Curse

Pooper · Oct 01, 2007, 09:51 PM // 21:51

A request to the developers, please add additional hotkeys.

I cannot stress enough how the following two changes would improve hero control and game types like Hero Battles:
1) Ability to hotkey hero skills (e.g. CTRL-1 for hero 1, skill 1 or ALT-3 for hero 2, skill 3, etc.)
2) Ability to queue hero skills in the same manner as a player's skillbar
3) Ability to have a hero weapon switch

There are several other long standing omissions relating to targetting which are somewhat cumbersome to work around and hotkeys would help a great deal:
1) Target enemy party member #1, #2, etc.
(more accurately, for multiple enemy teams or in PvE, it's actually: target enemy party 1, 1st member or enemy party 2, 3rd member, etc.)
2) Target ally #1's current target, ally #2's current target, (e.g. make my target whatever ally #1's target is)
3) Cycle allied spirits, cycle enemy spirits
4) Cycle allied minions, cycle enemy minions

The benefits of these additional hotkeys should be self evident, but in particular I would contend that heroes and Hero Battles specifically suffer from the poor ability to control heroes. While improved AI seems to be a recurring feature request, I believe simply allowing the player to have more precise control of their heroes circumvents the problem of continually adding to AI which can never reasonably be expected to run every conceivable build properly. Instead, give control to the player who can then create and run whatever build their creativity and skill for executing will allow.

In a large sense, I don't understand how hero controls have languished this long since the idea of sequentially executing skills is so pervasive and fundamental to the design of the game that an entire class was even designed around chaining attack skills together, let alone the numerous other examples in other classes of: apply a condition/hex/state->use another skill dependent on that condition/hex/state. Currently, clicking on hero skillbars to do this is a very hit-or-miss affair, hoping the hero doesn't start executing another skill between the time you click on the first and the second, thereby wasting energy and time or missing out on windows of opportunity like doing something which requires knockdown, or making sure a cover hex is applied immediately after the first hex, etc. There are many, many, other reasons why my first two requests (hero hotkeys, skill queueing) would be a good thing, and I hope the developers take the time to implement it.

The non-hero related hotkeys are ones which would do much to alleviate the clumsiness of very standard usage patterns like hex/blind/whatever one guy, then go back to attacking/damaging another guy. Currently, and really for the entire release of the game, you just end up spending a lot of time tabbing and CTRL-tabbing to reacquire the target you just had before you had to switch off to do something else. Having one called target doesn't address the issue completely since the target caller can't switch targets himself without losing the called target for the entire party. Using the mouse to click targets is again a clumsy task especially when there are lots of other things on the screen like minions, spirits, pets, etc. It's a game of holding down CTRL and madly trying to click on the little text names before they reshuffle over each other.

I think these additions (outside of perhaps queueing hero skills) would be relatively straightforward to implement and only require a relatively small amount of developer time. Please consider implementing them for us, ArenaNet.

Age · Oct 01, 2007, 10:39 PM // 22:39

Minions yes Heros no...

tekenden · Oct 02, 2007, 05:12 AM // 05:12

I would have to agree with what is being said here. When in a large scale battle, it is very hard to find the same target while trying to watch whatelse is going on around you. Lots of battles are won with the ability to switch targets and syncronize attacks when needed. This applies to hero battles too...if your monk isn't healing the right person and you need to assist the AI...then instead of a bunch of clicking...it would be easier to hit a few keys. Or if you're going to spike something, and your timing is off by having to switch between heros and clicking their spells, then you've screwed up and have allowed the enemy time to react and possibly counter. I may not be a Guildwars know-it-all like some people...but i know the basics and this would greatly increase peoples chances of survival amongst the (game)world.

LONGA · Oct 02, 2007, 06:44 AM // 06:44

I would like a system that work like call target but only work for yourself.