Another Guild Wars Beta Event

[kandrathe]

Actually, the game goes much better (and easier) at a slow pace.  If you take the time for monsters to walk on patrol a bit and separate from each other, you can easily take them down, as opposed to having someone on your team see a group of 10 monsters and rush in, dragging the rest of the team with them.

There are a few things about the GUI that would be nice to add/change.  A stats window would be really nice, something that can show you the total armor you have, rather than having to add up in your head from the inventory page.  Also, something showing the amount of damage you'll do with a normal attack (before armor) would help, especially when a lot of the weapons come with modifiers that have damage +/-X% and the fact that some of your attributes will enhance damage (ie swordsmanship for warriors, marksmanship for rangers, etc.).  At least, I never saw these, so if they're there, oops.

Also, it would be nice if there was a "Clear UI" button that would kill all of the open windows and the chat/messages that appear.  Similarly, it would be nice if you could close the party window, or at least shrink it so it doesn't take up as much space in the ui.  While we're on the subject, I didn't see a button option to cancel your current target.  That would help things a bit when you want to quickly switch from healing an ally to healing yourself, without having to select yourself on the party window.

The only problems I ever had with control was when a group of warriors would surround an enemy and I'd have to hover over the area to get the list selection so I could target the enemy instead of an ally.

The last thing I'll say for now is that it would be nice to be able to issue commands to the henchman (this is a game based on strategy, after all).  Nothing complex, but a retreat command would help a lot.
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I used the C key to target closest monster alot, then tab to cycle, or try to click on the one I want, when I have time. For allies, you can click on their name in the party roster, so when I'm acting as team healer I just click on the life bars that are low or dropping fast and intervene. Many times in heated battles I am unaware of what is going on as I'm overly focused on keeping the team alive.

You are spot on with the new UI issues, but it seems to be a work in progress. They went from an overly cumbersome, UI with alot of info on it, to one that is too simplified. There I would like to have the option of more detailed stats menus, when I'm in the mood. But, for a quick glance the smaller ones do nicely.

As for controlling Henchman AI, it could be as simple as having Attack (the way it is now), Defend (attack the monster than is attacking me), and Retreat (save yourself at all costs) modes.