Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Dev Discussion #36 - User Interface
Glorious Ashes community - it's time for another Dev Discussion! Dev Discussion topics are kind of like a "reverse Q&A" - rather than you asking us questions about Ashes of Creation, we want to ask YOU what your thoughts are.
Our design team has compiled a list of burning questions we'd love to get your feedback on regarding gameplay, your past MMO experiences, and more. Join in on the Dev Discussion and share what makes gaming special to you!
Dev Discussion - User Interface
Do you prefer to set up your UI very minimally, cover your screen with as much information as you possibly can, or something in between? What UI information is absolutely essential to you?
Keep an eye out for our next Dev Discussion topic regarding Holidays!
UPDATE: Greetings friends - thank you all again for taking the time to join in on this discussion! After putting together a recap for our team, check out some of the top notes you shared with us below:
- The large majority of players would like a variety of customization options, allowing them to both load their screens with as much information as possible, or clean it up for a minimalistic appearance.
- Many players expressed a desire for the ability to export, import, save, and share multiple UI setups.
- There were some players who rallied behind the idea of UI elements that dynamically change according to content you’re doing (ex. exploring, raiding, sieging, RP, solo/group content, etc.).
- A few players would prefer a simple “less is more” approach to their UI.
While many people shared many wonderful ideas, there was one that stood out in particular:
Nothing burned my taters like realizing I couldn't be competitive in WoW Arena without covering 80% of my screen real estate with blocks of bologna.
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Comments
One thing that always annoyed me about wow but I put up with was all the screen clutter.
I speculate we're talking about stats on the screen for health bars, buffs, debuffs, timers, damage, heals, and graphical points of interests?
If i answer freely, i would like to be able to customize the UI.
In many mmos, we end up downloading addons to rearrange/add/remove visuals on the screen.
Having that from the get-go would prevent/diminish the need for people to ask for such addons.
For hardcore players sometimes having many things in the screen is a must, but for casual players having too much infos in the screen can be a deterrent from enjoying the game.
Thank you for your time. Have a good day
Definitely need the basics on screen, such as the minimap, health, mana, skills and abilities. If we have these as well as toggles to add more, or reduce, I think you'll make many happy campers in AOC.
KISS - You should develop with this in mind!
Keep It Simple Stupid
That being said you can achieve a very compact way of expressing that without overwhelming people who might want less than more. I think it's very important the least information provided includes the "basics."
As far as floating damage numbers in combat etc that should all be toggleable but included. Knowing when you crit etc is something people usually expect to be able to observe.
To answer the question directly: I personally like to see as much info as possible that is usable to me. For example in eso I played a tank; the way taunt worked is that you would use an ability that had a taunt debuff associated with the damage the skill did. So if the skill had a dot I didn't care to see that so I toggled dots off but I toggled initial hits on. That gave me a confirmation visually on the mob I was trying to taunt; I was able to see that I did indeed taunt them because the floating damage number proc'd over them.
I also used the function of target frames which allowed me to look at a mob or enemy player to see what debuffs ot buffs they had so I can make more informed decisions. Like if my healing debuff is still on them etc
I personally like "essential" stuff or things that I need, depending on situation, visible. The rest can go away (looking at you BDO).
Assuming you're not in a group for raid or dungeon (where the names start popping up), I think there's no need for other than HP/Resource bar, experience bar, FPS AND LATENCY (please), hotbar/skill bar, minimap and quest tracker.
If then you let us customize everything, for example make the minimap bigger for those who use it that way, or let us set the order/size/amount of the quest tracker on the side, the position and size of bars, etc. then it's golden. If you like more info on screen, just activate it / configure it, place it, done. If you like less, deactivate it, done. Do you like the old school HP/MP bar on left top? You can. Do you like it in the middle and bottom, center around character? You can. Bigger or smaller group names, do they go vertical or horizontal, how many columns?. Side tracker, do you want up to 5 quests to appear or unlimited? Would you prefer quests to be ordered by age / time acquired or by zone/location?
Do you like fewer longer hotbars for skills, or do you like more and smaller into squares? Are HP bars blank, do they have info? If yes, is it numbers, percentage or both?.
Another key thing, let us move windows around and resize them. I can't say how many times I opened 2 or 3 at the same time and then have to close the first one, to see the second, to then close it and see the third, to close it and then open 2nd again, and so on and so forth. I know that's kind of my fault for not having a 1080p monitor but I mean, if other games did it you should too!
I also think that each element that will be included in the UI should be able to be customized in basically 4 ways;
- Size/Scale
- Width/Height
- Be able to move it anywhere on the screen. This will allow total freedom to make a layout that suits each individual, such has having minimap with action bars at the bottom of the screen rather than the traditional one with minimap on top right and action bars on bottom.
When it comes to Combat text, so damage numbers, heals received etc, i would like that this can be customized in various ways.
- Size of the text
- Changing font and color
- A checklist of what information you want it to display
- Direction of where what type of information goes and what is highlighted. This could be a big ask, but ideally that is something i would enjoy. So as an example; Damage dealt goes up, Heals received left, persistant damage (DOT's) right. This is merely a random example.
Just my two cents of the top of my head.
To start off with, I feel like there should be the bare minimum on the UI. Health, Mana, Action Bar & Minimap. I like the idea that everyone's starting experience should be they are a player in a world that is bigger than themselves. A UI that has too much information can hinder that but there should be options to enable additional UI features.
It doesnt because I destroy them in PvP.
AoC UI must have:
Skills hotbar (ff14 has great costumizations for that)
HP/MP
Lv/XP progress bar
Target mob HP (NO PLAYER TARGET HP)
Raidboss % hp bar
Selfbuff bar
Debuff bar
Active quests drop-down
Target player debuff bar (NO VISIBLE BUFF LIST FOR TARGET PLAYERS, just the visual art for effects during duration, like auras etc)
Group HP/MP (my suggestion is to minimize zerg gameplay by not providing raid group windows, effectively restricting the ease at which healers can assist non-group members. So no raid members HP/MP windows. Just a raid icon without the full list of raid members)
Minimal mini map with player directional arrow and group member dots.
Character, inv, skills, guild, quest, system etc etc box, with icons for all the above.
Chat box
Free to move and resize as well as control the opacity. Font size options as well.
I rly dont want to see combas or minimap or on screen hovering POI icons like eso, witcher, AC and other games that make you play looking at the objective minimap 100% of the time.
If we are questing and we are supposed to gather 10 roses for example, dont put an indicator over the flower. Make us look at the actual flowers and their visual art.
Only thing I can really say is that I prefer to have more information readily available. I'm not a fan of "minimalistic" UI, if that means important stuff is hard or impossible to find. Of course it doesn't ALL need to be on my screen at the same time. So I'd like options to show/hide stuff in different contexts (mostly in or out of combat).
As an example, if I'm playing at a high level, then I could potentially be making decisions based on small things like buffs/debuffs/resources (maybe even cooldowns) on my allies and enemies. A minimalist approach would probably cut that stuff out, but I'd want it on-screen basically any time I'm in a party.
Some features I'd like to see:
PLAYERS ON THE MAP! Good god! I used to play Star Wars: Galaxies and then went to playing Star Wars: The Old Republic. In SWG, you could see dots in the map to tell you where other players were (unless they were stealthed) and could get a feeling of how busy an area was. This would also give you an idea when a hostile player was approaching you. In SWTOR? There was ***NOTHING***! You never got a feel for traffic of other players, could never tell when someone else was nearby, and - unless you happened to be looking in the right direction - were left completely blind-sided when a hostile player was coming at you.
We should be able to re-size the mini-map and move it around.
We should be able to have MULTIPLE CHAT-BOXES, as well; If I want to put different channels and messages in different places on the screen, then this should totally be a UI option.
Also, if possible have a way to export/import UI setups between people. If I run mine a certain way, and someone likes the layout and wants to try it for themselves all I'd have to do is export/copy a code to my clipboard and give it to them. Then they could copy paste/import it into their UI and have my exact layout. I think that would also be a cool option to have.
my skils
quest list open permanantly
mana life bar , and those of my target
minimap
open, close, move the chat ( text )
nothing more
fully customizable if you can
the problem of the game is not the
our avatar look like barely articulated wire, motion animations are rigid, fixed postures are not natural.
Unless there's a button I'm missing, I'm really upset with New World right now for not subdividing all my resistances into something I can view at a glance. I'm not into that. Don't make me sit there doing math on my attributes and gear just to know what I have going for me, let it be something I can look up with ease. I'd personally like an attributes modeler so I can see what the damage of a spell will be with X gear vs Y gear (ESPECIALLY before I buy it) but that can be a tool for the AoC app.
I love that idea!