Update 9: Suitable UI, PLEASE!!!

[Al'Darion]

I really love this game, but the more and more I play it, the more and more I become aggravated at how inferior and sub-par the user interface is. The whole time I'm thinking to myself 'If I knew enough about coding and programming (which I don't), all it would take me to come up with a UI that would maybe not rival WoW's, but at least not look like 2nd rate work in comparison, would be a month, maybe two, of dedicated and undivided work!'
So, in the spirit of the season, I would like to put forth my Festivult wish list to DDO as follows:

Dear DDO development team:
All I want for Update 9 is a much MUCH better user interface. That's it. I don't want more adventure packs, world events, cosmetic items, or any other random bug fixes. I wish for weeks of work on the part of the development team dedicated exclusively to the task of presenting a beautiful, intuitive, customizable user interface for the next major update of Dungeons & Dragons: Online.
In my eyes, any content that shows up in update 9 or any other subsequent update before a revamped and remarkable user interface, will be seen as laziness and neglect towards the loyal player base.

Thank you.


Now, I don't know how best to get the development team's attention, but I really hope others out there ( I know you're there) share my wish and voice it enough for our plea to be heard.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

Have you tried customized skins?

[Al'Darion]

Yeah, but that's not what I'm talking about. Skins essentially make the UI look slightly different, but function exactly the same. I've played way worse MMOs than DDO that had way better UI.

[Shishizaru]

Yeah, but that's not what I'm talking about. Skins essentially make the UI look slightly different, but function exactly the same. I've played way worse MMOs than DDO that had way better UI.

It might be easier to find people who agree with you if you explain which aspects of the current UI you find to be badly implemented or non-intuitive. It seems mostly fine to me, but if you were to bring up specifics, I might have an "oh yeah" moment.

[Impaqt]

It might be easier to find people who agree with you if you explain which aspects of the current UI you find to be badly implemented or non-intuitive. It seems mostly fine to me, but if you were to bring up specifics, I might have an "oh yeah" moment.

QFT

OP: Youhave said nothing as to how you would "Improve" the interface at all. I like it quite a bit, the Devs have made great strides over the years improving and making it more functional. other thanmaking all elements scaleable and being able to really lock all emelments in place where I want them to stay, I cant think of anything I'd actually change at this point.

Just because you may be used to WOW's interface doesnt mean DDO's is bad.

[Bogenbroom]

Yeah, I have to join in with the dissenters. Not there are not a couple of areas I wouldn't do differently, but in general I find the UI to be pretty good.

[Al'Darion]

Everything duely noted. I suggest that this forum become a kind of wish list for a better UI. Not necessarily a bash list. Like I said in my first sentence, I love this game. I assume everyone who reads and/or posts on the forums also loves this game. So, not to pick apart the hard work that the dev team has done (this is me apologizing) with the UI already, let's just suggest some improvements we would like to see. Here are some of my ideas:

Zoomable minimap

Ability to examine other players' gear without them having to link everything into chat.

Guild commands in window & button form, replacing the (currently non-functioning, please fix soon) /slash commands.

A /follow command. I would do this in a pnp game if a party member and I were simply going from here to there.

Toggleable cloak visibility. We've already got helm and armor kits with this option.

Checkable list in the chat window. For instance check 'party' and 'guild' while avoiding general and combat chat.

A better macro system than alias. Something that you can associate with actions and throw on the action bar. For example: A rogue leads a party into a seemingly harmless corridor. The rogue spots a trap and taps a key. To his party he does some emote, instantly begins searching for the trap, while saying to the party 'TRAP!"
Another useful example: A wizard has 3 melee ranged spells (chill touch, shocking grasp, etc), 2 CC spells, and 4 ranged AOE spells prepared and on his action bars. Instead of filling up 9 slots on his action bar, he fills up 3; one for the melee spells, another for the CC spells, and a third for the AOEs. By using a combination of 2 or 3 modifier keys that apply to the same action bar button, the wizard accesses all of his plethora of spells on one action bar. No need to clutter up the screen with 20 different action bars.

Anyways, these are a few ideas that I would love to see in this game that, imo don't detract from the D&Dness of the game (notice I didn't say little red dots on the minimap to indicate where all the mobs are?) and seem relatively simple to produce without weighing down the game with tons of lag.

[Trippy]

Might want to do some searching for pervious suggestions on the forums here. I know that being able to examine players suggestions generaly devolve into flame-fests and the /follow and macro systems have both been shot down by developers at one time or another.

Could you go into more detail on the minimap (where have you felt the need for a zoom?) and the chat windows, how is it different then what we have now?(Right-click, pick from list what to see)

[Al'Darion]

Didn't know about the right click list thing for the chat pane, but then after testing it, I discovered a great example of how the UI could just be cleaned up a bit in a lot of areas. When choosing which chats to receive, I had to right click and go through the menus each time to check or uncheck multiple things, when a sysmple matter of making it stay open while you're choosing from the lists until you're done (as indicated by closing the window, or moving the mouse out of the menu) would make it feel more thought out and completed.

As far as the minimap goes, I haven't felt a need. I was merely brainstorming of ways to make the UI feel... crisper... more cohesive... less... clunky. At the moment I really can't think of exactly how a zoomable minimap would help in that cause. I guess, one big thing that would really help me feel better about the UI would be the already and frequently suggested improvement of having things nailed down into place a little more in a pretty and happy frame around the border of the screen or something.

I guess that's really my big issue; Many aspects of the UI feel very unfinished, as though the development team created some great and useful features, made them at least somewhat functional (in most cases), and then moved on to something they could sell like an adventure pack or a new race/class(My.DDO.com vs Half-Elves). I hope they have a list of unfinished projects so they can just go back through and finish everything up.

I've been playing for over a year now and there are some things that have just never worked as advertized, like guild commands! Can you please just fix that to appease me?

But, really, there is no one else out there that has any reasonable desires and suggestions on how to make the UI a little less clunky and more appealing than it already is?

In actuality, beyond some of these issues, I can't really complain about DDO at all. Considering the huge task it is to run a game with as little funding as it has (compared to the other major MMOs- THANK YOU FOR F2P!), DDO is a wonder and a treasure.

[Thrudh]

I really love this game, but the more and more I play it, the more and more I become aggravated at how inferior and sub-par the user interface is. The whole time I'm thinking to myself 'If I knew enough about coding and programming (which I don't), all it would take me to come up with a UI that would maybe not rival WoW's, but at least not look like 2nd rate work in comparison, would be a month, maybe two, of dedicated and undivided work!'
So, in the spirit of the season, I would like to put forth my Festivult wish list to DDO as follows:

Dear DDO development team:
All I want for Update 9 is a much MUCH better user interface. That's it. I don't want more adventure packs, world events, cosmetic items, or any other random bug fixes. I wish for weeks of work on the part of the development team dedicated exclusively to the task of presenting a beautiful, intuitive, customizable user interface for the next major update of Dungeons & Dragons: Online.
In my eyes, any content that shows up in update 9 or any other subsequent update before a revamped and remarkable user interface, will be seen as laziness and neglect towards the loyal player base.

Thank you.


Now, I don't know how best to get the development team's attention, but I really hope others out there ( I know you're there) share my wish and voice it enough for our plea to be heard.

How about some real concrete suggestions other than "make it better"

Your post has zero value without some suggestions for change.

[Impaqt]

Everything duely noted. I suggest that this forum become a kind of wish list for a better UI. Not necessarily a bash list. Like I said in my first sentence, I love this game. I assume everyone who reads and/or posts on the forums also loves this game. So, not to pick apart the hard work that the dev team has done (this is me apologizing) with the UI already, let's just suggest some improvements we would like to see. Here are some of my ideas:

Zoomable minimap

not sure what the function of this would really be... THe mini map serves its purpose

Ability to examine other players' gear without them having to link everything into chat.

no thanks. myddo is bad enough

Guild commands in window & button form, replacing the (currently non-functioning, please fix soon) /slash commands.

I dont use the guild commands much.. which ones dont work?

A /follow command. I would do this in a pnp game if a party member and I were simply going from here to there.

no thanks. and not really UI related.

Toggleable cloak visibility. We've already got helm and armor kits with this option.

not really UI related.

Checkable list in the chat window. For instance check 'party' and 'guild' while avoiding general and combat chat.

Exists

A better macro system than alias. Something that you can associate with actions and throw on the action bar. For example: A rogue leads a party into a seemingly harmless corridor. The rogue spots a trap and taps a key. To his party he does some emote, instantly begins searching for the trap, while saying to the party 'TRAP!"
Another useful example: A wizard has 3 melee ranged spells (chill touch, shocking grasp, etc), 2 CC spells, and 4 ranged AOE spells prepared and on his action bars. Instead of filling up 9 slots on his action bar, he fills up 3; one for the melee spells, another for the CC spells, and a third for the AOEs. By using a combination of 2 or 3 modifier keys that apply to the same action bar button, the wizard accesses all of his plethora of spells on one action bar. No need to clutter up the screen with 20 different action bars.

You need to explore the shortcut options more and invest in a keybaoard that has macro capabilities. WHile I have a High res screen and dont mind the 15+ hotbars, I now plenty of people that play with 1-3 Hotbars up and even use game controllers rather than keyboard/mouse and do just fine in game.

Anyways, these are a few ideas that I would love to see in this game that, imo don't detract from the D&Dness of the game (notice I didn't say little red dots on the minimap to indicate where all the mobs are?) and seem relatively simple to produce without weighing down the game with tons of lag.

[Thrudh]

I would suggest getting a Logitech G15 keyboard...

You can set hotbars in the DDO UI to respond to key combos (like Shift-F7 for instance), and then bind that key combo to a macro key on the keyboard...

Having a mouse with multiple buttons is nice too...

[Templarion]

Zoomable minimap

Ability to examine other players' gear without them having to link everything into chat.

Yes, please. And I want also scale the size of my minimap without limits.

I would also like to see the buffs my target has in the mini window with small icons below or above the picture.

PS. I want a possibility to make map and minimap transparent with percent-slider. So I could keep the map on all the time transparent like in Diablo.

[Darsith]

Everything duely noted. I suggest that this forum become a kind of wish list for a better UI. Not necessarily a bash list. Like I said in my first sentence, I love this game. I assume everyone who reads and/or posts on the forums also loves this game. So, not to pick apart the hard work that the dev team has done (this is me apologizing) with the UI already, let's just suggest some improvements we would like to see. Here are some of my ideas:

Zoomable minimap Not sure what this would add, but sure why not if it was easy to implement AND required little dev time.

Ability to examine other players' gear without them having to link everything into chat. while this could be handy, I agree with Impaqt... My DDO is bad enough with the privacy invasion

Guild commands in window & button form, replacing the (currently non-functioning, please fix soon) /slash commands. This would be nice, more ranks, ability to set access to certain things in game.

A /follow command. I would do this in a pnp game if a party member and I were simply going from here to there. No, I like that DDO makes players actually play the game. I find the lack of a follow command helps kill botting ability. While your experienced botter may be able to continue botting, your average person wont care enough to do so.

Toggleable cloak visibility. We've already got helm and armor kits with this option. this would be another Dragon Touched issue. Most people at level 20 are wearing GS cloak, Napkin, Mabar Cloak (sure there are others, but these seem the most common)

Checkable list in the chat window. For instance check 'party' and 'guild' while avoiding general and combat chat. we already have that... right click the party tab, go to incoming, select what chats you want to see.

A better macro system than alias. Something that you can associate with actions and throw on the action bar. For example: A rogue leads a party into a seemingly harmless corridor. The rogue spots a trap and taps a key. To his party he does some emote, instantly begins searching for the trap, while saying to the party 'TRAP!"
Another useful example: A wizard has 3 melee ranged spells (chill touch, shocking grasp, etc), 2 CC spells, and 4 ranged AOE spells prepared and on his action bars. Instead of filling up 9 slots on his action bar, he fills up 3; one for the melee spells, another for the CC spells, and a third for the AOEs. By using a combination of 2 or 3 modifier keys that apply to the same action bar button, the wizard accesses all of his plethora of spells on one action bar. No need to clutter up the screen with 20 different action bars. No, see the /follow command for my gut reaction to this one.

Anyways, these are a few ideas that I would love to see in this game that, imo don't detract from the D&Dness of the game (notice I didn't say little red dots on the minimap to indicate where all the mobs are?) and seem relatively simple to produce without weighing down the game with tons of lag.

Comments in Red

[Trillea]

The only thing I would ask for in the UI interface is to have the ongoing buffs across the top of your screen be sorted so that the one that is going to expire first is at the farthest right, instead of just being the ones that are cast first being there.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

Zoomable minimap

Before making it more zoomable, it would be nice if they made it work all the time, and in 3D considering we don't have flat dungeons

Ability to examine other players' gear without them having to link everything into chat.

No, mind your own business. MyDDO is annoying enough

Guild commands in window & button form, replacing the (currently non-functioning, please fix soon) /slash commands.

I've never found a guild command that didn't work and there are buttons for the key guild functions. Can you be more specific?

A /follow command. I would do this in a pnp game if a party member and I were simply going from here to there.

God no. This has been hashed about more times than I can count. New players come in from certain other games and want /follow and /assist so they can /pike. No. Bad idea for more reasons that I will get into, and I believe we have heard past dev no's on this as well.

Toggleable cloak visibility. We've already got helm and armor kits with this option.

As a very very very low priority item, maybe. The problem is they aren't showing cloaks at all now and no existing cloaks have skins. That would be one heck of a lot of work to all that to the system, and I bet half the people would turn it off so they weren't always looking at the same boring red cape after they paid for an armor skin.

Checkable list in the chat window. For instance check 'party' and 'guild' while avoiding general and combat chat.

That exists now.

A better macro system than alias.

As a low priority item, maybe. I'm not convinced of the value, and certainly it can be emulated at the keyboard level.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

The only thing I would ask for in the UI interface is to have the ongoing buffs across the top of your screen be sorted so that the one that is going to expire first is at the farthest right, instead of just being the ones that are cast first being there.

I kind of like the current "last applied" order but I'd be good for giving you the option for either.

More important however is dealing with the fact that a moderately buffed player (well, anyone with a ship for sure) has their buffs (and more seriously, debuffs) scroll off the screen now so they can't tell at all what they have. They really need to fix that.

[CaseStringer]

I think they could have added a second buff bar under the 1st for Ship buffs.
We all know what buffs we got from the ship. These are the ones that last longer & usually prevent us from seeing some of the party buffs we have.

----> Case.

[Aeolwind]

G15's & the like are way better than any macro system they can add in game, man.

/follow would be dope for those times you have to go AFK for nature, drinks, etc so you don't fall that far behind. Give it a duration of like 2 minutes or so.

If someone is serious about running 2 or more characters, they'll get a keyboard splitter.

[Uska]

Just a few comments NO to a /follow command, and examine gear that is something that other games have and annoys the hell out of me and sure add someting to the UI if its only a small part of the update as I dont have a problem with the UI as is.