UI design, will SE follow like the rest of the sheep?Follow

I stand alone and unique in a world of sheep...

I copied Diablo 3's UI design.

DOH


It's terrible if your computer has a high resolution. I hope Square learns to scale UI elements more intelligently in FFXIV

Edited, Jun 18th 2009 11:23am by Karelyn

Will the normal WoW UI be viable for pad to use too? I think they'll have to keep that in mind when making it, so it won't be exact copy at least

It most definitely would not be viable.

...

One thing I wish developers would learn from, is how to make a raid UI that is not a wall of bars that blocks half the screen. One that remembers that a raid/party UI should be designed while keeping in mind that one type of player, and one alone interacts with it in an important way... The Healer.

Stop being a jackass to the healers who play your game by making an almost non-functional raid healthbar UI. It's not like healers are not rare enough, without discouraging them via a frustrating UI.

...

Learn from Grid. Best Raid UI I've ever seen in any game. Designed by healers with healers in mind.

It would be great, but I'm not sure it is really needed. The key thing is to keep in mind what parts of the UI are used by which player roles.

Tanks, Healers, and Damage Dealers all interact with different aspects of the UI in different ways.

Every Raid UI I've ever seen (with the exception of Grid) seem to be designed with Damage Dealers (And maybe the tank) in mind. Which is utterly nonsensical. Damage Dealers do not interact with the health bars in a Raid UI. Healers do. Make a Raid UI that is easy to use to heal players with.

Don't make healing a battle against the UI.

About two sentences into your post I thought of the addon Grid then smiled when I saw you mention it at the end of your post. I agree it is an amazing raid UI.

I think SE should allow addons that let you customize your UI. The addon developers have added so much to WoW. The addons Clique and Grid alone revolutionized healing.

The idea I'm trying to get across is that if you allow addons you promote creativity. Addon developers come up with solutions (like Grid and Clique) that SE can spin off of resulting in a better game experience for everyone.

Edited, Jun 18th 2009 10:59am by NeithanTheWronged

I see MMO UIs to be similar to a cars dashboard. You don't go to a car dealership and go "Why do all these cars have round speedometers, red warning lights, and a big open space to look out the window." At least I don't. MMOs have adapted the easiest to use UI layout because of just that, it's been the easiest to use for the most people.

That being said I don't condemn a company for trying something new with the UI. After all maybe they'll get something right and it will be even easier to use. Something I'd like to see UI wise for FFXIV is dual screen support. The way I envision it is you would have your screen of choice as your play area and the second a blank slate where you can drag windows, maps, hotkeys, health/mana bars, chat windows, and etc. As UIs are now its like sticking the speedometer and red warning lights on your big open space to look out of to use the same example from above.

Corvette tried that once, if I'm not mistaken (50th anniversary model). It's true; that idea crashes and burns - pun intended.

I'd love to see dual screen support. In fact, I'd buy a second monitor if they had what you mentioned.

While you bring up a good point, one of the primary issues with dashboard designed UIs, is if you simply dont' need that much space. What if you only need about half of the space along the bottom of the screen (or less)?

This was my complaint about FFXI when played on larger monitor resolutions. The chat box along the bottom started getting ludicrusly long. And while I don't have a screenshot on me ATM, my monitor's resolution was even longer! Imagine that chatbox, twice the length it already is.

That's absurd! It was impossible to type a sentence long enough for the text to word wrap without hitting the character limit. I ended up playing on a lower monitor resolution, but I shouldn't have to reduce my computer's resolution that much in order to play a game.

Edited, Jun 18th 2009 12:18pm by Karelyn

My reply would be that it makes more sense to take advantage of my larger resolution by making the chat box taller instead of wider.

Tis nice to be able to see around 8-15 paragraphs of conversation at one time, instead of only 3-4 lines.

I must respectfully disagree with the OP.

FFXI's UI is terrible on almost every level. It's one of the areas that definitely needs an overhaul.

I don't expect to see a WoW-like interface for FFXIV, since it is a console game and a lot of the PC/mouse centric elements wouldn't make sense, but if it's similar to/the same as FFXI I will cry.

You can defiantly improve the UI that FFXI have today, but you also need to take into account that this MMO will be released for consoles as well, and thus needs to be useful and function well on a ps3 pad and in the future an xbox360 pad as well.

I really liked FFXI's UI, but I'm fine with them moving away from it as long as one thing stays. The emphasis on the chat portion of the game is really important to the experience.

Not going to lie, I actually liked XI's UI.

Sure, it's clunky as hell, but it's also functional and doesn't fill up your screen with 80 buttons, which is just damn ugly.

I hope they refine XI's UI and make it more useful instead of going the cluttered as hell 'visible hotkey for everything' WoW route. Since the Devs have explicitly stated that the last thing they want to do is create a WoW clone in any way, I doubt we have to worry much.

Gee I hope they don't follow like the rest of the sheep. The ui in ffxi is the best of any mmo imo. The ui's in wow, lineage, etc. Are all so clunky and unoriginal. I'm even fine if they just make the current ui better without making it ugly like all the other mmo ui's have.

Edited, Jun 18th 2009 5:59pm by EpedemicOptikz

Are you trolling, or are you really that daft? People copy these UI elements for their games because they're good ideas, not because they're following some herd mentality. The very idea that you'd rather have a unique-looking UI over a functional UI makes me feel ill.

Also, your comparison is sh*t; pick your sample of 4-5 games and then stick with it. Don't go pull a sample from another game because it helps your point better. You should also include FFXI's interface as well, since it uses its own variations of the same UI elements.

Let me preface this by saying that WoW's UI is inelegant and ugly. Mods are nearly a requirement in that game.

FFXI tree directories and macro system are elegant but do not transfer well to mouse and keyboard nearly as well as it should. Mouse integration was god awful.

Edited, Jun 18th 2009 2:44pm by baelnic

I just have no idea why the PC version uses the numbers for default movement control via keyboard. In the end you were better off not using the mouse than using a mouse it seemed to me. That's pretty bad UI design in my mind.

When I play games I pretty much hope to never have to use the mouse, except for the occasional RTS or FPS.

Mouses are dumb and unattractive to use. <.<

I just want the UI to be customizable. If I get that I will be happy with SE.

If it's not, I hope the .dat modders will be fast @ work @ providing us with a better one.

Not at all. The UI will go under lots of changes especially during the final closed beta especially if large number of testers are used.

I...hope they change the UI. A bunch. It didn't really feel accessible or natural to me at any point.

But, hey, whatever they do with that, the one thing I'm really asking for is simply options. Even if the default UI is still the same as FFXI, if I can move things around, mess with some settings, and get more mileage out of my mouse, I won't mind so much.

Edited, Jun 19th 2009 3:24am by PrinnyFlute

I think the reason why action bars as a component of an MMOs UI are implemented in a lot of games for the only reason that matters: it works.

In FFXI, a "short" cooldown is 30 seconds. A "medium" cooldown is 2-5 minutes. When I played, prior to the mainstream use of the windower and related plugins, most players had a macro that would display time remaining on cooldowns for their most commonly used abilities.

Compare that to more recent MMOs where a short cooldown is < 10 seconds. A "medium" cooldown is 20-60 seconds. Pretty much anything else qualifies as an oh-sh*t button that isn't "intended" to be used more than once in most encounters. As well, most MMOs grant all of the different classes a wider variety of abilities that they would make use of on a regular basis. In those cases, action bars aren't just the thing mediocre players click with their mouse; they're a reminder of your bindings for less commonly used abilities and a visual indicator of cooldown progress.

That's not to say that you couldn't accomplish the same thing (most important of which being at-a-glance cooldown status) with something other than action bars. If we're talking about a combat system in FFXIV that's closer to "real-time", the FFXI interface just wouldn't cut it. Real-time means that you'd likely need access to more information than the stock FFXI UI allowed for.

If you dislike action bars, that's cool. I'm not going to say you should because it's a subjective sort of thing where personal preference is the key factor in deciding what a person may or may not like. I do think, however, that UIs that make use of action bars do so for a purpose beyond a particular aesthetic, and a UI that offers little/no customizability in conjunction with extremely limited on-screen information would be a disappointment in FFXIV.

I'm the exact opposite. I have a 4 button mouse (6 with left/right click) and I love using mostly the mouse except to talk. I use the mouse to move and for my 4 most basic/primary macros. Everything else is hot-keyed. I like a healthy combination of mouse and keyboard.

I also prefer the FFXI UI style.
WoW with all these buttons and pictures and more buttons and windows and even more buttons...wth?!
Why do I need a button on my screen for every button, err ability.

The menu system was taken from the single player games where the game paused while you chose what to do.
While some might say this is too slow to play I got to say that with the battle speed of FFXI I never had a problem using the menu to select things.
Using shortkeys to open the right menu was even faster.
And with macros you could do almost everything you needed considering the PS2 limitations.

Don't expect FFXIV to have an interface like WoW. Maybe WoWs interface is nice and many like it because they can put 100 buttons here and 15 bars there and a big raid interface that takes up 50% of the whole screen on the left side and lot's of casting bars in the middle of their screen...
WoW is no RPG. It's a click adventure.

Also don't forget that WoW and all these interfaces are made for the PC with the use of a mouse while FFXIV got to be playable with a controller too.
None of the mentioned MMOs are cross platform games.

Why would you need a picture of your char next to your health and mana bar when it's right in front of you the whole time?
I think the FFXI status bar does exactly what it should.

Why do you need a radar?
I found the concept of collecting maps good and entertaining.
Just make it possible to blend them in so you can look at them while moving.

Why do you need a bar for casts or abilities?
If mobs are going to use special attacks or abilities you will notice it (because you can still see the mob instead of alot of buttons) and have enough time for proper actions.

Bags and Inventory are fine in both games.

Spells and abilities...well, I guess you already noticed that I can't stand all the buttons of WoW which you NEED because there is no other fast way to activate anything.
If FF would get more macro lines per hotkey and more hotkeys per macro set (and I bet it will) so you could put in every ability or spell you need, that would be perfect for me.
It's fast and configurable and doesn't take up any space.


I agree with the OP. I hope SE won't copy these interfaces because in my eyes he games that use the same interface as WoW just don't have the will or any ideas to improve or create their own UI.
How creative can a game be if the developers can't even think of an unique interface?

But knowing SE and their way of doing things their own way I think we can expect something new and well designed.
Maybe it's just me but I'd like to play an RPG and experience a great story and not a flight simulator like hack and slay game.

Sorry, this quote baffles me... I think cars have come a long way, but no one has revolutionized the steering wheel. I think computers have gone a long way, but the mouse/keyboard has hardly changed. I don't see what a GUI has to do with content and creativity in the slightest. At all.