'Your' 10 UI Enhancement Requests

[Captain_Pengie]

Tranferring this here from a now defunct post. Feel free to reply with your own list of needs (keep it to 10 max), comment, agree/argue or whatever (just keep it clean and in forum guidelines). Your list need not be 'THE' 10 or even the most important 10, it is simply your opinion on 'A' set of 10 required UI enhancements which are achieveable within the short to medium term (i.e. Turbine doesn't need to break the bank or recode the whole engine to make them happen).

I feel that the significant changes which happened in U14 should have been backed up by equally significant changes in the User Interface to display these new attributes and their source. Turbine should not make a fundamental change to the system which, let’s face facts, means it is no longer D&D and not show us how the numbers stack up and affect our characters. While DDO still reflects the settings of D&D it is now a long way away from the D&D combat & spell system so keeping the simplistic D&D style of statistics display is just no longer appropriate. Turbine should to add a whole pile of new attributes and their breakdowns to the character sheet plus include new information in mouseover help to give us complete visibility on what is happening to our characters. A complete rethink of the UI is long overdue and Turbine needs to gain input from the community as to what is needed rather than simply taking a guess at it as that has, in the past, proven itself somewhat sporadic in it's success.

So to kick things off here is my list of 10 achieveable UI enhancements which i think are needed in DDO:

1. Character sheets need to include totals, plus mouseover breakdowns for source components, for the new combat and spell system attributes. This must include as a minimum:
- Bonus to Hit (as a + for the old guard and the new % based system to show the reality) showing sources as tooltips
- Damage Bonus, which for some reason has disappeared from the detailed inventory screen, showing sources as tooltips
- Double Strike and Glancing Blow
ed. Pleasantly surprised to see this is now on Lamania although sources are not shown. A great start
- Dodge Percentage (this is displayed, but we need to know the source numbers so we can decide if adding or changing feats and enhancements is appropriate)
- Spell Power. Note that this would be the general spell power. Each spell needs its own specific spell power as tooltip information.
ed. Again pleasantly surprised to see this is now on Lamania although sources are not shown and pertinance to each spell is not covered. Ideally Spell Power should have its own section/page showing the total numbers as per test with mouseover help showing the source (feats, enhancements, items, potions etc). The Spell pages should include either new text or mouseover showing the SP + for each spell in your book. A nice start but more work needed
- Poison resist
- Disease resist
- Critical Chance (already displayed but has been shown as misleading or incorrect in some situations, particularly for druids in wildshape)
- Threat increase/reduction (mostly from enhancements but now also some items)

All the source information for these numbers is needed so that the effect of feats, enhancements, equipment, potions, buffs etc can be seen and we can tell at a glance if using a certain item or getting that special buff from the DDO store or whatever is actually worth it. These same changes also need to be applied to artificer and druid pet sheets so we can tell if pet enhancements/epic training is useful.

2. Buffs need to be fully moveable to anywhere on the screen, not just left/right. They should also have different and independently moveable windows for (at the least):
- untimed buffs (e.g. druid wildshape, equipment sets)
- timed defensive buffs
- timed offensive and/or class based buffs
- debuffs
- alerts (e.g. ready to level, action points available, spell selection available)

Class based buffs (like Druid’s Season Herald or a Ranger’s Archer Focus stance) should not be mixed in among the resist energy etc style timed buffs as the list just gets too long and it is hard to find them. You need to be able to split out things which are going to change your offence from those affecting defence so you can keep an eye on them separately as combat changes. Debuffs must also have their own bar which you can plant somewhere really obvious so you can easily see when you are hurting and throw (or ask for) the appropriate counter.

3. Druid’s Season herald and any other class based buffs (e.g. Barbarian Rage) also need to be way more obvious when in effect. The 14.1 change to add a few sparkles when the change happens just is not enough as you either need to have a great memory or be able to sort through the 20 or more buffs on you to find which season is current. When you are in water form (or frost wolf) and winter comes about a couple of extra pixels of snow are really not that obvious (same for fire form and summer) and in the heat of combat it is easily missed. The season counter needs to be pulled out of the general buff area into a class based block and the ‘form’ which is active should be reflected somewhere obvious such as a change to your character picture. This could also be done for Barbarian Rage as the brief red haze is okay but that quickly fades and you then need to check your timer. Changing the character portrait itself to have a red background would be much more useful. This could be applied to all similar types of class based buffs; Blue background for Druid winter, Orange for Druid summer, Red for Barbarian rage, Green for Archer’s focus etc. The border of the portrait should also change appropriately (snowflakes, flames, blood, arrows etc) so that colour impaired people can also pick up the change easily.

4. Day/Night cycle should be reflected as icons on the mini-map. While this is not that important at the moment it is only a matter of time before you start adding quests which require it to be night (e.g. kill x werewolves who only appear at night) so having an easy reference for the time of game day would help in these situations. It would also not be a bad idea to put the real world clock (local system clock and server time) there also (or perhaps as a mouseover as per LOTRO) as a reminder to people to have a break or go to bed occasionally and to check when downtime is about to happen. The ‘break alert’ function in EQ2 was great for that as it would pop up and tell you it is time to have a rest at a configurable period – really good ergonomics enhancement.

5. When you load a layout it should load everything not just rearrange what is visible. In particular if you have saved a layout with say 15 hotbars visible you should not have to (for example on a new character) extract those 15 hotbars and rotate them to the correct orientation before you load the layout. Chat windows and their channels, colours, font sizes etc should also be saved and loaded either with the layout or as a separate command set. A 'lock to grid' option (note option, not mandatory) or something is also needed so it is easier to line things up for those of us who like nice neat rows of hotbars etc.

6. A SWTOR style display of the number of your friends and guildmates who are online would be useful. It is often difficult to see that someone has come online (either the generic alert or their 'hello' message) as either it is mixed in with a pile of general chat messages or buried in a subwindow. A small window that you can move about onscreen showing the number of friends/guildmates online would greatly help to improve this visibility. Clicking on the headings of these displays should open the appropriate social window to list these people. Added to this is would be great if chat subwindows (i.e. the one not currently displayed) flashed when a new message has appeared and continued to flash until you click on that window. This would need to be configurable by window as you probably don’t want the combat window constantly flashing.

7. Auction House could do with some new filters for things like companion collars (which are mixed in with handwraps - yeah that's obvious), wood or leather vs. metal (make it easier for druids to find gear), 'wolf' useable armour etc. Maybe just a class filter (which includes metal dogs and wolves) so you can select to view only the items you can actually use instead of having to sort through it all.

8. You need to be able to see the health of people you have to protect. e.g. In the Red Fens Quest 'The Last Stand' you must protect Viercha and will fail the quest if she dies. However with no way to easily see her health without constantly running after her and swapping between targeting her and monsters, party members etc you can easily let her die. We need an 'escort' element in the same style as LOTRO where anyone you need to protect has their health shown as a separate element.

9. You need to add the buttons back to the focus orb so it is easy to click on chat, examine, friend etc buttons as the new menu method is just clumsy. Also need an option to revert the main menu to the old style with all of the buttons visible in a moveable window so we are not wasting a hotbar for these icons.

10. Open the UI up to mods. Yes I know that is a big wish but now that you can save layouts in xml it is a smaller step towards converting all of the UI elements to full xml and allowing them to be externally modded plus have new ones added. I'd love to see some of the great LOTRO type mods converted for use in DDO. There are some brilliant mod designers out there so why not ease up the burden on the Turbine UI team by getting some free outside assistance.

I cannot stress enough the need to look at other games and see what is being done instead of just sticking with the old standards from when the game started. The world has moved on as has the game itself and the UI needs to reflect these changes. If nothing else look at your other product LOTRO – while it’s UI is not perfect it has a lot of really good elements. When you add in some of the excellent mods available (such as Palantir, Buffbars and Tonic bars) it just makes the game so much better as it removes all the pain of the computer interface and allows you to concentrate more fully on the game experience itself.

PS: Not related to UI but part of the set of needs to bring DDO up to date is the big need for a security key application. It is not enough these days to stick with just usename/password as too many companies are getting their informaton hacked and Turbine is not exempt from that issue. An app to issue security keys neccessary for login to both game and forum would help ease this issue greatly. This app would need to be free, available for Apple and Android devices and would have to cater for people with multiple accounts (i.e. the app needs to include account name selection, not be hardwired to a single account as most games have done).

[ZeebaNeighba]

7. Auction House could do with some new filters for things like companion collars (which are mixed in with handwraps - yeah that's obvious), wood or leather vs. metal (make it easier for druids to find gear), 'wolf' useable armour etc. Maybe just a class filter (which includes metal dogs and wolves) so you can select to view only the items you can actually use instead of having to sort through it all.

8. You need to be able to see the health of people you have to protect. e.g. In the Red Fens Quest 'The Last Stand' you must protect Viercha and will fail the quest if she dies. However with no way to easily see her health without constantly running after her and swapping between targeting her and monsters, party members etc you can easily let her die. We need an 'escort' element in the same style as LOTRO where anyone you need to protect has their health shown as a separate element.

7. Yeah I'm tired of holding my mouse over some equipment just to see specifics in the auction. Like having to hover over every Thaumaturgy staff to see which types it boosts, or looking for good guild slot equipment. A way to search for effects would be very nice.

8. /signed. So much. Also being able to target them without manually running to them and right clicking would be so nice also.

[Lord_kNiels]

I agree that the character sheet needs updating. Obviously with all the new things to add it would need a new layout but there are so many numbers that have no excuse not to be on the sheet. To those you mentioned I would add healing amplification too and I know it has been asked for for a while. No reason to keep those stats "hidden". As for spellpower, with a reworked character sheet it shouldn't be a problem to add the power of each spelltype. Perhaps make it customizable to show whatever spellpowers are relevant to your character.

As for your fourth point I like the idea, but for people with limited play time available it would be a pain to time it to get into such quests. Making the shifts too frequent would make it annoying and obsolete.

[Raist1280]

4. Day/Night cycle should be reflected as icons on the mini-map. While this is not that important at the moment it is only a matter of time before you start adding quests which require it to be night (e.g. kill x werewolves who only appear at night) so having an easy reference for the time of game day would help in these situations. It would also not be a bad idea to put the real world clock (local system clock and server time) there also (or perhaps as a mouseover as per LOTRO) as a reminder to people to have a break or go to bed occasionally and to check when downtime is about to happen. The ‘break alert’ function in EQ2 was great for that as it would pop up and tell you it is time to have a rest at a configurable period – really good ergonomics enhancement.

While the day/night cycle isn't terribly relevant right now, there is already 1 random encounter in the King's Forest that does actually require nightfall to be able to complete it currently. While it's easy enough to tell (for the most part) when it's day or night in the King's Forest, I still think this could be useful, especially as we move forward. As to the idea of having an in-game clock (local time or server time, preferably user-choice), I think that is actually something of a must-have. If nothing else, having a server-time clock in the game UI allows a time reference that's consistent to all players, regardless of what timezone they login from.

5. When you load a layout it should load everything not just rearrange what is visible. In particular if you have saved a layout with say 15 hotbars visible you should not have to (for example on a new character) extract those 15 hotbars and rotate them to the correct orientation before you load the layout. Chat windows and their channels, colours, font sizes etc should also be saved and loaded either with the layout or as a separate command set. A 'lock to grid' option (note option, not mandatory) or something is also needed so it is easier to line things up for those of us who like nice neat rows of hotbars etc.

Absolutely /signed. I was overjoyed when I found out the ability to save and reload UI Layouts was coming. I was dismayed to see how poorly implemented it is. When you save a layout it *should* save everything, even the chat windows, and when you load that saved layout on a brand new toon, it really should create/expose/orient ui elements as needed to load the FULL layout, rather than the half-baked job it does now of only loading the ui elements that are currently on the screen, and in the case of hot bars, only if you manually orient them correctly first.

6. A SWTOR style display of the number of your friends and guildmates who are online would be useful. It is often difficult to see that someone has come online (either the generic alert or their 'hello' message) as either it is mixed in with a pile of general chat messages or buried in a subwindow. A small window that you can move about onscreen showing the number of friends/guildmates online would greatly help to improve this visibility. Clicking on the headings of these displays should open the appropriate social window to list these people. Added to this is would be great if chat subwindows (i.e. the one not currently displayed) flashed when a new message has appeared and continued to flash until you click on that window. This would need to be configurable by window as you probably don’t want the combat window constantly flashing.

I could certainly see this being useful, but honestly thing this is more of a luxury, and quite probably better handled by a modder (which would req. #10). For now I'd rather see some/all of the other things in your list implemented first.

7. Auction House could do with some new filters for things like companion collars (which are mixed in with handwraps - yeah that's obvious), wood or leather vs. metal (make it easier for druids to find gear), 'wolf' useable armour etc. Maybe just a class filter (which includes metal dogs and wolves) so you can select to view only the items you can actually use instead of having to sort through it all.

Auction House could use a total overhaul, search options/filters would just be a first step, and while we're at it, how about allowing for searching by item ENCHANTMENTS rather then just by names. The new Thurmaturgy staves are nice, but an absolute nightmare to find the one with the combination you want.

8. You need to be able to see the health of people you have to protect. e.g. In the Red Fens Quest 'The Last Stand' you must protect Viercha and will fail the quest if she dies. However with no way to easily see her health without constantly running after her and swapping between targeting her and monsters, party members etc you can easily let her die. We need an 'escort' element in the same style as LOTRO where anyone you need to protect has their health shown as a separate element.

People have been asking for this for years, we still don't have it... Somehow I don't see that changing, but /signed nonetheless as this really is something that SHOULD exist in the game's ui.

9. You need to add the buttons back to the focus orb so it is easy to click on chat, examine, friend etc buttons as the new menu method is just clumsy. Also need an option to revert the main menu to the old style with all of the buttons visible in a moveable window so we are not wasting a hotbar for these icons.

I agree, to a point, about the focus orb buttons. I say to a point only because I'm one of the apparently few individuals that actually likes the funky-looking focus orb with the health/name to the left of the orb itself, which leaves the orb too small to reasonably put much in the way of buttons. As for the main menu, however, as of U14, patch 1, we have the ability to drag icons from the "start menu" into a hot bar, thus re-creating the main menu bar (and allowing a vertical orientation if desired). While I'm sure that someone, somewhere wont be satisfied with this because they already use all 20 hot bars and don't have 1 to spare... personally I like this option better than having the main menu forced on the screen whether you wanted it or not. (Personally I always kept it behind other ui elements as I use the hotkeys to access character sheet/myddo/store/etc.) At least that much HAS made it into the game

10. Open the UI up to mods. Yes I know that is a big wish but now that you can save layouts in xml it is a smaller step towards converting all of the UI elements to full xml and allowing them to be externally modded plus have new ones added. I'd love to see some of the great LOTRO type mods converted for use in DDO. There are some brilliant mod designers out there so why not ease up the burden on the Turbine UI team by getting some free outside assistance.

This, right here, is, imho, the biggest step forward that Turbine could make with the ui. After all, if the ui were opened up to accept mods, pretty much everything else on this list could be implemented by mod designers, without needing to expend dev time/attention/effort, thus allowing the devs time to concentrate on fixing bugs, designing new content, etc...

[Raist1280]

As for your fourth point I like the idea, but for people with limited play time available it would be a pain to time it to get into such quests. Making the shifts too frequent would make it annoying and obsolete.

I understand about the limited available time, but this does seem to be a direction that Turbine's already looking at to some degree, we already have an encounter in the King's Forest that is dependent on the day/night cycle...

[peng]

I agree with just about everything in this thread so far.

My suggestion: allow item sets to be assigned to a single button, not just weapon sets (ie glove + boots + armor, or even every item slot). As a corollary, do something about item switch lag. It's horrible.

[Aliss7]

basic ui grade school window management:

1. New windows should always be placed on top of other existing windows.
2. Windows should remember past placement per character across logins.

[bigolbear]

some ui things id realy like to see.


1. All ui elelemts to be scaleable - people tend to run ddo in the highest res their pc can handle so they get more taskbar space/screen space.

2. Disability options: text to speach and speach to text.

3. auto translate options, ie if some one is running the french client amd im running the english client whet they type should have the option to auto translate to english and visa versa. This would also have to work with point 2.

4. The ability to assign alliases(yes they now work thankyou thankyou thankyou devs) to taskbar slots and thus hotkeys.

5. a comprehensive character sheet made from the following tabs:

1. core stats: shows you your main stats and includes a breakdown for bonuses (bab. stats. saves)
2. derived stats: shows ac, DR, to hit, resists, threat gen(mele and ranged and spell), heal amp & repair amp, runspeed, hp and sp. and includes a break down of them.
3. class 1 specific:
4. class 2 specific:
5. class 3 specific:
6. biography.
7. journal (a free area to write reminders specific to that character) should contain a handy link to adventure compendium.
8. feats: split into to auto granted by class and lvl and selected.
9. skills.
10. selected epic desinty: a summary of abilites that your current destiny is giving you.

For the class specific sections they should include:

fighter: list all tactics feats/enhancemnts you have and show dcs for them, base and derived,
barb: as fighter + info on rage timers and boosts.
monk: as fighter + ki calculation, including detailed break down
ranger: as fighter + spell section(as current + a section detailing spell dcs via level and school and spell power via element.)
paladin: as ranger.
rogue: as fighter.
cleric: as ranger, be sure to include turn undead info in tactics section.
fvs: as ranger.
wiz: as ranger
sorc: as ranger
arti: as ranger
druid: as ranger.

[Captain_Pengie]

I agree, to a point, about the focus orb buttons. I say to a point only because I'm one of the apparently few individuals that actually likes the funky-looking focus orb with the health/name to the left of the orb itself, which leaves the orb too small to reasonably put much in the way of buttons.

I also really like the new orb but only when you are targetting enemies, it is no good for other players. Ideally I'd like to see it switch depending on who is targetted and show the old style for other players and the new style for monster/npc/pets.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

I agree at least that the character sheet could use some sort of overhaul, too.

[WanderingGrump]

/signed

I would love to see a character sheet revamp and yes I know it's coming. Items I would like to see are the Spell Power Breakdown, which could be done on the spell tooltip similar to how they currently list the SP cost. Spell Pen is another item I would love to see. Fixing the Weapon dmg display on handwraps would be nice since that's currently rather borked.

I would also love to be able to set the chat windows to fully non-transparent just set it to a single fixed background and not have to deal with the light changes of the background it's over making it hard to read depending on where you are.

Assigning aliases to an item/hotbar button would be fantastic. I would love to have a "Stop searching for a trap" alias I could force in party chat for when my rogue searches for instance.

I too want to see the UI openned up to mods since the last skin I used had a feature I love and have a hard time doing without (it places a solid red transparency over an equipped item letting me see at a glance what is and is not being worn). I too would love button sets that would let you select multiple items/slots to put as a set for a specific hotbar button. I could definitely cut down on the number of bars a number of my toons use with that.

[Bakalakadaka]

/signed to all

Any of these would be good with #10 probably being the most important change that could be made to the UI.

[Mark_Oskar]

I need to mention that some people are still using Pawn Shops and that their UI needs improvement . Need to make it filter content similar to AH. Introduce Pawn mechanic to newbies xD. And buff selling prices by 3-5% to encourage players to use Pawn Shops.

[Asmodeus451]

some excellent ideas here, +1

[fco-karatekid]

I need to mention that some people are still using Pawn Shops and that their UI needs improvement . Need to make it filter content similar to AH. ...

I'd say apply this^ to all "lists of stuff" - vendors, end and challenge rewards, pawn brokers - all of it. While the AH still has issues searching for words within the text description, just applying the AH search to every list menu would be a great start.

[TekkenDevil]

To be honest all I want is a clock somewhere on the map. I hate not being able to tell what time it is, while my phone sits in the charger, or is left in my jacket's pocket 2 rooms away. Even LotRO has this...