UI - Save My Screen Space

[Rerisen]

Simple question really. Do you prefer a game (and accompanying UI) that shows you as much information as possible, no matter the expense of your actual gaming window into the world.

I'm not talking about UI customization so much as how much should the game code actually allow players to have access to. A lot or a little? Because even if the game ships with a very basic default UI showing a minimal of things, if it is at all possible for a player to get more information in a bigger and better fashion, it leads to a arms race of mods and add ons for competitive players so that they can have a leg up. But at some point does this arms race and shrinking screen size actually lead to less enjoyable gameplay and more simply reading spreadsheet type gaming? Keep in mind saying "no one has to use them" is not a very viable or honest answer.

Do you need to and should you know stuff like what spell an opposing player is casting, how many enemies are around you on your minimap , even out of range. What spell your ally is casting, what condition he is in (stunned interrupted, etc) even when he is not visible?

I.e. Do you want to end up with a screen that eventually looks something like this worst case scenario, where you can no longer even see the world, but are fighting against essentially rapidly incoming lines of text instead of a visually appealing game.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v469/Rerisen/86792894_011876a859_b.jpg

For example, the tales of healing classes having beat encounters without ever actually looking at the mob they are fighting (in the above game screenshot) is in my opinion sad and bad game design that I would not like to see repeated.

Keep in mind I am asking two questions here. Not just the effect to which info crowds the screen (as some will no doubt answer how they play in max resolution with font .0001 text and the bestest UI that leaves them plenty of space), but also just exactly how much information should a player be given about what is going on around him, even about things his player would have no way of knowing.

[-Request thread moved to UI forum]

[Dracohouston]

Keep in mind saying "no one has to use them" is not a very viable or honest answer.
It's a perfectly fine answer, tbh.

The stuff that information mods use is really basic stuff. And if they can't get a direct way into it, they'll just read your combat log. Being a RPG, under the hood is a lot of numbers and rolls, and they never truly hide it from you. Hiding it annoys the players, and they get a hold of the numbers themselves eventually, sometimes calculating it wrong, misleading people. So... they just expose it. It's not necessarily a bad thing.

Now, mods that break the game, like decursive, the devs hamstringed that mod pretty well. The problem was never that you could see who was debuffed. It was that you could just spam a key and the mod would do the whole dispell for you. Then in TBC they made it so that people wouldn't feel they ever needed to have decursive.

Don't worry, no one, not even blizzard, wants people to play with the UI covering the entire screen to be viable.

[Roargh Growler]

It`s not really the game design, although being a PvE game WoW is helps a lot.
In my mind, it is the best if you have as little as possible on the screen for UI.
This holds especially true if you are in PvP combat, since you want to have the screen free for optimal positioning and strafe pre-cognition.

Only thing i like to see is that the UI is like WoW basics UI, the way it is now.
And another thing is that it is a smooth working UI, as close to for example an UNREAL UI.
They are the smoothies among UI`s.

[Rerisen]

It's a perfectly fine answer, tbh.



The reason I said just don't use them is not a viable answer is because I play to have fun, but also to win. They are related.

If I can know something that my enemy doesn't, I want to know it. I would never choose to not have info displayed that an enemy might, if it could cause me to lose a combat I might otherwise win.

However sometimes, I think certain information that becomes available (or even scripts and macros that dumb down the game) actually take away from the enjoyment of gameplay and a game would be better served to not have these things available to anyone.

I'll give one example (from WoW as we don't have WAR available) but there are probably hundreds. As a hunter the original tracking ability simply showed you a dots on a minimap. A add-on later enchanced this ability to the point where the dots on your map not only showed where players were, but also whether they were friendly/hostile and also what class and level they were. This caused you to not even have to visually identify your target before choosing a plan of attack or to bypass an opponent. It was a significant advantage from the basic info available and pretty much allowed you to dictate any 1v1 encounter.

Another thing I might bring up concerning raiding, even if it will serve a lesser role in WAR. It seemed every time a new dungeon opened up, guild raiding would require 5-10 new mods (screen clutter) specifically created for the mobs in that dungeon. It came to the point where a player was receiving giant arrows on his screen for which direction to run in a fight, countdown warnings before abilities were firing off, etc. The mods were pretty much just giving you a step by step instruction on how now to screw up. And guilds often required players to have these. I think reducing the play experience to that is akin to having a trained monkey push buttons. In the quest for never ending info, it actually degrades the value of smart and creative players who could otherwise overcome such encounters on their own, but the mods (and endless accompanying info) end up playing the game for you, telling you what and when to do things in PVP, or holding your hand through every step of a originally intended as complicated encounter.

To me that is not progress in gaming. Maybe if you were playing a sci-fi shooter where your character was wearing a integrated helmet with a hud flashing tons of info it would make sense, but in a fantasy war game, it can become silly.

If it is possible for the game to tell me how much damage a opposing Wizard's fireball would do to me, before he even casts it, should I know that? If I can click on a enemy from 100 yards away and instantly look at every piece of gear he has, should I know that? Do these things make the game more competitive or more interesting? I think in many cases no and more info is not always better.

[DaveTurnbull]

I find all that kind of stuff ruins the game. The unpredictability of it is the most interesting part. It encourages people to explore, and experiment. If you know everything about a player, then you just need to go through a certain process to take them down - nothing really exciting about that. Also, people like me who have the most basic UI's are at a disadvantage :P

[Qog]

I have no problem with any mod that gives you info about you or your party. But outside of that they should be limited. No mod, should ever be capable of performing an action for you. No matter how simple it is, if you want to actually perform an action, you need to do it yourself.

Also your info about you're enemies should be limited to what your character could reasonably know. Like if you target an enemy, you shouldn't know what buffs he has on(unless they have a visable spell effect) or what spell he is casting, or the stats of what gear he's using. But if you dispel a buff, or counter a spell, I think it's reasonable that the game tell you what it is you dispelled or countered. But I don't necessarily thing a spell designed to tell you more info about your enemy is a bad thing. RPG games have had spells designed to point out weaknesses of an enemy, or tell you how many hps they have left, for decades. But you shouldn't be just given that info for free.

As far as the minimap, I'm kind of torn. I liked how in DAoC people had to actually see your character coming to know you were there. It allowed a lot of surprise attacks that were tons of fun. But on the other hand, it was also fairly easy for 2 groups to pass by each other fairly close without seeing each other and miss a chance to fight. And some times you could roam the frontier for a long time without finding a fight. So having enemy dots on the minimap isn't all bad, it will encourage more fights to take place. But under no circumstances should the minimap tell you anything other than an enemy is approaching.

In fact, what I think would be a lot better than just enemy dots is if a portion of the border glowed red in the direction the enemy was. For example, divide the circle of the minimap in to 8 sections, 1 for each direction( N, S, E, W, NE, NW, SE, SW). And instead of multiple red dots representing the enemy, the section in the correct direction would glow red to indicate that there was an enemy in that direction. That would give you the benefit of knowing an enemy approached, to help more fights take place, but it would not tell you how many or what was approaching, so there is still a surprise element to encounters.

[Rowhin]

Argh. That screenshot in the OP awakened some painful memories...everyone who has healed in a 40 man in WoW will probably know something similar. That was just ridiculous to the point were healers wouldn't acutally see the instances anymore, just a lot of bars. Which was often a pity, seeing as the level designers did often do a great job. Anyway, if someone wants to have his whole Ui cluttered with those things, let him. But there shouldn't be any UI mods taht simplify the game to a scale that they are considered a requirement for a certain class, like Decursive in WoW.

[Loekii]

I do hope that they limit UI mods to simply graphical, and not allow auto-casts, decursives, auto play, chain-casting, seeing information that is not part of the default UI, etc.

[Dyst]

Oh jesus. That example was a case of horrible use of the mods available.

You can very well make your UI much less intruding than the normal vanilla UI, without sacrificing information. F.ex. you could switch those Raid UF's with Grid, a much more visually appealing option. The same with actionbars, and you can make loads of information only appear once you want it to. For example if you only want to show the UF's and Actionbars once an enemy (or player) is targetted, you can set it to do so.

You could theoretically make a perfectly viable UI that shows nothing (except the game world) when nothing is targetted, or when you are not in combat.

[Zeetchmen]

I have no problem with any mod that gives you info about you or your party. But outside of that they should be limited. No mod, should ever be capable of performing an action for you. No matter how simple it is, if you want to actually perform an action, you need to do it yourself.

Also your info about you're enemies should be limited to what your character could reasonably know. Like if you target an enemy, you shouldn't know what buffs he has on(unless they have a visable spell effect) or what spell he is casting, or the stats of what gear he's using. But if you dispel a buff, or counter a spell, I think it's reasonable that the game tell you what it is you dispelled or countered. But I don't necessarily thing a spell designed to tell you more info about your enemy is a bad thing. RPG games have had spells designed to point out weaknesses of an enemy, or tell you how many hps they have left, for decades. But you shouldn't be just given that info for free.

As far as the minimap, I'm kind of torn. I liked how in DAoC people had to actually see your character coming to know you were there. It allowed a lot of surprise attacks that were tons of fun. But on the other hand, it was also fairly easy for 2 groups to pass by each other fairly close without seeing each other and miss a chance to fight. And some times you could roam the frontier for a long time without finding a fight. So having enemy dots on the minimap isn't all bad, it will encourage more fights to take place. But under no circumstances should the minimap tell you anything other than an enemy is approaching.

In fact, what I think would be a lot better than just enemy dots is if a portion of the border glowed red in the direction the enemy was. For example, divide the circle of the minimap in to 8 sections, 1 for each direction( N, S, E, W, NE, NW, SE, SW). And instead of multiple red dots representing the enemy, the section in the correct direction would glow red to indicate that there was an enemy in that direction. That would give you the benefit of knowing an enemy approached, to help more fights take place, but it would not tell you how many or what was approaching, so there is still a surprise element to encounters.

QFT

I hated it in WoW that if you wanted to compete in PvP or PvE you needed Mods to play the game for you, if you didn't have them you were SOL

[Loekii]

QFT

I hated it in WoW that if you wanted to compete in PvP or PvE you needed Mods to play the game for you, if you didn't have them you were SOL

Mods should be a condiment, not a main dish.

[Wattson]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v469/Rerisen/86792894_011876a859_b.jpg

For example, the tales of healing classes having beat encounters without ever actually looking at the mob they are fighting (in the above game screenshot) is in my opinion sad and bad game design that I would not like to see repeated.

That ss is of a Mage, though, not even a healing class @_@;;
Also he's choosing to cast Fireball on a mob whose name is Flamewalker? and it's effective? :(
His UI is extremely ugly, too. I don't understand how people could like those huge bars clogging up screen space. There's mods where you can arrange buttons however you like and do things to them whatever you want. When I played, I personally had a small wheel (12 buttons, all at 70% size) that you could cycle through - from flame spells, to ice spells, to arcane, and whatnot. Much, much, much more screen effecient to have your spells be the size of the minimap instead of..... that monstrosity. All those chatlogs make me want to cry, too.

A main healer in endgame WoW didn't need to see the screen. They just had to keep the tank targetted, watch the chat log and spam heal at the right time and then a macro saying the next person is up to heal... at least auxillary healers get to watch health bars instead. It's the definition of boring.


WAR is a PvP game, though, so the game isn't functional while staring at an Excel spreadsheet of a UI.
I'd much rather give up on some info to make the game playable and fun. Excel isn't particularly a fun program to use and if my MMO turns into that, it stops being fun. I think mods that tell you to step over here to dodge X spell or whatever are terrible. If you're going to do that, you might as well just go ahead and use a bot so you can go have fun instead.

[Rerisen]

Yep. If anyone remembers the mob in WoW's Molten Core that would turn you into a large exploding human bomb, it was beyond obvious when it would happen to your character and people still manged to get their guilds blown up despite having huge incoming text warnings telling them to move that they were about to blow up. :lol:

If people cannot even pay attention to the slightest degree where the game has to tell them what do every step of the way, they should just go play pac-man.

To whatever extent more information is available in WAR than what the default UI shows, I hope the devs put in some toggles and optional customizations that already work within the games UI you can choose to use if you want.

I personally do not find it fun running 15 different mods that have continuous buggy problems and need to be updated to function with each other all the time because the devs did not think to include their use, let alone the delays and problems that a patch day presents, as well as badly coded mods leading to frame rate loss.

[Mo0rbid]

This is quite simple. It's a matter of learning to costumize your interface...
---------
This is a parodic UI setup I made to show what I think of people who have utterly worthless user interfaces

http://fuskbugg.se/pub/misc/cleanUI.jpg


QFT

I hated it in WoW that if you wanted to compete in PvP or PvE you needed Mods to play the game for you, if you didn't have them you were SOL

- Almost all guilds had certain addons as requirments, did you not like that? Did it take a lot of effort? NO it takes almost no effort to download an addon. The reward outshines the so called "effort" needed to get that addon by the thousands

- The mods never played the game for anyone

- You're basicly downright liying when you're saying that you were SOL if you didn't have these addons you're talking about..


(as for PvP) Hmm lemme guess which addons you're talking about

enemycastingbar
stunwatch/necb

If you're claiming (as you very much did) that you needed these to be able to complete in PvP otherwise you'd have no chance in the world then you were simply not playing the game right

(as for PvE)
ctr
bossmod
kththreatmeter/omen
You needed these because it made things easier for everyone and it wasnt hard to setup either


------

I'm so tired of people lying and overexxagerating about addons to the very breaking point.

[Vid]

Simple put I want the most information I can possible get but I want the most viewable area I can get as well.

Once mods start to cramp my viewing area I start to rethink their usefulness. All the information in the game won't help me if I can't see whats attacking me.

[Dyst]

This is quite simple. It's a matter of learning to costumize your interface...
---------
This is a parodic UI setup I made to show what I think of people who have utterly worthless user interfaces

http://fuskbugg.se/pub/misc/cleanUI.jpg




- Almost all guilds had certain addons as requirments, did you not like that? Did it take a lot of effort? NO it takes almost no effort to download an addon. The reward outshines the so called "effort" needed to get that addon by the thousands

- The mods never played the game for anyone

- You're basicly downright liying when you're saying that you were SOL if you didn't have these addons you're talking about..


(as for PvP) Hmm lemme guess which addons you're talking about

enemycastingbar
stunwatch/necb

If you're claiming (as you very much did) that you needed these to be able to complete in PvP otherwise you'd have no chance in the world then you were simply not playing the game right

(as for PvE)
ctr
bossmod
kththreatmeter/omen
You needed these because it made things easier for everyone and it wasnt hard to setup either


------

I'm so tired of people lying and overexxagerating about addons to the very breaking point.
Exactly. And to be quite honest all of those mods were things that should have been in the vanilla UI in the first place.

[Dracohouston]

Exactly. And to be quite honest all of those mods were things that should have been in the vanilla UI in the first place.
Hindsight is 20/20

Ever played an old RTS game, gone to double click on a unit and found it doesn't select them all? Or in AOE 1 where the villagers didn't automatically gather. Or gone to set a rally point and not found it?

It's unrealistic to expect the release UI to do everything it should. They'll try hard and make it the best they can, but some things aren't seen as needed at first, mods are born from necessity. A good company will take the least game breaking and functional of the things people invent for their UI and do it themselves. Which is why WoW has enemy cast bars, target of target, combat floating text for yourself (not just your enemy), combat floating text for heals done, ready checks, main tanks, and many other things just being parts of the official UI now.

Mods will always be the cutting edge in UI design.

[Rerisen]

Mods will always be cutting edge, but should be moreso in terms of how they allow you to change and move the look of the UI rather than so much what more info they provide.

WoW was understandably behind the curve. It was Blizzard's first mmo and things like raiding were in a infantile form when it launched.

But WAR now has WoW to learn from, learn what people are likely to want. They have also already made a MMO in DAOC which should give them insights into what should be knowable or not as far as gameplay and balance wise for a PVP game.

For people that simply proclaim the more info they can get the better like Vin, I would propose that if the devs do not consider the info that is available that only some players will use, this can sometimes tend to distort the balance of various abilities or classes from what they intended.

One small thing that comes to mind from WoW in playing a Warlock. At the early releases of the game UI you could not even view opponents health in absolute numbers. The Warlock had a special ability Shadowburn, that was supposed to be used as a finishing move. Now figuring how much damage this spell did and trying to guess if a particular class was close enough to the threshold where you could use and get a shard back, required skill, knowledge of other's classes HP's and good timing in combat. Once mods came out that gave absolute numbers on HP (well before the default UI was changed to show it) this ability became obviously trivial to use. If you knew your spell did 700 damage you just waited till the opponent showed below 700 health and you never burned the spell on a opponent that remained alive afterwards. It is small things like this that I feel dumb down the complexity of the game and serve to just set poorer players on the same level of astute ones. I of course could go on on about other similar things.

I realize that many min/max style players simply ask for more info available regardless of what it is, not because it leads to more interesting dynamics nor combat that rewards the best, but because they know that not everyone in the game world will get the mods that display this info and since they will, this will default give them extra advantages that they apparently feel they need.

I do not have nearly so much of a zero-sum view, and certainly am for more info in many cases, but I prefer to rate mods and display info purely on whether it helps or hurts the game experience. I have enough confidence in my abilities as a player that I can face a player with an even level of knowledge about what is going on in the world (whether it is a little or a lot) and still perform very successfully.

For example if a mod were offered that could view a opponents entire gear set and build from 100 yards away, this would obviously be a huge advantage to those who used it vs those who didn't. But I don't care about that aspect so much as it ruins any mystery, or requirement of a player to adapt on the fly in the middle of combat to what his opponent is doing. That is where players truly separate themselves. It is in remembering that 'bob' the Bright Wizard is loaded up on AOE and that he always opens up with Spell X, vs simply scanning his build from behind a hill and seeing all his points in AOE fireball or whatever. Something that in no way makes sense for an opponent to know.

[jgame]

I'd rather have a UI that shows me the most important info, stuff that i need to use or see frequently, all others things should be on the UI in different, but organized menu buttons. I don't mind a lot of things in the UI, just as long as it doesn't fill too much of the screen. I like to see more of the game, then what buttons i can press..

[Jagatai]

I like to see what I want, which is usually very minimal, and as much of the actual game as possible. Most of the WoW mods I used were stuff like Cartographer and MobInfo that were helpful yet took up little to no extra space.

Mods are great, as long as they improve upon issue that need to be addressed and don't interfere with gameplay and being able to see what's actually going on.

[Rizzen]

I'm hoping the Vanilla UI has everything available that a person should need for RvR. As far as I'm concerned the only thing that I'd mod my UI for in that case would be aesthetics.

[Vid]

After reading your post Rerisen I feel you misunderstood my post and after rereading my post I understand why.

When I mentioned having the most information as possible on screen I was referring to information that is already presented to you from the developers that is either default or has to be turned on in the menus. An example of this would be if Target's Target was default off I would turn it on, in more cases than not this new frame would take up more space than the default viewing area. If I was unable to move or even resize this frame to make it fit so that I could increase my viewing area I would look for a mod that would let me do this. Maybe I feel the action bars are to big and cut into my viewing area as well, I'd want to make them smaller. Thats what I intended when I said "most information I can possible get but I want the most viewable area I can get as well."

I try not to install mods that track cooldowns, time buffs/debuffs, automate buffs/debuffs, or even show enemy player information that the UI doesn't already show. I feel mods such as these ruin my gaming experience.

Guess I should have just said this the first time.:???:

P.S. I really like HUD mods, I really dislike having to look to the top corners to see my health, enemy health, and buffs/debuffs. Also the HUD has to be invisible when I'm not in combat and mostly transparent while I'm in combat, it can't be getting in my way to much.

[BobTheOrc]

What about an Auctioneer type mod? Auctioneer is a very helpful mod, all it does for the player is list auctions. Sure you can do that by yourself, but auctioneer makes it faster.

[Rerisen]

What about an Auctioneer type mod? Auctioneer is a very helpful mod, all it does for the player is list auctions. Sure you can do that by yourself, but auctioneer makes it faster.

I liked auctioneer. But it actually it could do a lot more than list auctions. At one point there was a version that could actually scan the auction house when you weren't at your computer, buy any auctions that were 10% (or whatever you set) lower than their resale cost.

It could also track the price of things across months of the server's economy. Automatically undersell the nearest sellers of the same item, etc.

Since the best items in WoW were from raiding, I don't think it was anything game wrecking despite all its features. And the WoW devs even listed being a auction house guru as a legit means to make money in the world vs grinding or questing. So as long as the devs understand what a mod like that can do when they are designing their itemization I think it should be allowable. Though the automated stuff was a bit much.

[Loekii]

Here is an example of the minimalism I enjoy.

http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/full10891.jpg

I always would love to 'event' bar function -- ie where bars are 'invisible' until they can be used. There is a mod 'bongo bars' that turns bars base upon your target, stance, form, etc.

For example, lets say I am playing a Gobbo. I would like the my 'support bars' hidden until I target a friendly player, for example, rather than having it cluttering the UI all the time.

[Whiskeyjack]

eh honeslty you dont need half of those mods those were like first gen mods. With mods like grid and ora the whole healing thing is a LOT easier also that original SS is a gross exageration ( guy has 2 comabt logs on the screen) i cleared the whole of BT in wow without using much of anything mod wise ( Ora, omen, recount, and DBM) the newest generation mods are a lot more streamlined and effective. CTraid and all those altho were groundbreaking at their time are obsolete now and barely used by any serious raiding guild cause of memory usage and sheer screen cluttering

[Dracohouston]

Here is an example of the minimalism I enjoy.

http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/full10891.jpg

I always would love to 'event' bar function -- ie where bars are 'invisible' until they can be used. There is a mod 'bongo bars' that turns bars base upon your target, stance, form, etc.

For example, lets say I am playing a Gobbo. I would like the my 'support bars' hidden until I target a friendly player, for example, rather than having it cluttering the UI all the time.
jesus, that's tiny as hell. A rather dapper UI

[vazzaroth]

I like my UI to be as a frame for a picture. I like all 4 sides of the screen to have info/hotkeys and such, but not any more than, say, 1 inch into the screen. Maybe up to 2 on the sides.

I've played games with little info, and even modded Oblivion to include it, and I just feel odd w/o at least a base UI on the bottom, I feel empty. It's a very weird feeling.

In my MMO testing of over, like, 10 MMOs, I've also found out that I am very specific about UIs, and more than one game was uninstalled from my HD because of bad UI.
(And don't even get me started on Asian click-to-move only games, but that's control, not UI.)

[BobTheOrc]

I'm trying to Buy and Re Sell items using auctioneer. Except, I don't know how to use auctioneer for that, so I just searched for items and bought ones that were underpriced. I'll see how it goes I need the money for my epic mount.

[Dracohouston]

I'm trying to Buy and Re Sell items using auctioneer. Except, I don't know how to use auctioneer for that, so I just searched for items and bought ones that were underpriced. I'll see how it goes I need the money for my epic mount.
It's actually a mod the auctioneer people made called bottomscanner (btmscan). It used to be 'bottomfeeder' and was automated. Blizzard told them to get rid of it, so they did and redid it so you have to buy it yourself, it just alerts you that stuff is underpriced. It should come with most of the auctioneer distributions on their site.

[GrandOne]

Why don't we petition for one hit kill everything?
Then no mods are needed, but also the "fun" of keeping up with mods are gone
Personally, I like a challenge, to know my enemy "personally", not told every step to make next

[Loekii]

I agree, and to repeat, I don't think mods should perform tasks, nor should they give you information not directly found on the standard UI (ie if the Standard UI doesn't have an enemy casting bar, mods should not provide one either).

Mods should basically be cosmetic, and not functional per se.

[EToaster]

Personally, I liked to have a lot of information available, but while still leaving most of the center screen open. Here's what I had a few months before I quit WoW.

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a112/EToaster/WoWScrnShot_081907_023321.jpg?t=1199040807

I appreciate mods like X-Perl that give a lot of information without spamming me with text through things like highlighting unit frames in different colors to represent their status.

I would have gotten some new spell bars, but I could never find one that agreed with me.

[Nerissa]

For example, the tales of healing classes having beat encounters without ever actually looking at the mob they are fighting (in the above game screenshot) is in my opinion sad and bad game design that I would not like to see repeated.


That person is a great example of overkill. For example, the decursive display could have been turned off because that information was redundant with his raid UI. He has too many chat windows open. His raid UI is larger than necessary.



Think I've covered the basics of what causes that. It is not the INFORMATION that causes this problem, but unsophisticated means of relaying that information to the player, and simple user error. (Enabling too many options, opening too many chat windows, etc. that combines to create a LOT of spam)


And sadly, during the era that shot was taken, mods were pretty cut and dried. A mod exists now that would condense the entire left side of his screen into a little brick about half the size. His actionbars could also be shrunk, and as I mentioned.... one chat window is good.



The only time mods get that bad is when the user allows them to.

[Mo0rbid]

Save my screenspace ; )


http://s239.photobucket.com/albums/ff176/Mo0rbid/?action=view&current=uiwide-2.jpg

http://s239.photobucket.com/albums/ff176/Mo0rbid/?action=view&current=uiwide3.jpg

http://s239.photobucket.com/albums/ff176/Mo0rbid/?action=view&current=uiwide4.jpg

http://s239.photobucket.com/albums/ff176/Mo0rbid/?action=view&current=uiwide2.jpg

clicking ftl, oh yes

[Vid]

What about an Auctioneer type mod? Auctioneer is a very helpful mod, all it does for the player is list auctions. Sure you can do that by yourself, but auctioneer makes it faster.

I like Auctioneer but not for the same reason that most people do, able to post sever auctions at a competitive price. For me Informant that was packaged with Auctioneer was my favorite aspect of it. If you aren't familiar with what Informant did, it was the part that told you how much and item was vendored for. I always found it to be great to have when I would complete a quest that had BoP items that I couldn't use, I'd simple pick the most valuable and sell it.

[GrimmJaw]

I think the UI should not be able to be changed in any way aside from graphically.
I've always liked clear and concise for UI stuff. I would be happy with a UI containing only an action bar, simple combat log (X hits Z 193) and health displays for you, your group, and your target, containing no more than a name and a coloured bar.

Everyone ive ever played against or with in any online game (that had proper skill, in my opinion) didn't have a real need for most of the junk ive seen or heard mentioned over time.

[Higach]

Save my screenspace ; )


http://s239.photobucket.com/albums/ff176/Mo0rbid/?action=view&current=uiwide-2.jpg

http://s239.photobucket.com/albums/ff176/Mo0rbid/?action=view&current=uiwide3.jpg

http://s239.photobucket.com/albums/ff176/Mo0rbid/?action=view&current=uiwide4.jpg

http://s239.photobucket.com/albums/ff176/Mo0rbid/?action=view&current=uiwide2.jpg

clicking ftl, oh yes

Almost exactly how mine were :D

I like the sleek simple look.

[VeriusCarth]

To be honest, I didn't really read through the whole thread, so if I'm kicking a dead horse, simply ignore me.

My personal opinion on the whole matter is that leaving the screen as blank as possible, to allow the player to see more of the game, and making what UI elements you DO have on the screen unobtrusive, is best.

Having a screen absolutely cluttered with stuff takes you away from the game and puts you in a little box full of numbers and buttons.
Now, people can do that if they want... but we're not the programmers, we're the gamers. We shouldn't be in a little box trying to imagine the workings of the game in our head based on strings of text.
Put the player in the game, give him the basic elements he needs, and give him the ability to expand his scope if he so desires.

I'm not saying that having as little as possible is completely best from the get go. It's good to be able to accomplish all the necessary tasks through your default UI, and it's even better if you can manage to stick in secondary functions without it being obtrusive to your gameplay experience.

My example to this is every FPS based in a helmet view. While this is mostly Sci-Fi shooters, they're a pretty good example despite. In most cases, a first-person viewpoint that shows that you're looking through a helmet with a visor or some such thing is designed fairly well. It's pretty clean, pretty simple, and even though the elements aren't necessarily unobtrusive, they generally feel like they should be where they are. Star Wars Republic Commando did a pretty good job at that; it covered up enough of the screen to make you feel like you were inside your suit, and thus a character, rather than a floating camera holding a gun. Coupled with the fact that the visor would get damaged, or rained on, or something, and it would periodically send a little bar across the clear off the visor, rather than having it mysteriously vanish.
They did enough to make you feel immersed in the game, and while it wasn't technically the best game out there, it did a pretty admirable job with its UI.

Applying this idea to RPGs where you're not first person is completely different entirely. In this, it's best if you have your UI consisting of things that you absolutely need to monitor at all times, and other UI elements that you can bring up through a key binding, or from mouse-over. That said, it'd do one better if the company making the game allowed you to customize the key binding for those elements, the opacity of what's displayed, control over what is displayed by default, and also the ability to re-arrange and resize the UI.

Basically, a company probably shouldn't fill your screen from the get go, and force you to use player-made mods to change this.

All that said, and if you didn't get it by now, I support immersion in games, and RPGs are no different. If you're going to make things pretty, why not do your best to make it so that you continue to feel like you're in character? Though I realize people will possibly argue that it's easier for FPSes, it's generally a better thing if you can get immersion in an RPG of some sort. Being able to control your character without feeling like you're completely dis-attached from it, I think, is the best way for games to be set up.


If all else fails, make the UI neat, make it organized, and put as many little useful enhancements in there as you can manage. (And allow every bit of them to be on/off toggle-able.)

[CrazyGoldShield]

I am a fan of minimalism in my UI, so I hope for some built in support for situational popups of windows and bars and such. I had a bunch of bars in WoW that didn't pop up unless I was targeting certain kinds of creatures, or held an otherwise unused button.

[Vardelm]

Give me minimalism.

IMO there's a difference in what players NEED to know and what they would LIKE to know. There's definitely a lot of grey area in those definitions, but giving players every single scrap of info does not make for good gameplay, or at least enjoyable gameplay. The graphics & game world is where the vast majority of the action should be viewed, rather than UI elements.

Developers should define the limits of what players should be allowed to know, and then UIs should be customizable to present that information however the player desires. For example, you might be allowed to know what % health your opponent is at, but not an absolute value. This information could then be presented to the player as either a number (X%), a bar, a combination of the 2, or even something different. The result is that all players can know roughly how damaged their opponents are, but not an exact health total.

In terms of players' UIs, I think players often forget to ask themselves what they really need to know in game. They also often don't ask themselves when they need that info, and find ways to hide it until needed. In creating my WoW UI, I asked myself what information I absolutely HAD to know in the middle of combat, and removed everything that was extraneous. I love the result.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v729/Vardelm/Warcraft/UI/vard_hunterui_mingrad.jpg

[Rerisen]

Give me minimalism.

IMO there's a difference in what players NEED to know and what they would LIKE to know. There's definitely a lot of grey area in those definitions, but giving players every single scrap of info does not make for good gameplay, or at least enjoyable gameplay. The graphics & game world is where the vast majority of the action should be viewed, rather than UI elements.

Developers should define the limits of what players should be allowed to know, and then UIs should be customizable to present that information however the player desires. For example, you might be allowed to know what % health your opponent is at, but not an absolute value. This information could then be presented to the player as either a number (X%), a bar, a combination of the 2, or even something different. The result is that all players can know roughly how damaged their opponents are, but not an exact health total.

In terms of players' UIs, I think players often forget to ask themselves what they really need to know in game.

Excellent post. You are one of the few people that actually read my post instead of just screaming about 'know how to arrange your UI, lolz'. Then spamming screenshots of tiny buttons and .004 font text. I should have renamed the thread, because that was not the thrust of it.

Most players cannot separate what is good for their character vs what is good for the game and its gameplay at large. Forced to choose, most will always choose what is most beneficial for their character, especially those that are long time UI aficionados. In a Fantasy MMO, information dictating your actions on screen should come primarily from what is happening in the world, not from a list of mods or text telling you what is happening. As far as actually modifying and arranging what *is* avaialble, in any way you like, that is fine and should be encouraged.

[Vardelm]

Excellent post. You are one of the few people that actually read my post...
Woops.... Didnt' mean to do that.... ;)

In a Fantasy MMO, information dictating your actions on screen should come primarily from what is happening in the world, not from a list of mods or text telling you what is happening.
Well stated.

I like to get as much information from the game world/graphics as possible, but without cluttering the space. I like having tooltips at my mouse location because my eyes can change focus to that and back to graphics easily since it's right there, and it's not always shown. I don't like floaty names or health bars over toon heads because it clutters the graphics.

What I would REALLY love to see is some kind of API that allows us to change graphics that alert us to world conditions. For example, showing health somehow in a graphics under the target's feet, like the graphic you see in many games when you have something targetted. Usually it just for targetting, but showing something useful like health would be pretty nifty. If that graphic could be customized via an API, I would think that something could be made to convey the health without it being too obtrusive.

[Rerisen]

One thing I was thinking about in that original screenshot from WoW. Something like decursive is entirely the fault of the U.I giving out too much information.

If in WoW, the UI did not tell you when a ally was cursed or poisoned, and you actually had to view it physically (say like how in Final Fantasy a stunned character has stars over his head, or a poisoned one turns green) then there would have never even been encounters designed around healers hitting 40 (now 25) tiny little bars playing dispel whack a mole. To the extent those encounters would have still existed, the mobs would have placed ailments on players far slower and also given you far more time to remove them. The fact that these 40 little bars offered so much information was in fact, the very reason that a mod was made that did your job for you, and thus encounters based on their use followed. Followed lastly by giving us totally boring 'strategies' of hitting the same button 40 times over every 30 seconds to cleanse, cleanse, cleanse. Pretty challenging there.

Now if a player had been expected only to actually look around the dungeon and view what players were affected and cleanse them by clicking and casting on that character, the arms race of dispelling would never have reached the point it did. Something to think about in always asking for more information and correlating it with more = good.

[Silentium]

Developers should define the limits of what players should be allowed to know, and then UIs should be customizable to present that information however the player desires. For example, you might be allowed to know what % health your opponent is at, but not an absolute value. This information could then be presented to the player as either a number (X%), a bar, a combination of the 2, or even something different. The result is that all players can know roughly how damaged their opponents are, but not an exact health total.

In terms of players' UIs, I think players often forget to ask themselves what they really need to know in game. They also often don't ask themselves when they need that info, and find ways to hide it until needed. In creating my WoW UI, I asked myself what information I absolutely HAD to know in the middle of combat, and removed everything that was extraneous. I love the result.

Very nice UI.

I prefer the minimalistic approach as well but I won't complain from having too many options for information.

Most of the "bad example" screenshots are of people with no clue what they're doing. "I heard that this guild use all these mods when they raid so I'll download them all and be good." It's not how it works.

UI is about finding the correct balance of signal to noise.

I don't need fancy frames on my windows. I don't need gongs, whistles, flashing information. If playing solo I'd have a chat window, my health, the target's health. Most action bars were hidden since I used the keyboard. I'd only have up bars to display cooldowns. I'd need only the same if I were doing raid dps. If I ran the raid I'd need to see everyone's health and mana to know when to go, when to break. My guild never used threatmeters. The general consensus was they were too much of a crutch to lean on. We aimed for everyone to know well enough what was going on to gauge their pacing. But raid alerts were routine because most of WoW's bosses were heavily scripted fights based on timed mechanics. The fights are anticipatory rather than reactive. So it was either sit with a stopwatch or use alerts. That's flawed from a design point of view.

But in Blizzard's defense on mods, a LOT of Warcraft mods were based on info not directly given from the game. Like you suggested they only gave % of your enemy's health. Then a mod named MobHealth came out that said "If I hit this thing for 163 damage and it loses 8% health then how much total health must it have?" and it does the math and replaces the % with a rough estimate.

The threatmeters that are used now are the result of parsing thousands (millions?) of lines of combat logs to figure out how Warcraft's threat mechanics worked, then the threat values of every ability in the game. From the very basic info the game gave (You hit Target for 1000 damage. Priest healed you for 500 health.) a massive game-altering mod was constructed.

I'd hate for a game to not have the ability to log combat info. It's useful in working out the mechanics of gameplay, it's useful to go back and see what the hell happened. :)

I love access to as much information as possible. It's just that we also need to limit how much we can see, else we drown in it.

[Silentium]

What I would REALLY love to see is some kind of API that allows us to change graphics that alert us to world conditions. For example, showing health somehow in a graphics under the target's feet, like the graphic you see in many games when you have something targetted. Usually it just for targetting, but showing something useful like health would be pretty nifty. If that graphic could be customized via an API, I would think that something could be made to convey the health without it being too obtrusive.

Something similar to a HUD? I used one in WoW and it got to the point where I hid regular health bars altogether. A bar for health and rage on the left of my character, bars on the right for the target. Transparent out of combat, translucent in combat. It was never obstructive, gave all the info I needed in peripheral vision, and freed up more screen space. Some of the HUD mods came with massive graphics for health bars with detailed emblems and it seemed to defeat the whole point. HUDs were designed for centralizing information and reducing clutter.

[CrazyGoldShield]

Something similar to a HUD? I used one in WoW and it got to the point where I hid regular health bars altogether. A bar for health and rage on the left of my character, bars on the right for the target. Transparent out of combat, translucent in combat. It was never obstructive, gave all the info I needed in peripheral vision, and freed up more screen space. Some of the HUD mods came with massive graphics for health bars with detailed emblems and it seemed to defeat the whole point. HUDs were designed for centralizing information and reducing clutter.
Indeed, HUDs are a godsend. I fully planning on using/making one for myself. All the info I need to know about me, my target, and my pet, in an area I can easily access? Heck yes.

[Vardelm]

Something similar to a HUD?
Not quite.

I assume you're thinking of the hud mods from WoW like this:

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb42/VanessaDS/DrathalsHUD.jpg

Those aren't bad, but it's not what I'm talking about.


What I meant was an API to control graphical elements within the actual world graphics. For example, in WoW's options you can turn on the "name plates". This shows the character/mob's name above its head, and also a small health bar. It's in the 3D space of the game world. That I know of, there's no API calls for WoW where you can change what the name plates look like and what info they show.

To extend that, what about the circle of graphics that appears on the ground by your target's feet? It shows that the character is selected. Instead of having this be static, why not make it show information like how much health the target has? It could be shown in a "dial" manner. Full hp = full circle. As the target loses hp, the full circle disappears in a radial manner, just like showing cooldowns on action bars. What about showing the health a bar, not a circle, but still under the character's feet?


Why not have a full API for that stuff? It's possible that you could remove any sort of target unit frame and just display needed info (health & mana) right under their feet. It would be much less intrusive on the world graphics than having a bar floating over the head, and would take up less UI real estate than a traditional target unit frame.

That make it a bit more clear?

[Silentium]

Yes, it does. And there is a lot of potential in that.

In fact if I am recalling some of the released gameplay videos correctly there was a circle under your character's feet with arrow indicators pointing in the directions of party members so there already exists some of API elements in there. Whether they give us access to is another story but I really like the idea.