Please Give Us Back Old GW1 Settings.

[Eziair.2509]

With the new story and updates that are coming it would be nice to get back the old GW1 customized UI.

I love this game but having the target bar smack dead top of my screen. It would be so nice to move it.

Also get rid of the skills Info popping up if my mouse moves over them, or give it a delay.

 

Other games I play can do this... you once did this!

Please bring it back.

Don't say you can't because GW2 is now FTP....

 

You know we want them. I have seen post after post, year after year people asking for these back but we have never got a straight answer out of you saying why you don't do it.

I really would like an answer from Anet.

[Erasculio.2914]

Honestly, I think ArenaNet couldn't do this even if they wanted to.

 

Considering everything that has happened (the layoffs and etc), I'm not sure ArenaNet even has someone knowledgeable enough to change things in the GW2 engine (remember, it's seven years old, and it was never that great to begin with). It also looks like they cannot really afford improving old content, being 100% focused on making new content as fast as they can (which really isn't that fast) in order to prevent the playerbase from leaving for greener pastures.

 

So any kind of improvement to the UI - being customizable, fixing the item preview window so at least it has the proper size, fixing the dye preview window, etc - is very likely not ever going to happen.

 

That's simply the reality of GW2. I really miss this kind of convenience we had in the original Guild Wars.

[Eziair.2509]

Age has nothing to do with fixing things like this.

WoW is now 15 years old (ok it also gets about $9.23 billion and has more people working on it).

Champions Online - 10 years

LOTRO - 12 years

 

This is the only game I play with a non customized UI.

 

[Zephire.8049]

The UI in GW2 is pretty hard-coded into the game, thus not easy to change even when they want to. Even adding a mount button was difficult and a big deal, as was adding various keys to the wallet a couple years ago.

 

Different engines are different. GW2 uses a _heavily_ modified version of the GW1 engine. I can't remember quite exactly it was and have long since lost the link to a dev explaining it, but I want to say that they sacrificed customizable UI to get the simplified and more stylized one they have now. It's hard to have that when players can move elements around independently. I'm not saying this was a good or bad choice, but it falls under the category of undyeable backpacks—made sense at the time but gets harder on players (and devs) the longer the game is around.

 

At this point there's over 7 years worth of coding it a certain way and working around said code, and that's in an engine that is at least 15 years old. Not saying it will never happen but it's highly unlikely given the time and cost that would have to go into it to change it outside a major engine overhaul in general.

[Shylo.1426]

You can maybe find a custom project ( im thinking also something like overwulf? )

That has a customizable UI that you can over lay while having the normal UI turned off ? :-) hope that helps!

[Ashantara.8731]

It would be awesome to have an option like that. It's unfathomable how they left fundamental features from GW1 (like build templates and UI customization) out when they created GW2.

[Trise.2865]

In order to get something back, one must first have been in possession of it. Guild Wars 2 never had a flexible UI. Similarly, Guild Wars 1's UI is still exactly where it was. Nothing has been taken away, therefore there is nothing to return.

[SinisterSlay.6973]

It's really sad but as a developer, I can confirm that after 7 years, few if anyone knows how the core works. And those that do, are scared to touch anything.

 

Imagine building a pyramid. You build the base.

The 3 levels up, someone else notices the base is missing a piece. So they build wider supports on the third level to counter this flaw.

4th level someone encounters this work around, and duplicates it without knowing why.

5th level duplicates it again, it's now normal.

47th level someone notices that the base of the pyramid is missing a piece. They could quickly insert that piece, they try to, compile it, and.... everything breaks. What the? They don't have time to fix everything, they have no idea how many problems are covering up this one. So they leave it alone and flag it in the system as requiring too many hours and can't be fixed. They then build another band-aid for their project and move on.

 

This is how software development works. Ideally, a company will eventually pay the time to have the developers start over and rebuild from scratch. Then, with the lessons learned from the previous time, build a far better engine ready for another 7 to 14 years of use. Rebuilding an application from scratch usually only requires about 20% of the time that was already put into it. It's just straight code, no or minimal assets, no database changes, no design or discovery or research, just straight coding. Often with much of it copy and pasted from before.

But that's an ideal world. No company would permit their developers to essentially generate no money for 2 years while they rebuild from scratch. So you end up with what we have now, and pyramid that is falling over and crumbling under it's weight because of a few mistakes and oversights made a decade ago that can't be fixed.

 

Just consider, how insane it is that in 14 years, they still have random disconnects in stories. They can't even build a basic reconnect system to counter the original error they can't find.

 

There's a funny one with Microsoft. In Windows 8 they wanted to finally change the blue screen of death. They couldn't find a developer that knew how to change it. It took them a lot of digging to find someone that knew how to edit that ancient code.