Nameplates? Highlight visual spell effect? Draw order? Transparency? Solutions to "decluttering" UI

I've been ranting about UI issues lately, and the main point is to find ways for relevant game information to come out of the clutter and into our minds during combat. With so many opaque visual spell effects and other things happening in battle, it can be next to impossible to see triggers and combos that are relevant to your character. Ideally, we can find a way to do this without ruining "immersion" too much.

Picture a battlefield with a group of allies and enemies. Now picture all the visual spell effects going on. At one place, there is a giant ball lightning moving slowly in a blizzard. You see blood splurting all over the place from the ball and one of your ally fighters is standing right beside it, beating on something. Turns out it is a tripped mage! And to think you had the perfect skill to use on him but there was no way of telling.

Or maybe your abilities combo with a "chilled" or "on flames" debuff. Whatever condition it is, you want to know when the enemies have it, and don't necessarily care about all the other ones as much.

We could take this a step further. Maybe you really want to know when the enemy has "reduce incoming damage by 30%" spell on, but don't care about their "reduce incoming damage by 5%" spell.

The main problem is that there are so many visual spell effects and conditions that don't affect your decision making, and they all stack and overlap. This is why we can't rely on default spell effect immersion alone to properly control your character in a competitive PVP environment.

I solved this issue in WOW by using a nameplate addon called "Plater". This works well for small 2v2, 3v3 arenas and even the 15v15 battlegrounds. The 40x40 BGs still work but I admit that it starts to feel cluttered.

It took me a very long time to set up. Too long. I had to manually add each spell I wanted, from each class and spec. This is the love/hate relationship with addons.

Ideally, I would want a setup like this for 2v2 arenas and small battles.
It was a long and gruelling process to get this addon configured to my taste.

However...

Now I can clearly see when they have their defensive and offensive cooldowns up. I can tell when my bleeds are on them. I can clearly distinguish between allies and enemies. I can easily tell what class they are, whether or not they are in combat (important for a rogue), and see what they are casting and how long to finish. I can see their HP bar clearly. I can time stuns with a diminishing return tracker.

Now, I am not saying that AoC needs to do all this. In fact, I hope that they can find a better way to do what I am attempting to do. I am simply using some addon I found as best I can. For sure having the ability to adjust size/position/colour/triggers/opacity of anything nameplate related is key.

Nameplates probably aren't the best place for all this information. Sure, some important information isn't conveyed through visual spell effects, but for those that already have the spell effects, why not utilize them? Oh right, because they are hidden behind other spell effects...

Well...

What if we had the ability, in the game UI, to "highlight" specific spell effects. You could click the "tripped" button and then when a player is tripped, they become highlighted on the battlefield in yellow. Or when they are "bleeding" the blood is highlighted.

Or maybe you could assign "Draw Order" to each visual spell effect. If I put bleeding on 1, shield wall on 2, ball lightning on 3, etc. Then if all 3 visual spell effects are overlapping, the blood will show on top and the ball lightning will be behind.

Or we can assign "Transparency" values to each visual spell effect so that the important ones pop out at us.

To be honest, I don't really want to rely on nameplates for all of this information, as they just block more stuff. Ideally we can get it through the spell effects that already exist for the most part.

There are probably LOTS of other ideas out there. Do you have any?

Realistically we all have different preferences, so the ability to adjust the UI is very important. This is definitely an issue that needs to be resolved if we are expected to time dope combos on mofos in the middle of a battle and feel like super stars, highfiving each other and cheering and grinning. Hopefully something to explore in Alpha 2?

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Xeeg

Just looking at my settings made me want to change things lol. Messed around with transparency settings, shrunk the health bar a bit, changed friendly player names to green and enemies to red. Tried the 40v40 battleground.

0-25 yards - 90% (shadowstep range)
25-60 yards - 60%
>60 yards - nameplate off

daveywavey

Xeeg wrote: »

What if we had the ability, in the game UI, to "highlight" specific spell effects. You could click the "tripped" button and then when a player is tripped, they become highlighted on the battlefield in yellow. Or when they are "bleeding" the blood is highlighted.

What colour would they be if they were both tripped and bleeding?!

akabear

I long for a game that dispenses will all supplementary visuals aids and just provides all the tells required on the player, the enemy and the surrounding ground.

Arya_Yeshe

akabear wrote: »

I long for a game that dispenses will all supplementary visuals aids and just provides all the tells required on the player, the enemy and the surrounding ground.

I totally agree with that, it would be much better if players had to select the for bigger distances target and see all nameplates within a specific range. I'm tired of seeing countless health bars cluttering up the screen, especially when characters are hidden behind walls or bushes

Blip

daveywavey wrote: »

Xeeg wrote: »

What if we had the ability, in the game UI, to "highlight" specific spell effects. You could click the "tripped" button and then when a player is tripped, they become highlighted on the battlefield in yellow. Or when they are "bleeding" the blood is highlighted.

What colour would they be if they were both tripped and bleeding?!

I dont want anything to be only convaid with colors, if your colorblind your out of the game.

But options like the addon from OP whould be great IMO.

Laetitian

Nameplates probably aren't the best place for all this information. Sure, some important information isn't conveyed through visual spell effects, but for those that already have the spell effects, why not utilize them?

So many reasons.

- More player skill if your decisionmaking isn't based on reading a spreadsheet to identify the right thing to do, and instead you actually have to generate your information yourself. Imo, cluttered UIs aren't much better than playing a shooter with wall hacks.
The impressive things about pro gameplay is tracking information, paying attention to detail, and reacting the right way quickly. Why are we letting the game do two thirds of it for us?
It's so weird to me that MMO tryhards seem to care so much about skill expression and doing everything optimally, but want everything handed on a platter to them to the point where optimal performance is the default assumption, rather than an achievement. It ruins both the challenge and the reward.

- Keep the devs honest. Less UI information means the 3d information has to be legible, which means less clutter staying on the screen, clear vfx matching their skill effect, and important effects remain visible as long as they're active.
The more the UI replaces that information, the more the vfx department can lazily prioritise "feels good" and "impressive" over "clear."

- Nameplates look fucking ugly. Show an MMO with nameplates constantly toggled on to any casual player and try to get them to agree that your game looks pretty. Guess what's the first thing they say.

The best way to handle nameplates is to have them turned off by default and have them toggle on by a held button. Perhaps one button for enemies one for allies.
(The target you have selected is an exception; you should always get information on that, unless you opt out because you have a very unique custom setup disabling it.)

Let them only display health and name. You can add extra information about non-sensitive buff information on your selected target. (i.e. you don't get the info if they weren't on your screen when the buff was cast, unless it's a buff with a persistent visual effect in 3d)

Everything else, you just need to be able to pay attention to and read in the situation yourself.

We could take this a step further. Maybe you really want to know when the enemy has "reduce incoming damage by 30%" spell on, but don't care about their "reduce incoming damage by 5%" spell.

The main problem is that there are so many visual spell effects and conditions that don't affect your decision making, and they all stack and overlap. This is why we can't rely on default spell effect immersion alone to properly control your character in a competitive PVP environment.

I find "minor buffs" and "minor debuffs" to be utterly pointless. Everyone just rushes to find ways to optimise getting all of them. Completely removes the point of a vast skill system and variety, if everyone rushes to get the same effects in different ways.

My take is very clearly that those just shouldn't exist. If they do exist, yes, they shouldn't be displayed in the UI. Or if people insist to be able to see them, make them optional and turn them off by default. But honestly none of this should even be in the game.

All of these issues are solved by my general take on skill design. Make bigger skills with longer cooldowns and bigger costs, and more unique effects, and make many of them to fill several skill bars. Make buffs that last long, crucial effects that need to be dispelled, powerful abilities that force enemies to pay attention to you when you churn them out, and use their equally powerful abilities to prepare for them or cancel them. The minor effects can all be passives and weapon stats no one needs to be able to see.

Ludullu

Laetitian wrote: »

So many reasons.

This pretty much says everything that I was too lazy to say

Xeeg

akabear wrote: »

I long for a game that dispenses will all supplementary visuals aids and just provides all the tells required on the player, the enemy and the surrounding ground.

Diablo 4 is basically like that. Although it does tell you when they get the vulnerable condition.

Xeeg

Laetitian wrote: »

Nameplates probably aren't the best place for all this information. Sure, some important information isn't conveyed through visual spell effects, but for those that already have the spell effects, why not utilize them?

So many reasons.

- More player skill if your decisionmaking isn't based on reading a spreadsheet to identify the right thing to do, and instead you actually have to generate your information yourself. Imo, cluttered UIs aren't much better than playing a shooter with wall hacks.
The impressive things about pro gameplay is tracking information, paying attention to detail, and reacting the right way quickly. Why are we letting the game do two thirds of it for us?
It's so weird to me that MMO tryhards seem to care so much about skill expression and doing everything optimally, but want everything handed on a platter to them to the point where optimal performance is the default assumption, rather than an achievement. It ruins both the challenge and the reward.

Wait, this paragraph was me arguing FOR using spell effects to better convey information. I don't think you understood the point I was trying to make.

However, if visual spell effects are overlapping, that is cluttered. The reason I am using nameplates is because the information I want is hidden behind 1000 other effects, it isn't reliable. I am "uncluttering" the information. Maybe there is a better way to do it. I dunno, that's what this post is about.

I don't understand your points though. You seem to equate skill with lack of knowledge for some reason. And then you appear to insult people who want to be good at games by obtaining knowledge of the game, and having that knowledge displayed in a legible format.

Laetitian wrote: »

- Keep the devs honest. Less UI information means the 3d information has to be legible, which means less clutter staying on the screen, clear vfx matching their skill effect, and important effects remain visible as long as they're active.
The more the UI replaces that information, the more the vfx department can lazily prioritise "feels good" and "impressive" over "clear."

This was the whole point of my post, which you completely missed.

Laetitian wrote: »

- Nameplates look fucking ugly. Show an MMO with nameplates constantly toggled on to any casual player and try to get them to agree that your game looks pretty. Guess what's the first thing they say.

Uhhh... this is a really bad point. It's like saying that a Boeing 737 control console looks ugly and any casual person would agree. The real question is, what does the pilot think while using it?

The rest of your points seem to be about how Ashes of Creation should be a go kart with a go kart console, rather than the Boeing 737. Then we don't need all this extra information, right?

There are going to be 8 classes, with about 30 skills each, plus augments, which means something like 500 different "unique looking" spell effects just from the players alone. And then they are all stacking on top of each other. And we are expected to combo off of specific conditions. They are making something closer to a Boeing 737 by the looks of it, like it or not.

I'm currently using a nameplate addon to address this type of issue in WOW. It has been very effective, and I like it. I'm not saying it is perfect, as it is something I keep tweaking. But at least I CAN tweak it.

This is why I am asking about different ideas, and also asking the devs for a lot of custimizeable UI options. If you want to remove everything go right ahead, I don't want to stop you. If you want the default UI to be very simple and clean for noobs, sure. But if my character is comboing hard with trips I want to be able to see who is tripped, or this is going to be a very frustrating game.

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