Sirlin's World of Gaming

One part competitive gaming, one part game design, and one part trombone rubber ducky non-sequitur insights. Sirlin plays to win. www.sirlin.net

Sunday, November 20, 2005

I can't play Guild Wars

I tried to play Guild Wars. It's just so unpolished, clunky, and full of rookie interface mistakes that I can't even take it seriously. The moment-to-moment feel is so off-putting that I can't stand it for more then 5 minutes before I quit in frustration. I wanted to like it so much, because it's based on the "right" concepts of fairness rather than being rpg-heavy and caring about time invested way more than ability.

Here's a quick list of its crimes:

I can't leave the game running and on screen while I click on things on my second monitor. I have to minimize the game access anything on my second monitor.

I can't figure out how to turn off click-to-move. Even when "click to move" is off, I left click on an NPC or Monster or loot on the ground and my character runs towards it. I never want to move unless I move myself.

When I hold the right mouse button down and move the mouse, the camera and character move as expected. When I hold the LEFT mouse button down and move the mouse, nothing happens. I should be able to move the camera WIHOUT moving the character with this method. It's very painful to be missing this feature. In World of Warcraft I do this constantly and can't even fathom that this similar game doesn't allow this very basic feature.

Left clicking on a monster attacks that monster. I want left click to select things and never interact with them. Right-clicking should interact with them.

The "unit frames" (HUD graphics at top of the screen when you select a unit) look absurdly bad. Also, when you have a unit targeted, its name appears over him in text. This text looks like a joke or placeholder. Should be in a nice-looking small popup window with a decent font.

The green exclamation points over the heads of quest-givers are too hard to see. Should be more bold.

Art style of humans in this game bothers me. Almost all my options to make a male character look homosexual. Way too many options are for characters that look slight, slender, and dainty.

The mini-map spins around as I turn. This is totally disorienting to me and I want it to stay still.

The game has no jump fucntion. Not that it's really needed for gameplay, but it contributes to the overal clunky experience of Guild Wars when you can't climb up a little lip, two inches high.

There are weird invisible walls all over the place in levels. Makes it feel very restricted, but is at least consistent with the overal clunky Guild Wars feel.

When you rotate the camera quickly with the mouse, then let go, the camera takes a brief moment to smoothly come to a stop. I want it to move instnatly. This is very subtle, but bothers me every time I move the camera.

Guild Wars was my most anticipated game of the year(!), but the simple act of moving the character around and attacking is so unpolished that I can't even have fun with this game. :(

Now all the Guild Wars fans can get mad at me.
--Sirlin

23 Comments:

  • At 12:10 PM, Hermy said…

    Hey Sirlin,
    I played GW for the first few months it was out, and I was a 'starter' in one of the top 20 competitive guilds. My MMO experience basically equated to Runescape, so I didn't have experience with how smooth WoW must feel. It took me a while to get used to the clunkiness of it, but I have to say that once you got past that stuff and got used to it, the competition was incredible. I guess you've already hit on this point, that you couldn't get past the clunky side of it, but I guess I was able to let it go because I had so much fun competing on it.

    On a side note- I quit GW a little while ago DAYS before I got to your site and read your articles. The reason I quit was because I was arguing with my guild leader about changing our strategies to something similar to the Koreans (Koreans OWN that game). I basically got told that my suggested tactics were "cheap" and "not fun" by my all-knowing guild leader, and he told me if I wanted to 'play to win' (exact words) why didn't I just cheat.

    Unfortunately the argument got cut short and I couldn't defend myself adequately, because I hadn't ever thought about it. I knew there was something flawed with his argument though, and I was thrilled to finally figure it out after reading your stuff. I quit because I was never gonna get to the highest level with my guild, and I didn't want to invest the time working my way up in another or starting my own. Anyways, I guess this is all just a big late thanks for your articles. And GW competition > WoW competition. Thats what a dutch guy told me.

     
  • At 2:43 PM, Sirlin said…

    Too bad Guild Wars (and World of Warcraft) don't emphasize 1on1 competition. Then you wouldn't need to form a guild or convince other people of their flawed strategies. I much prefer games where you don't have to rely on anyone else. Oh well.

    --Sirlin

     
  • At 7:32 PM, Hermy said…

    I know what you mean, I too being the individualistic type of gamer who, if I AM on a team, prefer to carry them and dictate where we go. However, there is something really cool in a teamwork-oriented game when you see your coordinated efforts come into fruition. The first time i played with a good team, they were doing coordinated countdown attacks (really cool to me at the time) and I don't know if I've ever marvelled at how cool a game was as much as I did then. Teams and guilds have their downsides, but I think for me it was more rewarding when all the efforts of all the team members came together than any solo game I've played.

     
  • At 8:26 PM, David Boudreau said…

    About not jumping (and it making sense or not for purposes of gameplay) that's one of the first things that stuck out to me with Metal Gear Solid for ps1 (he can do all this maneuvering using all the buttons, but can't even jump on top of that box?) but that's probably just too much time spent with Mario games on my part. btw Congratulations on your official book release- I figured you were really busy lately so could you please reply to my email when you can?

     
  • At 2:19 PM, jms said…

    I recall reading an article on 1v1 PVP being a "possible" addition come expansion time. For the life of me though, I can't see HOW Guild Wars will be able to pull it off. Team play is too central an ideology to the game. As hermy demonstrated, the team play aspect is Guild Wars' greatest strength and its greatest weakness.

    Regarding the interface problems: 100% correct on the foolishness of left-click being the movement AND action button. Misclicks that MOVE your character when you don't want him/her to are annoying, and even utilizing the targeting hotkeys only alleviate this slightly.

    You're also right about the arbitrary "walls" that you can't circumvent with a jump button. Way to go Sirlin--care to give the design team a piece of your mind so that all of us Guild Wars players can enjoy a better game?

     
  • At 5:26 PM, Anonymous said…

    Sirlin, have you considered starting Mario Kart DS? It's still fairly new, so the battlegrounds are still rather balanced, and it would be an interesting change from reading about all the fighting games you discuss.

     
  • At 8:48 AM, Griffith said…

    From the ‘I can’t play Guild Wars’ blog:

    ”When I hold the right mouse button down and move the mouse, the camera and character move as expected. When I hold the LEFT mouse button down and move the mouse, nothing happens. I should be able to move the camera WIHOUT moving the character with this method. It's very painful to be missing this feature. In World of Warcraft I do this constantly and can't even fathom that this similar game doesn't allow this very basic feature.

    Left clicking on a monster attacks that monster. I want left click to select things and never interact with them. Right-clicking should interact with them.”


    From the comment section of the ‘PvP in World of Warcraft, yet again’ blog:

    "In WoW you can hold the left mouse button to rotate the camera without rotating your character. In GW you can't. GW had all this fucked up click-to-move that was default on and I couldn't even figure out how to turn off…Right click someone and there's no options or anything."

    ___________________

    I would like some clarification in regards to the functionality of the camera system in World of Warcraft (WoW) in comparison to Guild Wars (GW). I would also like to (hopefully) remedy a ‘qualm’ that Sirlin had with target selection/character navigation in Guild Wars.

    Personally, I have not played World of Warcraft (WoW) or any other games that make use of the camera features that Guild Wars is said to be lacking, so I cannot relate to WoW-specific examples, however I have played Guild Wars (GW). So, from the above quotes, here is what I know…

    In WoW, the LEFT mouse button is used for:

    * (when held down) Rotating the camera WITHOUT moving the character

    * Selecting things but NOT interacting with them

    In WoW, the RIGHT mouse button is used for:

    * Interacting with things (which seems to exclude movement navigation such as clicking a Monster or NPC to walk up to it)

    * Presenting ‘options’ when right-clicking on someone

    I have also discerned from watching various game play footage from WoW that movement and general character navigation/rotation seems to be solely covered by the keyboard (either by the directional arrows or the ‘W, S, A and D’ key configuration), where as selection and interaction with the selected target, as well as camera control, is the function of the left and right mouse buttons.

    Now, from my personal experience, this is what I know about GW…

    In GW, the LEFT mouse button is used for:

    * (By default) ‘Clicking to move’ (or navigate). In other words, moving the character to a position selected by clicking the left mouse button (if an obstacle is in the path of the selected position, the character will attempt to navigate around the obstacle)

    * (By default) ‘Holding down to move’. In other words, the character will endlessly follow the mouse cursor until you release the left mouse button, and the camera will (rather awkwardly) try to adjust to remain behind your character (note: when holding the left mouse button down to move while simultaneously holding the right mouse button down and moving the mouse, both the camera and character rotate to face in the direction of the cursor)

    * (By default) Selecting a target, at which point your character will automatically move to it

    In GW, the RIGHT mouse button is used for:

    * (when held down) Rotating the camera around the character

    * (when fully zoomed into your character using the mouse scroll wheel, giving you a ‘first person’ perspective, in addition holding down the right mouse button) Rotating the camera to face whatever your character is facing

    Some additional GW information

    Note that the control scheme/functionality can be customized to an extent via the ‘control set up’ found within the options menu. Movement is not restricted to the mouse; the keyboard (directional arrows, ‘W, S, A and D’, etc) can be used/configured for movement and general character navigation/rotation. Character movement/navigation in the form of clicking and/or holding down the LEFT mouse button, can be disabled by turning ON an option which disables “click to move”, or as it is known in game as, ‘disable mouse walking’.

    Also, while giving some additional info, and as I previously mentioned, to (hopefully) remedy a ‘qualm’ that Sirlin had with the targeting system; I quote:

    "Left clicking on a monster attacks that monster. I want left click to select things and never interact with them."

    When you click on a character (other then your own), NPC, Monster, loot, etc, using the LEFT mouse button, the default action in GW will cause your character to ‘do it’, which is in-game terminology for preforming the most ‘logical’ action. E.g. if you left click on a Monster, you will attack it; if you left click on an item (loot) you will pick it up. To separate the ‘do it’ function that is (by default) tied in with the selection of a target/object using the LEFT mouse button, you must turn ON ‘Double-click to Do It’ in the ‘control set up’. Doing so will allow you to select any target/object using a SINGLE LEFT mouse button click. From there, if you wish to ‘interact’ with the target/object and ‘Do It’ either double-click the LEFT mouse button, or by default, simply press the space bar on keyboard..

    From what I know of how WoW works, turning ON ‘disable mouse walking’ and ‘Double-click to Do it’ will provide a control functionality quite similar to WoW, however I could be wrong.

    Either way, now that we have that covered, again to quote Sirlin:

    “[In Guild Wars] When I hold the LEFT mouse button down and move the mouse, nothing happens. I should be able to move the camera WIHOUT moving the character with this method.”

    Sirlin continues to say:

    “It's very painful to be missing this feature [in Guild Wars]. In World of Warcraft I do this constantly and can't even fathom that this similar game doesn't allow this very basic feature.”

    As I understand it, when playing Guild Wars, Sirlin would like to hold down the LEFT mouse button to rotate the camera around the character (WITHOUT causing the character to move), and click the LEFT mouse button on a target to select it, but do nothing else. Also, Sirlin would like to interact with characters, NPC’s, Monsters, loot, etc, by clicking the RIGHT mouse button.

    Fortunately, after turning ON the ‘disable mouse walking’ and ‘Double-click to Do it’ options, the LEFT mouse button can be used to select targets WITHOUT causing the character to move. Unfortunately, the left and right mouse buttons cannot be configured to perform different functions, so you have to use the LEFT mouse button to select/interact with a target, and the right mouse button to rotate the camera.

    What I do not understand is the reasoning behind wanting to “move the camera WIHOUT moving the character” using the LEFT mouse button, when the RIGHT mouse button already performs this function. Perhaps this is due to my rather nonexistent experience with World of Warcraft - who knows?. If anybody (including Sirlin :D ) would care to enlighten me as to what these reasons are, and the logic behind it, please feel free to do so.

    Cheers,
    Griffith

     
  • At 7:41 PM, Patrick said…

    I apoligize, because this has nothing to do with this post. But, I just read Sirlin's "Playing to Win" article. http://sirlin.net/Features/feature_PlayToWinPart1.htm

    Sirlin - you are the most intelligent person I know. I tip my hat to you.

     
  • At 9:50 PM, jms said…

    Honestly now, don't let it get to his head. Next thing, he'll have us all believing that Guild Wars needs a low strong x67 feature.

     
  • At 11:02 AM, Anonymous said…

    I'm kinda confused here. Sirlin, did you believe that the game design itself was bad? Or do you think that the game wasn't polished enough? Or somewhere in between?

    Dawolffman

     
  • At 8:47 PM, dave h. said…

    "Sirlin, did you believe that the game design itself was bad?" -Dawolffman

    He is saying that the design of the game's interface is so bad and unintuitive that it distracts from the rest of the game.

     
  • At 2:11 AM, Q-ball said…

    I definitely agree that clicking the mouse to move and interact with things sucks.

    However, you don't have to use the mouse to do it (in fact it is *highly* recommended you don't use the mouse to select enemy targets, ever).

    Shifting important functions like movement, enemy target selection, and skill selection to keyboard while leaving mouse to camera control, sending allies quick messsages via control-click, allied lifebar clicking, and maintained enchantment canceling makes things 5x easier, plus it allows for better performance in high stress situations (PvP) than fiddling around with the mouse for everything, even if the mouse interaction could be configured to however you want it to be.

     
  • At 2:40 PM, Anonymous said…

    G-Ball is absolutely right. Mouse targeting is effectively never used in PvP, which is the only worthwhile part of Guild Wars.

    Take a look at Tab, T and C at some point Sirlin. They basically become your mouse. It's much easier to Tab up to that mesmer than hunting him down on screen and clicking, and it's easier to tap C then manually point at that annoying warrior pounding on you.

     
  • At 10:31 PM, David Boudreau said…

    This article and the references at the end reminded me of this blog post:
    http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/essay46.htm

     
  • At 10:33 PM, Anonymous said…

    I miss UO .

    Especially in the beginning, when it was fairly quick to reach the 700 skill point gap. It wasn't as much as a grind as modern MMORPGs, especially since in UO you could have a Macro do the grinding for you as you slept.

    Also, it had rewards for PVP, and didn't have a lot of stupid restrictions. It was real fun joining up with a PK guild, and going to dungeons and seeing how many people you could gank. The real fun is when you run into a rival PK guild and you have to fight it out. This kind of unscripted, spontaneous fighting in one large persistent world is what real "guild wars" should be about.

    Also the fact that you lose everything on your person when you died really added to the rewards of victory and sting of defeat.

    I'm not saying that games need to be that severe, but there is hardly any incentive for PVP in modern MMORPGs at all.

    I could say I also enjoyed it at low levels. First playing UO was a real adventure knowing that if you leave town, you could be murdered and robbed by the bandits in the wild. It was probably the most immersed I have ever been in an RPG world. I really felt the town was a safe haven, and the outside world was truly dangerous.

     
  • At 6:59 PM, Sirlin said…

    Sure, I'll check it out again. I know you wouldn't use the mouse to target anything in a real pvp situation, but that really isn't the point. The main complaints have to do with the way the camera moves. It lacks a function that I constantly use in World of Warcraft, and it lacks it for no real reason.

    I just get sad everytime I try to move around in Guild Wars for even 30 seconds. :(

    Dawolfman: I'm critizing the UI look and feel, not the actual game design (though the focus on group vs group rather than 1on1 makes it not for me).

    Maybe I should just keep my mouth shut at this point, since I admittedly have little experience with GW. I tried twice to play, and quit twice in frustration.

    --Sirlin

     
  • At 5:29 AM, Anonymous said…

    So Sirlin is capable of letting go a GOOD game because some little faults on interface? i'm i thought Sirlin thinks starcraft is good, wich has an HORRIBLE interface a the game is a MICRO/MACRO game mor than stratgy game (even i heard it's a strategy game) and worst oh my god, he plays WOW.
    I personally didn't play GW because i don't play MMORPGS i can't play a game just to play and not trying to win (somethng imposible to acomplish on MMORPGs)
    And much less when patience, is more important than mental or motorized skills

     
  • At 6:34 AM, James Vonder Haar said…

    I think it's more because you're used to WoW as opposed to the fact that GW's interface sucks. I got acclimated to GW's interface rather quickly. However, it took me a couple weeks to get the hang of WoW's interface after I started playing that, and I recall complaining to my friends of WoW's crappy interface. I don't think either one is better; they're just different. Keep it up and you'll get used to it, I'm sure.

    For what it's worth, I usually have the left mouse button clicked constantly when I'm moving. It sort of activates a "strafe-only" mode that's useful for moving your character if you're not inclined to move the camera. If you want to adjust the camera, take your finger off the left mouse button and use the a and d keys. You can use the Z or X key I think to do a complete about-face.

     
  • At 8:03 AM, q-ball said…

    While I don't see a complete answer to your desire to move the camera without moving the player the 'Z' key will face the camera at your front rather than at your back. This can be done independent of your movement state, and I also find it sufficient.

     
  • At 10:53 PM, thedeadhaji said…

    i am fairly certain that starcraft micro and macro encompass the "strategy" of the game, both on the large and small scale. Watch a korean Starcraft VOD, and this is really apparent.

     
  • At 2:37 PM, Brinstar said…

    I have been playing Guild Wars for months now, so I'm very used to the UI.

    I just started playing World of Warcraft the other day, and to be honest, the UI turned me off initially. I attributed it to the teething problems that any newb has when learning controls to a new game. For instance, as you noted, LEFT clicking an enemy in GW will attack it, whereas RIGHT CLICKING an enemy in WoW does the same thing. I continually found myself LEFT clicking to attack in WoW. I feel that the LEFT clicking to perform an action is more intuitive than RIGHT clicking, because after all in a normal Windows environment, you use the LEFT mouse button to interact with icons and such in your desktop folders, and RIGHT clicking in Windows just brings up options.

    What I have found difficult in WoW is the lack of a button that will display enemy or player names, without resorting to a toggle. I use the CTRL and ALT keys a lot in GW. The CTRL key will display all enemies onscreen and the ALT key will display all players and NPCs. The ALT key is particularly useful in towns when I'm trying to find guildmates easily.

    I haven't figured out how to remove the chat window in WoW, or at least minimise it so that it only displays one or two lines of chat. I find the chat window intrusive, and in GW I generally open it only when I think I have missed something and need to display previous lines of text.

    As griffith said, the RIGHT mouse button rotates the camera around the character without the character moving. I don't see a problem with that, except that you're not used to using the RIGHT button for GW rather than the LEFT in WoW.

    I have no problems with the exclamation points in GW or in WoW. They're easy to see for me.

    I love the character design in GW. I like that the men (and women) aren't unattractive. Why do they look "homosexual"? The Warriors are burly and brawny, as should be for what their role is. Warriors use their physical strength a lot, so of course they have lots of muscles. Mesmers, are admittedly the ugliest profession in terms of character design as a whole (I could not for the life of me create a female Mesmer whose appearance I was happy with), but when you consider the Mesmer's role in the game, it's really not out of character for them to be depicted as they are. Mesmers are spellcasters and manipulators of magic. Monks, again, healing class -- therefore they aren't huge uber-warrior types, and shouldn't really look like Warriors anyway. Elementalists -- spellcasters, therefore why should they look like they work out 24/7? Rangers -- I could argue for a bit more brawn for this class, perhaps. Necromancers -- well, Necros are spellcasters as well. They do tend to be all goth-looking, which I guess is fine.

    The only male character I have is an Elementalist, and I like his appearance. I certainly wouldn't want him, or even a male Warrior looking like Duke Nukem. That's my personal preference, though.

    What does "looking homosexual" even mean, anyway? There are plenty of men and women who are queer, but don't look like it. Indeed, I've been told that I didn't look like I belonged in a lesbian bar because I didn't look like a stereotype.

    Conversely, I am having a hard time getting into the world of WoW, because all the characters are so cartoony and goofy-looking.

    The mini-map in the upper right corner functions more like a compass. Press U to pull up a map that doesn't move, and which also shows the path you have taken in the area.

    As James said, I think perhaps much of your irritation with Guild Wars comes from not being used to the UI.

    Cheers.

     
  • At 3:31 AM, red aesop said…

    I played Guild Wars competitively for a while, and it was really amazingly fun. The reason I quit is because despite ArenaNet's claims, the game is not "grind free", and actually requires a substantial time investment. Well, you can just jump right into pvp with a template character, but not if you actually want to be competitive.

    Now, I think they have improved things quite a bit since I stopped playing in terms of grind required, so it may be worth your time to give it another try, if you can get past your qualms with the interface. It's definitely the most incredible multiplayer rpg I've ever played, in terms of game design and strategy.

     
  • At 10:49 AM, Anonymous said…

    I think it's unfortunate that you can't get into Guild Wars; it is the best RGP PvP ever designed.

    While on one level i can relate, i went through the same period of frustration when i was first introduced to the game, i'm a long time WoW player myself. On the other hand, after having played Guild Wars for a few months, i say with the utmost confidence that the UI does not inhibit play. Is it the best, most effective, and good looking UI on the market? No. Is it so clunky that the gameplay suffers? Also, no.

    The clunkiness you describe, to me, is the same awkwardness experienced every time you learn a new set of controls that is almost, but not quite, like a game you already know.

    -Kyx

     

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