General interface improvements

[Regn]

The probability that people will read this might be minimal, and if they do they might unfortunately get annoyed at me. If it seems like I'm stalling my point it's because I'm having trouble communicating in a way as to be properly understood, and to not step on anyone's toes. Especially when it comes to creation people are very sensitive to criticism, even if it's meant to be constructive. And I want to be constructive, and practical, but unfortunately, like I'm going to write next, I can't do much about it myself. So, the only thing I can do is give my opinion, or my point of view.

I used to be very good at learning things quickly, no matter how complex it was, but as I've gotten older, certain things have resulted in me losing that intellectual trait. So I cannot learn how to e.g. create my own interface anymore. And believe me, I've tried. More than once. I get far into development, but eventually I lose patience and stop when things do not work as intended; I feel like I get more out of doing something that requires less energy, you know.

I just wanted to get that out of the way. That, I am in no way saying that those of you who can and has created user interfaces are not doing it well enough. It would be hypocritical of me since I cannot do what you do at all. I acknowledge that, and do not disregard it in what I'm about to say next.

The reason why I wanted to make my own interface was because I was not and am still not content with the default or modified interfaces in EverQuest 2, because they are disregarding the following (which I consider important):

- Relevancy
- Size
- Design

Relevancy being the most important, size being the second most important, and design being the least important.

Although I used to like being able to see all my stats, and all my experience bars, and my health, power and concentration bars in three different locations covering half the screen next to three different spells windows (Effects, detrimental, and maintained), and a giant group window, raid window, mini-map, quest journal, and lest I forget six hotbars, I have now grown less attentive to focus on all of these interface pieces, most of which are irrelevant to combating mobs, and interacting with the game in general. And instead want to minimize the interface, and magnify the world I play in.

Ok, so, to the point. Let me move on to what I consider relevant and not relevant to certain interface pieces.

Character stats window

- Irrelevant to combat. Clutters up screen. Can be found in the persona window.

Effects window

What's irrelevant to the effects window:
- My own buffs that remain active until death. They can be found, read and toggled on the hotbar.
- Other peoples group buffs. They can be found in the persona window. And if I want to know what kind of buffs the Dirge/Troub has up, I'll ask them. Otherwise these thirty to one hundred buffs clutters up my screen.

What's somewhat relevant to the effects window:
- Other peoples single target buffs on me. If they buff me up with a hate increase/decrease buff, and they forget to put it back on me after we have died, I can remind them to put it back on me. And this is still somewhat irrelevant because I can ask them, or open up my persona window, but it should be an option. They are not that many buffs so they do not clutter up the screen.

What's relevant to the effects window:
- Experience and stats potions, because there is no other way to see when these potions need to be consumed anew.

Maintained window

What's irrelevant to the maintained window:
- Buffs that remain active until death. They can be found, read and toggled on the hotbar.

What's relevant to the maintained window:
- Buffs that will eventually run out of time or charges, like tradeskill poisons, the ranger's Archer's Fury buff, ranger and assassin's Exploit Weakness buff, priest and tank wards, reactives, and stoneskins.

Experience bar

- Irrelevant to combat. Should be found in persona window, achievement window, crafting window, and guild window.

Group & Raid window

- Class icons are not needed. These can be seen when hovering over group members.
- Player levels are not needed. These can be seen when hovering over group members.
- Player names should be on the left side of the health and power bars, and should be aligned to the right, while the health and power bars should be on the right side of the player names and aligned to the left (Think of the cells in an Excel sheet).
-- Alternatively, player names should be over the health and power bar, and aligned to the left.
- The health bar should have twice the thickness of the power bar, and the power bar should be very thin. This could be an option for illusionists/coercers, so that they can turn the power bar's thickness up, like a healer who needs to see the health bar more clearly. The power bar does not need to be visible for everyone else, even though sometimes power is drained for an entire group, it will still be noticeable.
- The groups of a raid window should have the option of being stacked in 1x4, 2x2, and 4x1 on the screen.
- The raid window should look like a minimized group window, not have its entire design changed to the color patterns of a clown. It should also not have an all black background; if names and health are difficult to read, it's just the names and health bar that needs more shadow, not the entire window.
- A small button that will toggle between group and raid window view.

Player window

- Irrelevant. Really(?) Yes. The health and power can be found over the character's head, and in the group or raid window. There's no need to see ones health and power in the player window, over the character's head, and in the group and raid window.
- The concentration bar is irrelevant to experienced players. New players would find concentration warnings peculiar if the bar was not present. To fix this spell icons should have a small blue dot in the corner when it implies taking up a concentration slot (Problem solved. Less clutter. No confusion.)
- Even though the health bar, power bar, and concentration bar is irrelevant; curing trauma, elemental, noxious and arcane using potions or abilities with the click of a button is not irrelevant because it avoids cluttering up the hotbar with potions and single target cures. This could be a single interface piece that did not replace the detrimental window.

Target & Target's Target

- These should be locked together by default. Main target to the left. Target's target to the right.
- Option to turn off target's target by the single click of a button.
- Option to turn buffs and debuffs off on target and target's target.
- Option to turn casting bar off on target and target's target.

Quest helper window

- Clutters screen. Should have an option to resize text of title and context to make much smaller.

Bags

- Needs joints and snap.
- Option to joint lock.
- Option to joint resize.

Chat window

- Tabs on the bottom (see next point).
- Window fades from bottom to top (gradient transparency).


Like I said, I hope nobody gets offended by this, and I'm not telling anyone to change. I'm not better than you. This section of the forum said "UI User Discussion - Talk about what interface best helps you." And I took that opportunity to mention what best helps me, or how I prefer or visualize my interfaces. I just wanted to relay my point of view, and maybe, hopefully, someone who can create interfaces will go "Hmm, I like what you're saying and share some of your views," or maybe it sparked some new ideas. But like I said, I'm not telling anyone to change; the people who can and has created interfaces most likely got into it for the same reason that I wanted to, and that's ok.

Oh, and another option to all of the above would be to create a small interface piece that could be configured to display certain buttons, the buttons to hide and show interface pieces. That way the group window could be turned off and raid window turned on, turn off or on the effects and maintained windows whenever certain things needed to be checked up on, hide the quest helper until it was needed, and so on. It's unfortunate that I can't help create any because I have lots of ideas. Well, at least I can share my ideas should you want to take from them, integrate or modify them as you wish.

[piva]

All I can say is:

[Sollux]

well put , and some very intriquing ideas as well

[lordebon]

A lot of what you're asking for is far beyond the control of UI modding in EQ2. In general, if it seems like something should be an obvious improvement but none of the major UIs are doing it, it's because we can't. Some general comments:

Any filtering of the effects/maintained window is not possible. The game decides what effects you see, not the UI. Bug SOE to change it, but GL, we've been asking for it for years.

Raid window: Much of the stuff you want here you should be able to do. Also IIRC you can already change how the raid window stacks, just resize it...

Player window: Hardly irrelevant because the player is *not* part of the group window. Unless you're in a raid, it's the only place to see your own hp and such. But if you don't want to see it, you can always hide it, all windows are capable of being hidden if you don't want it visible.

Targets: should all be doable. can change the location of one using an event handler of the other (there is no "locking" windows together in EQ2's UI, just moving them via scripting).

Bags: I doubt this is possible, but not 100% sure you're talking about with "joints." In either case, because all bag windows are clones of the same underlying window scripting it to move them in relation to each other may be difficult if not impossible. Depends on if you can directly address the various clones (which I've never tested).

As for buttons to turn windows and such off, such a window could be made relatively easily but the game already has hotkeys to turn windows on and off. I know I don't see the need for it in Fetish, but if it's something you want you should be able to make a custom window that has buttons to /show_window and /hide_window various windows.

[Darqwood]

Regn, you have some good ideas and I agree with your general sentiment which is less interface, not more. With EQII and other similar games, I often find myself "playing the interface" and not playing the game, especially in intense combat. EQNext may solve some of that. The 3D game world is much more interesting than a screen full of buttons and scrollbars.

In the case of the raid window, and by extension the group window, I think it may be a bit too severe to take out the archetype icons. When I'm looking at the raid window in combat, I rarely look at the names of the various raiders. Connecting name with class would be an extra thought process unless the exact same players were in the exact same positions every time. And how often does that happen? What I want to know is, what is the tank's health? Red icon. Does the priest have an arcane on them? Green icon. And in the case of a pickup group or raid where the players are not familiar with each other, the icon becomes even more valuable.


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[Regn]

Thank you. I'm glad that I was not dismissed.

Raid window

I must have not known or forgotten that the raid window could be resized to get the desired dimensions. I will keep that in mind from now on, and take advantage of it. Thank you. And Darq makes a fair point. I've not had much use for class icons myself, but I can see how they can be valuable, even for myself.

Another thing that I had in mind for the raid window was that when a player had been targeted, that player's cell would get a little brighter or darker, or get a thin border around it, so that it would feel like a button that had been toggled.

Note: I'm not content with the design, but it works to illustrate what I had in mind.



With this it becomes easier to notice who the target is, and it also feels like the target is connected to oneself in a way that one does not feel any doubt. One does not have to glance over to the target window to confirm, or presume the target.

Just putting the idea out there.

Player window

My ignorance caused me to state that the player window was irrelevant. I was on my Shadowknight earlier today, pulled up to twenty mobs, and put my back up against a corner. Surrounded by mobs whose health bars stacked on mine, I quickly found it difficult to see my own health bar in the blob of models, particles, numbers and text. It was not very pleasant when that happened.

I do, however, think that the player window becomes irrelevant if a group or raid window is present. For the same reason that when I am by myself I do not need the group or raid window. These things should sort of overlap each other to avoid cluttering the screen with UI elements. Two or more health bars is redundant.

When it comes to bags. Pardon me. Joints was a bad way of referring to what I meant. What I meant with joints was that when you move one bag closer to another bag, and they get in proximity with each other (5-10 px), they will align with each other horizontally and vertically. Like placing a square object next to another square object in Photoshop, it aligns it for you. And if these bags could be locked to each other then if you move one bag the other bags will follow. This might not be something that can be done with scripting, but I thought I would mention it.


At any rate, I feel that I have learned something new by posting here, and that I have much yet to learn.

[tknarr]

The player window's less critical in groups and raids, the target and implied target windows track target information and your own health/power is available via the XP window. But it's also compact and not intrusive, so having it there doesn't really interfere with the rest of the UI. And since the game doesn't allow you to close that window without turning off the setting that keeps all critical main HUD windows visible, it's mostly just left there. There's a lot of things in custom UIs that're like that: not optimal, but useful enough and hard enough to optimize that it's not worth the cost of making them work exactly ideally.

The problem with your highlighting in the group and raid windows is that, while it's possible to track changes to your own target, there's no easy way to tell what group/raid slot your current target occupies (if it does, mobs obviously aren't in any slot). You'd have to have each slot in the group and raid windows tracking changes to your target and checking against their occupant's name, which would trigger a lot of scripting activity if you were quickly tabbing through targets. That'd probably cause the UI itself to lag processing all the scripts, which would be a killer in a raid. As a raid healer I also find that the other information in the target and implied target windows is crucial (things like mob casting bars and what the implied target is, things which wouldn't be displayed in your group/raid windows), and even for target the highlight would be harder to track in the raid window than it is in the target window. I'm mostly watching the raid window for colors of health bars and for detrimentals lighting up, having a target highlight in it would actually be more distracting than useful (the highlight would distract from health bar color changes and detrimental highlights, and it wouldn't provide the additional information so it wouldn't replace watching the target window).

Bags, that's a function of the game code. The UI engine doesn't allow for aligning windows automatically like that, and there's no easy way for scripts to determine the position of other windows and do alignment manually (it can be done, but it's cumbersome and has a lot of failure conditions that when they happen completely scramble your bag windows). With bags not open very often compared to the rest of gameplay, it's another one of those "not enough benefit to make it worth the effort and the problems when it doesn't work right" things.

[Drumstix42]

Raid/group window highlighting is very doable, but it requires a little scripting.

[Darqwood]

Originally Posted by Regn

. . .
When it comes to bags. Pardon me. Joints was a bad way of referring to what I meant. What I meant with joints was that when you move one bag closer to another bag, and they get in proximity with each other (5-10 px), they will align with each other horizontally and vertically. Like placing a square object next to another square object in Photoshop, it aligns it for you. And if these bags could be locked to each other then if you move one bag the other bags will follow. This might not be something that can be done with scripting, but I thought I would mention it.

. . .

You can get some of this to happen by going to Options >> User Interface >> Game Windows. Look for "snap to grid" settings that will make all windows, not just your bags, easier to line up with each other. I keep mine set at 10 pixels, which is small enough not to be too blocky, but it keeps the bag windows nice and neat with minimal annoyance. It won't make all the bags follow each other if you move one around on the screen which I agree would be a useful feature.


Also regarding the raid window target highlight thing, the DarqUI raid window does have a floating highlight as you mouse over the raider names which is useful and lightweight on the system. But making the highlight stick involves way too much software and performance loss for too little return. I use the backgrounds for other things, like showing which raiders are low on mana for example, and changing the color of the player name is also not a good idea since group leaders, looters and people not in zone have color assignments already. On the other hand, highlighting the target in the group window requires much less horsepower and was useful enough to implement.


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[Zenith88]

This is my first opportunity to visit this website.I want to show my admiration for your generosity in support of people that should have assistance with your question.