
Well with only six proffesions it isnt that hard to remember what picture goes to what class. Or you could just look at the picture and see what class it resembles.

Wow chaos dragoon, work on that English class, I think google has a translator, you might want to try that out. Or www.worldlingo.com translates stuff also.

Actually what I'm referring to is the fact that they hide information for no purpose, that could be used to make selections more quickly. For example in the character appearance menu you only see the 'face' window if you have your mouse over it and all the others are faded out for no reason. Now you have to move your mouse over to the other windows and wait for them to unfade before you even see what there is to choose from, while if you saw all the time what is available you could just click on your choises. Which I thought was the purpose of the whole initial change in the interface in the first place, but this new fading windows thing makes it completely pointless. Same annoyance is there with the attribute point display as well, and you have to constantly mouse back and forth to check what the attributes added up to again.

- KanRyu

Isn't anyone else actually interested in showing support for getting these actual problems with Guild Wars fixed ? Theres plenty of views on the thread but no replies.. I'd hate to see the substitute player problem still remain after the third time I've brought it up, since it's such a simple thing to fix too. As well as anyone who needs to reroll their PvP characters quickly for Heroes Ascent and what not, I'd imagine would like the character creation to be as streamlined as possible. Maybe I should just about post more controversial issues alongside the posts to get some conversation going :/ If you are worried about posting just to agree.. well, that's exactly what's needed to keep this thread and issue up in the eyes of the devs.

On a side note, is it just my computer, or does anyone elses computer pause for a good while when you enter the character creation screen, as well as when clicking to select your character classes ?

- KanRyu

My suggestion: make an option to use the old style or the new, or select placement, fade out/not etc. Just like the HUD.

I have no problem with the new character creation screen and quite like it.

So you have to hover over the box to make the selection area appear? Forgive me, but so what? It is much better than the style when I started playing, not seeing the full face or feature selection at a glance and clicking through those arrows. Never knowing how many faces there were and ending up in a loop and counting how many from one you kind of liked to see what else was there.

Part of keeping a game like this fresh and appealing is adding new features, which may seem, and which probably are just fluff. As long as it doesn't pull away from functionality, it works. Seriously, how much longer does it take you to make a character because the stuff is hidden until you hover over? Even if it were always visible, it is too small to really know unless you click on them anyway.

Er, yes. The system was nicer in that regard indeed now, and that is what I thought the original update was for. But if you try creating a new character now, you'll see that you won't actually see those things at a glance anymore. They're hiding the windows now until you move your mouse over it, that is the latest change and the issue I am bringing up here.

Well, unfortunately this current update does exactly that. It takes away from the functionality. Theres no reason to hide the little pictures at all before you hover your mouse over the selection window. True it does not cause a huge impact, but it is an extra annoyance you have to go through every time for no real reason. That is exactly what good UI design attempts to avoid. And as for me at least, they were not too small to click on directly, knowing what the end result would be, though admittedly I can see that problem happening with certain monitors/resolutions.

- KanRyu

These are not problems.
A problem is when something is broken/does not work/gives an error message.

Your post is just an opinion, you do not like the current character creation while others like it.

Sorry, but it does nothing to affect the functionality. The purpose of that screen is to be able to pick the components with your mouse. Does that work? Yes. It is functional. The rest is purely cosmetic/asthetic.

As someone who works with these issues day in and day out, I can reasonably understand their thought process, whether I agree with them or not.

Questions they likely asked themselves:
1. Can the screen be made to be more dynamic, thus making it appear more "high tech"? Yes we can add little hover over dropdowns.
2. Is that important? Yes to keep it visually appealing, and less cluttered.
3. Is that significant change worth our time? Apparently the answer was that it was worth the time.
4. Does it cause significant inconvenience to the user? No, not significant.
5. Is the level of inconvenience high enough to outweigh the asthetic? Their answer is obviously no.

One rule of UI design, and in fact life, is that you can't make everyone happy. The trick is finding the balance to make as few people unhappy as possible while maintaining functionality and appealing design.

You apparently fall into the unhappy camp, I do not.

since it is working fine and i like it there is no problem to be fixed

Just because something doesn't fail completely, it doesn't mean that there isn't a problem. A problem is something that causes trouble, I feel that these things fall quite well under that definition. Also, practically everything is an opinion, stating that on it's own doesn't mean anything.

Hmm, you feel that the new changes to the character creation are an improvement ? The hiding of information and so ? If so, that is quite fine. But I would also like to hear some base for that argument, these posts are here after all to get something done/get some conversation going on about the issues.

Maybe saying 'broken' may be a little sharp statement, true, but I do indeed feel that in the functionality regard the hiding in the UI does indeed cause unneeded inconvenience. As far as user interfaces go, in a sense that is indeed 'broken'.

Also you refer to both of these things. Do you indeed feel that it is a smart way for Guild Wars to work to drop in a completely random substitute player as the leader of a group that's been fighting together for who knows how long ? A person who has already spent time in the group should instead be assigned/kept as the leader, by logic.

- KanRyu

There are things beyond black and white, as well. Functionality is not just a on/off switch of if something works or not. While you can cut with dull tools, a quicker and a better end result is achieved by sharp ones. Cosmetic and aesthetic are in specific graphical, how something looks like, say decorations or the graphics. When you actually change how something works though, say hiding information and requiring an action from the user to access it, that becomes a matter of functionality.

A design should never be something that is apart from it's users. I need to use this interface, and as such I also can comment on it. Do not speak for the developers, when you can not for sure know their minds and if they have considered these things, that is why I am bringing up the issue. As for the significance of inconvenience, that is an issue personal to everyone. Clearly for me this has been inconvenient enough to make me take my time and post of the subject on multiple forums and make a suggestion to remove the fade effect. Maybe the question you need to ask yourself is that do you in specific feel that it should not be removed/made optional ? And if so, why not ? The devs have not answered yet, so do not presume. If you have worked with UI design and so yourself, you should well know that you can not always consider all the implications when making a change.

True, I'm glad if you are happy with how it is now then. Do you personally actually have a reason to feel why a change I have suggested should not be made, though ? Since the fact remains that I am not.

I am also someone who has worked a fair bit with user interfaces and alike, designing and implementing them. I personally tend to be of the 'camp' that functionality should go before eyecandy. Certainly the eyecandy can be nice for the first time, but after that point it has been seen and you are stuck with it.

- KanRyu