Feedback: Quest Panel & LFM Panel Updates

[Tolero]

Use this thread for feedback regarding the changes and additional functionality that has been added to both the Quest Panel and LFM Panel! (and technically the adventure compendium too).

[Seikojin]

I thought it was good, but the layout and graphics were soo different, it confused me a bit.

Can you post pics of it so we can discuss things about it?

The reason I ask is because it is difficult to name the pieces of the UI in a way that would help.

But my biggest concerns is the LFM portion of it. You can set the number of players to 12 for every quest (last time I checked) and it opens the group panel and won't let you in the quest as long as the LFM is up... There wasn't any tooltips that said that would happen.

[hiryuu42]

This post is similar to an earlier thread I posted, with some adjustments as I've tested the open beta.

Nice work:
* When you join a Public, it auto-transports you there, so late-comers don't need to run across the world
* When the quest finishes, the auto-group for it takes itself down
* Quest reset is very helpful.

Perhaps WAI, but not good:
* That center message space is okay for a line or two of crucial information. At 13 lines of explanation, the Leader of a Public LFM message dominates the screen every time it comes up. That needs to be an '!' hint, so I don't see it all the time and can disable it if I wish.
* Gold lock icons on the yellowish/orangish Hard/Elite icons is maybe not the best UI design.
* Not tested on open beta yet: Someone wrote a dialog just to say I don't have the quest, so I don't get a reward? Just share the quest if it's sharable. Really, I think all quests should be bestow-on-enter, but that's a battle for another day.

Bugs:
* If you can't open hard/elite, you can still click the icon. The lock icon goes away and doesn't come back. Attempting to enter a difficulty you can't access gives an 'invalid difficulty' error.
* If you Pulic a wilderness, it will not update or come down as you go through quests.

Overall, the Public LFMs are better than nothing, but their inherently IP nature limits their appeal. To post one, you need to either be able to complete the quest on your own or be ready to sit idle inside the quest for a potentially very long time. To join one, learning and/or contributing to the quest needs to be a low priority, since the 5 minute window is often most or all of the quest. So, zergers and pikers, basically.

On Beta, they work okay because of quirks specific to Beta. At +300% XP, I don't care if I arrive late. Likewise, I don't care if people pike, die, or even re-enter. There's so much XP it doesn't matter. The characters I copy over are my top tier. The ones I make are all sub-10, where even a gimpy trash build can solo.

Earlier, I proposed a 'queue' driven auto-grouping. Seeing the current implementation, I still stand by it:
http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p...&postcount=183