GreymaneAlpha Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 UI customization. This game needs it badly. But if the only customization is moving and resizing a few frames, as the recent developer preview video indicates, then I'm deeply disappointed. As the recent catastrophe with the cooldown indicators show, you cannot create a UI that will appeal to everyone. In WOW, the cooldown indicator problem could be easily solved by just installing a little mod that overlays the number of seconds left until the ability is off cooldown. People that don't like the new system install that mod, everyone's happy. If BioWare is to pointlessly continue without mods and macros, though, this sort of thing will continue to happen. I obviously do not expect the developers to have the range of options available for their UI that user-created mods could give. Hell, I don't even expect a toggle between 'old cooldown system', 'new cooldown system', and 'cooldown system with overlaid numbers'. Nonetheless, BioWare seems to think that they should continue paying people to make the UI better, ostensibly with the intention of making it better for everyone, when they truly would be better served just allowing the users of the game to create mods. You cannot make a single UI, no matter how customizable you think you've made it (and from the preview video, it does not appear very customizable), that will appeal to everyone. It's simply not possible. Letting users collaborate and create their own UI? That's possible, and at this point in the genre's evolution, it's almost required. And for the people complaining about how mods ruined Warcraft, or other nonsense: the power of your mod is based on the functions the API exposes. If you don't want SWTOR versions of Recount, don't give mods the ability to parse the combat log. If you don't want SWTOR versions of GearScore, don't give mods the ability to inspect equipment. If you don't want SWTOR versions of Deadly Boss Mods, don't give mods the ability to parse chat logs. Etc. TL;DR: this game needs mods. P.S.: This game also badly needs macros (especially mouseovers for healing) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cmdluke Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 why do you think that what they showed in that short video is all the UI customization they are implementing? The legacy section of that video only showed a family tree graphic and a mirluka sith warrior, and there is much more to it than those 2 small things. why don't you wait and see what bioware is going to give us with UI customization before complaining about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pink_Saber Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 (edited) why do you think that what they showed in that short video is all the UI customization they are implementing? I don't think he's saying that at all (and, in fact, I happen to agree with him). True customization (i.e., allowing people to modify the UI however they see fit, and not just via the options Bioware gives us) can eliminate a lot of (and probably most) usability issues. Personally, I'd love to see an API as open as *cough* that other game's *cough*. The user community can have some really great ideas, and could come up with stuff Bioware would never think of on their own. Edited January 20, 2012 by Pink_Saber Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rhazz Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 why do you think that what they showed in that short video is all the UI customization they are implementing?Why should we expect there be more? Bioware has already let us down. They've given us no reason to show faith that this will be implemented in a way that the majority of players will be satisfied. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
run_hello Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 I'd love to see add-ons. But if BW is going to start by just letting me move around the things I have and change the size, I'll take it. Fortunately the cool down shading thing didn't affect me for some reason. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Poin_Dex_Tenobi Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 Or you could just make do with what you get (which works fine imo). You know, like all the other, non mmo games, people play. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quraswren Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 (edited) Probably best to not base your entire opinion of a 4 sec video segment. For all you saw in that video it will do everything you could ever want given how much was left to your imagination. But I bet your a glass half full person. Edited January 20, 2012 by Quraswren Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Avrose Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 (edited) Also there was a reason BW isn't along mods and macro's. In World of War-Craft developers at blizzcon did state they had reasons for banning certain mods because it made content ridiculously impossible to tune. Keeping both the non-mod players have a fight easy enough that they were not forced to use mods while the mod crew had a fight hard enough to sate their appetite. Some people say BW isn't learning from the old hat but this shows you that is not the case. Mod's and Macro's open the door to that issue and in mod country the possibility of getting your account hacked. Between both of those problems I respect Bioware's wisdom in taking it slowly. Mods and Macro's are not the be all end all. Petition for better interfaces if you must, hell I will sign them. I don't like ours but Mod's and Macro's is not the solution to this problem. Edited January 20, 2012 by Avrose Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreymaneAlpha Posted January 20, 2012 Author Share Posted January 20, 2012 I don't think he's saying that at all (and, in fact, I happen to agree with him). True customization (i.e., allowing people to modify the UI however they see fit, and not just via the options Bioware gives us) can eliminate a lot of (and probably most) usability issues. Exactly. Plus, do you really expect the stupendously huge amount of UI options that BioWare would need to implement to even come close to the customizability of UI mods? Keep in mind that if BioWare adds it, BioWare needs to play-test it, and BioWare needs to officially support it, and BioWare needs to make sure it's bug-free, and BioWare needs to continue improving it. It's just not reasonable. What is reasonable is letting the community do all that work. Not only will it be lead to more options for the user, but it will lead to less effort for the developers. They're wouldn't just be allowing more customization, they would be saving themselves the expensive and time-consuming parts of coding: testing and bug-fixing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
truedark Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 I believe UI mods need to be heavily restricted. All players should have an equal playing field against each other whether or not one has mods or the other does not have mods. Saying, "Just go download the mod" does not cut it. Both should have an equal playing field. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreymaneAlpha Posted January 20, 2012 Author Share Posted January 20, 2012 Also there was a reason BW isn't along mods and macro's. In World of War-Craft developers at blizzcon did state they had reasons for banning certain mods because it made content ridiculously impossible to tune. Keeping both the none mod players have a fight easy enough that were not forced to use mods while the mod crew had a fight hard enough. some people say BW isn't learning from the old hat but this shows you its not the case. Mod's and Macro's open the door to that issue and in mod country the possibility of getting your account hacked. Between both of those problems I respect Bioware's wisdom in taking in slowly. Mods and Macro's are not the be all end all. Petition for better interfaces if you must hell I will sign them I don't like our but Mod's and macro's is not the solution to this problem. As I mentioned in the original post: it depends strongly on what capabilities are exposed via the add-on API. World of Warcraft, especially early on, exposed too much power to mods. BioWare could easily make things like Recount, Deadly Boss Mods, etc impossible just be limiting their API. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
profaneascension Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 I shall reserve judgment until the customization options are official, but I'll consider them to be subpar unless they allow me to set up a row of 18 hotkeys on the left side of the screen, set up different windows for different chat channels, and let me see my cooldowns numerically. ....so yeah, I'd prefer mods, but at this point I am not very hopeful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattdell Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 I believe UI mods need to be heavily restricted. All players should have an equal playing field against each other whether or not one has mods or the other does not have mods. Saying, "Just go download the mod" does not cut it. Both should have an equal playing field. The playing field is always equal, its just a taste preference. Me having 4 action bars at the bottom of my screen is comfortable for me. You may like to have two of them on opposite vertical edges. Thats cool, too. Neither give any edge. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zodnom Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 why do you think that what they showed in that short video is all the UI customization they are implementing? The legacy section of that video only showed a family tree graphic and a mirluka sith warrior, and there is much more to it than those 2 small things. why don't you wait and see what bioware is going to give us with UI customization before complaining about it. They don't get the benefit of the doubt until they earn it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeweledleah Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 I think its a great start. and I have a feeling, the reason why they are not opening up the code to the players is becasue they are still working out the kinks in it. whether they will ever open it up - its up to debate, but considering how every patch blizzard releases, breaks half the addons despite them giving addon makers advance warnings? yeah... I'd rather bioware works out as many bugs as possible and implements small changes little by little, then try to much, too fast and end up with spectacular issues (Illum) current system is not perfect. its somewhat clunky. but its most certainly playable. my twitch/reaction time is horrendous and i can still manage to play well enough to be complemented by the people I group with. if I can do it? you can do it constructive feedback and suggestions good. requesting that things should be done exactly the way YOU want them? not so much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DTuloJr Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 The HeroEngine is not designed around allowing end-user customization of anything. Everything has to be built from basically the ground-up. World of Warcraft was designed, from the ground-up, to specifically be user-customizable. There are very serious considerations that must be accounted for in order for BioWare to allow end-user customization of the SWTOR game client user interface. The fact that BioWare *FAILED* to account for this in their six YEARS of development time... is telling. The fact that they're at least trying to accomodate *some* requests... a full year after they continuously began receiving them from beta testers... is... nice. Finally. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keypek Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 It's all I want. Ability to resize and move things around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Powerhowse Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 I don't think he's saying that at all (and, in fact, I happen to agree with him). True customization (i.e., allowing people to modify the UI however they see fit, and not just via the options Bioware gives us) can eliminate a lot of (and probably most) usability issues. Personally, I'd love to see an API as open as *cough* that other game's *cough*. The user community can have some really great ideas, and could come up with stuff Bioware would never think of on their own. It also has unexpected draw backs such as gearscore, which in turn was used by the community in WoW to restrict raid access. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theothersteve Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 I disagree that mods are necessarily mandatory, but I will say that the very limited features displayed in the video are either very misleading or very worrying. While, certainly, what they displayed is a good step in the right direction, we need many other things before the game breaks free of its current UI shackles. I posted this previously, but going to Curse.com and reviewing the top twenty addons by downloads would be a very good use of design time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SaiBear Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 I hope they do add more than just moving things around. I meen I would love to be able to move the side bars into 2 rows of 6 cubes wide left and right of the middle bars. But for better functionality and enjoyment for some, being able to see procs clearer and control over the display of buffs and debuffs makes a big difference. At the moment in a flashpoint/op it's hellish trying to track your own debuff on a boss when it shows everyone elses debuff. Specialy others of the same class or those that share the same graphic. No target of target or some kind of threat indicator makes things pretty tough on tanks too. Moving and resizing would be great, but we don't just want to customise the current UI we want more of a UI to customise! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NuanceNW Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 TL;DR: this game needs mods. P.S.: This game also badly needs macros (especially mouseovers for healing) This game doesn't need to be the other games you've played and left to play this one. I don't need macros, I don't need boss encounter addons or mouseover healing mods. Perhaps those of us who are playing and enjoying the game as is are the more skilled? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreymaneAlpha Posted January 20, 2012 Author Share Posted January 20, 2012 They don't get the benefit of the doubt until they earn it. Pretty much. I don't even give them the benefit of the doubt on allowing us to move and resize all things. Or add usable focus/target-of-target frames. What makes anyone give them the benefit of the doubt that features like improved buff/debuff tracking will get implemented by BioWare. And tested. And supported. And will come out before everyone has already left the game. Or targetting by nameplates (seriously, why the hell can you not target by nameplates?). And as far as macros? All I want is context sensitive [help],[harm], [mouseover], and [targetoftarget] buttons. If you think that a macro like that somehow "trivializes the game", you have no idea what you're talking about. You don't have to allow castsequence macros. You don't have to even allow relics to be used automatically by macros (though they should, I think). Basic macros that allow mouseovers, targetoftarget, and help vs harm contexts just allow you to do your desired actions faster, without going through additional hoops. That's it. I do not understand how anyone can think this kind of feature is somehow 'reducing the skill cap', unless you somehow conflate extract mouse-clicks as skill. Which I do not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
curzen Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 Considering how they for me broke the usefulness of the cooldown indicators with the last patch I by now sincerely hope for total UI customization as BioWare themselves apparently can't deliver a usable one and only make it worse over time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valkirus Posted January 20, 2012 Share Posted January 20, 2012 What the update video displayed on the UI customization would be great for me. It is really all I need to be able to move things around and resize them. Nice to see Bioware working on stuff that is really going to be useful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreymaneAlpha Posted January 20, 2012 Author Share Posted January 20, 2012 This game doesn't need to be the other games you've played and left to play this one. I don't need macros, I don't need boss encounter addons or mouseover healing mods. Perhaps those of us who are playing and enjoying the game as is are the more skilled? Yes, because clearly it takes much more skill to mouseclick before casting a heal than it does to cast via a mouseover. Wow. What a great argument you've made. As far as boss encounter add-ons, I agree with you. That's why the API is important. If you don't expose chat or combat log parsing, you cannot have useful boss mods. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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