Your UI survey feedback

[donfilibuster]

The thread about the survey (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php...wpost&t=343153) has mostly comments about the survey itself, but what did you put in the final box for comments?
Bet there would be some good suggestions, and hopefully turbine won't shelve them all.

The thread about the UI for healing is http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=341112
The thread about the UI for griefing is http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=341068

Personally, i went with the points that:
a) The vitals should be separate from what you are examining. 'vitals' is a good word for seeing hp, sp and other status.
Thus the focus orb shouldn't be used for vitals. the question about it made me think turbine may be thinking about it.

b) The bars are useful in game and in combat beyond merely display of vitals. Ease of targetting is a must-have.
The bar that is selected should be highlighted properly, with a glow or edge.

c) Smaller is not always good. There's many 'visual' people and everyone does a bit of it.
Being able to see the hp bar diminish is important. A smaller bar don't help with that and the numbers put you off.
The vitals could be seen at a glance, spacing is not too good here as well.

If it was all about the pet stats then those can be shown elsewhere or different.
There's some ideas that are less intrusive with the UI. e.g. overlapping a light red bar with a dark red bar.
If they are thinking of the focus orb that'd be good for the pet only, since the arti would be the one concerned the most with it.
Perhaps a mood icon to show when the pet is hurt, etc.

[WolfHealr]

Heh - I opened Notepad++ and wrote this - that comment box was too small for me

There is far too much empty space between names - especially compared to the old UI.
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php...33#post4072533 Original party UI - compact, easy to glance at, utilizes far less vertical screenspace.

Suggestions:

Remove as much space as possible between individual's vitals bars.

Change the opacity of the vitals background. The new bars make it difficult to see in certain environments (ToD part 1's lava, the end room of Enter the Kobold, etc).

Party members' names should be moved to be within their box, not above it - with no background behind it, it is more difficult to identify a particular party member by name.

Remove highlighted delineation (not sure how to put this - the new white line dividing the bars) inside the current vitals bar. See the linked post at the end - moving the names to be inside of the vitals UI would obviate this.

Allow drag and drop of party member's boxes to other positions within the overall UI; for example, moving the assigned tank to the second position would be easier for a healer to make a small hand movement to hit F2 instead of searching for F10.

Allow for color-blindness and give options to change things in the vitals bar - text, background opacity/gradiation, and bars.

Change the hit point bar's color pallete for Pale Masters while they're in form - http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p...1&postcount=54.

As the old UI showed a monk's ki, keep it in, or make it toggle-able. However, the only use to other party members is to see if the monk is using his ki or not.

As to the Artificer's pets - divided on this one. In either case, should it remain, the pet's HP bar should be incorporated within the vitals bar, not tacked on the the lower side where it eats up more room.
Part of me feels that since summonable creatures didn't get a HP bar before, they shouldn't really now; as an Artificer's pet is part of the class, however, they should definitely get a health bar on their owner's screen.
The other part sees the new pet HP bar as a testbed, paving the way for future additions of more class pets - Wizard/Sorcerer familiars, Ranger/Paladin/Barbarian animal companions (not mounts), etc. There may also be situations when the party decides to have the pet tank, in which case its a necessity to have the bar shown.

While I don't want to see the programming effort that went into the new UI wasted, give an option to revert back to the old UI with some of the new tweaks.

Bring back the auto-attack button to a player's personal UI. Better yet, make the personal UI's shown icon into another hotbar space - drag autoattack, sneak, a heal spell, etc. to it.

Keep the individual checkboxes for each option - this was great, keep it up!

With modifications to allow some or all of the above, the second iteration in the original post of this thread is what I would consider ideal: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=341001

[Jiirix]

I have a suggestion for the new UI to make it more healer friendly in raids and for new players:

If a healthbar drops under 66% HP a small red outline appears around the bar and/or the character symbol. If the health bar drops under 33% HP a big red outline appears. Or make the character symbol get a shade of red when the HP drops. More red = closer to death. That would make it easier to tell what kind of heal is needed. Would be very handy in raids and very neebie friendly too.

[AMDarkwolf]

the new ui just makes me believe the devs in charge of what it is, are absolutely not in touch with... anyone...

For instance, why did they feel making it a big huge fluffy stretched out thing AND reduce the size of the hp bars. I don't get this, INCREASE the overall space the window eats, but REDUCE the size of the bars?

Also, what, who, why, I am not even sure HOW to ask this, but WHAT Possessed them to swap the autoattack button(A useful tool, for pretty much anyone due to lag and other issues) for a 'nice little animated portrait of our face'

Do we REALLY need to see what we look like, was that so much more important than the autoattack function? And while it may not cause a lot of lag, it DOES add some strain to the gpx. Strain that was NOT needed and NOT wanted. And is absolutely NOT useful. In anyway. I mean if it shows us when we had some effect, fine, but it does NOTHING.

Really am wondering what made them think 'this' was a better option than what we had. Thats ALL i want to know, wish a dev would comment, but then if they did I guess that would be grounds for WB to can them


Truth is, if the devs cared one iota about what the players thought, the REAL players not the one trying to brown-nose for some tiny hope of some 'benefit', they would have looked at some of the absolutely amazing player made skins and used THOSE for an idea of 'what players want/need'

[Pfold]

Well, the questionaire itself was pretty sad. Like why ask what is important on the bar? Devs should be like chefs, testing their work before it goes out.

Apparently who ever set up the survey never healed a raid before. Really? Pets, Ki, Spell points, and Health.... ...gee, which one negates them all if empty?

As far as the comment box, I'm fine with autoattack they way it is. Party ui on the other hand I suggested being able to move party members according to what you priority targets are. Personally it's easier for me when my targets are 1-6 as opposed to 7 and up.

/stillheadshaking
Like if you want to be silly and ask a healer whether or not a pet bar or ki bar or sp bar are relevant, I have to goof on you. What's the word I'm looking for..? Oh yeah, WINNING!