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UI Customisation - What do YOU want?
Wandering Mist
Moderator, Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha One
DISCLAIMER: I am making this thread as part of my own personal interest, not as a representative of Intrepid Studios.
Intrepid have said that the UI in Ashes will be fully customisable but they haven't said yet what exactly you can do with it. So, I'd like to know what kind of customisation options YOU would like to see.
I'm going to hold off on stating my own opinions until a bit later because I'm curious to know what the other community members think.
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Comments
I like to put a hotbar with critical/proccing/etc abilities vertically right next to my character for quick CD Checks. If I'm a Bard.
Enlarged Ability/Buff/CD Icons. I have a big screen. Customisable Ability/Buff/CD Icons would be boss.
Would like the ability to display only HP in a group/raid if I'm a Healer.
I would love a customisable scalable scope for all aspects of the UI so I can run 4k but still read the information.
When In Active Combat Stance, I want tab targetted abilities to be greyed out. When I'm in Tab Target Stance I want Active Combat Abilities to be greyed out.
I want team members out of range to be greyed out. Little directive arrows towards their position would be awesome at the end of the team member frame.
I want active abilities out of range to be greyed out.
I might be able to think of more but I haven't slept and these are my current hopes.
Seriously, when it comes to UI customization they hit the nail on the head.
Agree with this one. SWTOR let you move things all over the place. Don't know how feasible it is to implement, but that was nice.
You'll still be able to use tab abilities in action mode and action abilities in tab mode, though.
Everything needs to be, able to be nicely moved scaled and locked into place. Nothing should be mandatorily on the screen or combined with other UI elements. What I mean by this is if I move and scale my targets buffs/debuffs they should not be a set package. Some games combined things like this thinking that I would not want to do something common sense like make my targets buff in one spot and debuffs in another spot for quicker identification. Everyone does things differently. The DEVs need to be working under the assumption that everyone is going to move and scale everything all the time.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
As for me, I'm pretty chill when it comes to customizing my setups, but having the control like final fantasy 14 would be really nice too.
Overall, if I could ask for something, I would like some font, color, and size controls for damage and healing numbers.
For font I would love a way to import options so you can really go silly with it, and a proper color wheel for fonts rather than a few basic options would be neat.
Turn off/on settings for things like damage numbers roll, heal numbers
Absolutely no designated buttons or widgets on the main menu/overlay/HUD for the cash shop or log in rewards (in the unfortunate event they are added to the game), and the ability to turn off all pop-ups/notifications for such features. Those kinds of non-core game play features should placed within a menu, not on the main screen.
Ability to turn on / off various part
Pre-sets
Capability for parts to fade away or disappear when not relevant in area / zone / activity
And style, style, style
I have yet to see an addon that is just blunt stylistically. Nil finesse.
Did like New World UI clean and simple, not distracting but the compass and weapons could have been simplified further.
All UI elements
Group window
- Each group member has their own UI element, rather than one element for the group window
- Ability to move group members as I see fit - if I want the tank to always be in the first spot in my group window, I should be able to do that.
- Ability to move and resize each element of my UI window. If I want the tank to be a large UI element on the left of my screen, and the rest of my group small elements on the right, I should be able to.
- Ability to show what information I want to see for each person in my group. If I only care about the HP of the tank in my group, and I put the tank in the first position, I should be able to set it so that I only see the HP of the character in position #1 if that is what I want.
Raid window- Same deal as group window, just smaller versions.
- For both group and raid windows, there should be a fairly easy to find way to reset back to standard, as people will make a mess of this.
Hotbars- Ability to open up hotbars containing as many keys as I want, rather than always having to open new bars in multiples of 10 keys. If I want 18 buttons, the game should not require me to have 20
- Ability to set hotkey shortcuts to individual abilities, rather than having to assign preset shortcuts to hotbars
Chat window- Ability to set multiple chat windows, with multiple chat tabs.
- Each chat channel should be able to be assigned to any tab or window
- Ability to assign font, size and color to each chat channel as it appears in each chat tab. If I want group chat to be in small orange Ariel in one tab of one window, and large hot pink wingdings in another tab of that same window, more power to me.
Buff/debuff window- These should be separate windows.
- Ability to set which buffs and debuffs I want to see - this list needs to be able to be changed based on build.
- Ability to chose to display or not display a buff or debuff based on who cast it on me. If an area has many mobs with weak poison debuffs and I chose to not bother showing that, this should not prevent me from seeing a poison debuff of the same type cast by a boss mob.
- The best way O can think of to make the above work is to have the option to turn a buff/debuff on or off, or to go in and have a check against every entity that has cast that buff or debuff on you in the past.
- Ability to highlight specific buffs and/or debuffs when cast on you, including the ability to highlight based on who cast them on you - as above.
Quest window- Ability to show as many active quests in this window as I like - if that means I need to scroll through them, that is my business.
- Ability to set a color and opacity to individual quests, quest types or quest states, as if they were individual UI elements.
Map/minimap- Ability to share information via minimap with your group or raid, but also being able to form larger entities to share map information with (so that a siege of 250 people can all be working off of the same location data)
- Setting locations, defining areas, placing grids, detailing routes, designating characters, these should all be things that can be shared on the minimap.
I consider the above to be a fairly basic overview of what would be needed to consider an MMO's UI to be fully customizable, though I am not really taking in to consideration any kind of functionality the UI may have in relation to things like click-to-heal (which I hope isn't a thing in Ashes).With this, I would set up my UI to be completely empty until I joined a group, raid or entered combat, though I would have a map and journal I could mouse over if I needed.
To me, that is the mark of a good UI. It should not display anything you don't want to be able to see, but should display everything you want to see, and when those two things change, the UI should change as well.
Yes please!
Also a way to enable/disable background and borders of UI elements and a way to have some stuff appearing/disappearing on certain conditions, being able to change the colors of UI elements will be nice too.
I would be interested in being able to sort lists in the UI. Whether that be my party list, enemy list etc. Perhaps with options like health, distance, debuff, buff etc. So that we can call things to the top we need to pay attentionn to in that particular fight.
I've not seen an MMO that uses lists like this.
If Ashes does, then obviously they should be able to be ordered.
That is a path to DPS meters. I would not count on text logs being a thing.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Multiple hotbars that can be moved and resized individually. Really let me move and resize everything. Little things, too like customizing each UI element and offering specific choices for that UI element - for example on the various target bars you can give me options how to show buffs/debuffs (top, bottom, all or only mine, priority system for them, etc.). Other UI elements will need different types of options. Also let me hide certain UI elements. Let me move all the windows in game as well at will (and lock them if desired). So if I want to move my quest window, map, inventory, character sheet, etc. around on screen let me do it. Don't lock it to a spot.
Let me save profiles for keybinds as well as UI setup so I can import it on alts, or maybe for saving different setups for different uses on the same character.
That's all I've got for now.
Prefer also to have what ever mods somehow controlled off my pc.. With work, playing from different PC in different locations globally, really would like to be about to download, update and go.. Not fiddle around with 3rd party mod managers and sync data.
Hmm this is probably unrealistic but how would you all feel about being able to upload custom assets and graphical designs to your UI?
All UI settings should be able to be saved both locally and on the games server, so you can use the same settings with multiple accounts, or with the same account on multiple PC's.
With enough customization, there should be no need for UI mods.
Honestly I think Intrepid the best move would be to hire a couple of the modding teams that made some of the popularui"s like elvin UI or bartender or any of the super popular ones reach out and talk to that community and see about maybe hiring them on to work on a ui
I like the clock wise circular count down really cool when cool downs are less than 20 seconds. But some cool downs are like 5 min and that case the clockwise hand that count down moves really slow and really hard to see when actuall comes of cool down like last 15 seconds. This could easily be fixed by lets say when the cooldown reached 15 seconds it would count down from 15 seconds that way not force to use numercal count down for all cooldowns.
Usually MMOs have one main Action Bar were you can page down or up well if you page down ounce or up that is possibly a two button sequence or three (page up, ability, page down) So you can go up and down fairly quickly giving you acces to two more bars fairly quickly. Rune Scape has two bars that can be paged down and up. So insteadof accessing two bars fairly quickly you can access extra bars really quickly. So if Bars are 12 blocks long and you have 2 of them that is 72 quick and fairly easy keybingings. Be pretty cool if ther was function that you could toggle that would make it so that ounce you page down hit ability the it automatical goes back to main action bar. In WoW this could be don through a macro.
Another function is to have a bar appear when a page button is pushed. Which is basicall a page up or down function but works this way. You push the Page1(1-10 depending on number of pages) button. After which the Page 1 bar appears above or below your main action bar and after ability is in the page 1 bar the bar just disapears.