[Can you scale buff/debuff icons in new UI in 1.2?]

Was this post really necessary? If you don't like it, don't play. I think Bioware is doing a great job. Yes, there's room for improvment, but your negative attitude does little to solve those problems.

 

Please clarify how thinking happy happy thoughts or sucking up to Bioware like a gushing fanboy will solve it either.

[Can you scale buff/debuff icons in new UI in 1.2?]

The tiny icons in the default UI was an egregious oversight.

 

Failing to correct this glaring problem in the much heralded 'UI update' speaks volumes about the ineptitude of the devs tasked to tweaking the HUD.

 

And I predict that when buffs and debuffs are finally scaleable, it'll be a ham-fisted fix, scaling ALL buffs without any filtering. As a HOT healer, for instance, I want to see the remaining time on my heal effects in great gory detail, large enough that I can track with my peripheral vision. I don't need to see the class buffs, or my raidmates' procs. It's just a lot of useless information obscuring what I need to know.

 

Seriously, Bioware, this isn't rocket science.

[is healing really that bad in this game?]

SWTOR healing is one of the best, if not the best, I've seen this far. They really managed to make it work and I love their difficulty level.

 

The only flaw they might have is the fact you need to click-heal and can't keybind. Don't worry, I can heal without, it's just, for people with non-big hands like me, I can only reach buttons 1 to 5. Having more then 5 heals makes that a tiny bit annoying.

 

Overall though, SWTOR healing is awesome for people who enjoy healing. If you're not a healer at heart you will dislike SWTOR healing just as you dislike healing in any game.

 

Who's your dealer, because I want what you're smoking.

 

The MECHANICS aren't bad at all, as an alternative to standard mana pools.

 

It's the clunky controls we're expected to manipulate to USE those mechanics.

 

----

 

Imagine a car, a standard transmission, with the stickshift mounted in the center back seat. You can still get from one place to another just fine. So what if you have to reach back over your shoulder to change gears? Don't talk to me about it being an 'uncomfortable and unresponsive design', you just want it within easy reach because you're lazy. In fact, you're demanding more direct control because you like to speed, so you're a cheater too.

 

This is what it feels like trying to reason with people on the forums about this issue. To hell with them. They can spend their time spamming "LF healer" while the subscriptions dwindle. Here at 50, the only thing keeping me playing is the presense of my old-time guildmates and maybe the single player RPG story (I could see my self playing through a few times just on the solo content, but that doesn't make for years of subscriptions).

[Knights of the Old Republic 3]

Most pathetic reason I have ever heard. Come up with a reason to quit that matters less in the greater scheme of the game, I dare you. No, I double dare you to infinity.

 

Because fighting with the controls isn't fun.

 

If things as trivial as the ui (which is not clunky and is decent imo) make or break the game for you, I think you're spoilt by the previous mmos you've played.

 

HOT heals are a critical part of my class. To be effective, I have to know how many stacks my groupmates have, and how long until they expire. The UI displays this as a 4x4 pixel above their health bars.

 

This is just example. Yes yes, new game, kinks being worked out, big changes coming. But when emotes while mounted tops the developer list, I'm not encouraged.

 

UR BAD LEARN2SQUINT

[is healing really that bad in this game?]

I heal. I'm good. It's great fun. I don't need any mouseover macros. I encourage you all to at least try it before you decree you cannot/will not do it.

 

Healed end-game content for years in other games.

 

Have been healing instances since Day 1. I'm now lvl 50.

 

SWTOR healing blows.

 

Even putting aside mouseovers and macros, the UI is pathetic. As a HOT healer, I can't tell who has my HOT on them, how many stacks of it, or how long til it runs out. Certainly not when the buff/debuff icons are approximately 4x4 pixels or smaller.

 

But I suppose the reply will be UR BAD LEARN2SQUINT.

 

I'll heal for guildmates. The rest of you aren't worth the aggravation.

 

Unless serious UI improvements appear on the horizon, SWTOR is destined for the discount bin like so many other MMOs.

 

See you next game.

[Knights of the Old Republic 3]

As a singleplayer RPG, it's an unrivaled masterpiece.

 

As an MMO, the next few months will render that verdict.

 

For me, the clunky UI will make or break it.

[Mouseover Healing]

This is what makes me not want to heal in this game. I along with many others came from WoW where I was doing heroic 25 man content and hardcore pvp. I used healbot, power aura and a few others. I can actually get along without most of it BUT what some people don't seem to get through their heads it's not just the extra click or keybind. Its the targeting. I tired to heal a warzone and it was such a bad experience I've just about given up.

 

How are you going to heal in pvp? Try to heal & CC/Stun in a small cluster of 4-5 people in a vicinity. I go to heal a friendly and my target/focus switches to that guy, I try and reacquire my original hostile target who is all over the screen with target nearest and I get the guy at full heal who I end blowing my shiv move on while the original enemy was down 85% all the meanwhile I got some other guy trying to tear me up. It's critical that not only do I heal but help my team in dps, the time lost in having to find my target is the difference in win or lose.

 

Several of us at work are playing this game, the dps guys are all pretty much ok with the UI maybe some better CD timers would be nice. Those of us that heal all pretty much hate it so much that we are all going to dps but I LOVE to heal. This UI makes me not want to heal.

 

Maybe I could deal with it in a raid situation where I can set focus on a boss but in PvP I just dont see this as feasible. So once I go through all the content as DPS. I'll be leaving the game because I want to heal in the end game. Being a healer while leveling usually sucks in most games anyway. So if bioware is paying attention they will fix this quick. Otherwise, the long term revenue of subs is going to evaporate fast. You got me hooked now bioware but you need to keep me.

 

I want to beat encounters and not fight with a UI.

 

Amen.

 

My own most recent experience is healing end-game raids in WoW, BC through Cata. No healbot automation, don't try to lay that BS at my feet. Just raid frame UIs to display health bars and vital information (ie. critical buffs/debuffs and timers) where I can easily see it, and mouse-over casting macros, so I can quickly and intuitively respond.

 

I was able to spend most of my time looking at and playing the game itself, not hunting and clicking through UI bars to achieve what I wanted. I could keep heals rolling off a tank, maintain CC or interupts on a mob, debuffs on the party would barely have a chance to tick and you'd never see me standing in fire because I was too busy squinting at icons to maintain situational awareness.

 

And no, this was not spamming one uber-macro keybind, I still had to think about every cast and perform moment to moment triage. Lttle heal. Big heal. DOT on a DPSer, but he can wait, he's third priority. 5 seconds left on the CC. Things are stabilized, regen some mana...KICK THAT SPELL NOW NOW NOW.

 

By comparison, healing in SWTOR up to the 30s has been a miserable and un-enjoyable experience. Maybe it's just my hardware (an 'internet browser' mouse and a stock keyboard), but I have ANTI-mouseover: if my cursor is left hovering over a portrait/UI nameplate after I click on it to select a target, my keybinds stop responding. So to heal, I'm like a boxer sparing with my UI, jabbing, ducking and weaving to achieve my desired result. It's getting very old, very fast.

 

It cannot be stated enough: we're not whining for automation, we're gripping about targeting. For you DPSers spouting L2PLAY at us, imagine if you had to maneuver your targeting reticle with the arrow keys, like old FPS games that didn't support mice. Stop your complaining, mouse aiming is a crutch for bads, I used to dominate multiplayer Doom with just the keyboard, your arguments about being able to quickly swap targets are invalid.

 

It's really very simple. If healing means spending more time fighting with the UI to get feedback about health and debuffs (and then acting upon that information), then it's more frustration than fun. And if frustration reigns, then subscriptions drop and SWTOR soon withers and dies like so many other MMOs since WoW began (which, let's face it, is the benchmark). Yes yes yes, the game was just released, big changes are coming, great things are planned. And soon, we promise.

 

We'll see.

 

That said, some people believe that having well built UIs that utilize even such a basic macro like on-mouseover is unfair to those who don't know how to use it, etc. All I have to say to that is, it's unfair not to. There are plenty of gaming peripherals that allow for the making of macros outside of the game, in fact there's a set of a mouse and keyboard specifically designed for TOR that have extensive macro-making capability! When it comes right down to it, it's actually unfair not to have basic macro function in the game because it gives a distinct advantage to those who are willing to spend a $100 on a specialized mouse or keyboard. I don't say it for myself, as I'm one of those terrible people who happens to use a Naga. I just wanted to point out, to all the naysayers, that the possibility already exists. Instead of giving an unfair advantage to some, basic healing UI function like mouseover should be added directly into the game.

 

Bingo. It knocks any argument that 'macros are cheating' into a cocked hat, as the Brits say.

[Healing with this UI is not fun]

Have to give them credit for allowing some basic customization, in that you can replace the party frames with raid frames, move them around the screen, and edit the size of the health bar. As a start, at release, it's not bad at all.

 

How they failed to include an option to scale up buff (and more importantly, debuff) icons with that is beyond me.

[Mouseover Healing]

Bioware should remove the mouse altogether. It's just a crutch for bads, and anyone who supports the use of a mouse to select targets (either by clicking or aiming a reticle) is just a whiner who wants the game automated.

 

What's so hard about keyboard turning? And remember when you had to use the arrow keys to tilt your crosshairs up and down? That's how old school pros roll, learn to play.