DevTalk: Battle UI Changes and Suggestions - Mockup Included

It's that time again where we play everyone's favorite game: "Let's Fix Final Fantasy 14"

Today, we'll take a look at the battle user interface and how we can improve it. I've included a handy visual mockup so you can see my ideas a little more clearly.

VISUAL MOCKUPS:

English: http://i.imgur.com/O29Mr.jpg

Japanese: http://i.imgur.com/1OCM7.jpg

First, let's talk about the various problems the current battle UI has.


It's hard to play both offense and defense at the same time.

If I'm duoing in a party of two Disciples of War, and I'm locked on to the enemy and attacking, it takes way too many steps to heal my party member. It's easy to heal myself of course, I can just make a "/ac Cure <me>" macro and heal myself with just one keystroke. However, if I want to heal my party member, I have to select cure, tab through, or dpad/arrow key select my party member, then press enter.

Too many steps.

As a Thaumaturge, this isn't so bad. I can lock onto the enemy and dart/nuke/debuff it all day long, and thanks to the conal AOE, all I have to do is use my self heal macro, and it will automatically cure everyone standing in front of me too.

As a CON, this is a little more problematic because of CON's crappy radial AOE. If I lock onto the enemy, I have to use subtargeting to cure my allies. Alternatively, if I'm locked onto the tank to make curing easier, I have to use subtargeting to cast nukes and debuffs on the enemy, in addition to not being able to Spirit Dart the enemy at all.

What can we do to make this process easier? Well, for one thing, we can start by making better use of the mouse functionality. The devs said that they are developing separate UIs for PC and PS3, so this one will be PC only.


It's hard to know when the skill you want to use is in range of the enemy.

The only way you can do it now is just via guess and check. You have to inch closer and closer, retrying your spells and skills everytime until it works.


GOALS:

Reduce the number of steps needed for a player to achieve a desired action upon a desired target

Provide a variety of methods to achieve desired actions, and let the player freely customize the setup so that he can use a system that is most comfortable to him

Give the player more information about his position and battle capabilities.


IMPLEMENTATION:


"Right-click quick cast option"

This new function lets the player select up to 5 skills or spells to put in a special "quick cast" bar.

The active "quick cast" skill is selected via the mouse scroll wheel, and it is instantly executed simply by right clicking (either on the party member name in the party list, or on the desired target itself).

Example 1:
I am a Gladiator tanking a goblin, and it just did a bomb toss attack. My lancer friend needs healing. Luckily, I anticipated this and have "Cure" set as my current "quick cast" skill, so all I do is hover over his name and right click while still being free to quickly access my other skills and macros with my left hand. I see that "Cure" did not heal him to full, so next I quickly scroll to "Sacrifice" using my middle mouse wheel and simply right click on his name again.


Example 2:
I am a Thaumaturge, locked on to the enemy and doing my regular strategy of DOTs and debuffs. The archer in the party grabs hate for a split second, and the enemy hits him for half his life. Because he's an idiot, the archer decides to run behind me, making it even harder to target and heal him. With right click "quick casting" all I would have to do is right click his name in the party list, and that would heal him with "Sacrifice".


"Range Finder"

This new function lets me see the distance between me and a targeted object.

Whenever I am targeting something, a small number will appear right over its name showing how many yalms are between me and it.

If the target is in range of my active skill, then the distance number and the targeting reticule are green. If I am out of range, the distance number and the targeting reticule are red.


Example 1:
I am a Marauder, and like always, I like to open my battles with "Disorient". I target my enemy, and see that the targeting reticule is red. I run closer until the targeting reticule turns green, then I use "Disorient".


"Mouse-Over Friendly Casting"

This gives me another way to do skills and spells quickly and accurately.

Hover your mouse over a party member's name in the party list. Press a number assigned to a friendly skill/spell to instantly activate that skill/spell on your party member.

Example 1:
I am a Conjurer. In the middle of the battle, "Shockspikes" wears off on the Gladiator. My "Shockspikes" skill is assigned to number 9 on my action bar. Instead of pressing '9' and having to manually select the Gladiator via the subtarget, I simply hover the mouse over the Gladiator's name in the party list and press '9'.



Additional Changes to Camera Movement:
Currently the right click is reserved for camera movement and the middle mouse wheel is reserved for zoom, so we would have to change that-

1. Right click on empty space and drag to move the camera.
2. Right click on empty space and mouse scroll to zoom the camera

Miscellaneous features that would help - These are unrelated changes that would help make it easier for players to play:


Give us the option to have all 3 action bars displayed on the screen at once

Give us the option to cancel any buffs we have applied to ourselves. For example, sometimes I do no want shockspikes on me if I do not want to damage the mob.

Give us the option for mouse "click to move". Double click on any area to move your player character to that area.



OK - that's all my ideas for now. I'll add more at a later date. For now please leave your analysis of my suggestions below, and be sure to include your own suggestions as well. Ask lots of questions!

"like" this if you like it.

More threads on how to Fix FF14: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/s...vBForum_Thread

I am more than okay with all of this. :D

...And not just because I was in the party when you took this screenshot.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rentahamster

It's hard to know when the skill you want to use is in range of the enemy.

The only way you can do it now is just via guess and check. You have to inch closer and closer, retrying your spells and skills everytime until it works.[U]

---

It gets worse than that. If you're asleep, or out of range, or out of MP, AFAIK nothing shows up in the log to indicate why your cast is failing, so you don't know what the problem is immediately.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rentahamster

"Range Finder"

This new function lets me see the distance between me and a targeted object.

Whenever I am targeting something, a small number will appear right over its name showing how many yalms are between me and it.

If the target is in range of my active skill, then the distance number and the targeting reticule are green. If I am out of range, the distance number and the targeting reticule are red.

---

Please, not red/green. Red/blue is preferable.

+1 for all these idea's, hopefully a community rep will forward your Japanese translated version to Yoshi-p :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cutriss

Please, not red/green. Red/blue is preferable.

---

Ah, that's right. For color blind people, yes?

Hello,

yes, thats alot of information. i like it alot.

ive posted on another thread befor but i think its died.

i am a keyboard and mouse player. sometimes i use a ps3 controller but i just dont care for it.

my issue is this. action bars! i dont know if this is possible but id like to have the action bar stay out anytime im in active mode.

i dont like it when im fighting 2 or more mobs, when 1 mob dies the action bar disappears and i have to retarget to get it back up.(double click)

my wish would be, to go active mode, action bar pops up. tab target , click on skill, mob dies, tab next target, click on skill.

having to double click on mobs or myself just seems to take to much time. if there are no mobs then it should just auto self cast. buffs

yes i do play other mmo's. it works the best. atleast for me.

i played 11 for 4 years with xbox controller. if the controls for 14 were like 11 then that would work too.

right now it just seem way to many clicks and way to clunky.i know they are still working on ui and controls. hopefully they will address these things.

(id use f8 to target but it never selects the right one >.<)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Soma

my issue is this. action bars! i dont know if this is possible but id like to have the action bar stay out anytime im in active mode.

---

Hm, that's odd, I could have sworn that I wrote that in my OP. I guess I didn't, heh.

Yes, I totally agree. Sometimes it's just more convenient to have the action bars onscreen the whole time. There might be some new information in regards to that in that huge JPN dev post that Mocchi just made, I dunno. I'm still looking through it.

Good news, it's under consideration.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...371#post154371

Quote:

---

Q: ターゲットしないとアクションパレットが表示されないことが不便



A: 常時表示するように改修を検討しています。

---

Q: Not being able to see the action bar when I'm not targeting anything is inconvenent

A: We are considering fixing the action bar so it is always visible.

And another suggestion I proposed is in as well, heheh

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bayohne

Instead of having to go through multiple layers of actions, I would like to be able to view all my actions at once.
We are currently looking into being able to display multiple action bars at one time.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rentahamster

Ah, that's right. For color blind people, yes?

---

Yes, a lot of game developers fail to accomodate R/G colorblindness in UI design. It affects 5-10% of all men.