I think the default UI should be tweakable and designed in such a way that it works well (resizing, dragging locations of windows, adding/removing hotbars, orienting hotbars vertically/horizontally etc.). This is one of those areas where I think once that design is achieved, it's okay to open it up to the modding community slightly. Saves time for the devs to focus on important content and allows players to customize addons/skins that go above and beyond with features (like ProfitUI from EQII).
Bump... Because I like to know what I would need programatically (if any) to customize personal interface.
ref: https://www.eqinterface.com/)
Like graphics format and restrictions, window in window customizations, etc.
Or is this also part of the 'found out for yourself game play element' ?
(or am I now to be flamed for not seeing some tube that addressed this?)
Anyways, related threads:
General UI aspects and limitations:
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/5218/user-interface-restrictions/
Race ; / Cultural default:
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/3566/user-interface-design-for-your-race/
Game default:
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/5616/simple-initial-user-interface/
This is extreamly important, to me at least. Allowing me to move things, hide, remove or add the different aspects of what I want to see to the game window is, honestly, almost a game changer.
I'd like everything in the UI to be customizable. Everything from group windows, cast bars, buff windows, chat/info windows, as well as resource bars for both yourself and your enemies. The default UI should be robust enough to not be obligated to install a custom made UI, but the option to create your own should definitely be enabled in the API.
UI has always been a major part of my gameplay because I was a healer. It had to be perfectly clear and snappy to get all the information. Text size, colors, hotkeys and how much screen space it still let me see. Everything had to be at the right place to fit my style and let me play at my best. This UI below was using pieces put together of many UI themes for EQ1 while it still worked so I'm showing you some pictures I scrounged up. In these pictures the UI is far from perfect and I really hope there is a huge effort put into the UI customization from everyone working on it. Viewing space, crystal clear snappy information reading ability from the design and beautiful artwork is critical so if the UI is taking too much space or blocking my view it becomes something I would very much not want to use at all. Something too big or too small, or ugly will turn me off right away and make me want to find a better setup.
Big problem with EQ1 right now is the lack of UI being done since most creators have stopped supporting the game which is very sad because art and UI's look is big bonus for the immersion feeling. As a cleric i spent hundreds and hundreds of real days /24h looking at it solo, groups and on raids mostly. You bet that I care a lot about that part of my game. I would even pay someone to customize mine just for me if I had the chance lol. :)
I took hours upon myself to care for every details in the UI i could adjust. Even the pink/fake item links in my hotkeys to highlight < %t name > of my target and my spell names to attract quickly the eyes of the players on raids. I went to great length to make sure I stay on top and make it easier for me to do my job.
Iksar said:Being able to move the elements and reszie them is pretty much all I need. I'm not too picky really as I still remember spending over a year with the original EQ ui on a 15 inch monitor...so about 5 inches of viewing space.
The old UI was very cool and easy to read. It had a mysterious cool factor to it back then. :)
Iksar said:Being able to move the elements and reszie them is pretty much all I need. I'm not too picky really as I still remember spending over a year with the original EQ ui on a 15 inch monitor...so about 5 inches of viewing space.
Ditto. Never really put a lot of effort into my UI until I absolutely had to.
NOTE: What I DO very much hope they do is allow us to /copy our UI from one character and paste it to another. That is, if I spend an hour adjusting my UI just so on Tralyan, and then create a new character, give me an option to /Copy Tralyan's UI so I don't have to spend another hour messing with the new one.
Customizable UIs are super important to me. Along with being able to move and resize, transparency with various triggers is top on my list of wants/desires. Transparency triggers could be anything such as a mouse rollover or combat triggers. I also love to be able to have my character health/mana/energy bars fade out when full. It can also mean having chat screens fading when they've gone silent after so long. So on and so forth.
Basically the less I can see of a UI the more I get to enjoy the look of the game while keeping the truly important parts visible. This is how I played as a healer and any other class.
While watching the stream tonight, I thought about how much it bugged me in past games where I was not able to adjust the group order. Say I am playing a healer and I want to move the main tank to be directly under my name in the group list (1st group member). Another way this helps is if I am quicker pressing say F2 to target someone, that way I can put the person I want to target the most as F2.
Can we have a feature to drag and drop to reorder the group?
bigdogchris said:While watching the stream tonight, I thought about how much it bugged me in past games where I was not able to adjust the group order. Say I am playing a healer and I want to move the main tank to be directly under my name in the group list (1st group member). Another way this helps is if I am quicker pressing say F2 to target someone, that way I can put the person I want to target the most as F2.
Can we have a feature to drag and drop to reorder the group?
Yes this is very important to me as a healer. I always prioritise my healing group by shifting them around my UI. I keep the tank & me as my main focus, and then the dps. After all if the tank is dead we're all dead, and if I'm dead, you will all die very soon!
Whilst I'd be happy to have *some* control (moving bags and other dialogs. Scaling for different resolutions) I hope there is nothing too wild and that there are no third-party tools possible. You tend to end up *having* to use them or not being able to keep up, at high level and in raids, anyway.
The UI in streams is looking very nice and clean and tidy and unobtrusive.
What would be nice is if they design encounters like raids and whatnot so that you only *need* to see your group and your buffs and de-buffs and whatnot so there's no need to have a mass of clutter.
As long as the interface is well presented and isn't painful to use, then it's part of the game to be able to operate it well, especially in situations like raids. MMORPGs aren't supposed to be twitch combat, but being able to keep half an eye on party health, ability cooldowns, etc and whip out a potion in an emergency and move your character around etc all at once is part of the fun isn't it?
If you can extensively re-design it or especially if you can add third-party tools, it will actually effect the intended difficulty of the encounters.
Iksar said:Being able to move the elements and reszie them is pretty much all I need. I'm not too picky really as I still remember spending over a year with the original EQ ui on a 15 inch monitor...so about 5 inches of viewing space.
FLASHBACKS! OMG!
I cant believe we used to play with that as our screen. I am glad they fixed that.
Resurrecting this topic, because I had a thought the other day about UI.
One thing I hated, was having to rebuild my UI everytime I made a new character, particularly my chat filters/colors.
I make a character, build and arrange my UI and settings, and then my next character I would like to be able to "copy" from another character, and then tweak it some more based on the new characters class etc.
As long as the UI is unintrusive, I'm fine with just being able to edit it a bit. Move the health/target areas, hotbars, just generally rearranging the layout. Beng able to add a few additional bars for things like bags or items or tradeskills (if they're buried within a different part of the UI, that is) is great to.
