Screenshot Exposition Forum Rules - PLEASE READ before POSTING ANYTHING!User notes will be added against you if you don't follow these rules! No exceptions!
Repeat offenders will be banned without warning!
The 3 Strikes System:
If any of the rules detailed below are broken, you will receive a user note and a strike against your forum account. The system works like this:
1. 1st Strike - A warning will be given via a public thread warning and / or a PM will be sent. If necessary a mod will also close or soft-delete the offending post or thread.
2. 2nd Strike - An additional warning will be sent via PM, this is a final warning. If necessary a mod will also close or soft-delete the offending post or thread.
3. 3rd Strike - 1-3 Day Ban will be given without warning
4. All Further Strikes - Will simply result in additional bans without warning with increasingly longer banning lenghts.
All incidents are documented! So don't think your not being watched and can get away with rule breaking.
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General Guidelines - Covers all Images and Posts:
* No character names can be displayed in any posted images, unless permission is given, or it's your own character(s).
* Swearing in images are not allowed, so please make sure to censor them before posting. The whole word must be censored, not just part of it. So filtering out one or two characters is not enough!
* All posts are subject to the rules of the Guild Wars Guru forum guidelines.
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Image Posting: Second most violated rule, so read carefully!
* All posted images must be no larger then 800 x 600 in size and no larger then 600KB in file size. This size still allows plenty of quality to be shown. If your image is larger then this, then please do the following before posting:
* Please convert all images to .jpeg whenever possible.
* Images larger then 800 x 600 will be deleted or converted to URLs.
* Images that are over 600KB in size will be converted to URL links or deleted.
* Thumbnails, such as the ones provided by ImageShack are recommended for all images as they keep loading times down.
* Finally do not repost old images! This includes:
* Reposting images from older closed threads.
* Reposting images that were posted in the existing thread, but some time ago.
Exceptions:
* Images posted in the "Show off your Titles in Progress" threads are allow to exceed the height limit of 600, but not the width.
* Images posted in the "Show off your Ranger, Monk, etc..." threads are sometimes allow to exceed the height limit of 600, but not always.
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Chatting and +1 post counts within Threads - IS NOT ALLOWED!:
* This is a forum, not a chat room! So don't threat it as such. This concerns spamming in particular! (See below)
* Please don't use threads as a kind of chat-room. If you wish to discuss random stuff that has nothing to do with the thread in question, then please use forum PMs, e-mail or chat in-game if you must. Not within the thread.
* Random pointless chatting, 1+ post count crap and other spam will be deleted.
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Replying to Posts: Currently the most violated rule - So read carefully!
* Please keep all replies tasteful. Swearing, flaming, crude comments and pointless comments will not be tolerated! Insulting people's builds is a good example, don't do it!
* +1 post count spam is not encouraged! Mods daily find themselves deleting this kind of spam and crap from a number of the Screenshot threads. The "Post your Character" threads in particular. The following clearly explains the differences between a worthwhile reply and spam/+1 posts:
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Spamming:
The GWG forum rules on spamming are very clear:
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Screenshot Requests within Threads:
* Please don't request screenshots within threads on this forum. We however have a request sub-forum for that here:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/f...play.php?f=245
* Please discuss the thread topic by all means, but requests for screenshots should be made in the forum above.
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Reporting Spam and other Rule Breaking:
If you see a rule-breaker, don't hesitate to use the report feature located at the bottom left of each post.
A mod will deal with the problem as soon as possible.
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Closing Large Threads:
Similar to the Off-topic forum, mods will close any large screenshot threads such as the "Post Your ____ threads" and recreate them from scratch after 1000 posts have been reached.
Older threads are then added to the archive list stickied at the top of the forum. The new threads are also added to the popular threads list to replace their older counterparts.
The list can be found here: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10004018 As most of you know, you can customize the GUI and key commands for Guild Wars in a few easy steps (for those of you who don't know, you can customize things through the customize option in your menu and change your shortcuts through the options menu.) and that gives each of us an incredible ability to organize the critical information being displayed to us for the best effect. The interface is how we interact with the game and using it effectively can give you a significant advantage. Laying things out well and getting an input scheme that's comfortable means that you'll be better able to manage the information going to and from the game. The question, though, is just what's the best way to do so?
So, I'm curious as to what sort of customizations people use. Do you change your setup depending on where you are? Or d you have a favorite setup that you change to as soon as you can?
Personally, I've been fiddling with things to figure out a good way of going about things. There are a few things I always like to do.
First, I want to centralize all my information so that I don't have to keep glancing around for important things. In PvE, I like to set my XP bar right next to my health and energy, in PvP I don't care about it so I don't. Those I usually set to the left hand side of the screen and make a bit larger to ease clicking on them rapidly. I'm left-handed and I use an inverted mouse scheme (ie I click with my left hand) so when I'm using a mouse it tends to gravitate back to the left side of the screen meaning I have further to move to click. Then, I put the enchantments/hexes/conditions box next to the party health bars so that they're a lot easier to see. Since I tend to play a healer a lot that makes it a snap to see if I've got something nasty on my character as I'm trying to keep my party alive but it's also a lot more central to the screen and lets me see them easier. I usually shift those down a bit and move the mini-map up to the right hand corner of the screen and set the chat box opposit it along the top of the screen too. I do that because, visually, it's a lot easier to notice things below your line of vision than it is above them. By setting those on the top while looking at them I'm getting a glimpse at the field of play and everything else at the same time but they're also not crucial and can be cut from my field of view when I don't need them. Finally, I move the target health and skill display to somewhere near the mini-map just above the party health, as well, letting me get a view of what's going on all at once. The basic idea is to organize things by keeping the things I use a lot close together, especially if their function is related and to leave a nice large view of things in the middle of my screen so I can watch a battle as it unfold. I also tend to zoom out as far as possible to get as much perspective on things as I can.
As for customizing my hotkeys, I use the WASD movement scheme for the most part so I like to set my commands up in a ring around my movement keys, especially my skills. I leave the first 4~5 skill hotkeys mapped to the numbers but I shift the rest to, say the T,G, and B keys so I can reach them easily as I move. That means I have to reassign some other hotkeys like opening up the guild tab but that's not a big deal compared to being able to easily reach my skill buttons. As I said, I like to play a healer, so I map the party selection function (normally these don't have a hotkey) to my numpad. I'm used to using a phone so I map the first party member to the first key on the pad, '7', the second to '8', the fourth to '4', the eighth to '2' and so on, letting me swap back and forth easily. I use numpad '3' for the "go back to previous target" command and '0' for self-target. As it's a bit of a pain to switch that all around, I tend to keep that layout even when I'm not a healer so I map a lot of the targeting functions to keys around the numpad, too.
Again, the goal is to keep similar functions closer together to make them easier to use. It's something that works for me and might not necessarily work for you, but it's the sort of thinking and planning you'll need to do to carve that little edge out of your interface. That's me, anyway, what about you?
