User interface and unit frames

[ZZSmufa]

One thing that has always bugged me in many games, especially fast, action filled ones such as ARPGs, are the unit frames. Is there any reason that your character's and the current enemy's health and mana are displayed in the far corners of the screen? Other than maximizing the screen real estate; I agree it makes for more pleasing screen shots. It's also valid that other players might find them distracting sitting somewhere nearer your focal point.

I find that it's much easier to keep track of my character when all the relevant information is right there, without needless glancing about. Thus, if in anyway possible, I'd like a fully moddable UI or failing that, at least that the key elements are somehow movable. Feel as you may about the game otherwise, WoW truly shines in this aspect. I mention this only as it pertains to the UI and its wide customizability. How do other players feel about this issue? Do you have some other ideas that should be considered?

[yerkyerk]

Just concerning the GUI, not the controls;
I think it'd be good if we at least had standard positions to display them. I never really liked looking up to see my health and down to see my skill cooldown. Think they'd fit better closer together.

[Zealuu]

If they don't want to make the UI completely customizable, it probably wouldn't kill them to offer a few presets to pick from. You could have a "unit frame in top left corner, skill bar at the mid-bottom" type UI as in TQ, or a "Health - Skillbar - Mana" type bottom display as seen in Diablo, as well as a few other possible combinations.

[Chaos5061]

Would really like to the option to move the UI around. Been playing TQ lately and the placement of the Character Health and Mana Bars has been bugging me. Would like them to be on the bottom right above my skill bar. The closest I could recommend to a moveable UI without having people change the core UI with AddOns would be Rifts UI.

[medierra]

The UI is customizable, modders can release alternative UI's just as they did in TQ.

[Dejnov]

I brought this issue up awhile ago in another forum post and was shot down by Grim Dawn fan boys. Even though there are a lot of us really waiting to see pieces of the development, I think that criticism for bad decisions is still warranted.

A prime example of this is the UI in TQIT. Placing the hitpoint bar and the mana bar in a location outside of the user's focus is a bad design decision. The fact that valuable real estate at the bottom of the screen is used for hotkeys to the quest manual, skill bars, equipment screens, and white space is a true travesty. Who in there right minds in the middle of a battle needs to access there quest manual? I mean seriously? Did anyone actually think that was a design decision that was going to be helpful for the player?

Thank god there wasn't any form of hardcore in TQIT. The lack of UI responsiveness would have killed more characters than any monster/bug in the game. The reason there's hardcore in diablo is because their UI supports it.

Dejnov.

[ASYLUM101]

Although I don't think the UI was the reason hardcore was left out and I think that's kind of a silly assumption to make, I do agree that putting the bars in the middle rather than the top corners is far better. I've played games with my bars all over the place, and having it at the bottom is just way more practical.

[medierra]

A prime example of this is the UI in TQIT. Placing the hitpoint bar and the mana bar in a location outside of the user's focus is a bad design decision. The fact that valuable real estate at the bottom of the screen is used for hotkeys to the quest manual, skill bars, equipment screens, and white space is a true travesty. Who in there right minds in the middle of a battle needs to access there quest manual? I mean seriously? Did anyone actually think that was a design decision that was going to be helpful for the player?


Well, I would say the design failure was not so much in thinking that people would need to access their quest manual in the middle of battle but rather, it was a failure to predict that you'd be staring at the bottom of the screen during combat.

Most of the maps in TQ are oriented towards "northern" progression, so most of the game you're running up, toward the top of the screen or laterally. You rarely run down for any length of time. It was designed this way to accommodate the lack of camera rotation. Since you tend to come upon enemies while running up, and combat generally takes place between the center and top or sides of the screen, I would have assumed that would be the area of focus. Especially if you're playing at the default camera zoom.

When I play, I know what all the skills are on my skillbar and I access them using hotkeys. The enemy target box is also at the top of the screen, why would you need to be looking down?

Sometimes, players don't do what we would do or what we expect though. That is why a lot of companies do usability testing. We didn't get much usability testing on TQ and this was never reported as a problem. Ultimately, it may be that our decision is not what the majority of players would have wanted but, it isn't that we didn't think about it. You can't win them all.

We've talked about changing it for other reasons though and that may still happen. From my perspective as a player, the top of the screen is a good place to have it, in terms of visibility but aesthetically, it sort of obstructs the view forward. This is especially bothersome in GD where the camera is angled forward a little more and you can rotate it. So, time allowing, you may get your wish.

[yerkyerk]

Most of the maps in TQ are oriented towards "northern" progression, so most of the game you're running up, toward the top of the screen or laterally. You rarely run down for any length of time. It was designed this way to accommodate the lack of camera rotation. Since you tend to come upon enemies while running up, and combat generally takes place between the center and top or sides of the screen, I would have assumed that would be the area of focus. Especially if you're playing at the default camera zoom.
A great number of deaths in my hardcore challenges were partially due to the healthbar being in an er... unhealthy location in TQ. Focus is center/down - because not only the skills are useful, cooldown for skills are as well (and cooldown for potions). I think bot is the best location. Either way, dividing elements of the HUD (especially elements that need to be focussed on) over the entire screen is not a good idea. You have to look at the center for the action, at the bottom for skill cooldowns and occasionally topleft to see if your healthbar is still doing ok. Because honestly, I wouldn't look at the healthbar that often, it usually (over 99% of the time) was ok. Which caused focus to shift.

Ofcourse, D2 had the giant health orbs, which were very visible. Perhaps the size of the healthbars were the problem as well... When a small healthbar hidden in the topleft corner of the screen is depleted, it's not very noticeable. When a giant-ass health orb in your main focus is depleting, it is. This has a lot to do with visibility as well. The main focus of the human eye is a very tiny area, the rest of our vision area takes clues from big changes. It's very possible just not to notice small differences a peripheral visual area.

I brought this issue up awhile ago in another forum post and was shot down by Grim Dawn fan boys.
Links or it didn't happen! :)

[i.n.s.a.n.e]

Medierra, I think the main reason for having the bars at the bottom is the skills' cooldown. As there is no indication (I am glad though) of when a skill comes off the cooldown, a player must be constantly checking the bars for it, and that's where his/her sight is mostly settled then.

Also, having it in a corner of the screen makes human reactions to the bar's status change a bit slower I think (--> bad for hc diff.), opposite to the middle of the bottom or just bottom in general (though with the bars being little bigger for better view).

Not sure if it is just me, but my eyes are always fixed to the middle of the screen, and my peripheral sight is covering the bottom better then the top of it (but I wear glasses and my eyes are broken, so who knows, hehe).

Anyway, I disagree with TQ being bad at it, I think I never died because of it, but it definitely helped my experience when I installed the D2 UI. =)

[NZSpy]

Personally, I thought the UI was fine. The health bar was never an issue for me as I would listen for the 'heartbeat', which was my cue to spam a potion and get the hell out of the way. Also, after playing long enough I would get a feel for how much of a beating my character would take and would only glance at the healthbar when I felt it was getting dangerously low. But that's me.

[yerkyerk]

Personally, I thought the UI was fine. The health bar was never an issue for me as I would listen for the 'heartbeat', which was my cue to spam a potion and get the hell out of the way. Also, after playing long enough I would get a feel for how much of a beating my character would take and would only glance at the healthbar when I felt it was getting dangerously low. But that's me.

Lol, your story supports that there's something pretty wrong with the UI :)

[NZSpy]

Lol, your story very accurately portrays what's wrong with the UI :)

It's all perception. As I stated, 'I' thought it was ok. I don't really understand how that shows how it's bad in any way. I don't fix my eyes to the top or bottom of the screen. I watch the action, my point was I don't need to constantly see the bars, there are other indicators that worked for me.

Besides, I get the feeling it doesn't matter how well designed a UI is someone will find something wrong with it.

[medierra]

Ah yeah, I think skill cool-down is the missing factor. I can see how that would be something people needed to focus on.

We shall endeavor to make the change. We've been talking about doing for a while mainly for aesthetic reasons but what I'm hearing makes me think it even more important to address. It will probably be a few months though before that happens just because the priority is generally to first finish that which is incomplete and then address things that need improvement.

[Dejnov]

I reread my earlier post about the UI and I should apologize a bit for my rant. I think I over-exaggerated the issues with the UI and may have said stuff that would've sounded okay in a conversation (where tone and body language help portray a more accurate picture of the message), but instead can come off as condescending and rude in an internet forum. I will try and rephrase my critique in a more neutral tone.

In TQIT (and Grim Dawn by inference) there are three important things for players to keep abreast of in the middle of the action: your auras, your cool down timers, and your health and mana bars. Since TQIT has skills that can stop auras, you have to pay attention to them. Certain classes only work when their aura is up. This also goes for skill intensive classes. While TQIT had default melee skills, they had a lot of defensive/offensive skills on timers that are valuable to spam for melee intensive fights. The whole point of cool-down reduction being the most valuable mod reflects this argument (if not the most valuable, then one of the top three most valuable mods). Lastly, your health and mana bar are always important, since you die when the health bar goes to zero.

TQIT's UI design was bad in that they separated these three valuable data streams into different sections of the HUD. On large screens player have to focus on a subset of the screen and assume that other stuff is secondary. This is because cool-down timers are a visually intensive graphic; your eyes have to focus on them to notice the sub-second accuracy of the graphic. They cannot be in the peripheral vision. The same goes for health bars (also a visually intensive graphic).


If you're going to maintain the visually intensive graphic approach to maintaining health and cool-down timers in Grim Dawn, then you have to collocate those data streams. Anything else is sub-par.



Dejnov.

This, by the way, isn't the only way to fix this issue. You can instead make cool-down timers for EVERY skill over 20-30 seconds and NEVER allow cool-down timers to be less than 20 seconds. That way players can glance on an ad hoc basis and allow their attention to be somewhere else. If you insist on maintaining split second decision-making for cool-down timers and hit points, please collocate them.

[Harlequin]

Most of the maps in TQ are oriented towards "northern" progression, so most of the game you're running up, toward the top of the screen or laterally. You rarely run down for any length of time.

I never really realized that but it's true. oO

Anyway I personally like it being top because, as you said, I usually have my eyes middle or top and not bot and of course there is always the warning if you get low so yeah hm...maybe I was used to it from Sacred?

[Kirii]

Ah yeah, I think skill cool-down is the missing factor. I can see how that would be something people needed to focus on.

We shall endeavor to make the change. We've been talking about doing for a while mainly for aesthetic reasons but what I'm hearing makes me think it even more important to address. It will probably be a few months though before that happens just because the priority is generally to first finish that which is incomplete and then address things that need improvement.

Want me to do it for ya?:rolleyes:

But seriously the UI can wait until alpha, or even beta phase, since it really doesn't take long to change. You can also get better feedback during those stages to see what people like and dislike.

[Samsonite]

Kirii's Diablo UI for TQIT is as good as it gets for Health + Mana bar position. All information the player needs has to be in one section of the screen if you are really going to play like a pro. Trust me, healing raids in WoW for 4 years teaches you this right away lol.

Here is a SS of Kirii's UI in my mod to give you an example.

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k186/samsonite12/th_Tqit2011-03-2119-36-41-64.jpg (http://s88.photobucket.com/albums/k186/samsonite12/?action=view&current=Tqit2011-03-2119-36-41-64.jpg)

[Dejnov]

Samsonite wrote:Kirii's Diablo UI for TQIT is as good as it gets for Health + Mana bar position. All information the player needs has to be in one section of the screen if you are really going to play like a pro. Trust me, healing raids in WoW for 4 years teaches you this right away lol.

Brilliant!! That is exactly what I've been missing in TQIT. I can't believe I've never seen this mod before. One question: where are the aura shown? That's the only thing that's missing. Other than that brilliant and exactly what Grim Dawn needs.

Dejnov.

P.S. Out of curiosity do you know of any UI mods for Sacred 2? It has the same crappy outlay and I would love to change it. In that game not dying is even more critical because you lose your survival bonus when you do die and I'd like an advanced UI for that game.