Poll: What do you think about the new changes made to global cooldown UI in 1.1.2?

[adkbmxrider]

I will admit that the changes make it easier to see the actual cooldown meter, but dimming everything else while there is a cooldown in effect makes combat very difficult. I have trouble differentiating my spells when they are dimmed.

[Rhila]

Hey BioWare,

 

It's not a matter of taste here. The real issue at hand is that it is physically making people ill (be it headache, eyeball ache, and nausea), whereas this did NOT happen before your new UI change.

The clear cause is the UI that we need to be able to either keep with your new, rather inane changes, or revert back to the original UI.

 

The fact that your game now makes people ill and unable to play is terrible. The fact that it has not been hotfixed when there is such an uproar is even worse.

 

Please address the real issue at hand, and not this "Like" or "Dislike" idea you've gotten lodged in your heads.

Edited February 8, 2012 by Rhila

[Morfiend]

If you'd like to give us constructive feedback on changes to the UI and the global cooldown animations, we'd welcome that in this thread. Discussions about the poll or other aspects of development aren't appropriate.

 

1) Every ability flashing every GCD is just silly. Maybe leave the flash for abilities coming off cooldown that is NOT GCD related.

 

2) All abilities grayed out during GCD. This is terrible. It makes iv VERY hard to know what ability is going to be usable due to resource. As a SW/JK this seems to effect me more than some other classes. This is really game breaking for me. I had this issue with the launch GCD also. This was fixed in GCD2 and now broken again in GCD3.

 

3) Delay in lighting up. Abilities dont light up as soon as the GCD is done and they are ready. Once they are ready, they then slowly (over like 0.2 of a second) light flash then light up. Due to this if you are a class that is GCD locked (uses an ability every GCD) all your abilities will never light up, just go from grey to flash to grey. This is annoying and again hard to track what abilities are ready with a quick glance.

[GamewizX]

Changes are definitely going to be made to the UI in response to initial feedback we received after the patch was deployed. (Very little feedback was received on the PTS Forum before the patch was deployed to the live servers, otherwise changes may have been made before the patch's deployment.)

 

The primary purpose of this poll is to get more accurate numbers on player sentiment. Threads are very helpful for us to get an immediate idea of areas that need attention, but accurate numbers as opposed to post counts help us present a more accurate picture of those affected (threads/post counts can easily be inflated by multiple posts from the same person, opposing points of view, and so on).

 

If you'd like to give us constructive feedback on changes to the UI and the global cooldown animations, we'd welcome that in this thread. Discussions about the poll or other aspects of development aren't appropriate.

 

Thank you for the response. I've posted this elsewhere, but I will post it again here:

 

Essentially I think the problem most people are having is that the GCD effect is the same thing as the ability cooldown effect. I absolutely love the changes for the ability cooldown (the brighter descending timer and the flash at the end makes it easy to see when a cooldown is up), but it is completely counter-productive to have the exact same effect for the global cooldown as well.

 

This should change as soon as possible, as in within the next day or so if at all possible. Having the global cooldown be as bright and flashy as the ability cooldown completely negates the changes made as now your entire UI is just a big mass of flashing buttons.

 

Make the GCD effect with a much lower opacity with no flash at the end (essentially the way it was pre-1.1.2). Keep the ability cooldown as is post-1.1.2. Problem solved. Also, do not grey out the abilities on GCD. Only grey out abilities on their ability cooldown.

 

 

Edit: Played for about 3 hours last night doing almost solely PvP. Overall I think that, for me personal, it is not nearly as drastic as others believe it to be. Does it still need to be fixed? Absolutely. But it is not anywhere near eye-straining for me as others have claimed.

 

Honestly I think the method works fantastic for ability cooldowns. Just trim down the effects for the GCD (no dimming of icons, no flash at the end, lower opacity on the timer portion) and it would be good to go. Basically, after playing for three hours my initial assessment remains the same.

[Thesseract]

Finally a reply. As for suggestions on improvement there were many good ideas posted in previous threads.

[Sivn]

Take the WoW cooldown look with OmniCC addon and transfer that into SWTOR.

 

Simple, effective and works great.

[Danakar]

For me it is very confusing when every ability is getting greyed out constantly and you can't see which of them are usable and which were still on a timed cooldown until after the GCD is ready.

 

Also, the last part of the GCD (the flash) does not coincide with the abilities actually being ready. They were ready long before the GCD does its flash; thus keeping me in a constant state of grey where I just have to keep guessing.

 

Personally I would like you to revert to the previous version or give us a choice from the Preferences menu on which indicator we want to use.

[AERHAE]

Are these patches actually being tested?

If so ,who is doing the testing?

There seems to be some kind of disconnect between new patches then the new patches going live for things to be broke,not working,or in this case not what the community wants at all.

To me testing patches needs to be re-evaluated,and more attention needs to go into figuring out what it is the community wants.

Also it has become apparent that the people on test center are not the same community as the player base for live servers.

Streamline the Madness please.

[Stormnut]

I like it but I think it should be optional (especially the flash effect)

 

Voted for it

[Naroga]

1) Every ability flashing every GCD is just silly. Maybe leave the flash for abilities coming off cooldown that is NOT GCD related.

 

2) All abilities grayed out during GCD. This is terrible. It makes iv VERY hard to know what ability is going to be usable due to resource. As a SW/JK this seems to effect me more than some other classes. This is really game breaking for me. I had this issue with the launch GCD also. This was fixed in GCD2 and now broken again in GCD3.

 

3) Delay in lighting up. Abilities dont light up as soon as the GCD is done and they are ready. Once they are ready, they then slowly (over like 0.2 of a second) light flash then light up. Due to this if you are a class that is GCD locked (uses an ability every GCD) all your abilities will never light up, just go from grey to flash to grey. This is annoying and again hard to track what abilities are ready with a quick glance.

 

100% accurate. As a Jedi Sentinel, I couldn't agree more.

[Grimgrey]

So I guess they didn't bother reading through any of the 1000s of posts about why this UI is so bad.....

 

They probably did. Thing is, people who hate something tend to be a lot more vocal than people who like the same thing. They probably thought a poll would give results that more accurately represent the opinions of the player base.

[gryhmr]

Seriously why is the issue of dizziness, headaches, and nausea being ignored? Its not that I just do not like the new UI its that the game has become unplayable for me with it. The strobing effect makes me dizzy after 15 minutes of play and I have to stop. I didn't even check if the effect would get worse. I never get dizzy or sick from other games and I am not the only one with this issue.

 

THIS IS NOT A PREFERENCE ISSUE THIS IS A HEALTH ISSUE.

 

I am honestly furious at how this has been handled by EA/Bioware.

[Nappylou]

my 2cents.

 

the last UI we had was fine.

[Edgecase]

This poll's options are too limited. I would have voted, "step in the right direction but needs major refinement" with specific reasoning that I find the new UI superior for tracking GCDs, but completely obscures skills which have other availability requirements. In case you're keeping track, this is from the perspective of a scrapper scoundrel and defense guardian.

 

You will never get 100% approval from players on stock UI, the same way you will never truly get one-size-fits-all clothing. Since SWTOR has decided to forbid crowdsourcing of deep UI customization, all we can hope for is something that's okay-ish for everyone.

[dvezina]

I selected they are fine, because I feel like I like this version of the UI much better than the old one.

 

But An option would probably be the best, I guess. Might even please both party?

[Natch]

The new GCD UI is too bright and aggressive.

[Sholagar]

Where's option D; I want a toggle switch so I can choose whether or not I want to use the change on my UI??

 

 

Seriously, why is that so hard to do? Why does it have to be an all or nothing thing where it is obviously so easy to make everyone relatively happy (or at least equally unhappy)???

[CecilTellyn]

So I don't really care that much either way... but that said, I don't really see what was wrong with the cool down effect in the first place (when the game first came out).

 

I'm not really sure what the optimal solution is, though.

[Kthx]

1Make this easier. Put a big, red, countdown number (1 = 1 second, 2 = 2 seconds, 1m = 1 minute) that goes away when it's not on cooldown or GCD (i.e. when it's available to use). Have it always round up to the lower increment.

 

From a human factors perspective, this is not a good idea. The human mind is good at scanning analog depictions of values but not text, especially when a large number of displays are involved. Imagine a cockpit where all information about the aircraft's position, attitude, and trajectory is displayed using numbers instead of visual, analog indicators. It would be nearly unflyable. I find your prototype to be cluttered and hard to interpret at a glance.

[space_cadet]

Only sith deal in absolutes...i like to think that bioware isnt an evil empire so please put up a new poll with an "other" option where we can elaborate or at least give us more choices to vote on. the "whiteout" on abilities on cooldown is great but the flashing for the global cooldown is awful and is the problem

[thesmileguy]

I actually didn't know that was changed in the patch (I forgot to check the notes), and when I started playing I was really confused as to why I couldn't tell when my abilities were ready. I checked the patch notes and it was all clear.

 

Very cool that you guys have put a poll up for this, but I'm wondering why we don't see more stuff like this?

[Ceihra]

I am glad to see they are paying some attention to the problems people are having with the new UI. Personally, i just found the flashes annoying and un-nessesary - however my husband is in a situation where he cannot play (or watch my screen when i play) without it hurting his eyes for hours afterwards.

 

I really would like to know more about when any changes will be made, as my husband and I would like to be able to play together again as soon as possible.

[DarthKeredias]

Changes are definitely going to be made to the UI in response to initial feedback we received after the patch was deployed. (Very little feedback was received on the PTS Forum before the patch was deployed to the live servers, otherwise changes may have been made before the patch's deployment.)

 

The primary purpose of this poll is to get more accurate numbers on player sentiment. Threads are very helpful for us to get an immediate idea of areas that need attention, but accurate numbers as opposed to post counts help us present a more accurate picture of those affected (threads/post counts can easily be inflated by multiple posts from the same person, opposing points of view, and so on).

 

If you'd like to give us constructive feedback on changes to the UI and the global cooldown animations, we'd welcome that in this thread. Discussions about the poll or other aspects of development aren't appropriate.

 

As I noted in our Twitter discussion Stephen, this UI is causing health issues for players, it's not a matter of who likes it or dislikes it, it's a matter of people's health on the line. You said that you prioritize bugs you consider gamebreaking, well isn't someone getting a seizure from these flashes considered game breaking?

[GSLorch]

I like it, it's certainly a step in the right direction.

Might wanna make the flashing optional as it seems some people are having a hard time with that. There is obviously still a lot of room for improvement, but it's definetly a step in the right direction!

[Nitewolfe]

I submitted a ticket yesterday about this causing psychical headaches after 1 hour of play time.

 

The response i received from BW was...

This feature is working as intended!

 

So this was designed to cause physical illness?