What Is So Bad About the UI?

[BanesBluff]

Can someone tell me what is so bad about the UI? I see so many people complaining about it and I'm just not seeing what all the fuss is about. Sure, its customization is limited, and there could be some more quickbars, but other than that I'm just not seeing what all the fuss is about. And no I am not trolling, I am honestly curious.

 

Can someoone please explain?

[Microtia]

In the middle of doing something in your inventory/GTN/whatever. Crew skill finishes. Proceed to rage.

 

(One of my biggest complaints anyway. That and the overlap of the quest tracker and the right toolbar)

[Buzzkil]

i think its just because most players have have got used to having it there way,i dont mind the ui either...also i think alot of players these days are massive drama queens and make it sound a lot worse than really is. Edited January 9, 2012 by Buzzkil

[Vitiock]

For me some of the major issues are as such (mind you I will play the game despite this they just make me fight the interface as much as the mobs)

 

Rage meter: The rage meter is horribly placed for me, something like a hud that shows up near my character would make it much easier to monitor my rage and know when to dump and when to save

 

Cool downs: as a sith warrior I have a TON of skills on cooldown (many of which are not different just on a priority basis) these cooldowns show up as a de-greying of the icon which isn't very good for seeing whats coming up unless you memorize how long the cooldown is, also I have to look at my bars to see the cooldown which is not where i'm fighting and takes my focus off whats actually happening

 

Target of target: as a tank I have no good way to identify how my threat is holding or if the boss has switched to a dps or healer, this is annoying because I can't taunt when the boss is losing interest in me, I have to wait until it does an instant direction change and smacks a dps in the face, or runs across the field to the healer.

 

Targeting: targeting in this game is pretty horrible, tab targeting doesn't tab through like many of us are used to, and you don't seem to be able to select things by their name plates.

 

Raid frames: raid frames don't show buffs and debuffs well making it harder for group members to track whats going on, on top of this raid frames don't seem to update in real time leading to my health being at 20% and my healer saying your bar is full!

 

these are just some of the issues I have that could be fixed with more UI options or addons.

[BanesBluff]

Yeah I mean the only REAL issue that I see is the ops frames overlapping the left quickbar, and in Voidstar, the map overlapping the top-right quickbar buttons, but I just put my PvE cooldowns/relics there so I don't even have a problem. I personally think it looks very sleek and matches the game very well and when addons are put in, I might not even change it then.

[Iskevosi]

The UI looks okay, it just acts wrong. Have some windows open and then see what happens when a companion say's "Job Complete". They all close down except that Window. What a pain in the ***!

[Azaranth]

I know that this forum is filled with a lot of unneeded whining, but the UI is legitimately lacking in some areas.

 

Consider that the Scoundrel and Operative healing mechanics are based around tracking a buff on each party member, and 2 more on yourself. Now look at the default party window. The buff icons are about 4 pixels on a side, and it's really not possible to tell what is what at a reasonable resolution.

 

So yeah. Some UI changes would be appreciated, just from a quality of life perspective.

[HerrFett]

That i can't change the size of it.

 

What fisheye at bioware made the UI so big?

[jestertron]

I see a few annoyances, but I'm able to game with it just fine.

 

I did wish they thought of using Dragon Age Origins UI where you stretch the bottom action bar as long as you want it. That was awesome.

[GHeissi]

I can't resize the damn LFG comment in the /who tool. What the heck, I want to read it, so it could actually be useful!

[Qoojo]

I want to move some things around like put chat on the lower left, but the companion thing is there. Can you move the companion bar somewhere else? That's about the only thing I do not like about the UI.

[krisslanza]

The problem with the UI is people can't clutter up 80% of their screen with all their add-ons.

[Fredcat]

A lot but to name a few.

 

Not enough hotkey bars.

 

Can't move or resize anything.

 

Target windows should not be locked to hotkey banks.

 

It's easily the least customizable UI in an MMO I've ever seen. Games that were developed nearly a decade ago had more customizable UI's from the start. EQ2 and WOW to name two of them.

[ThiborF]

For some it's merely the inability to un-dock/lock the various elements and move them where they would prefer them to be. For others it's the inability to scale it (be it in its entirety or as individual components) so that it takes up the amount of screen real estate they would prefer.

 

And then there's the whole litany of things that seem to be missing or that folks got used to having in other games. Some are more of a typical thing in the genre while others are more specific to only one or two games.

 

BUT, here's the thing with UIs. They either feel intuitive to you and therefore comfortable, or they don't. And if they don't AND the developer hasn't seen fit to give you options to make it more intuitive, then some frustration sets in.

 

And with some folks, it's only going to be a minor aggravation while for others it's a much larger PITA to.

 

Think of it like this:

The ones that are only somewhat aggravated by this are like folks used to say a particular length of snow ski or a particular weight bowling ball. If they show up at the mountain/lanes and they don't have their favorite length/weight, it doesn't mean they can't make do with something close, it's just not as comfortable to them.

 

The ones that are majorly torqued about it is like someone learning to play golf right handed and then giving them a set of left hand clubs to play a round with. It's just not going to feel natural at all and it's going to seriously effect their game.

[BanesBluff]

Consider that the Scoundrel and Operative healing mechanics are based around tracking a buff on each party member, and 2 more on yourself. Now look at the default party window. The buff icons are about 4 pixels on a side, and it's really not possible to tell what is what at a reasonable resolution.

.

 

See this IS a legitimate reason to not like the UI. Another guy said he doesn't like the placement of the rage bar, I know that is a slight inconvience to have to actually look somewhere for a split second, but I mean come on, by the time you get to 50 and play for a while, you should have some understanding of what abilities will be appropriate to use, just by muscle memory alone of pushing the buttons countless numbers of times. I'm pretty sure 99% of the people that are complaining are people that are just used to WoW and don't want to even try to adjust to a different game.

 

Bugs and stuff that PHYSICALLY PREVENT you from doing things are a whole different story entirely, but things like placement and texture are just things that people have become way too picky about in my opinion.

[drbeat]

Try healing with their "raid frames" in PvP. The health bars rarely even update.

[Knyghtprowler]

My UI issues:

 

#1 Alt F brings up a focus target, the minimap currently shows tooltips and that covers the focus target and you can not select it.

 

#2 I play all my games in Eyefinity. I can not play Swtor in Eyefinity because I can not resize or move anything like all my hotbars, the minimap, the popup windows ect.. Just about everything would be moved with my setup if I could run it.

 

#3 I prefer having all of my hotbars near me (middle screen) so If I need to click something I am not going to the left or right of my screen to get it.

 

#4 Companion frame is placed in a spot I would normally ALWAYS place my chat in game. I do not like it there.

 

 

#5 Buffs and Debuffs are too small IMO - they are easy to miss if you are not focusing on them directly which detracts my eyes from the fight.

 

#6 Quest tracker is ok but allow me to change the font and resize it so it doesnt take up half my screen when it is full.

 

#7 if you use the right hotbar and go into PvP the PvP interface in the rop right covers the top 3 buttons.

 

#8 It would be helpful if hotkeys actually functioned off the bound keys. I use mouse roll forward and back to execute interupts, they only seem to work half the time and I have to spam my wheel it seems. If I am in a healing setup I would normally bind heals/damage bubble to the mouse wheel.. This is not possible because I can't trust it firing off every time.

 

#9 A more customizable operation frame. I use the operation frame as party frames because i can resize the health bar and unlock the frame and move it where I want it. The problem is buff and debuffs are TINY and can not be used to tell what they are. You have to click in the frame so you target that player then look in the lower right to see his debuffs. I would also like to show more info on a operation frame.

 

#10 Party / operation frames with companions on them!!! Every try healing someone's pet? It's tedious.

 

#11 Threat indicator on the party/operation frames. They give us the ability to lower threat and to pull people to us that are in trouble but its difficult to see whos in trouble. All I would require is a red outline around the frame designating who has threat.

 

#12 The ability to save configured UI's so if I am healing all my most used buttons are on the numbers hotkey bar. If I am questing and using my DPS abilities I would be able to load that UI and all my buttons would change. As is - I have to pull all the buttons out and stick the ones in there that I want.

 

#13 The 4 hotbars you have are not enough - it used to be nice when I wasn't displaying them because I could flip the main hotbar to one of the others I had preset and things worked out when I changed roles. Now that I have all 4 bars filled, I can no longer toggle through preset bars. The arrow disappears cuz all bars are visible.

 

#14 The inventory screen covers the chat in my game because I moved the Chat and CAN NOT move my inventory. When I try to shift click items to link them I don't like that I cant see what I am linking...

 

There are many other gripes I have - I will update this as I think of others. Hard to do this at work without actually playing.

Edited January 9, 2012 by Knyghtprowler

[ApesAmongUs]

Spend the night crafting and have 5 new armor mods today, how do I go about slotting them.

 

C to bring up character screen

ctrl-right click to mod, which opens the mod screen and the inventory screen - which closes my character screen for no good reason

now for next piece, I need to open the character screen again, even though I never closed it and never wanted to closed

 

Same thing when looking for schematics in the market.

I can't view the recipes I already have at the same time as the market, because opening the recipe inventory involves first going through the "N" crew screen - and having more than 2 screens open would mean that the dark side wins.

 

Maybe I buy something and immediately want to equip it. Well, first I have to reopen my inventory, because it was closed when I closed the store screen - again for no reason.

 

Those are just the annoying little parts, but then you have the stuff that will get you killed.

 

I'm in a combat and suddenly my companion needs to be healed. Now, with a better UI, I would be able to set a key to select my companion. But no, here I have to hit F1 twice. And I better hope it recognizes both presses, because the display of the change lags by 2 seconds, so if look down and see my picture still it might mean that I need to hit the button again to select my companion OR it might mean that it just hasn't updated and hitting that button again will toggle back to me and I end up healing the wrong person.

 

And in a group it gets better. First we have no way to quickly select a groupmate's companion in a 2-3 man group.

 

But better yet, the hot keys to select group members change depending on what order you were invited into the group.

 

F1,F2,F3,F4 for the sensible people who understand the complex and new idea of sequential order.

But F2,F1,F3,F4 OR F2,F3,F1,F4 OR F2,F3,F4,F1 are also equally possible and exactly the kind of thing I need to have to think about in the half second that guy has to live. And it's even better if you get used to the current order and then someone leaves the group. Why not just scramble my keymapping occasionally to keep it extra exciting? It makes about as much sense as having "W" occasionally make me turn left.

[Gilbara]

Can someone tell me what is so bad about the UI? I see so many people complaining about it and I'm just not seeing what all the fuss is about. Sure, its customization is limited, and there could be some more quickbars, but other than that I'm just not seeing what all the fuss is about. And no I am not trolling, I am honestly curious.

 

Can someoone please explain?

 

The Crew Management screen interferes with the chat by obstructing it. If you have the crew management screen open on the left side, it's upper part covers the chat input field, making it almost impossible to click your mouse in chat input in order to type something. You basically have to close crew management in order to chat.

 

This needs to be addressed.

 

Also, if you are say, searching GTN, and a companion completes a mission, the GTN closes! I Can't tell you how frustrating that is. Same is true for submitting a ticket or bug report. Spend five minutes writing a detailed report only to have companion return from mission, and it closes the ticket... this is maddening.

 

It must be fixed ASAP.

Edited January 9, 2012 by Gilbara

[BanesBluff]

This is just too amusing. It seems like all of these issues are first-world problems that people don't want to work around.

 

That must be the absolute WORST feeling in the world when your WINDOW ACTUALLY CLOSES when you open another one? Wow that must take you at LEAST 1 whole second to do whatever you need to do in that window before you open the other one again. I feel really bad for you man, I'm sorry to hear that.

 

Like I said, bugs and things that TRULY affect your gameplay (like people losing health and the frames not showing it) are really the only things that matter. The rest are just things that just don't "feel" right and the people that "don't like this bar here" and "that button there" are just spoiled as hell and don't want to adjust to a new game.

 

I think it is so funny how people complain about other games being WoW clones, but then whenever the game does something that is actually DIFFERENT than WoW, the moan and complain about it. What do you want? A game that is a clone of WoW, or a game that gives you a fresh experience? Because I am starting to think that people don't really know what they want these days.

[Xenich]

Can someone tell me what is so bad about the UI? I see so many people complaining about it and I'm just not seeing what all the fuss is about. Sure, its customization is limited, and there could be some more quickbars, but other than that I'm just not seeing what all the fuss is about. And no I am not trolling, I am honestly curious.

 

Can someoone please explain?

 

The lack of customization is a large part.

 

Only 4 hot bars usable at a time is problematic with their location issues. If you use your mouse to click, it is a large distance to cross if your screen isn't extremely small which reduces your efficiency to maneuver and deal with actual combat. That is, the lack of hot bars and inability to move them creates game play issues.

 

Now you can hot key everything (which I prefer) but they are limited as without any sort of targeting macros or the like, you end up working against yourself with. some skills (reactive combat skills that open up healing abilities) and some of the existing aid hot key systems (focus system) are buggy and create problems.

 

Being able to move and re-size your UI is something that is a must in these games as everyone plays a bit differently. Now certainly it wouldn't be too bad if there was extensive thought put into the current UI system for efficiency and functionality, but it appears as if the UI was written for the PC by someone who is more familiar with console interfaces which creates many problems within game play. That is, as I said, many functions of play end up being counter to the goal of the function.

 

I am not trying to slam the game, but even LOTRO's UI which was a static non configurable UI (much older than WoW in its initial engine design) was far more functional than this game in its UI design and layout.

 

The basics need to be available for this UI. That is, movable, scalable, more hot bars that are adjustable in shape and size as well as an extensive look into the hot key system and targeting behavior.

 

There is a lot that needs work if the UI is going to "work for" the player rather than "work against" them.

[Vitiock]

See this IS a legitimate reason to not like the UI. Another guy said he doesn't like the placement of the rage bar, I know that is a slight inconvience to have to actually look somewhere for a split second, but I mean come on, by the time you get to 50 and play for a while, you should have some understanding of what abilities will be appropriate to use, just by muscle memory alone of pushing the buttons countless numbers of times. I'm pretty sure 99% of the people that are complaining are people that are just used to WoW and don't want to even try to adjust to a different game.

 

Bugs and stuff that PHYSICALLY PREVENT you from doing things are a whole different story entirely, but things like placement and texture are just things that people have become way too picky about in my opinion.

 

I'll admit that to me the rage location is an inconvenience, it's not game breaking but to me it definately is an issue. I spend most of my time at the feet of a giant boss, and I have to continually switch between looking and seeing if i'm going to be standing in fire, and checking the bottom of my screen for how much rage do I have, is there an enemy cast bar going on and if so what is it cus it's so tiny, what cooldowns to I have up and whats coming up, and have any of my skills procced. Now leveling 1-50 I could just faceroll my keyboard and it would turn out pretty well, except if I was facing an elite higher level than me, then I could faceroll my damage, and just had to make sure to interupt. However now that i'm in hardmodes I have to play better, to keep threat and help with damage so things don't enrage, yes it's an annoyance it's not game breaking, but at time I feel like i'm fighting the interface for a fight that would have been simple for me in wow. Fighting the interface to me isn't fun, it doesn't leave me feeling acomplished, or make me feel like I did something hard, it just frustrates me when I can't do something that I know should be simple.

[Yoggs]

It clutters up the screen needlessly. I don't want or need a huge picture of character or my target next to my action bars. For that matter why the hell did they go with the ridiculous oversized 2 on the bottom and 1 to each side bar style? Why put my pet bar right at the bottom corner of the screen, and again, with the oversized picture. Let me resize that garbage, get rid of portraits, alter how buffs/debuffs are presented to me.

 

Then there's Ops frames. Can't tell what debuff is what, or if it's a buff or debuff the player has unless I'm playing on a jumbotron. Not to mention the not always updating properly part. How am I supposed to do my job as a healer this way? I mean yeah, I can do it, but I'm not fighting the boss, I'm fighting the UI.

 

 

GTN UI... dear god what inbred crack baby that's been dropped on the head came up with that ****** UI? No search by name function until after you've selected everything else? Can't search armor by slot. Doesn't remember the price you just used on the same size stack of the same item not 5 seconds ago. No option to see what the price of each individual unit in a stack costs. Oh and that filter where you select "Usable by"? Yeah, doesn't work.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm having fun playing the game, maybe because it's still somewhat new and fresh and I like the story, I can overlook the bad UI and lack of customization. Now if those and a few other issues aren't taken care of or addressed in the next month or two, it'll be time for me to move on to a different game.

[BoostHungry]

I can't stand the fact that I can only ever have 2 windows open at a time and I can't move or re-size any of them. Want to compare a quest reward to the modifications on an item you have equipped? O I'm sorry, that requires opening your character sheet, then opening the modifications window which then closes your quest window which means you have to close your character sheet to reopen the quest window but now your stuck at 2 windows which means you can't compare the modifications on the quest rewards to the modifications on your gear without either a good memory or a pen and paper.

 

The UI is horrible IMO. I love the game, but I do get frustrated more than I should with the UI.

[Minack]

This is just too amusing. It seems like all of these issues are first-world problems that people don't want to work around.

 

That must be the absolute WORST feeling in the world when your WINDOW ACTUALLY CLOSES when you open another one? Wow that must take you at LEAST 1 whole second to do whatever you need to do in that window before you open the other one again. I feel really bad for you man, I'm sorry to hear that.

 

Like I said, bugs and things that TRULY affect your gameplay (like people losing health and the frames not showing it) are really the only things that matter. The rest are just things that just don't "feel" right and the people that "don't like this bar here" and "that button there" are just spoiled as hell and don't want to adjust to a new game.

 

I think it is so funny how people complain about other games being WoW clones, but then whenever the game does something that is actually DIFFERENT than WoW, the moan and complain about it. What do you want? A game that is a clone of WoW, or a game that gives you a fresh experience? Because I am starting to think that people don't really know what they want these days.

 

What a total sycophant. So any complaint about the UI being clunky and inconvenient immediately garners a response about WoW? So let me get this straight, ToR is supposed to have an awful UI for no other reason than it needs to be different from WoW? I've never played WoW, but I have played SWG and still play Eve. The UI in both of those games were/are light years ahead of the UI in ToR. But I'm supposed to suck it up and smile with glee because "hey, at least it's different"? So now fanboys need to whiteknight for BW/EA because of UI issues...wonderful.

Edited January 9, 2012 by Minack