Curse

Vangor · May 16, 2005, 11:01 AM // 11:01

The biggest problems I see are often those for the HUD itself, somewhat excess, perhaps important, information is often sort of placed aside, and it would become more helpful.

Arrows of Health Degeneration - Place these, in much smaller forms, on the health bars of party members near the top of their health ranging from 1-3 arrows pointing either of course for regeneration, or degeneration. 1 would represent 1-2-3, 2 would be 4-5-6, and 3 is 7-8-9, this would just help to see at a glance how fast health is dropping, since it is I believe 2 health every second, and would be nice to know they aren't wasting a healing breeze on someone with 1 arrow. Just a more efficient use of keeping people alive.

Energy Levels - Because these remain rather constant, arrows aren't exactly necessary, however, level of energy would be helpful, represented by a small blue line just beneath their health. Just nice to know when people have energy or do not, you never know all the spells they are using, what they may need to cast before next battle, a nd it at least lets you be prepared if you know the elementalist dumps all of his energy to kill em and right now has about 20.

Conditions - Read these out to the side grouped as conditions, hexes, and incurable effects such as death penalty, world conditions, spectral agony, so on. These would be rather small squares of course representing the icon which can be stacked 2 high and say 5 long, in the unlikely event (though I've had about 10 a few times) it goes over, incurable effects are temporarily overwritten on that display.

Class Colors - While people have suggested coloring every person's name, I'm moreso suggesting representation of dots on the minimap and their target selections with pinging the map based on class, since it is unlikely you'll ever really have more than 3 for a team of 8, it at least gives you a decent showing. This would perhaps be identified on the player's name itself in the party screen, not the health bar as a few have suggested as this could lead to conflicts with mesmers being purple and necromancers being a sickly green (note the color of their skills, boss auras, and most effects)

Party Arrows - Of course people have noted this one, these would remain with the above class color scheme, be subject to highlighting similar to clicking a party's name, but have a different look from quest icons, such as a more angular arrow rather than broad, with the quest arrow getting precedence so you can still tell it if people have spread.

Resurrection Notification and Automatic Announcement - First is just announcement, a few people don't tend to notice others ressing certain people, and only henchmen stand right over their corpse (unless you have that touch one, which it seems people have rebirth instead now for obvious reasons), this would be automatic such as selecting a target, so people that do not press ctrl or do not realize you can, still notify. As well, resurrection notification, including henchmen for the team leader, I am getting sick of getting down to one person, especially a henchmen, who decides to resurrect me, and all I do is spawn into the middle of a killing field, so I lose another 15%. Or someone with a signet from the henchmen ressing the healer and now they are down another 15%, even worse. Plus, would mean people can't res me in the midst of 8 lava spitters, or if they do I can tell them to move away before I get up and have to die twenty steps closer. Rebirth will work only on the point of cast so no exploitation there, just offers a bit more security in saying yay or nay.

Targetting While Dead - This is annoying to die and be unable to call targets still, it says "I am targetting XXXXX" however, it isn't a press T to target or an icon on the party screen, so really it is ineffective, and means that if your target caller dies, then you often get anarchy of a few people stepping up and dividing the team, or no one doing so and just hacking at their own things. Would be helpful if a dead person can still call targets, means there is never that kind of confusion, and they can get a decent overview besides while others may be unable.

Color Fade - This is on the terms of conditions, colors fading into one another as their timer begins to run out, and slowly turns into the next ranking color, or back to red. Means you have the sickly green of poison over 16 seconds and bleeding over say 21, at 13 green begins to fade into the pink and then fades completely, then at 18 the pink begins to darken into the red of the health bar. Nice to know so you don't blow a purge condition on a poison that had 2 seconds left just because you can't pay attention to everyone's time of poisoning.

Most or all of the options should feature enabled/disabled options, alot of people may not care or may have no use for knowing conditions of a person, or infact enabling certain types, such as hexes, conditions or merely world effects, and even buffs, though there are alot of unseen options to many of the things above, so it would take some working on.