Weekly Discussion 74: UI Suggestions

[GM Miss]

Hey guys! Last week we talked about T9 support powers!

 

Weekly discussion 74 Week 10/25/20-10/31/20:

YOU VOTED: Let's talk about UI suggestions!

 

❓ Things to think about:

>Post your UI setup (Optional)

>Are there windows/UI in the game that can use work (I'm look at you ARENA!)

Let's Chat 😄

[Luminara]

Map zoom changes in mission maps.  I despise that.

 

The netgraph display can't be moved.  Makes it difficult to see what's going on in tray 1 during when latency/ping is bad, unless you relocate the entire power tray window to another location.

 

The navigation window really should be attached to the map window, or built into the map window, or the nav turned into a HUD element and the map into a transparent overlay.  More HUD elements, instead of discrete windows, would go far in making the game feel more immersive and saving screen space for more important features.

 

The player health/endurance/buff window isn't eye-catching, it doesn't stand out, it doesn't draw the player's attention to it when health or endurance is going down, and it can't really be placed in an out of the way location where it also remains immediately visible without distracting from the fight.  There should be something that notifies the player that kissing the floor is imminent, and looking at the health/endurance/buff window means looking away from the 10 jerks on the screen who are trying to turn you into a meat popsicle.

 

Those are my oldest complaints about the UI.  That's not to say that my nostalgia reflex doesn't kick in when I see it (still), but it's never been a good UI and time hasn't improved it.

[ForeverLaxx]

I've become so accustomed to the UI as it is that I rarely have issues navigating it. That said, a friend of mine that won't play the game due to his utter hatred of MMOs as a principle was endlessly frustrated by the very tiny, often easy to miss buttons that close a window. This is compounded by those buttons being the same color as the window and his complaint was that it wasn't even clear that was a button at all.

[Troo]

Being able to have the same setup across characters without having to reposition stuff is a great thing.

[Troo]

Powertrays.. too bad we can't save a power tray setup.

[Troo]

Market UI.. is it a lost cause?

[Greycat]

10 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Map zoom changes in mission maps.  I despise that.

 

Seconding that. Not sure why that never got fixed. It's at least as old as Cimerora. (Issue release, not "back in ancient rome, computers had many problems and maps autozooming ... ok, wasn't one of them. But would have been if they had electricity and the internet.")

 

I think the only other things that come to mind are that we don't really have scaling elements (or I'm missing them) - some of the small buttons were fine in the days of 800x600 or 1024x768, but with HD, 2k, 4k and above monitors, they're *tiny.* That and we don't have the ability to lock *trays* - we can lock powers IN the tray, but can't lock individual (or all) trays to keep from accidentally switching them with the arrows.

 

Hmm. What else. Base storage. There's no easy "Set all" and/or "Change default" for storage items. You put down eight enhancement storage tables, for instance, you have to go to each one and set every rank (or whatever you want) to "get" and "put."

 

Oh, yeah. My typical UI:

Team or League tends to go on the left. If I'm a MM, minions go on the right.

[RobotLove]

Some more granular controls of what buffs are displayed on the team window would be welcome. Those big long bars that show every single toggle running, every inspiration (especially on level up), and everyone else's buffs is major clutter. When playing buffer-support characters, I really only want to see my own buffs so I can know easily when it's time to reapply.

[RobotLove]

Oh, and the ability to lock elements in place would be nice.

[PeregrineFalcon]

The ability to snap windows to a grid and then lock them so that they won't move and all be saved at that same location.

 

Including windows for base storage. (Which always reset when the UI options are reloaded)

 

Oh, and I'd like stuff that's in base storage to stop jumping around when I'm pulling items out.

[CrudeVileTerror]

UI Wish List:

FIX THE INSPIRATION TRAY BUG, PLEASE!  *flails tentacles*

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/10109-reset-inspiration-tray-default-as-closed/

 

Increase maximum Tray Slots:  https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/12662-ran-out-of-room-need-more-power-trays/

(and the Respec problem too, as it's somewhat UI-related:  https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/14927-save-and-load-command-for-power-tray-configuration/ )

 

Having the option of making the map variably translucent and being able to toggle it as borderless for a map overlay would be delightful.  Bonus points if it can be given a toggle for being unclickable too, so I can interact with gameplay that's behind said translucent map.

 

Increased maximum chat tabs (and increased maximum Global Channels).

 

More "Do All" buttons.  Such as claiming Character Items from Mail, or moving stacks to the market/storage.

[johnnysc]

The Enhancement conversion window is a UI nightmare, specifically the "In Set Conversion"/"Out of Set Conversion"+Rarity/Category dropdown.

 

Change this to be simple 3 radio buttons:  "In Set", "Rarity", and "Category", plus a text field that shows the rarity or category value of the input enhancement.

 

Please.  My wrist begs you.

[carroto]

45 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Oh, and I'd like stuff that's in base storage to stop jumping around when I'm pulling items out.

I was going to mention this one.  If I repeatedly click an item to take multiples, it usually takes just a few clicks before all the items in the list re-order themselves.  Then once I scroll to find the item again, taking another causes the list to reset to original again, so I have to scroll back to continue taking them.  I've found that if I click slowly enough this doesn't happen, so it makes it a bit tedious to take a stack of items, because I have to slooowly take them so the list doesn't jump around.

 

Ideally I'd like to have a "take all" option, or a "take many" with a pop-up like when placing stacks on the AH.

[carroto]

35 minutes ago, johnnysc said:

The Enhancement conversion window is a UI nightmare, specifically the "In Set Conversion"/"Out of Set Conversion"+Rarity/Category dropdown.

...and for the love of all that is holy (or whatever you value), please have it retain the current setting when you place a new enhancement in it, rather than resetting every...damn...time.

[carroto]

When using enhancement boosters / catalysts don't make me wait many seconds after applying one before the UI resets and I can do another.  Better yet, maybe rethink this UI altogether, although just speeding up the current one would be a huge improvement.  It seems like the original devs expected that using these would be a rare event and wanted to make applying them impactful.  However it's not unusual for me to boost quite a few IOs after a respec, not to mention catalyzing an entire set of ATOs at once.  It's one of the aspects of putting together a build I like the least.

[ZekeStenzland]

The buttons for creating Praetorian and Hero/Villain characters on the first screen of character creation don’t even look like buttons — let alone any other buttons in character creation! — they look like static, uninteractable artwork. Makes it difficult for new players to figure out how to go goldside. 
 

There’s some confusing buttons when entering the game world for the first time. I think at one point your two choices are Enter and Next. 
 

The rich text editing code, used in character bios as well as some AE spots is... precarious at best. It has been since Day 1. It’s always a brisk exercise to try to trick the editor into inserting correctly, deleting correctly, scrolling correctly, managing the behind the scenes html markup correctly. Honestly, IMO, this is the most visibly buggy UI area in the entire game. 
 

You can only toggle the Convert tab if you have converters. Which means if you use your last converter doing a conversion, you can’t toggle the tab off. Sigh. 

[carroto]

There are a number of issues with the numeric input fields used with the AH and elsewhere.  I think they apply both to the pop-up when placing stacks on the AH (or in vault storage) and for setting prices in the AH.  If I click-drag to select the number in the box (I usually go right-to-left), it tends to lose the selection after I release the mouse button, so I usually have to do it twice.  I don't have this issue outside the game, so I presume this has something to do with the way it's coded here.

 

I've also run into an issue where if I select the text there and start typing, sometimes I will not see anything.  Seems like it's happening invisibly off to the left outside the visible area of the box.  So it looks like the box is empty.  Then I click in the box again to make sure it has focus and start typing, and suddenly what I typed before shows up and the new text is appended to the end, so I've come close to selling or bidding way too high a price before due to this issue.

 

Also I'd love it if the pop-up for moving stacks of items to the AH would recognize if I moved all the items in a stack and the next one I drag, would default to all the items in that stack regardless of size.  I work around this by starting large and working towards small.  But sometimes I miss a stack and having to drag that tiny little slider to the right over and over is not ideal.  Maybe a rethinking here would help.  Maybe a checkbox for just "all", so it's easy to just move entire stacks to the market.  Even if it reset after each session to avoid mistakes, if it could remember that checkbox setting within a session it would help tremendously.

 

Also regarding that numeric stack pop-up, it starts with the input field blank for the first stack.  If I click-drag the slider to the right, it doesn't work at first.  I've found that I have to first click-release the slider, so that it puts a zero in the input field, and then click-drag to the right.  If it could just accept a click-drag from the start that would be less clunky.

 

[macskull]

1. The CustomWindow command is amazing but boy does it need work. It's not documented anywhere that I can find, it resets to the upper left corner of the screen every time you restart the game, and when you try and resize the expanded version of the window it jumps around everywhere.
2. The arena interface is buggy as hell. I would completely remove "scheduled events" because no one uses them and they just clutter up the UI. The "view event results" button for completed matches is grayed out. The PvP section of the help file has been mostly un-updated since 2008 and much of it refers to pre-I13 PvP.
3. There should be a way to lock tray selections. Note I'm not talking about locking powers in their trays, but rather locking which tray number is selected where. I don't click powers often but when I do half the time I click the arrow next to the tray number accidentally, changing that tray number, and am left frantically trying to get the tray back to the correct one.

[Vanden]

I've made several UI-based suggestions in the past:

 

Range Indicator in the Target window

 

Widescreen in the character creation screen

 

Stop the mission info window from blinking

 

Sticky screen edges

[unblocked]

Make trays display the bound keys of the slots in tiny font instead of 12345... on every last one. Dunno how possible that would be to implement for this ancient dinosaur but it would immensely make everything related to pressing buttons %500 more better. Sure I could just bother to remember that my 3rd tray goes zxcvb instead but who has time for that?

Edited October 27, 2020 by unblocked

[carroto]

Not sure if this applies but in the character creator when I select a costume piece that has a pattern I can choose that matches, put that pattern at the top of the list rather than the bottom.  So for example if for chest I select "Bodysuit Armored", there is also a "Bodysuit Armored" pattern for it I can choose, but it's all the way at the bottom of the list.

 

Also maybe sort the lists in the character creator alphabetically?  Add a button next to each option that will pop up a search so if I know what I'm looking for I don't have to scroll through looking for it.  Probably a lot that could be done there but it would probably be a redo so I'll leave it there.

[Lines]

It's a big'un.

 

Contacts, Missions, Clues and Souvenirs Consolidation!

 

One larger menu to contain all of the above, where clues are listed under their respective missions and missions listed under their respective contacts. Those lists can be expanded to save clutter. It would keep a record of all completed missions and all of its clues and contact dialogue for reference, which can be toggled on and off. The contact's main listing would include their souvenir for an overview of the plot, but you'd also be able to see their introductory dialogue.

 

The very top entry would be current contact and their story arc up to the point its completed, even if it's someone else's. This way other members of the team would be able to see all of the dialogue and clues so far as much as the team leader.

 

A second tab would include inactive contacts that contains all of the above for reference in the same layout.

 

A third tab would be the 'find contacts' page, which would neatly list currently available contacts but also sort and section them by chronological relevance according to other arcs the player has already done. It would be nice to sort contacts into 'chapters' relating to timeframes throughout the life of the game such as "after the first Rikti War", "The second Rikti Invasion" "The Praetorian War", etc. Each contact would give a little bit of context as to why your character would want to meet this contact ("Azuria usually deals with magical affairs." or "An aspiring mad scientist would get a lot from working with Vernon von Grun.") Also this tab will chill out about Night Ward, ok?

[Lines]

1 hour ago, carroto said:

Not sure if this applies but in the character creator when I select a costume piece that has a pattern I can choose that matches, put that pattern at the top of the list rather than the bottom.  So for example if for chest I select "Bodysuit Armored", there is also a "Bodysuit Armored" pattern for it I can choose, but it's all the way at the bottom of the list.

If you press the 'left' button on those sorts of options (the one inline to the name of the currently selected part), it jumps straight to the bottom of the list.

 

Not saying it shouldn't change to the top, but I find that helps.

 

6 hours ago, Troo said:

Being able to have the same setup across characters without having to reposition stuff is a great thing.

I don't know if you mean anything more specific, but options > window > save windows right down the bottom does this. It saves it into wdw.txt. You can then load them to other characters, and new characters will automatically adopt this.

 

Edit: i may have read this as a suggestion but now I see you might just be making a statement.

Edited October 27, 2020 by Lines

[Luminara]

Missions being cleared from the navigation window when changing zones.  FIX THAT BUG!  FIX IT!  I'm 48 years old, I don't need any help forgetting where I was going or why I was going there!  Players shouldn't have to go through extra steps to lock the mission into the window, or select it again and again and again.  It's UI, not a mini-game.

 

On the rare occasion that I have to open my Team window for some reason, "You are no longer seeking a team" pops up in the chat window.  Seeing that is unnerving for people with social anxiety disorder.  It implies that we're automatically added to LFG, without our consent or knowledge, and even the implication is detrimental for people with this mental health issue.  If that were actually happening, I'd set this laptop on fire.  Do something to get rid of that unnecessary and incorrect notification.

[Gulbasaur]

12 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Missions being cleared from the navigation window when changing zones.  FIX THAT BUG!  FIX IT! 

And while you're at it, having to manually select a mission to have teammates able to see it. It's a pain in the bum while going through story arcs with other players. If it's the same person and they get a new mission, it's probably that one we're going to. 

 

There are a few enemy powers that don't have effect icons - the energy attack with a lingering debuff that goldside PDP use is a noticeable one as you've got a small white rectangle in among the effect icons. 

 

A WAY TO LOCK WHICH NUMBER POWER TRAY WE'RE ON WOULD BE GREAT - Being able to lock powers in place is handy, but being able to not accidentally cycle through the power trays because of a mis-click would be really nifty too. 

Edited October 27, 2020 by Gulbasaur