Vidar Anahdi
21-04-2008, 21:49
I've been wondering what kind of interface changes might come with GW2. I'm pretty much okay with most of the GUI, but there is one part of the interface that I really miss from the old MUD's or other MMO's that offer more robust slash commands.
Anyone who's played the old text-only MUD's will remember that everything you did with your character was done by way of the keyboard. Now, for a modern MMO with a GUI, this isn't necessarily exclusive, but there are still a lot of very useful commands that I think should be included.
Emotes:
Right now there are a good number of decent emotes in GW, but I think that it'd be nice if GW2 included a few more just for entertainment value. I see a lot of people using the chat to do things like "blush," "cry," etc, that don't exist as regular emotes. Some of these might be fun for more of a role playing experience if they were animated emotes, but there's a certain balance of what's necessary and not. /spit is one that I've never liked. Still, there's also the option of the old universal /em or /me emote which would take any bit of text that followed the emote and turn it into the character's emote.
/em picks his nose, pondering the situation, only to find there's no more gold up there than in this dungeon.
... /em or /me being replaced by the character's name, so it'd appear as ...
Vidar picks his nose, pondering the situation, only to find there's no more gold up there than in this dungeon.
... in chat. Of course it's fun and entertaining for creative types, but can be abused, just like anything, but there's already a profanity filter, and the option for turning off the emotes channel.
Searches:
My most coveted and missed command from GW is /who. I think that the search function is seriously lacking in GW, and I'd love to see it improved in GW2. A robust /who command could bring about all sorts of results, and it's not like the information isn't available, and could be presented in the Party Search window dialog.
Being able to search by guild, profession, class, location, or whatever is wildly useful. If you get the hang of it, it becomes so incredibly valuable that when it's not there it's like not having arms.
/who -G DVDF
... for example, would return a list of every player online who's in the guild DVDF.
The /who command flags, the -G or -P, or whatever would have to be determined by what was feasible depending on the game network. For example, would it make more sense to search for players online across any district, or just who's in the current district or region? From my understanding, GW2 will have a more persistent world, so this could be very useful. You could be hanging out at Umbral Grotto, trying to find that last monk you need for your Slaver's Exile, and do ...
/who -P Monk
... listing all the monks online. You may recognize a name of a Monk that did a decent job with on that last HM venture into UW, but you didn't add them to your Friend's List, so you send them a quick tell to see if they're busy and are interested in joining your group for Slaver's. Maybe they remember you too, and aren't busy. It's quicker than sitting in Umbral for an hour spamming the local chat, hoping that someone will respond.
Extending the /who command to a more robust GUI might also be more useful. The party search interface could cross districts, zones, and towns, so that you could be in Ascalon and looking at the Party Search dialog which would report what groups are looking for types of members, but that gets into more robust GUI discussion. Beginning with a decent /who command, though, I think would be invaluable for GW2.
The options are many, but a few ideas might be...
-P for profession
-G for guild
-D district, o
-Z for zone
It could include level ranges ...
"10-15"
... would return anyone between the levels of 10 and 15, which might be useful if there's a different level cap for GW2. Do you need someone with the skills in the level 100-120 range? It could be indicative of their skills in the game overall.
/who -P Monk 150-160
... returns Monks online who are between levels 150 and 160.
DND and AFK:
A couple other quickie commands that are kinda useful are /afk or /dnd for if you want to quickly change your status so that you're not being bothered. As useful as the /who command is, it also invites a lot more random tells from people looking to fill groups. If you're busy, just type out a quick /dnd and those tells don't come in anymore. /who would report that you are set at /dnd, and the whisper wouldn't even get to you to bother you. /afk could still let a whisper through to your chat, but alert the sender that you're not available to see the message.
Ready?:
Another command that I enjoyed from another MMO I used to play was /readycheck or just simply /ready. This was used for large groups and raids, only available to the group leader, and would pop up a small dialog with a button and a timer. If you don't click the "OK" button before the timer runs out, then you're not ready, and the group leader knows not to go out or begin the dungeon. Handy for those multiple occasions when the group has to rezone back and forth because one person wasn't ready. The chat can be kept cleaner without a lot of "1" or "rdy" checks, and report just a simple message ...
"The group is not ready."
... in Red if the timer runs out, or ...
"The group is ready to begin!"
... in Green if everyone clicks on the "OK" button on their screen.
Custom Chat:
Finally, one last feature that I can think might be handy is a more customizable chat. One useful feature would be the ability to colorize the standard chat channels. Right now the Party Chat and messages from NPCs are both colored blue, so sometimes people trying to convey messages in Party Chat while NPCs are blathering on can be missed.
Creating separate, or private chat channels might also be useful to help with this. Everyone in a group for a UW run could just join a temporary chat channel created by the group leader for the venture. This would, of course, involve more chat commands such as /join "Channelname" and /moderate and so forth. It opens problems of moderation for channels that could involve more anti-EULA types of things like gold trading black markets, etc., but could also be very useful.
Anyway, I realize that much of this has probably been discussed in other threads throughout the last couple years, but since our best hopes for GW2 are emerging, I thought I'd put in for a new discussion. Of course, this doesn't have to be exclusive to just text interface commands. I'm curious to know what others might like to see in other interface improvements for GW2. As a keyboard commando, myself, I'm all about the /slashcommands. :wink:
Anyone who's played the old text-only MUD's will remember that everything you did with your character was done by way of the keyboard. Now, for a modern MMO with a GUI, this isn't necessarily exclusive, but there are still a lot of very useful commands that I think should be included.
Emotes:
Right now there are a good number of decent emotes in GW, but I think that it'd be nice if GW2 included a few more just for entertainment value. I see a lot of people using the chat to do things like "blush," "cry," etc, that don't exist as regular emotes. Some of these might be fun for more of a role playing experience if they were animated emotes, but there's a certain balance of what's necessary and not. /spit is one that I've never liked. Still, there's also the option of the old universal /em or /me emote which would take any bit of text that followed the emote and turn it into the character's emote.
/em picks his nose, pondering the situation, only to find there's no more gold up there than in this dungeon.
... /em or /me being replaced by the character's name, so it'd appear as ...
Vidar picks his nose, pondering the situation, only to find there's no more gold up there than in this dungeon.
... in chat. Of course it's fun and entertaining for creative types, but can be abused, just like anything, but there's already a profanity filter, and the option for turning off the emotes channel.
Searches:
My most coveted and missed command from GW is /who. I think that the search function is seriously lacking in GW, and I'd love to see it improved in GW2. A robust /who command could bring about all sorts of results, and it's not like the information isn't available, and could be presented in the Party Search window dialog.
Being able to search by guild, profession, class, location, or whatever is wildly useful. If you get the hang of it, it becomes so incredibly valuable that when it's not there it's like not having arms.
/who -G DVDF
... for example, would return a list of every player online who's in the guild DVDF.
The /who command flags, the -G or -P, or whatever would have to be determined by what was feasible depending on the game network. For example, would it make more sense to search for players online across any district, or just who's in the current district or region? From my understanding, GW2 will have a more persistent world, so this could be very useful. You could be hanging out at Umbral Grotto, trying to find that last monk you need for your Slaver's Exile, and do ...
/who -P Monk
... listing all the monks online. You may recognize a name of a Monk that did a decent job with on that last HM venture into UW, but you didn't add them to your Friend's List, so you send them a quick tell to see if they're busy and are interested in joining your group for Slaver's. Maybe they remember you too, and aren't busy. It's quicker than sitting in Umbral for an hour spamming the local chat, hoping that someone will respond.
Extending the /who command to a more robust GUI might also be more useful. The party search interface could cross districts, zones, and towns, so that you could be in Ascalon and looking at the Party Search dialog which would report what groups are looking for types of members, but that gets into more robust GUI discussion. Beginning with a decent /who command, though, I think would be invaluable for GW2.
The options are many, but a few ideas might be...
-P for profession
-G for guild
-D district, o
-Z for zone
It could include level ranges ...
"10-15"
... would return anyone between the levels of 10 and 15, which might be useful if there's a different level cap for GW2. Do you need someone with the skills in the level 100-120 range? It could be indicative of their skills in the game overall.
/who -P Monk 150-160
... returns Monks online who are between levels 150 and 160.
DND and AFK:
A couple other quickie commands that are kinda useful are /afk or /dnd for if you want to quickly change your status so that you're not being bothered. As useful as the /who command is, it also invites a lot more random tells from people looking to fill groups. If you're busy, just type out a quick /dnd and those tells don't come in anymore. /who would report that you are set at /dnd, and the whisper wouldn't even get to you to bother you. /afk could still let a whisper through to your chat, but alert the sender that you're not available to see the message.
Ready?:
Another command that I enjoyed from another MMO I used to play was /readycheck or just simply /ready. This was used for large groups and raids, only available to the group leader, and would pop up a small dialog with a button and a timer. If you don't click the "OK" button before the timer runs out, then you're not ready, and the group leader knows not to go out or begin the dungeon. Handy for those multiple occasions when the group has to rezone back and forth because one person wasn't ready. The chat can be kept cleaner without a lot of "1" or "rdy" checks, and report just a simple message ...
"The group is not ready."
... in Red if the timer runs out, or ...
"The group is ready to begin!"
... in Green if everyone clicks on the "OK" button on their screen.
Custom Chat:
Finally, one last feature that I can think might be handy is a more customizable chat. One useful feature would be the ability to colorize the standard chat channels. Right now the Party Chat and messages from NPCs are both colored blue, so sometimes people trying to convey messages in Party Chat while NPCs are blathering on can be missed.
Creating separate, or private chat channels might also be useful to help with this. Everyone in a group for a UW run could just join a temporary chat channel created by the group leader for the venture. This would, of course, involve more chat commands such as /join "Channelname" and /moderate and so forth. It opens problems of moderation for channels that could involve more anti-EULA types of things like gold trading black markets, etc., but could also be very useful.
Anyway, I realize that much of this has probably been discussed in other threads throughout the last couple years, but since our best hopes for GW2 are emerging, I thought I'd put in for a new discussion. Of course, this doesn't have to be exclusive to just text interface commands. I'm curious to know what others might like to see in other interface improvements for GW2. As a keyboard commando, myself, I'm all about the /slashcommands. :wink: