User interface is, for me, a really important aspect of a mmo, and how much information is displayed by the UI can have a negative or positive impact in the player’s experience, immersion or even in the way they play the game.
The first topic I want to discuss, “How much information does the UI provide”
Too much information being displayed by the ui (multiple floating health bars, target markers, clutter bars in the middle of the screen, etc) has an impact on how you, as a player, plays the game, and I would like to see pantheon move away from these, and force the players to pay more attention to the enemies position and the environment they are in, making the game more immersive and not a watch the bars type of mmo.
I know that floating health bars and target markers are amazing and make it easier to stay aware of what’s going on during the fight, but if you think about it, there a multiple gameplay elements that are lost with their addition, and immersion is tore down to pieces with a screen full of colourful markers and floating health bars.
The most important thing that’s lost with target markers is the importance of a good communication inside a group or raid, instead of having to assist a tank you just kill the targets by their mark order, and it makes crowd control trivial.
As for the floating health bars I think there should be a limit of 2 (your current offensive and defensive target), multiple floating health bars make tracking your opponents a way easier task, and make it so you never pay attention to the model of the npc you’re fighting, instead you just stare at their floating health bars. Also a screen filled with floating health bars looks awful.
(Don’t know If I can post links to images or not if I can’t I will remove them)
Here are some examples: http://imgur.com/A2N0sLD ;
This said I would like to see a little corner indicator that shows current HP when you mouseover the target so you don’t have to lose your current target to check another’s HP (kind of like “looking” at in in-game). Something like this - http://imgur.com/QqvuO1d
Now, onto the next topic, “Max camera distance”
A larger zoom option in the camera is a huge advantage in awareness, but it has some downsides, the main one immersion. If you’re given the option to zoom out too far, your character becomes a tiny part of your screen and you sacrifice a large part of the games visuals, details, and immersion.
Using wow as an example
Max zoom (after the zoom “nerf”) - http://imgur.com/2J1quQw
Normal zoom - http://imgur.com/dYlDxne
Also, if you have a larger field of view you might spot dangerous situations or encounters easily/faster and avoid them, making the game easier.
The last topic I want to discuss is, “central UI clutter and raid frames”
When I say central UI clutter I’m referring to parts of the UI (action bars, status frames, targets frames,buff bars, etc) being moved to the center of the the screen to focalize all of the UI information in one single place, making it easier to check everything and still keep an eye on the character’s position. Also known as “sco ui” for wow players.
Example of “sco ui”: http://imgur.com/2lHkjn4 ;
I’m perfectly fine with customizable ui’s but I firmly believe that there should be a limited “clean” space where, components that are always visible, cannot be placed. (Action bars, status frames, targets frames, buff bars, etc)
“Clean” space: http://imgur.com/PZiFSYY
Inside the red rectangle is the “clean” space, where action bars or status/unity/target frames cannot be moved to. Windows like the inventory, whisper windows, and such can be moved anywhere.
Raid frames - I don’t know if VR is planning to show all the raid members in the ui bars, but I would prefer they did not, not having all your raid members in the ui allows you to look around and pay attention to what’s going on in the encounter, who’s taking damage, who’s tanking the adds, dpsers that pull aggro, who’s standings on fire, etc, and enables you to spot heal if you’re aware of your surroundings.
After reading my post you might be thinking that all of these “UI stuffs” are down to how you prefer to play the game, but my main argument here is, players (almost) always choose what’s more effective, even if that breaks their immersion and turns the game into something it is not.
That’s why taking steps to preserve the games original intents (teamwork and gameplay with focus on immersion and challenge) and trying to prevent automation of gameplay is important. Because too much information provided by the ui takes away many important and immersive gameplay elements.
I would like to hear your opinions on this topic.
Edit: Changed the word “nameplates” to “floating health bars”, it was causing some confusing to what I was actually referring to.
I agree on some points but...
There should in no way be something that forces anyone to play the game in a way they do not wish. If I want my bars in the middle of the screen so I can stare at them, I should be able to do so. If I want to zoom way out to maximize situational awareness, I should be able to do so.
VR has stated the UI will have many configuration options. I see all of this as being options to toggle. Nameplates on/off/only targets/self only/etc.
Forcing someone to conform to your ideal way of playing the game isn't a good idea. VR will make all of the options they feel are required for the game to work and leave out the fluff. They are already doing this be removing all the huge floaty gold ! and ? for quests. No GPS style maps. Stopping people from placing UI elements in a specific spot because it is less immersive is just a silly thing to impose on someone and I hope VR wouldn't do something like that.
I personally like a clean minimalistic UI. I have a feleing that you and I would most likely setup our UI much the same, but not everyone will. Nor should they be required to do so.
@kellindil
Maybe the limitations on the placement of ui elements is a step to far, but things like nameplates, raid frames and zoom distance have a direct impact in the gameplay that VR is trying to create.
Jpedrote, while your UI aesthetic is generally sound, I'm with kellindil on this one; there's no need to force everybody to play the way you prefer.
You correctly point out that zoom distance has an impact on gameplay. I agree that we shouldn't have a camera that zooms out "too far." There are a lot of reasons for this beyond immersion. What constitutes "too far" I leave to the artists and level designers.
Regarding nameplates, raid frames. I think these should be user-configurable to the greatest extent technically possible.
I just can't see multiple nameplates and raid frames being a good thing for the game, sure they are helpful and work perfectly, but they take away loads of gameplay elements and don't provide anything extra in terms of information (just make it easier to see the information inside the game).
I thought a bit about this in another thread. Here's what I ended up writing:
Ideally, you want people "heads-up" for maximum immersion and enjoyment; however, to achieve this the UI has to be incredibly good. It has to really effectively communicate information to you and very efficiently translate your commands into actions. The difficulty of implementing this scales with game complexity, so with respect to targeting in Pantheon I suspect it would be particularly challenging when it comes to Crowd Control and Healing. I guess my point is: my preference is minimalist UI provided that VR can give me all the information I need to perform my role.
So, yes. A busy UI is a failure in design; information should be presented inside the game.
However, I need the information regardless, so if you flub the UI design then don't exacerbate the mistake by constraining the player's ability to compensate.
I'm all for the clean UI's and i think the current one they showed on stream is pretty good, it show all that you need to know when you're fighting, can you tell me what you think it's missing? i would just add 1 thing to the current ui, the mouseover health in the corner of the screen as i said above, outside of that i think it's pretty solid.
jpedrote said:I just can't see multiple nameplates and raid frames being a good thing for the game, sure they are helpful and work perfectly, but they take away loads of gameplay elements and don't provide anything extra in terms of information (just make it easier to see the information inside the game).
I like seeing nameplates. I just do. For no other reason than, "Because I like it."
Why should I be deprived of something I like when there is no real technical gain? Name plates do not make anything easier. Now if you are talking about health/mana being displayed in name plates SPECIFICALLY, then I can understand how that could "make things easier", but at the same time.... come on really how much easier does this make anything? At some point you have to stop and think on what is keeping with the non-hand holding aim of the game and what is just down right silly restrictions. Plus having the HP info in the name plate will keep people's eyes on the characters on screen, rather than a group window to one side of the screen.
I personally see things like nameplates and raid frames as insignifcant in the overall. Raid frames serve a very valid purpose. When you are stuck in the middle of 80+ other people and you need to target that ONE guy who doesn;t have resist gear and is being eaten by an AE or something and you are clicking away like mad on every character in game except him because everyone is over lapped and standing on one another. In EQ, I have become a ninja at typing /target I can at a glance know exactly how many letters of someone's name I need to type in to get the person I want. A raid frame makes it so I have to look for a name and click. Its not really that much easier in the long run.
this is why I am for having these elements in game and configurable in many different ways such as placement, size, and display type (name platse as simple names, with hp ino, with or without guild tag, etc) so that people can build the UI to what is best for them. Within limits of course. No add-ons and such. No scripting languages. Just stand configuration options you see in any next gen MMO.
jpedrote said:I'm all for the clean UI's and i think the current one they showed on stream is pretty good, it show all that you need to know when you're fighting, can you tell me what you think it's missing? i would just add 1 thing to the current ui, the mouseover health in the corner of the screen as i said above, outside of that i think it's pretty solid.
I agree with you personally on this. I really don't see much i'd want to add to the UI there. Though I will say I want to see a raid frame window so I can target people from that window while in a raid. Its not shown in any form in the stream, but they weren't raiding so I wouldn't expect it to.
kellindil said:No scripting languages.
Lets just be clear: there's a difference between UI scripting and gameplay scripting.
Examples of UI Scripting:
-healthbar that changes color based on %health
-targeting window that flashes when health changes
-ability icon that changes size based on cooldown status
Examples of gameplay scripting:
-Automatically cast a spell on a target when their health changes
-Automatically select target when ability is used
-Automatically adjust facing to target
I support UI scripting. I don't support gameplay scripting.
@kellindil
Yep i was refering specifically to hp showing on the nameplates (not the name above the mob), and i'm fine with nameplates but i think they should be limited to your current (offensive and defensive) target, so your screen is not filled with bars.
my reason behind the exclusion of raid fames is to avoid the watch the bars type of healing, but your concern (of 80+ people on screen) is a really good and valid one, don't know what could be done if raid frames were not an option, only thing i can think off is 1 healer per group, and the healers need to communicate with each other if they need help in their group
edit: also, the current nameplates display the mobs debuffs, so it makes it easier to identify cc.
Everyone has their own preferences. Unlike the OP, I hope they have a very robust interface that gives us massive amounts of data. Then, I hope they give us the option to remove any information we don't want.
Let people have the interface that helps THEM play the game, not just one person's preference.
Don't really care about UI issues, except to disagree with player restriction. I mainly wanted to voice my support for OP's assertion that camera distance (which in my opinion is not really a UI issue but whatever) can have a negative impact on intended gameplay experience, and that I too hope that zooming is limited. There is something bad about being able to zoom too far that I have a hard time articulating, but nevertheless too have felt for quite some time.
It's because technically you are handicapping yourself, generally speaking a closer zoom is restricting your field of view. Personally I believe this is a fundamental method of keeping players from being omniscient re: their surroundings, and as Pantheon purports to be making the environment more deadly I hope the camera is taken into consideration.
UI is a personal preference for many players, I believe we should have toggle/options for each display and or particle effect etc .
Don't want to see other players frames , turn them off or keep them on depending on personal taste.
I think there needs to be a way to adjust the stock UI to anything we want or resize things. I don't like my chat window here > move it where I want and so forth.
This post also reminded me of camera restrictions being a thing in early EQ unless you hit one of the 'F#' keys.. The idea in early EQ was to force the character to stand and look around every so often for danger instead of just zooming / pivoting camera... Kinda like the idea of you not actually having eyes in the back of your head and needing to physically look in each direction because.. you know.. that's what makes the most sense.
I was horrified by it at first when I played p99 and the old camera was in full effect, but you get used to it, and it's just one minor detail that separates players who are safety driven from those who are just lazy or don't care. Small things like this, as well as restricting UI elements bring about a greater sense of danger and a higher need for cooperation & communication. The primary reason we're wanting pantheon is to help bring back these missing facets of mmorpgs no?
I thumbs up the idea of being restrictive with information, be it with the UI, cameras, or text, but at the same time, we don't want a game so harsh by today's standards that everyone not forged in the fires of 1999 can't hack it and won't stay.
Personally I think information restriction is a powerful tool in creating excitement and "immersive" gameplay.
But I think the things I would like to see be hidden might be a little different.
I don't mind nameplates, they are usefull and sometimes pretty much necessary when you have LOADS of mobs on the screen, paying attention to the model is not really a thing when you have like 10 of them pretty much on top of each other. As long as these can be extensively customized (I like only seeing player nameplates usually) I am ok with it. A more important question for this I think is WHAT information should be viewed at the nameplate leve, Health, Mana, Spellcasts?
Target Markers you put on the ground? I don't see as a problem, if they don't exist the raiders would just use something else to mark, be it terrain or geometry or whatever, it is a small convinience and doesn't really make it easier at a high level and aids in group communication at lower level making it more fun for everyome imo.
Max Camera Distance, here I agree. These extreme far away view distances takes away from the game for me, it makes what is a 3rd person perspective to pretty much a top down, it is a different game. It is less immersive and A LOT easier to play, having things sneak up on you and having to look around you to access the situation from time to time is a good thing instead of having the entire damn battlefield in view at all times. BUT, and I think a big but here, very restricted camera distance SUX as melee, like, a lot. Having some kind of melee camera which zooms out when in melee with things might be nice, cuz staring at the arse of a boss all fight is not what I would call very fun.
On the UI. I'm sorry but I think this is a bit silly, just because you like a certain design of UI (Hell, I love my minimalism) does not mean you should restrict people to that. I also think you picked some very extreme cases with those screenshots as most people I know of don't play with it that cluttered (Having it like that seems to be a top tier raider thing). Where I have my action bars is not important.
Some more "generic" examples:
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Things that I would like to see hidden would be things such as:
Precise health
There is a reason you don't tell your players the health of the monster in D&D. It creates excitement, and I think it does the same for MMO's and RPG's. Just having a visual bar or/with a percentage number is enough I think. None of that 16053HP/20500HP or similar, keep the health and thus in a way the a bit of the difficulty hidden.
Timers
This is probably my biggest no-no that I hope VR stops. And specifically things like boss timers that tell you when and what the next thing the boss does will happen, Deadly Boss Mods for people that play WoW and know. It is pretty much a mandatory addon for PvE for it makes it SOO MUCH easier. Imagine playing Dark Souls and every move the boss does is announced to you with a countdown, you are no longer watching for visual or listening for audio queues, you are no longer playing Dark Souls imo.
Meters
Another thing I am not a fan of are meters. Damage meters, Healing per second, Threat/Aggro meters and other types of counters like that, I am not talking about logs that you can take out and analyse and watch afterward, but in the moment "online" meters that you have as a UI element at all times. I feel like these are a contributor to bad behaviour and mindset in a game, mindset more focused on what class deals the highest number instead of everything else the classes brings to the table. It makes things a contest where there shouldn't be any and give access to analytics to people that don't know how to use them properly, let the math and spreadsheet people deal with the math and the spreadsheets.
Raid Frames
Seeing your whole group is usefull, especially as a healer, but I also thing these are one of the biggest contributors to the healbot playstyle where you stare at the frames and play whack-a-mole with heals. But I don't know a solution to this either, it will depend a lot on the design of the raid encounters. Is the raid made with having a healer in every group in mind? Well then there won't be much of a problem with not having raid-frames for the entire raid. Is it expected to have about 3 healers for a 30 man raid? Well then it is a bit harder to not let the healers have a way to see others health.
@youmu
My main concern with nameplates is that the current ones they have in-game show things like debuffs and cc under it, and i think we can all agree that the majority of players will use whats is most efficient, and if you are allowed to have multiple nameplates that show all the debuffs and cc that will become the norm for most players because it's the best option, that's why i would like to see it restricted to the current target (offensive and defensive).
I used to have a clutered ui because it was supposedly the most efficient thing and i just copied what the top guilds had, but at 1 point i notice it draw to much of my attention from the envoriment and it accutaly made me less aware so i switched to a cleaner one and got better results, might just be a personal thing, but there is a tendency to immitate what the top players do.
I think kilsin as stated that there will be no addons like meters or DBM, also VR could go 1 step further and make the bosses not cast the ability at an exact time, so let's say the boss cast ability x between 30-45 secs of the start of the fight that way players need to bee ready to reacted in that time window, instead of just waiting for the 30 secs mark. also a egg-timer would be neat.
Did you see if it showed all debuffs or just your own. Even though I don't think showing all debuffs/buffs is any problem really maybe restrict it to only your own on the nameplates, playing a DoT class would be extremely annoying (not hard, just annoying, which is not a good thing) if you have no way to tell what mobs have your DoTs, where DoTs are expiring and so on. Tbh I don't see a problem with having debuffs show on the nameplates, you still have to do the mental arithmatic of timing things and having some foresight. Just because something is the norm does not mean it is bad and something will become the norm whatever you do anyways. And I don't see this being an option that would become norm in something like a big raid enviorement, the amount of buffs and debuffs on targets are large and there is such a thing like too much information for you to process, seeing only your own stuff is what I would believe would be the norm.
How would you play a DoT focused character then? Multi-DoTing being one of archetypes strenghts usually would you just sit there and spam tab to switch target to check the timers all the time, got to say that does not sound very fun, just frustrating. Having debuffs one the nameplates would help tremendously in stopping you from having to do that tedium. Could you tell my why not having them on nameplates would be a good thing?
Youmu said:
Precise health
There is a reason you don't tell your players the health of the monster in D&D. It creates excitement, and I think it does the same for MMO's and RPG's. Just having a visual bar or/with a percentage number is enough I think. None of that 16053HP/20500HP or similar, keep the health and thus in a way the a bit of the difficulty hidden.
Yes! I'd rather not see this. Let's go back to the days where you couldn't be more exact than 'these guys have a ton of hitpoints'. Someone would figure it out eventually and you could look it up on fan sites, but I don't think the game should tell you.
I also agree with Youmu on the nameplates with health gauge and buff/debuff icons. Make it the players option to display those or not.
As to Nameplates, I prefer the minimalist approach.
When a young lad ventures forth into the world, his lack of knowledge should be reflected by an absence of nameplates. But once an adventurer confronts a creature, a basic nameplate will appear overhead. And once that creature has been killed multiple times, a more specified nameplate appears.
So we start with No Nameplate. Then progress to "An Orc". Then further experience will yeild "An Orc Centurian" or "An Orc Shaman".
And the name is as far as I would go with nameplates. Never been a fan of debuffs showing on the nameplate. I prefer that info being communicated by the party members, not the UI. Maybe a good compromise would be if the debuffs only appear to the person that casts them. That way your friendly necro can see when his DoT expires. Or a that evil ogre druid can see when the snare is about to fade.
And I definitely dont like hp/mana/stamina on a mobs nameplate. Same goes for the "dot" system to signify difficulty. One dot, two dot, three dot. Yuck.
This "nameplate reveal" is also how I'd like to see player v player interaction. A players name won't be visible unless you formaly exchange greetings "Hail", or become groupmembers.
Mob Knowledge: There was a thread that brought up the idea of Zoos. If zoos were implemented, that would be a good way for the youngins to gain knowledge before venturing into the wilderness. They could go down to the zoo and read the plaquard for each display and gain the Nameplate knowledge that way, instead of thru multiple kills.
