Character Planner - New Interface Ideas

[Zistra]

Like many others, I want to pass kudos on to the dev team on the planner. I've been recommending it everywhere (Gen Chat, Guild, Steam forums, you name it) for several years now, because there's nothing else that comes close. Thanks for doing this.

As for suggestions, my first is for feats:

I often like to work from general to specific (I think they call that 'global thinking'). In build-planning, that means that I like to develop a 'pool' of the feats I'm considering for the build with no consideration of levels, prereqs or anything else. Then I select from that pool when actually assigning feats to levels. This intermediate step brings the feat list down to a manageable size (usually less than two dozen contenders). Probably the easiest way to populate the pool is by having checkboxes beside the feats in the overall list. Then it would require the ability to 'show only selected feats'. Clearly this is about supporting a particular creative process, but I think it might not be an uncommon one.

My second suggestion is about enhancements. I gather that to a large extent, you plan to simply recreate the existing Enhancement Planner, and since its functionality is exactly like that in-game, that's near-ideal. The only thing I would like added is kind of a 'what-if' option. Sometimes when I'm planning a multiclass, I know the primary, but I'm considering various possible secondary classes or even on a pure I'm not sure which race will work best. Working from the same 'general to specific' creative model I mentioned above, I want an overview of the enhancement trees of possible races and classes so I can decide which to take. Usually I'm doing this before I've picked how many levels of which class, let alone at which levels I'm taking them. I'm not so much selecting enhancements as looking at what's available. In this mode, I'd prefer to see what all three tiers of an enhancement grant simply by hovering over that enhancement (and without consideration of prereqs.. neither enhancement, feat nor stat). Having to change races/classes/levels in the main screen simply to see this information is painful. I think that this would be best set up outside the current enhancement selection window as a button on the main screen that would open a modified Enhancement window that would allow selection of race/class/class/class, not bother with level considerations at all (treat all as L20), and allow no input (simply show all tiers of tooltips for the enhancement the mouse hovers above). No information from this screen would be used to populate the actual planner. You would want to retain the race/class selections chosen here during the planner session (to allow revisiting), but need not save them at all.

[ThomasHunter]

I am so excited about the new version! Any ETA on usability?

You guys are awesome and one of the main reasons that I have 29 toons! I love tinkering with builds!

[Dragon.Star]

Like many others, I want to pass kudos on to the dev team on the planner. I've been recommending it everywhere (Gen Chat, Guild, Steam forums, you name it) for several years now, because there's nothing else that comes close. Thanks for doing this.

As for suggestions, my first is for feats:

I often like to work from general to specific (I think they call that 'global thinking'). In build-planning, that means that I like to develop a 'pool' of the feats I'm considering for the build with no consideration of levels, prereqs or anything else. Then I select from that pool when actually assigning feats to levels. This intermediate step brings the feat list down to a manageable size (usually less than two dozen contenders). Probably the easiest way to populate the pool is by having checkboxes beside the feats in the overall list. Then it would require the ability to 'show only selected feats'. Clearly this is about supporting a particular creative process, but I think it might not be an uncommon one.

This will actually be part of the Feat screen, basically a list box of desired feats. I will be coding this screen up next and will post screens once i get some of the layout finished up with it.

My second suggestion is about enhancements. I gather that to a large extent, you plan to simply recreate the existing Enhancement Planner, and since its functionality is exactly like that in-game, that's near-ideal. The only thing I would like added is kind of a 'what-if' option. Sometimes when I'm planning a multiclass, I know the primary, but I'm considering various possible secondary classes or even on a pure I'm not sure which race will work best. Working from the same 'general to specific' creative model I mentioned above, I want an overview of the enhancement trees of possible races and classes so I can decide which to take. Usually I'm doing this before I've picked how many levels of which class, let alone at which levels I'm taking them. I'm not so much selecting enhancements as looking at what's available. In this mode, I'd prefer to see what all three tiers of an enhancement grant simply by hovering over that enhancement (and without consideration of prereqs.. neither enhancement, feat nor stat). Having to change races/classes/levels in the main screen simply to see this information is painful. I think that this would be best set up outside the current enhancement selection window as a button on the main screen that would open a modified Enhancement window that would allow selection of race/class/class/class, not bother with level considerations at all (treat all as L20), and allow no input (simply show all tiers of tooltips for the enhancement the mouse hovers above). No information from this screen would be used to populate the actual planner. You would want to retain the race/class selections chosen here during the planner session (to allow revisiting), but need not save them at all.

This is a very good suggestion and one that is on my TODO list. It may not make the first release but it will get there. .

I am so excited about the new version! Any ETA on usability?

You guys are awesome and one of the main reasons that I have 29 toons! I love tinkering with builds!

Honestly, that is not an easy answer. In fact at one time I had hoped that you guys would be already using the new planner; sadly though real life stuff happens and slows us down. Maybe and I emphasize maybe we might have an alpha version ready for the Next DDO Update 23.

[Zistra]

I have another suggestion, but it's pretty 'out there'. It's about tracking quest completions in the planner.

The game's Adventure Compendium is terrible. If you run a quest on Heroic Elite, then Epic Hard, you can't easily tell looking at the compendium that that's what happened. I can't even remember atm if the Epic completion overwrites the Heroic, leaving it impossible to tell what diff you ran Heroic or if it's the other way around and the Epic completion doesn't show if the Heroic was harder. That's the the annoyance. On top of that, it does nothing to show you what quests you are flagged for or where you are on Saga completions. Having to run to the Saga NPC to see what I still need is a pain. And as a person who runs multiple toons, I often forget which flagging a particular toon has completed and some of them aren't really clear if you didn't actually pick up the final. You are left scrolling thru the quest list to try to remember all the flaggers and check for completion.

Clearly, I wish DDO would simply improve this. However, they seem to be making the Compendium less readable over time, rather than more. I have built a spreadsheet for flaggers, but it doesn't help with Sagas. It would be wonderful if the planner could take up the slack. All that would be necessary would be a list of quests with selectors for Heroic AND Epic completion difficulty and then two displays built from that raw data: Quests Flagged and Saga Progress. Your existing setup allowing input of other data would work well here.. new quests/flaggers/sagas? Just input the names and dependencies. The only sticky bit would be when a saga reward was taken, resetting the saga without resetting the completed difficulties or flaggings. I haven't worked out the mechanism for that.

I recognize that this is a bit out of the realm of a 'character' planner, but I figured I'd throw it out there anyway. If you wanted your planner to be running in the background while people played DDO, this would be a way to encourage that.

[Tom.JonesJr]

Clearly, I wish DDO would simply improve this. However, they seem to be making the Compendium less readable over time, rather than more. I have built a spreadsheet for flaggers, but it doesn't help with Sagas.

I have built a spreadsheet for sagas it does not use any macros. It can be found at http://AdarDDO.2kool4u.net along with a couple of other spreadsheets I have made for the game.

[Zistra]

I have built a spreadsheet for sagas it does not use any macros. It can be found at http://AdarDDO.2kool4u.net along with a couple of other spreadsheets I have made for the game.

Won't load on my Win8 system with LibreOffice, so I can't try it.

[Tom.JonesJr]

Won't load on my Win8 system with LibreOffice, so I can't try it.

Ok, I have now fixed most of the spreadsheets to work with LibreOffice. The only one I did not fix is the Shipbuilder as the Web site does a better job. Someday I may even make it so you can save or at least link to a ship build.

[Dragon.Star]

Hey gang

I'm going to start doing the coding on the Class Screen where you make your class selections at.

This is a rough draft that was done up a few months ago, giving a general ideal of what it will look like.


I want to get your feedback (good and bad) and suggestion before I do any major coding for this screen.

Currently the thought is to drag the class icon to the left top icon positions. the 1st one will automatically fill all the levels in, the 2nd and 3rd one will not. You would then select them in the combo boxes that you wish them to be in.
Class Descriptions: We are thinking to show this through a tooltip when you highlight the icon or would you rather have the description show on the particular screen when you click on a class icon?
Character Alignments will also be selectable on this screen, this will allow you change alignments if you need to while playing with the classes in this screen.

[Stoner81]

I quite like it and here are my suggestions/thoughts:

1. List the available classes in the order in which they were released so as they are the same as past lives.
2. I would do away with the boxes at the top and just leave the multi selectors for each level, maybe add a tick box to say if you wish to stay pure so as it auto populate the others for pure builds.
3. Tooltip for class description I think is the way to go just please make them more up to date and informative than what we get in game, the game has changed soooo much yet the descriptions have not altered at all.
4. Alignment - if you put this on this screen then could you make it so that when you select an alignement if there is a class which isn't allowed then it is greyed out or a huge red X is put on it or something, just some visual cue to say "OK you take this then this other thing isn't allowed". The alignment requirements could also be added to the tooltips.

As always great appreciation for all your time and efforts on this mammoth task

Stoner81.

[EllisDee37]

Currently the thought is to drag the class icon to the left top icon positions. the 1st one will automatically fill all the levels in, the 2nd and 3rd one will not. You would then select them in the combo boxes that you wish them to be in.
Class Descriptions: We are thinking to show this through a tooltip when you highlight the icon or would you rather have the description show on the particular screen when you click on a class icon?
Character Alignments will also be selectable on this screen, this will allow you change alignments if you need to while playing with the classes in this screen.

I like Stoner's suggestion to grey out classes whose alignment restrictions don't allow the currently selected alignment.

The basic screen design is pretty solid, and if you go with comboboxes that will be fine. Certainly functional. Here's my alternative thought to remove the comboboxes, which as a general rule are super effective and easy to code, but clunky in terms of actual use. (Too many mouse clicks.)

- Instead of comboboxes, use labels to just display the class taken at each level. I'll call these "level labels."
- Make the "top three" class boxes into graphical option buttons, with a visual cue as to which is currently selected and all three are mutually exclusive selectables. (Clicking on one of the top three deselects the other two.)
- Left-click a "level label" to change it to the currently selected top three class.
- Right-click a "level label" to change it to the primary class.

It would be a non-standard UI element, so I understand if you want to stick with comboboxes, but the alternative label system would be so much more efficient from a user's perspective. Picture a 12-6-2 split using both setups, where you have to manually click 8 comboboxes and make choices from them. If you accidentally set one wrong, it's cumbersome (relatively; still very easy) to correct.

With the alternative design, it's efficient and easy to both set up a 12-6-2 but also much more fluid to to change levels on the fly as you change your mind.

The alternative design would also allow an elegant way to present class descriptions. Above or below the top three, display the description for the currently selected class.

EDIT: To clarify, the basic screen concept is absolute perfection. My alternative for comboboxes is minutia, really, but I hope you at least consider it.

EDIT 2: Either way, if you deselect a chosen top three class (by right-clicking it, I would hope) then any levels that were set for that class would logically revert to the primary class. Meaning it would take a grand total of two right-clicks to change a 12-6-2 into a pure 20 build.

[Thayion516]

Hi ya Artamax! I didn't know you helped with the DDO planner. That's pretty awsome!

As a user of the character generator for about 4 years now. Would love to see it updated to include all the bonuses from Enhancements and from EDs. If there was a way for the final print out/feed back to list Enhancement paths and EDs with twists it would be perfect.

I like the sleeker brighter look of the interface. Maybe put Tabs on top to easily swap between Levels/ Enhancements/Epic Destinies with twists.

If what we ate doing here is brainstorming, I would love to see a 4th tab that could accommodate gear selections. Maybe divided by slots and click on the slot for a drop down with all the available named items and a random loot input? I would use the heck out of that.

Now let's really shoot the moon and ask for the planner to add up all things and put it on the feedback screen!

[Dragon.Star]

Thanks for the Class Screen Feedback all, I'm going to start coding it up.

Keep the suggestion coming

[Zistra]

I like Stoner's suggestion to grey out classes whose alignment restrictions don't allow the currently selected alignment.

The basic screen design is pretty solid, and if you go with comboboxes that will be fine. Certainly functional. Here's my alternative thought to remove the comboboxes, which as a general rule are super effective and easy to code, but clunky in terms of actual use. (Too many mouse clicks.)

- Instead of comboboxes, use labels to just display the class taken at each level. I'll call these "level labels."
- Make the "top three" class boxes into graphical option buttons, with a visual cue as to which is currently selected and all three are mutually exclusive selectables. (Clicking on one of the top three deselects the other two.)
- Left-click a "level label" to change it to the currently selected top three class.
- Right-click a "level label" to change it to the primary class.

This is EXACTLY what I was going to suggest. The suggestion to sort the class icons by past life priority is also awesome (tho without any feedback to that effect, who would know? Maybe a note below the class icons?).

I have a question as well. If you swapped icons 1 & 2, what happens to the class selections below? I'd recommend that all class choices switch to the new primary. But in reality, aside from initial population of the class/level boxes, does sequence of classes at the top matter at all? (i.e. would switching the icons for 2 & 3 do anything?).

EDIT: When/if you implement LR in planner, you could use this same screen. All you'd do would be to select the +n LR heart you were using and then you could easily make your n class changes (or add classes and then do likewise). If that's eventually to be in the works, you might want to keep it in mind as you design the screen and its programming.

[Zistra]

Also, as regards changes on this screen for a character already some planned, have you given consideration to what happens in the background? For example, say I planned a pure Wizard and picked everything (feats, skills, you name it) and then I came here and decided to change from pure Wiz to 18 Wiz/2 Rog, changing L1 and L9 to Rogue. Does all the stuff in the background get wiped for all levels? Or do all the Wiz selections get pushed up a level (i.e. keep the Wiz 1 choices as Wiz 1 but move them from Character L1 to Character L2)? Without having thought about it deeply, I'd like it if the class feats were kept with the class level and all else got wiped.

Could be this is too complex a concept to consider for the first release, but it wandered into my consciousness, so I figured I'd raise it in yours.

[EllisDee37]

That's a massive can of worms. Best to stick to the current planner's behavior, which is to just signify (with color) that you have errors based on now-invalid choices. I'm thinking in particular of skills, where if you apply your skills and then switch a class level from, say, bard to fighter, you will have a lot of used skill points that you don't actually have.

Class Bonus Feats are a special case in that they might be relatively straightforward to "carry over" based on changing class levels.

In any case, not resetting anything is way preferable to trying to guess the user's intent, especially if they're just "moving" a splash level from one level to another.

[Ron]

That's a massive can of worms. Best to stick to the current planner's behavior, which is to just signify (with color) that you have errors based on now-invalid choices. I'm thinking in particular of skills, where if you apply your skills and then switch a class level from, say, bard to fighter, you will have a lot of used skill points that you don't actually have.

Class Bonus Feats are a special case in that they might be relatively straightforward to "carry over" based on changing class levels.

In any case, not resetting anything is way preferable to trying to guess the user's intent, especially if they're just "moving" a splash level from one level to another.

Yes, I think the idea is, as much as we can, to inform you of any invalid choices and let you decide how to deal with them. This should end up being better than what we currently have (in our current system, if you have errors in your spell list, for instance, there is no way to fix them without changing your class back to an old class and removing the spells. In our new system, you will have a list of spells you have taken, so if there is an error in the list, you will still be able to remove that spell without having to mess about with your class selection). And similarly for other systems (feats, enhancements, etc). So yeah, we're learning from past mistakes and are going to be applying a little more intelligent behavior to the error system

Ellis, we're looking at your "label" suggestion and seeing how it would work in practice. I like it. We may very well end up using it (Dragon is doing the actual coding on that screen, so he has the final decision). I think we'd need some instructions on the screen about what the left and right buttons do, which would need to be fairly dynamic, but that's easy enough to program (just a couple of labels like "Left click: set secondary class (Wizard)" and "Right Click: set primary class (Rogue)" or something to that effect.

I'm still inclined to go with the drag-and-drop system for setting primary/secondary/tertiary classes. I think that's a fairly intuitive and easy method for setting your three classes. But I do very much like the idea of "greying out" incompatible alignment classes (as opposed to just not showing them, you guys have no idea how many "bug reports" I've gotten about missing classes in the planner. "Hey, you have a bug. I can't select Barbarian, it's not on the list", "what is your alignment?", "Lawful Good, why?", "Not. A. Bug." If I have to have that conversation one more time, I might scream ).

[EllisDee37]

Ellis, we're looking at your "label" suggestion and seeing how it would work in practice. I like it. We may very well end up using it (Dragon is doing the actual coding on that screen, so he has the final decision). I think we'd need some instructions on the screen about what the left and right buttons do, which would need to be fairly dynamic, but that's easy enough to program (just a couple of labels like "Left click: set secondary class (Wizard)" and "Right Click: set primary class (Rogue)" or something to that effect.

I'm still inclined to go with the drag-and-drop system for setting primary/secondary/tertiary classes. I think that's a fairly intuitive and easy method for setting your three classes.

Agreed 100%. Drag & Drop is one of my coding weaknesses, so I tend to never even consider it. For choosing your top 1-3 classes, drag and drop is the best way to go I would think. In my previous post I mentioned right-clicking to remove a top 3 class, but it would be much better (more intuitive) to simply drag it off.

The reason I suggested the label approach is that I just finished a program for myself for personal use. I set it up like a good little programmer, using standard elements in standard ways and had a beautifully designed application. Then I started using it, and quickly remembered why I dislike comboboxes so much. They're so easy to code, so intuitive and so "sturdy" that I'm constantly drawn to them as design elements. But using them is just so clunky, especially if you have a bunch of them on a single screen for picking options.

So after about a day and a half of using it I tore open the code and pulled out the comboboxes, switching to more streamlined elements. I'm so much happier now! The only reason this jumped out at me was because this happened just this past weekend, so it was fresh in my mind.


You could do a compromise in terms of intuitiveness and only support left click, which would apply the currently selected top 3 class to whatever label you just clicked. Adding right click support to "reset" a level to the primary class would increase usability, but is un-intuitive enough to merit a special label on the form explaining it. And in practice, even with an explanation written on the form, the right click functionality could very well end up being more confusing than helpful. But the basic premise of the top 3 class icons being option buttons, and whichever is active is the class you currently assign to levels, is reasonably self-explanatory.

EDIT: The tricky part would be the top 3 classes. They need to support drag & drop both to them (to set them) and away from them (to clear them), plus adding in option button-style selectability. That might end up being annoying to code. If it ends up looking like a timesink just stick with the tried and true combobox approach.

[Zistra]

That's a massive can of worms. Best to stick to the current planner's behavior, which is to just signify (with color) that you have errors based on now-invalid choices. I'm thinking in particular of skills, where if you apply your skills and then switch a class level from, say, bard to fighter, you will have a lot of used skill points that you don't actually have.

Class Bonus Feats are a special case in that they might be relatively straightforward to "carry over" based on changing class levels.

In any case, not resetting anything is way preferable to trying to guess the user's intent, especially if they're just "moving" a splash level from one level to another.

Yeah. Even on initial impression, it seems to me that simply clearing skills would be best.. or if a 'fill priority' was used, reiterating that priority with the new skill point pools. But just indicating the existence of problems is fine and simple as long as correcting (and especially clearing) those settings is easy and straightforward.

[Zistra]

The reason I suggested the label approach is that I just finished a program for myself for personal use. I set it up like a good little programmer, using standard elements in standard ways and had a beautifully designed application. Then I started using it, and quickly remembered why I dislike comboboxes so much. They're so easy to code, so intuitive and so "sturdy" that I'm constantly drawn to them as design elements. But using them is just so clunky, especially if you have a bunch of them on a single screen for picking options.

Strongly agree on comboboxes. Avoid where possible and minimize the number of choices in the pulldown where they can't be avoided.

EDIT: The tricky part would be the top 3 classes. They need to support drag & drop both to them (to set them) and away from them (to clear them), plus adding in option button-style selectability. That might end up being annoying to code. If it ends up looking like a timesink just stick with the tried and true combobox approach.

If this is too difficult, I'd aim for drag to set (and select), click to select, right-click to clear. Easier to program and still avoids the comboboxes. With no drag away, all left-clicks become 'select'.

[Zistra]

What's best may depend on consistency with choices made elsewhere. If you implemented someone's suggestion of click to increase stats and rclick to reduce on the stat distribution screen, then the rclick to remove class functionality for the top 3 classes would be intuitively more obvious. If you're not implementing rclick functionality anywhere else in the program for anything else, doing so here would be strange.