jdusk8622 said:I would truly enjoy the ability to customize the default UI, however, I do not like custom UI's that you can download and install.
Personally I like to make the UI as small as I can without being unable to read/navigate, so I can view as much of the world as possible.
I should have stated that one too. Way to many issues going the DL version.
Ox
Sunmistress said:I really need a horizontal running spell bar and group bar. I cannot stand the Vertical style group bar i saw on the twitch. I am hoping we can just drag/resize things instead of having to edit .xml or something.
I am all for a good open UI, witht the ability to customize the layout, as long as it doesn't give people the ability to exploit or "cheat" the game.
This is a huge deal for me because no UI design is every done in a way that I prefer and a bad UI can completely ruin a game for me. Most waste too much space in their element designs so the elements do not fit together very well. They also don't know how I like my information presented. I'd rather a developer just create the tools for creating a UI and let the players make their own, of course limiting us to only the data we should be receiving.
This may sound odd, but a good example of a horrible UI is EVE Online.
Vandraad said:This is a huge deal for me because no UI design is every done in a way that I prefer and a bad UI can completely ruin a game for me. Most waste too much space in their element designs so the elements do not fit together very well. They also don't know how I like my information presented. I'd rather a developer just create the tools for creating a UI and let the players make their own, of course limiting us to only the data we should be receiving.
This may sound odd, but a good example of a horrible UI is EVE Online.
I agree with all of this. Although I don't think a UI can make-or-break a game, it is quite important. The ability to customize it will make any imperfections that much easier to overcome. Especially since each player will have different tastes.
And I agree, the EVE UI was not very good. Too many little buttons and strange list modes. It was not always easy to select a specific asteroid to go to and then cruise over to it. Worse yet was trying to pick out the "correct" space station from the list when in a crowded area.
Huge for me.
I put it before even gameplay and combat. If the UI is to big, clunky, ugly etc. and I can't alter it, that's most likely a deal breaker. EQ2's current "out of the box" UI is the best I've seen in a long, long time. Hopefully something along those lines will be in play here.
I tend to stay away from mods that alter the UI interface (meaning alternate themes mostly) and stick with the original look that the developers provide. With that said, I enjoy being able to resize and move around the UI. I always like to reduce the size of the UI/chat infterface to provide maximum space for me to see whatever might be happening to my character on screen.
I'm fairly picky about UIs. I prefer fully customizable UI elements. One thing that always turns me off and has me hopping around looking for a third party solution is games that want to scale the entire thing. I like big huge buttons, and a chat window with larger font. I don't, however, want to scale my party frames to take up the entire left half of my screen. I usually set up my bars for a couple of large full 12 button bars that are hotkeyed (large to more easily see CDs on abilities), and 1 or 2 clicky bars scaled down in size for buffs, food, mounts, ports, etc. At the end of the day, I'm not concerned with backgrounds or window colors and things of that nature, but the ability to individually scale the size of frames, and not the entire overlay, is important to me. I like the way both EQ2 and LotRO did it where you could save a layout and easily import it for different characters. On my healer, for example, I'm going to want larger raid frames to click than for a tank where additional visibility can be more important. Simply scaling the whole UI to accomodate larger resolutions isn't a very effective solution for me.
The primary interest I have in customizing the UI is to move windows around and perhaps adjust sizes and such. I don't plan to use the ability to re-skin my UI, but I definitely support having that and all sorts of customizations even if I don't use them.
The ability to be able to adjust the UI is important to me. I normally do rearrange the layout and set things up how I like. I use a G13 gamepad for mmos. Going back to just keyboard and mouse makes me cringe, well only a little bit. :P
What I like to do is have some hotbar setup to reflect the layout of the G13, so it gives a quick visual reference to abilities that are commonly used. Using the G13 just feels more fluid and fun.
I like my UI's to be simple. By that I mean, not having all these fancy scroll elemnts and graphics on the borders. Give me simple square boxes that I can move, and resize, and that allow me to have horizontal OR vertical layout of any and all information I choose.
I also really like the "viewport" option in EQ so I could not only resize my gaming window to not be covered by the UI, and that allowed my UI to be along the edges or bottom with black backgrounds, versus being translucent and fighting font color issues backed on the zone you were in. (IE: grassy zones made green text harder to see, sandy zones tan/beige text harder, caves gray or black hard to see)
For those that don't know, the viewport option was like a window within your game window, allowing you to get the full game screen sized down inside your monitor screen.
You didn't give up any viewing area, just resized it to give yourself an outside area to place UI components. (Note: IMO this is too many UI compnents. :) )
