Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
It seems like all the functionality is there. I'd still like to see the UI while at crafting stations, a UI for node information, and a stamina meter. I really like the system in chivalry 2, not only do they have a regular stamina bar but also a small transparent shield that appears only when you're holding block, that way you don't have to be constantly checking the meter in the middle of combat.
Overall, I like where this is going. I think the combination of having UI that is minimalistic, informative and fully customizable is a winning recipe.
I am playing Hogwarts Legacy currently, the UI was clearly designed for consoles. I am playing it with mouse and keyboard and I must say that I really like to have 4 skill bars that I can actively toggle them and control skills with same keys.
So I would really like to be able to do it also in AoC.
e.g.
map 4 keys (Q,E,R,V) to control skills and then map 4 keys (1,2,3,4) to each skill bar, but on each bar I can use
keys Q,E,R,V.
Would be nice to simultaneously have access to key combos like "mouse side button" + Q.
So I have option to switch skill bar or I can press button + skill button to activate skill on second skill bar but bars won't change.
Also I'd like to have option to see all 4 bars and clearly see which is active one, so it's easy to see all skill cooldowns.
Personally I think this is really powerfull and simple way how to reach muscle memory, because you can effectively group skills, In the example above I could have all CC on key "E" and add some supportive skills that could have synergy with the CC on same skill bar. And then I have access to multiple combos each using same keys effectively.
btw I really like what was shown in this month's stream
SWTOR has an incredible ui editor. One thing that I really liked though above all (as someone who mainly plays as a tank) is the "target of target" UI. So when you click on an enemy, you can see if they are focusing on you, or someone else.
Good, but can be better. Archetype icons on nameplates in game for example are not good.
↓You showed us that you have a good iconography to represent each archetype.↓
↓But you ruining them by making them looking cheap.↓
You should keep it simple and elegant, don’t make it like something come from mobile games made by China.
* Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the UI Progress and Processes?
Most you showed us were great. But few things are not great such like making good icons looking cheap.
You should really notice that you draw both 3d and 2d bow wrong, the strings you draw are attached or tied on bow limbs in stead of string notches which means they will break in few shots and those bow ears are not only meaningless but also making those bow heavier and less efficient.
For immersive quest dialogue or say when player talk to npc to have conversation for information or about quest. I personally consider it should be a performance to player. Therefore I prefer the way like how Zelda: BotW(my favorite), FF14 or Immersion addon for WoW did the conversation between player and npc. Elegant camera work that point out who I am talking to. Make it like how a real conversation like instead of throwing too much dialogue log at once to player. Nice chat bubble design that won't block game screen. Able to use keyboard ex:123 key to control which dialogue/option/path I want. To me, you should at least consider Immersion addon for WoW:
I really enjoyed the effort you all have been putting into Ashes of Creation and you really have people looking forward to the UI development. The only question / suggestion that I have is will you have a gradient option for transparency. So if we want to have lot of bars and slots available can we make some of them more see-thorough so that we can still se the play area. I would include the option to hide unused slots hidden.
All the best.
I agree with the poster above. The iconography at its core is great and maybe shouldn't be colorized. I would keep archetype/class icons to two colors as they were rendered in the "Iconography" chart. They're a bit hard to read when they're colored blue, red, yellow and green as in the screenshot.
I'm mostly open to the quest log design for now. The theming looks great so far. In some other games, I've seen them swap camera position and zoom during dialogue and offset the dialogue window to the side of the POI as to not occlude them. Some make the dialogue choices transparent too but I'm not too sure how well it can handle more details/text.
Some parallels to other MMO's:
Some MMO's I've played are Eve Online, Black Desert Online, and New World. In terms handling a plethora of data on the screen at once, I think Eve Online does it the best. Each window side shows markers when you drag them close enough to snap to something. The data shows well when there's very little background noise and high transparency on each window.
New World chat system is unique and very nicely laid out. Hitting the "Enter" key any time, activates the chat input and chat window outlines to show that you're in chat mode. Otherwise, only the chat text itself is showing and the windows are transparent. The chat settings are intuitive and simple. The disadvantage is that in New World you can't create custom group chats like in Eve Online. Eve Online chat groups are optionally password protected and have some moderation features available to the chat owner/admins as well.
In Black Desert Online, I would split the chat into two windows with the top one being for listing loot drops collected and bottom chat for regular communications.
It would be nice if there was a pinging function similar to '@' in Discord that would light up the chat tab in a way that's different from when there's just regular chat updates. That way you'll know if someone was addressing you directly.
Would there be a way to access crafting functions from within the inventory/backpack?
As for the HP/mana bars, I'd prefer to be able to resize them and be able to place them near the bottom of the screen near the action listings. I'd also recommend being able to add flashing animations of some sort to both HP and mana as they're being affected (larger flashes for bigger changes in HP/mana maybe?).
It's good to see that the development team has a process/pipeline for designing and implementing UI elements that tie in work from the various sub-teams.
Despite being the player's primary way of interacting with the world, I think UIs often contribute to taking a player out of the world, they're artificial by nature and not reflective of any real-world thing, but they're of course very necessary. A dialogue window is unique in that it's a player's only window into a conversation between themself and a virtual character, something that's potentially immersive, yet it's presented inside an unimmersive window. As nice as the window looks, it's something that's physically blocking the player's view of the immersive space (the world) and also the parties of the dialogue. In a somewhat extreme comparison, it's like alt+tabbing and playing a choose-your-own adventure book in a different window.
I think a dialogue window should take up as little space as possible and not block the player's view, the player should especially be able to see parties to the dialogue. That in mind, something akin to the alpha 1 dialogue window at the bottom of the screen is a good start, it just needs jazzing up.
What not to do is something akin to World of Warcraft's quest dialog window, which the current iteration is actually somewhat similar to in terms of obtrusiveness, although this one is a lot prettier. Also bad is GW2's system of yanking the player out of the game space. It somehow manages to be fully voiced and at the same time bad. Anything that hijacks the camera I feel doesn't work well in an MMO.
I really like the journal UI. Looks colourful without being annoying.
I like the minimalist style of the hotbars.
I like the party member nameplates on the side.
I like the direction you're going with the spell iconography.
I like the direction you're going with the UI buttons.
I really, really do not like the character equipment/stat sheet as shown below. Looks quite "cheap" and low quality in my personal opinion and I can't say why.
Finally, I agree with Astrolite that dead space should be avoided. You could easily slim-down the bar like this:
I play a raid tank in Everquest 2 and I love their threat meter. So the EQ 2 default threat meter allows you to (in a visually attractive way) see me as top hate (the background within the black circle bursts into flames and moves) with a numerical value of 100 displayed in front of the flames. I am the top hated number, because I am 100/100. Other peoples threat as they are fighting (when I'm playing my Enchanter, for example) in a group/raid setting might show a numerical value of 42, in yellow text (displaying the text from yellow -> oj -> red depending on the value of the number [84 being mostly reddish-oj]) with a black background, as I am not generating as much hate as our group/raid tank is. So aside from not being punched in the face, I know I'm not stealing the hate from the tank.
The number, when tanking, will also display below my 100, a numerical value with smaller text just below it. It may be an 84 with reddish-oj text or a yellow 21. This text indicates who has the next highest threat against the mob. It allows me as a tank to determine how many taunts I need to be spamming if I'm working in tandem with my Off Tank to ensure we keep the highest positioning for threat or to see that I am doing well with hate maintenance so I don't need to be spamming my taunts and can focus on defensive maneuvers or damage.
Love what you're doing here with Ashes, but this is by far my favorite "threat/hate meter" that can still be attractive and UI-wise could be very easily tied in with Colby's awesome work!
I would like to be able to have my own folder and be able to select (drag+drop) certain set of items to be there for quick access. I don't necessarily want to click the filter tab for items every time I'm looking for something. For me personally, it would be a lot easier to toggle to my own folder and access the specific items I have chosen.
Other than that, I'm really looking forward to seeing functionality and how that works.
The status effects should go over the health/mana in the Raid frames rather than have spread out information. I feel the change should be personalised so Cleric sees the heals and Bards see the buffs etc whilst a player sees the personal status effects in a different window (to be moved anywhere wanted). I don't want the same information in two different aspects of the UI like some WoW Addons.
It can be difficult to fit everything in and we don't want an overwhelming experience. I haven't seen the raid frame since A1 and I'm not sure if there has been a change. I hope I've made sense.
It would mean we can time skills rather than watch floating numbers to see what's happening - I assume more than 1 Cleric and 1 Bard will be in a raid for example.
Edit: formatting. Also, there does seem to be some heals added into the status effect, I checked on my laptop because I was on my phone. Yet, the conviction etc also goes up there so my point still stands. I can't see what another group member sees though, only the active player. I apologise for any errors and confusion.
Just another note to state that in an ideal world positive status effects and negative status effects have separate dedicated windows each. It would be optimal if these can both be placed wherever we want them. The class resources should probably also have a dedicated window/ui element like Rage for WoW Warrior.
Shadowbane's UI still holds up as one of the best designed in a MMO. Being able to adjust transparency, key bind, and delete on every element. You could enable a snap to grid option to line all elements up. All element windows could be resized and dragged. Chat channel windows could be separated.
Second point: when crafting ( not sure at the moment if during craft we will need to have all items in inventory, or WH will be used from the same town), but here similar function could be used so selecting WHs from other town to see if possible to craft item from what I have quickly. This would save quite some time for planning, like go and collect materials from other towns in one place or decide and farm in local area, as one of scenarios.
How do you feel about the direction the UI is taking, based on what we shared during the February Development Update?
Legitimately love the art style and design. I think its absolutely brilliant. But what I think ya'll should endeavor to do is to make many different style skins inside of it. Yes there needs to be sliders so that you can greatly customize the elements...but having completely different skins for players to select from will be amazing.
What are your favorite UI elements that you would like us to incorporate? Please provide examples when applicable.
I actually really like the journal and quest acceptance screens. Is the plan if a player does complete the optional objectives...is that going to automatically appear as part of the UI? Or is that actually going to be something discovered upon actually finishing the quests? Especially I could see some optional objectives will fail because you succeeded in a different optional objective. (maybe not relevant...but I kinda do hope thats relevant...)
Now an idea that I love is from Paradox's Grand Strategy Games. Which is the Drill Down UI Tooltips, that are just absolutely brilliant if you can make it work. When you hover into a tooltip it will highlight all the keywords from that tooltip. And then again, and again, and again. This is a great way to introduce concepts to players especially where in a game there can be so many overlying mechanics. Here is an example of what I love. They use this specifically in Victoria 3 and Crusader Kings 3.
I have spent many time and day hovering over one aspect of another. And as MMO players its so important to READ YOUR TOOLTIPS!!! This will make that experience even better.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the UI Progress and Processes?
There is one huge red flag that Steven said that is greatly concerning to me. Okay that might be an exaggeration but eh I'll go with it.
Us being unable to share UIs could be extremely limiting. Going based off with the idea that the amount of different UIs we can have will be limited. I know we might be able to change based off raiding and so forth, what our UI will be like between being in party mode and/or solo. Maybe if we are in gathering/artisan mode and just out exploring with our combat skills.
What if we want to share these UIs between our characters? Are our UIs character bound or account bound? Now I fully admit some of these features dont always exist with all games, but if they do exist oh it would be sooooo good.
I personally do like customizing my UI but I do think a lot of players love to steal and to give them the ability to steal will make the game better for them. Especially if you can customize certain aspects like hiding certain hotbars while your mid-combat. (Like usually I have a hotbar with my mount, foods, other items that can't be used mid-combat but I want easy availability to.)
Oh and please if you haven't thought about it. I use an MMO mouse with the keys on the side, and I mimic my hotbars based off that mouse like a 3 x 4 hotbar instead of 1x12 hotbar. Just options!!! Just give me so many options and I'll be happy.
I personally have nothing against the UI, To me simple is best, especially when its an MMO and you have super flashy weapons.
that being said something that could be added on too ( and I'm sorry UI team if it goes threw ) is maybe having an effect border where if your hit with say fire and your ignited maybe the edges of your screen crackle and ignite minorly, or maybe to know what ability your using have it as a border to make an impact obviously allow it to be Toggled.
What are your favourite UI elements that you would like us to incorporate? Please provide examples when applicable.
I don't really have that many UI ideas in mind to be able to give a solid opinion nor have I seen any that I've really enjoyed or disliked, besides maybe the WOW meter bars that are super bulky and bright I would HATE to see that in the core game takes away from the MMO feel to me, I guess if I had to choose an UI element from a game i'd have to be WoW's border icon.
I really dislike where WoW went and have stopped playing for a while now but this icon was one of the few cool things I liked, I would maybe instead of making it for a World Boss or a Raid boss id maybe like to have it over Professions in stead, so while in town it pops up and people can identify you as a ( insert Gathering, Processing, Crafting class icon ) That would definitely be a unique use for Border icons in a Town environment.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the UI Progress and Processes?
Nothing with the Processes I'm not a UI expert of 12 years was it? so I have no real right in commenting on it but the Progress is amazing all I can think about now is that soon all the iconography and borders will be there for use, one step leads to another and bam games released.
I think I'm most excited for my chosen classes icons, and abilities icons, armour is all well and good but they can be improved, it normally takes ages for a spell icon to change if it even gets the change so I'm hoping they all look really cool and easy to know what they do if that makes sense from a picture standpoint ( I.E seeing a Blood red arrow ability then the shot is like a green trap or something along those lines )
Besides all that Can't wait for the Tower of Carphin Raid show case and just to add ignore the ones saying " how bad a tank/ healer/ Dps blah blah is, its refreshing to see people play at a casual level who make mistakes and so on, that cleric update would have been really boring in my opinion if you all just swept threw with no problems, it actually looked like a proper group of friends playing for fun and I'm excited to feel like that when I finally get my hands on the game.
Edited: had a thought I think there should be a Server wide Announcement when someone reaches any major significant achievement like becoming King, Queen, Mayor and Reaching Teir4 Max with your Gathering, Processing, Crafting skill that you go into, and that UI should be nice and Flary to really give someone and others a Sense of Accomplishment, pride and Acknowledgment, that in my opinion brings a community together all you need to do is watch the WoW Hardcore videos when someone dies they all come together and F in chat or scream Noo after a level 60 drops to something dumb, stuff like that made Vanilla wow great and it could make this perfect
I don't think you can have multiple "storage" since your meant to stick to one town and get a citizen ship, on top of that Homesteads will give you more Storage as well apparently, and to the Crafting if it is outside of Town I don't think just pulling it from another town ages away is very fun, would pull away the need for Caravans, I would assume/ bet on having to have the materials with you, but in reality how much could you really make out in the open that's decent gear without the proper table. that's my 2 cents on it
For example, I'm wandering around the map and skillbar is hidden while my minimap is at 50% opacity, there's an enemy player ahead and I enter combat mode which brings up the skillbar, after the fight ends the skillbar fades out and becomes hidden again.
Those additions would make for a more immersive gameplay for sure but my main point was managing static content burn-in when playing the game for thousands of hours on an OLED panel.
The quest window doesnt look terrible, and understood what steven had said about the quest dialog on the bottom, but I actually would've liked to see you guys work on the quest dialogue box at the bottom of the screen. The blocky window that was shown just reminds me too much of old school dated games. I like the immersion to draw me in - into actually reading the quest. They could've cleaned up and come up with some borders or made it seem more 3Dish windows for Quest dialogue.
The only other thing that I didnt care for much at all was the Character/Equipment window. It looked really blan and reminded me of EQ Character sheet. The only good example i could possibly give is I like how FFXIV did theirs where the equipment boxes were kinda rounded on the edges and gave that 3D effect almost.. here's what i mean:
Intrepid showcased "IN ITS CURRENT NON-FINISHED STATE":
EQ Character sheet:
FFXIV Character/ Equipment sheet:
And with that, overall, I think you guys did a great job outside of those two things I didn't really like visually in its current state. Thank you all for giving us the ability to have a very customizable UI
Keep up the great work Intrepid!
- Please have a hover over setting popup text box that explains what that specific setting does. In that popup, also have a little note for how much of a hit on FPS it would absorb. Ex, (Very High FPS consumption), (High FPS Consumption), (Med FPS Consumption), (Low FPS consumption), (Min/No FPS consumption). Something along the lines of this.
I find this very nice for players that don't understand the tech lingo. Usually I have to explain things to friends and every once in a while there's something I'm iffy about too on games that have an insane amount of settings.
I'd like to have the ability to hide a choice of UI windows. I really love to have only hot bars and/or minimap shown when im exploring. Even have the ability to have the Hotbar UI fade out after set timer of not being used. That way I could enjoy and explore the amazing world Intrepids Environmental and artists team created. Please allow us to hide these windows and have the ability to have Hotbar fade out.
As a retired engineer I can totally get behind the nuts and bolts of how this is being built and appreciate it. With that said, I'd like for you all to ponder this little idea if at all possible. What about making the UI Malleable? As we've seen the advent of REAL seasons being added to the gaming infrastructure, then why not changeup the looks, the makeup of the UI as the months go by? I mean you have the ability to do this with UE5 at the helm! The toolboxes in that engine are undeniably incredible and make production of such UI changeups a simple matter. I'm sure this idea has already been introduced somewhere along the line of desks there at Intrepid, however, I wanted to pass it along "just in case" it hadn't. Kind of like a game within a game when you think about it in those terms, you could even setup the UI builder toolbox as a contest in the future for players to try their hand at making a cool "theme style" UI for some promotion and such. With many holidays, and future expansions to come, there would never be a lack of content to utilize when it comes to UI Creation. I honestly believe that educational interactions like this for our gaming community will always be one of the cornerstones of our industry and helps to provide an "inside look" at what it takes to create just a small part of a game and the knowledge learned from that experience can help fuel the next generation of game designers and coders. Once again, Thank You for your time, it's much appreciated and I hope to see you soon! [Did someone say Pizza Party?.... heh heh] - Sincerely, Nylfaen
So I think the path Ashes is going is fantastic. Simple familiar UI. If anything maybe includes more complex features as optional in the setting.
Now NARC did a create video on the UI but one key point or idea he made with UI and threat was very cool.
Summary:
- At the name of the NPC or mob when aggroed have a highlighted green around the name. When losing aggro or about to lose have orange. When lost or no agro has yellow.
- It is simply easy to see and clear.
Here is Chromatic Steak's Rendition:
Thank you.
The main thing I would love to see with the ui is allowing certain ui elements able to breakout of the game screen (character screen, inventory, crafting). Black desert did this and it was very helpful to be able to keep your inventory up (and interact with it) on another screen while you are still playing the game on your main screen.