Improvements to the Action Bar and Unit Frames ?

From what I can gather from the negative comments about this subject I can see some want quantity over quality. I myself want both and know it takes time to achieve that. People complain enough about bad UI but once they put effort into making it better they are suddenly wasting time? Please explain......

Also, they mentioned changes to the party roster. Gladly welcome changes to make that more visible/aesthetically pleasing.

I'm actually very happy they work on Action Bar. It obviously improved a lot since beta and it's not bad atm, but it still need to be better :D

I would really like to see implemented feature, when I can actually see when I'm pressing or clicking buttons on Action Bar, cos that's something it's missing atm and it would improve Action Bar a lot in my opinion.

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Originally Posted by LuciBlack

I dont like this idea... i mean i wouldnt prefer to use it...
I like to see more of my screen, not less.
Just my opinion.

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I think that is a must have feature, if u think about more skills in future etc, however I'm sure they will consider to having an option to enable and disable that function.

Action bar visibility is fine. Please work on something more worthwhile. Like chocobos. Their visibility is pretty bad right now.

Jesus.. the UI artists cannot work on chocobos or armour sets, or environments or anything else that isn't UI. people have specific roles in the studio, you guys have no idea how retarded you sound when you suggest SE is wasting time on reworking the UI when they could be reworking zones or adding content of some sort.

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Originally Posted by Skuld

Maybe u dont have any problem with it but on bright areas as Thanalan regions it's difficult to see what exactly you have selected, and is worse if you play with a controller cause you have to scroll through the abilities.

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Most of the people who didn't understand are probably people who select skills either by number presses, or by clicking; such as myself since I click my skills for the most part, and press numbers for the others. I know I didn't quite fully understand why this change was needed until I read this post.

Kind of wish it was the first post instead of people just being ****s to the TC ;v

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Originally Posted by LuciBlack

Are 95% of the players blind?
Why is SE spending time on this?

"Action bar graphics will be enhanced to improve overall visibility"

Theres nothing wrong with my action bar visability...

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old action bar: http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/8...lleisteold.jpg
current action bar: http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/2...lleistenow.jpg
new action bar: http://static.finalfantasyxiv.com/to...3e1acfbaa8f404

You see?
In the old action bar, the cursor was more visible than in the current. Now they make it more visible again, what is very good for control players.

This is mostly a controller issue, and more Japanese players expressed problems with it than you may have seen here (because more of them play with a controller). If you play with keyboard+mouse and use the number keys to activate actions (like I do) you won't perceive this as a problem because you don't care which ability is highlighted at all.

It's a pretty big issue if you're playing in a bright area and using a controller or the arrow keys to pick actions though. And since it takes a couple artists no more than a few hours to a day to fix, why not do it? It's not like it's going to take any time away from chocobos or whatever other big thing that's already coming out in 1.19 whether they do this or not.

Yes, I've messed up a few time losing track of the semi glowing halo myself. This is welcomed.

yes im happy with this. hopefully SE will give us some options to change the color. (although it doesnt look like it)
adding bars is a good thing also. just give us the ability to toggle as many as we need.
if they add more bars maybe that will fix the issue were i have to click or retarget mobs to scroll threw the bars.

While you're at it, please make 'light shot' and 'refill' movable and removable. Thanks billions.

They will be adding a bouncing mickey mouse head, so you can sing along to your abilities.

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Originally Posted by LuciBlack

Are 95% of the players blind?

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To the OP: Sensationalist comments like this completely undermine the spirit of the forums. Ask your self, as a developer, would you listen to someone that started their thread with "Are 95% of the players blind?"
All the "If they add xxx I will stab my eyes out" or "If they don't xxx then I'm gonna jump in front of a train" or even "All of you idiots who don't know what you're talking about" just makes you look silly...

All of this forum hyperbole, when used alongside a complaint, comes off tantamount to a child's temper tantrum.
That is not the way an adult gets their point across. Forum Rants are extremely counterproductive.

As far as the point of your thread; What if I told you the Action Bar fix took 1 person 1 hour to change. Would it still be a complete and utter waste? Or would you still think it still could have waited months until bigger problems were fleshed out?

What if I told you people with slight visual impairments have been having trouble playing the game since 1.18 because they have a hard time seeing which ability is highlighted?

Would it then become a major issue for you?

the number #1 priority at ALL times is that the game remain playable by everyone. This was an issue that was hindering people from playing and needed to be addressed.

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Originally Posted by LuciBlack

...Why is SE spending time on this?...

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...and curses to those darn devs working on grammar when I still don't have what I want...a Tail.

@ The people saying it isn't broken are you using a mouse? Because just about everyone I know who uses a controller has trouble with it, myself very much included. I run a 22" HD Monitor 18" from my face and in Thanalan with the sun shining it is almost impossible to see which action you are on.

Just realized this was said many times later in the thread. My bad...

the only improvement i can think of is the highlighted action needs to be more visible. at a quick glance in combat i have a really hard time identifing what skill is selected. aside from that other improvements are welcome.

Cool this was bothering me when I was playing a few days ago. I'm glad they fixed it :).

Also OP, not to insult you're intelligence but i'm sure they did not stop the battle program team, music team, the motion capture actors, sales team, localization team, debuggers, environmental effect programmers, classes designers, story line team, engine designers, battle animators, weapon designers, and etc just to implement this.

Ill bet that it was a guy who knows how to use a tablet and Photoshop and drew some arrows to make make the action bar stick out more. Then he spoke to the UI programmers and they replaced the current highlighter with the new arrows. Then the QA or maybe the programmers tested the to see if it works. Ill bet that this took no more than two days to complete and it was done by a very small group of people. I doubt this completely halted the dev team.

I'm no game designer btw so maybe i'm wrong.

i agree there needs to be a way to move the skills that auto equip to the first empty slot. If those skills could be moved to anywhere on our bar freely and not only by unequiping/re-equiping that would be great.

I can see the actions just fine, I think they look great. It is a little tough to see what is selected though. There is a faint yellow glow that highlights what you have selected and it can be very hard to see, especially if on top of a lighter background. Would be nice to be able to customize its color so I can make it a bright purple or something.

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Originally Posted by MattyWS

Jesus.. the UI artists cannot work on chocobos or armour sets, or environments or anything else that isn't UI. people have specific roles in the studio, you guys have no idea how retarded you sound when you suggest SE is wasting time on reworking the UI when they could be reworking zones or adding content of some sort.

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Because there's nothing else about the UI that needs to be worked on, right?

Think about what you're saying before you jump on your soapbox and throw accusations around.

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Originally Posted by Plure

While you're at it, please make 'light shot' and 'refill' movable and removable. Thanks billions.

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i agree there needs to be a way to move the skills that auto equip to the first empty slot. If those skills could be moved to anywhere on our bar freely and not only by unequiping/re-equiping that would be great.

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You can already move them with macros or through the action set menu, ie: put Cure in the slot you want Light Shot to go to, then through the menu put Cure where Light Shot is, they will swap with each other as long as the other skill is already on a bar.

Macro/command-wise you can use /eaction "Refill" # to put Refill or another action somewhere on your bar, no matter if it's already on the bar or not. (ie: /eaction "Refill" 27 to put it on the 7 slot on the 3rd action bar). Although I do agree that we should be able to get rid of Refill, since it's kinda pointless when they made arrow stack sizes 999.

I'm really happy the UI is getting this update really soon, it's tough trying to heal somebody in a pinch when you cant see what you have selected.

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Originally Posted by Dreamer

Because there's nothing else about the UI that needs to be worked on, right?

Think about what you're saying before you jump on your soapbox and throw accusations around.

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I can see why this took priority over other UI changes, people found it almost impossible to see what they had selected, and the bar is something everyone uses all the time. What they did was a simple change with an image that is probably about 128x128 pixels and people are getting annoyed that this takes priority over other content when it is under a completely different department from anything else that isn't the UI.

So yea, I thought about what I said and I can say that it does take priority over any other UI changes that needed to be done and it does not stop any progress over other things like 'more content' because it's done by a separate team.

It's getting to the point where SE need a small print at the end of each update on Lonestone along the lines of "No progress was slowed down during the making/tweaking of this content".

Hope its better for sure, though I get the feeling it will just be bigger like everything else hehe.

Hope I'm proven wrong.

Please understand there are different groups of devs... changing UI on the action bar is pretty damn simple and is a quick fix, it doesn't take that much time to do unless they went all out fancy but looking at the image in the topics it's simple change and it really doesn't take much time for it...

OMG!?!?!?! 15-30 minutes of dev's precious time spent on a action bar UI change!?!?!? OH NO ITS THE END OF THE WORLD!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCpjgl2baLs

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Originally Posted by xeqtr

Hope its better for sure, though I get the feeling it will just be bigger like everything else hehe.

Hope I'm proven wrong.

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Bigger the better right? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq8xuVnB-Pk

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Originally Posted by LuciBlack

Are 95% of the players blind?
Why is SE spending time on this?

"Action bar graphics will be enhanced to improve overall visibility"

Theres nothing wrong with my action bar visability...

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when I play with the controller sometimes it's hard to see which action you have selected...

i agree with the OP. They can go back and fix the UI after they fix this butchered FF title that has very little FF feel to it. On that note, anyone who thinks this game is in good condition should be paying sub and playing the game instead of trolling the forums where serious FF fans discuss what SE has done wrong and what they can do to fix it.

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Originally Posted by Azztaroth

i agree there needs to be a way to move the skills that auto equip to the first empty slot. If those skills could be moved to anywhere on our bar freely and not only by unequiping/re-equiping that would be great.

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You can
Say, you will move the skill to action bar 3 slot 5. Now first you put any skill to action bar 3 slot 5. Then you put the same skill where you have your unremoveable skill. These 2 skills now switch their positions

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Originally Posted by Bita

i agree with the OP. They can go back and fix the UI after they fix this butchered FF title that has very little FF feel to it. On that note, anyone who thinks this game is in good condition should be paying sub and playing the game instead of trolling the forums where serious FF fans discuss what SE has done wrong and what they can do to fix it.

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We all know that the game is not in good condition. But to complain about small fixes isn't helping to get the game better.
To fix the action bar is the first step to fix the game for controller players (the future PS3 gamers). Uncomfortable controller UI = worse PS3 release. If you want content, wait for 1.19

I'm glad that this is a change that people who use controllers will welcome. I don't use a controller so it means bupkiss to me. I'm not mad that they are implementing this change... I am confused as to why it deserves the big banner on lodestone.

Something like that suggests that SE is trying to give this announcement a sense of gravity that doesn't fit the actual change to gameplay. Which in turn, makes the announcement seem trite.

If people are having issues with this then it's great that they are fixing it... but honestly... I was hoping for better information than this... and with the weight SE has tried to give this announcement it makes me feel like this is our snippet for the week.

If they had posted the updates to the chat log post from friday with a banner I'm sure it would have exhibited much the same response, but they snuck it in under a banner about an update to the grand company page (which if you ask me was equally as trite.)

Mainly, this kind of information seems disingenuous. "We won't give you any useful information... but here's a pretty banner!"

Of course, that's speaking from the perspective of someone who gains nothing from this change. I can see how if you have actually had issues with the visibility of the action bar how this information is nice to have. Frankly, I didn't even realize people had this issue until this thread.

Think it's obvious SE can do no right on these forums.

"We added 20 new NMs, 2 instanced dungeons, 100ish quests and 3 nation companies" - SE

"Fix connection lost issues, get off your ass do you guys even work? I'm mad at you for this free to play game" - Forum Users.


I welcome new UI changes because FFXIVs UI does kind of suck, so new modifications as part of a minor patch update are good to have. The current UI is clunky and I sometimes have issues with the party window overlapping other menus because of the # of buffs players get during boss fights. Overlapping the BR window and such, so better graphics and updates to them could be very useful if its not just a simple GUI Swap.

Um yes it needed to be updated. Was playing in U'ldah and it was hard to see which action was being highlighted. Don't get your panties in a knot, they are fixing and working on other things as well.

The ability bar looks better than pre 1.18, however i would really like the "option" of seeing all 3 bars at once. Then if you don't like it you can go back to its current shape and form.

lol, its like some people think that all production in other areas of the game has stopped just so they can tweak the action bar icon a little. Just because they are fixing this does not mean that this is their main focus. I can't even believe people would act like that was the case.

I admit that I started this post with a childish rant.

But, can I ask, those who cant see what icon they are on. Are you relying on reading the huge black bar that pops up when your on an icon that tells you the name and what the abiltiy does?

I find that to help.

I think thats annoying tbh. I like to see more of my screen, not less.
But, it also helps to memorize where you put abilitys, and press the button corosponding to it.
Of course thats for they keyboard users.

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Originally Posted by LuciBlack

I admit that I started this post with a childish rant.

But, can I ask, those who cant see what icon they are on. Are you relying on reading the huge black bar that pops up when your on an icon that tells you the name and what the abiltiy does?

I find that to help.

I think thats annoying tbh. I like to see more of my screen, not less.
But, it also helps to memorize where you put abilitys, and press the button corosponding to it.
Of course thats for they keyboard users.

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You mean the tooltip? Yes that is annoying to view.. needs to toggled imo. Also if they let you have all 3 bars up.. all they would need to do is make the action bar a little smaller which isn't so difficult. I don't know what size screen you play on or what your resolution is but being able to adjust to any size is a plus. I personally play windowed 1600X900 i believe on a 40 inch do it's nice and I have plenty of room. Obviously it also depends on how your personal UI layout is. Mine is very clean looking, others like it full.

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Originally Posted by AnaTien

The ability bar looks better than pre 1.18, however i would really like the "option" of seeing all 3 bars at once. Then if you don't like it you can go back to its current shape and form.

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I would like this to.

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Originally Posted by DGMart

I don't know what size screen you play on or what your resolution

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I play on a 24inch widescreen 1920 X 1080.
Fullscreen.
I moved all the UI to the bottom of the screen so i can see most visuals in front of my char.

I did try XIV on a 18.5inch and it was just too unbearable. I couldnt take how little of the screen i could see. If any of you are playing on anything smaller than a 24inch, i highly suggest upgrading. Ive seen good 23-24inch for around 150$ and very possably less.

If i could I will invest in a larger monitor in the future, cause i know this game has a lot of potential.

Yeah you should play it on a tv it's that much better... 40-50 inch ftw.. it's big and nice.

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Originally Posted by DGMart

Yeah you should play it on a tv it's that much better... 40-50 inch ftw.. it's big and nice.

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But I hear that No tv is going to be better than a PC monitor for a PC.
The picture will always be more clear on a monitor.

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Originally Posted by LuciBlack

I admit that I started this post with a childish rant.

But, can I ask, those who cant see what icon they are on. Are you relying on reading the huge black bar that pops up when your on an icon that tells you the name and what the abiltiy does?

I find that to help.

I think thats annoying tbh. I like to see more of my screen, not less.
But, it also helps to memorize where you put abilitys, and press the button corosponding to it.
Of course thats for they keyboard users.

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not when we're on intense battle, furthermore as a tank, we need to careful on what action that we use. no lag on the brain helps the battle.

Yes I do have to rely on those big popups to know what I'm on when it's too bright, that's why I'm happy they are changing this quickly to something I can see =P I can respond much faster when I can tell what icon i'm on and where the icon I gotta get to is.

I would love for them to shorten the descriptions and i figure they have that in the works already since there has been a lot of clamoring for it. I'd love to just see Name, HP/MP/TP Costs, cast and recast times without the big description.