Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
User Interface and Addon Feedback and Questions
Stormfyre
Member, Alpha Two
So as it stands the developers don't want to allow addons for the game. My main MMO is WoW so this worries me. When it comes to things like damage meters and boss mods and weakauras and simming I totally understand why they don't want that level of min maxing in the game, its been a big issue for wow the last few expansions when it comes to designing encounters around players having that level of information.
My issue with it is that I really like being able to set up my UI how I want it to be. Moving things around, putting my health and target health near the center of the screen, making the unitframes/nameplates nice and neat and display all the info I need them to (I always play healers in games so unitframes/nameplates in particular are very important to me), putting my actionbar into a grid because i use an mmo mouse, setting up my keybind layout how I like it, etc etc.
In wow I use Elvui and Bartender mostly to accomplish the majority of my UI because just those give me all of the options I could ever want. If they don't want to allow addons that's totally fine to me but then please give us addon level UI editing in the base game. Even newer MMOs that come out rarely let you change more than just dragging things around on screen, they dont let you change fonts, style, colour, size, shape, etc of elements. One of the big reasons it's been so hard for me to leave wow for other MMOs has been UI customization. I'm so excited for this game I don't want to be turned off by a static, boring UI.
I also know that just saying "It's bad, fix it" doesn't help and specific feedback is the most helpful so these are the biggest things I'd like to see that I haven't seen in any of the gameplay footage. Sorry if they're already in or are planned to be in:
~Being able to change the actionbar into a mmo mouse grid (and moving it around) as well as allowing modifier casting. Basically I have my 1-12 action bar but I can hold shift to swap to a different 1-12 actionbar while the modifier is held, same with control, alt, etc.
~Since the party size is going to be huge (up to 250+ players on a large scale battle) how is this going to work for healers? Unitframes are the main way people heal in other MMOs but it seems like friendly nameplates would probably be more effective than a big block of health bars on the screen with that many people. That also means that it will be hard to keep track of people who are out of your line of sight or behind you. Are friendly nameplates going to be able to be toggled on? Can we set people as a focus to keep their nameplate on screen at all time even when they're out of LoS and can it be more than 1 person (I'm thinking mostly tanks and secondary healers)? How much will be displayed on them without having to click the person? (Buffs, debuffs, etc) Will we be able to filter it to only show negative status effects that we can cleanse or will that be indicated by something like a border?
~Right now the player and target healthbars are at the top of the screen. Will we be able to move them to the center or toggle a player nameplate to keep track of our own health under our feet? How much information will be displayed on enemy nameplates out in the world? How far away will we be able to see them?
~Will we be able to change the fonts in the game? Even just having a small list of fonts would be great because some are easier to read and look at than others and it can throw off the whole feel of the game to have a shitty font (Looking at you Final Fantasy 14). Something like a like or dislike of a font is super subjective too so it'd be nice to have a small selection in the menus somewhere.
I'd really like to hear what everyone else thinks too. Thanks for reading!
My issue with it is that I really like being able to set up my UI how I want it to be. Moving things around, putting my health and target health near the center of the screen, making the unitframes/nameplates nice and neat and display all the info I need them to (I always play healers in games so unitframes/nameplates in particular are very important to me), putting my actionbar into a grid because i use an mmo mouse, setting up my keybind layout how I like it, etc etc.
In wow I use Elvui and Bartender mostly to accomplish the majority of my UI because just those give me all of the options I could ever want. If they don't want to allow addons that's totally fine to me but then please give us addon level UI editing in the base game. Even newer MMOs that come out rarely let you change more than just dragging things around on screen, they dont let you change fonts, style, colour, size, shape, etc of elements. One of the big reasons it's been so hard for me to leave wow for other MMOs has been UI customization. I'm so excited for this game I don't want to be turned off by a static, boring UI.
I also know that just saying "It's bad, fix it" doesn't help and specific feedback is the most helpful so these are the biggest things I'd like to see that I haven't seen in any of the gameplay footage. Sorry if they're already in or are planned to be in:
~Being able to change the actionbar into a mmo mouse grid (and moving it around) as well as allowing modifier casting. Basically I have my 1-12 action bar but I can hold shift to swap to a different 1-12 actionbar while the modifier is held, same with control, alt, etc.
~Since the party size is going to be huge (up to 250+ players on a large scale battle) how is this going to work for healers? Unitframes are the main way people heal in other MMOs but it seems like friendly nameplates would probably be more effective than a big block of health bars on the screen with that many people. That also means that it will be hard to keep track of people who are out of your line of sight or behind you. Are friendly nameplates going to be able to be toggled on? Can we set people as a focus to keep their nameplate on screen at all time even when they're out of LoS and can it be more than 1 person (I'm thinking mostly tanks and secondary healers)? How much will be displayed on them without having to click the person? (Buffs, debuffs, etc) Will we be able to filter it to only show negative status effects that we can cleanse or will that be indicated by something like a border?
~Right now the player and target healthbars are at the top of the screen. Will we be able to move them to the center or toggle a player nameplate to keep track of our own health under our feet? How much information will be displayed on enemy nameplates out in the world? How far away will we be able to see them?
~Will we be able to change the fonts in the game? Even just having a small list of fonts would be great because some are easier to read and look at than others and it can throw off the whole feel of the game to have a shitty font (Looking at you Final Fantasy 14). Something like a like or dislike of a font is super subjective too so it'd be nice to have a small selection in the menus somewhere.
I'd really like to hear what everyone else thinks too. Thanks for reading!
0
Comments
For big events like sieges, wars etc, i think it will be up to the players to make raids and groups strategically to be able to win against the other side.
No idea about fonts, that's too detailed to know at this point.
UI currently is at 'testing level', meaning some of the UI you see including stuff you see on the map won't be there on release. Some things are currently there to help developers spot bugs and fix them :-)
Steven rockin' the sunglasses too lol
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/User_interface