The User Interface - Mouse and Keyboard Users

As many people know one of the major problems with Final Fantasy XIV in its current state is the user interface. It seems that the game was designed with only the gamepad players in mind. (I remember reading it in one of YoshiP's letter.)

For a game as ambitious as Final Fantasy XIV (They wanted to be a serious contender in the MMO market.) you would assume they would be cater to all parties, ESPECIALLY the majority of MMO players which tend to use mouse and keyboards as controls. This unfortunately doesn't appear to be the case.

The fact remains that almost all MMO players use the mouse & keyboard for gameplay. Usually the gamepad players are the ones who have moved from Final Fantasy XI. If the intention was to draw players from other MMOs or new players in general the players using mouse and keyboard should have been at the very least acknowledged.

Top hindrances in the UI

1. No drag and drop functionality.

This is one of the strangest omissions I have ever seen in a PC game. The lack of the ability to drag and drop abilities on to the action bar. (Plus many other instances.) Makes the necessary amount of working with the keyboard absurd. This brings me to my next point.

2. The main menu system.

Nothing has stopped me from playing this game more than the clunky menu system. I understand the purpose of it for gamepad players; however, quite frankly, for a mouse and keyboard player it is an absolute nightmare. There is absolutely NO reason I should not be able to bind hotkeys to access the specific parts of the menu. Having to trek through the large menu is tedious and cumbersome.

Coming later: On field interactivity.


I apologize for cutting this short but due to the fact I am at my workplace I will have to complete the compilation of my list later on. Feel free to comment on the current part.

Totally agree. It blows my mind that people are talking about stupid idiotic stuff like class-renaming, jumping, swimming, and other nonsense when I still can't even hotkey 99% of anything in the game. Why do I have to use third-party programs like AHK to remap my keys because the game STILL won't let me do it? And why do we only have ONE action bar at a time? It's like, hey, I WANT to use all the pretty skills in the game, but I can't even assign keys to the hotbars in the first place. It's like I'm always unequiping skills because I don't have enough room on my bar.

And don't stand up for SE by saying "FFXIV is meant to be played with both hands on the keyboard to access the 1-9 keys and arrows to swap through your bars in combat." Are you kidding me? Seriously? No. This game needs to be brought up to the standards of modern MMOs. I'm hoping that the new battle system improvements address these issues.

- Allow us to hotkey anything. Full customization. If you don't, players are just going to use AHK type programs to do it anyway.
- Give us more than one action bar for skills at a time.
- And allow us to toggle it to not disappear every time we're not in combat. I want to be able to see the cooldowns on my skills between fights and such.

Basically, and I know you guys hate it, but we need WoW's set up of allowing us to have a few hotbars that are always visible, with skills being able to be dragged directly to where we want, with the option to bind ANY of those buttons to ANY key combination we wish. Yeah, you may not like it, but if this game is going to succeed that is where it needs to go.

Combat needs to be easily accessible, and skills need to be easy to use. Right now, that is not the case.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Soda

Totally agree. It blows my mind that people are talking about stupid idiotic stuff like class-renaming, jumping, swimming, and other nonsense when I still can't even hotkey 99% of anything in the game. Why do I have to use third-party programs like AHK to remap my keys because the game STILL won't let me do it? And why do we only have ONE action bar at a time? It's like, hey, I WANT to use all the pretty skills in the game, but I can't even assign keys to the hotbars in the first place. It's like I'm always unequiping skills because I don't have enough room on my bar.

And don't stand up for SE by saying "FFXIV is meant to be played with both hands on the keyboard to access the 1-9 keys and arrows to swap through your bars in combat." Are you kidding me? Seriously? No. This game needs to be brought up to the standards of modern MMOs. I'm hoping that the new battle system improvements address these issues.

- Allow us to hotkey anything. Full customization. If you don't, players are just going to use AHK type programs to do it anyway.
- Give us more than one action bar for skills at a time.
- And allow us to toggle it to not disappear every time we're not in combat. I want to be able to see the cooldowns on my skills between fights and such.

Basically, and I know you guys hate it, but we need WoW's set up of allowing us to have a few hotbars that are always visible, with skills being able to be dragged directly to where we want, with the option to bind ANY of those buttons to ANY key combination we wish. Yeah, you may not like it, but if this game is going to succeed that is where it needs to go.

Combat needs to be easily accessible, and skills need to be easy to use. Right now, that is not the case.

---

I disagree with a lot of what you say. My biggest concern is that the UI takes up way too much space on the screen at the moment. FFXIV's (only) strong point is it's graphics which I find hard to appreciate when the UI in all up in my face. I liked FFXI's UI because it was simple and didn't take up much space. List's of your WS/JA/MA were brought up with shortcut commands and didn't take up much space at all. The controls and the UI were flawlessly integrated with each other. FFXIV's UI has so much shit all over the place (especially during leves) that I can hardly see what is around my character. Between my action bar, health,mp,tp bar, stamina bar, party member bars, chat log, minimap, rank/physical level bars, target health bar, debuff/buff status window, and levequest objectives window, I can hardly see anything without reducing all of these bars as much as I possibly can and shoving them into the corners of my screen. It's a huge cluster-f*** right now and what we DONT need is more f****** action bars in the way.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Benjaman

I disagree with a lot of what you say. My biggest concern is that the UI takes up way too much space on the screen at the moment. FFXIV's (only) strong point is it's graphics which I find hard to appreciate when the UI in all up in my face. I liked FFXI's UI because it was simple and didn't take up much space. List's of your WS/JA/MA were brought up with shortcut commands and didn't take up much space at all. The controls and the UI were flawlessly integrated with each other. FFXIV's UI has so much shit all over the place (especially during leves) that I can hardly see what is around my character. Between my action bar, health,mp,tp bar, stamina bar, party member bars, chat log, minimap, rank/physical level bars, target health bar, debuff/buff status window, and levequest objectives window, I can hardly see anything without reducing all of these bars as much as I possibly can and shoving them into the corners of my screen. It's a huge cluster-f*** right now and what we DONT need is more f****** action bars in the way.

---

What the fuck do you play in 800x600 it's an extremely minimal design as is. That minimalistic design is what is hampering it's functionality. The last thing we need is less usability of the interface. I don't need a clusterfuck of macros and menus to do what what simple hotkey press that I map to the key of my choosing should accomplish.

PS GTFO

I agree. I would love to see an overhaul on the UI, and that alone could take care of a lot of XIV's basic issues. I've tried it with the mouse and keyboard, I've tried it with a PS3-cloned gamepad, and it really doesn't seem ideal for either. It seems to me like they attempted to do something that would work for both camps, and ended up not entirely managing to make it work smoothly for either.

For the reasons OP said, it's rough using a mouse and keyboard. But it's also rough using a gamepad, especially in battle trying to press left or right repeatedly to get to desired actions, and with the game as menu-heavy as it is, it's slow navigating with both a pad and a keyboard regardless.

Can someone explain how Drag and Drop could possibly be implemented in XIV?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cairdeas

Can someone explain how Drag and Drop could possibly be implemented in XIV?

---

Dragging skills from the list of skills to the action bar, but I fail to see how this is that much faster than the current implementation where we click on the space that we want the action in, then click the action. Either way, total time spent setting an individual action would be around 3 seconds.

Sure, this request would be nice to have, but is the current implementation game breaking? Absolutely not.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Molly_Millions

Dragging skills from the list of skills to the action bar, but I fail to see how this is that much faster than the current implementation where we click on the space that we want the action in, then click the action. Either way, total time spent setting an individual action would be around 3 seconds.

Sure, this request would be nice to have, but is the current implementation game breaking? Absolutely not.

---

Yeah that isn't that big of a concern to me either. I do, however, despise the fact I had to write macros to use any of the hotbar abilities other than the first hotkey bank. The alternative is CLICKING arrows up and down? How un-user frielndly.

Here's a simple solution to the QQers whining about screen real estate. Give me the option to turn on multiple hotbars at once, as well as have them stay up all the time. Furthermore allow me the option to map my keys however I want. You don't have to use any of this and it can stay the same for you if you wish, just let me have some usability of the UI without having to fight that along with the monster. Thanks!

Second both the OP and 2nd post

I would like to have the option to use the "FFXI Full Keyboard" setup as well. I am quite used to that after what, 7 years of playing and i keep getting spam from accidentally hitting Right Arrow Key + Enter Key or some other random Arrow Key.

Even if they only add WoW's setup I'd still be happy though, the current setup is far too buggy.

i know it kinda sucks but you can F9+Enter Key to see your action bar. F9=target yourself

I dont know about all of them, but I would like to be able to have the bars up at all times, and yes it would be nice to have or be able to use hotkeys in game instead of going to a 3rd party SW which is against the TOS if I am not mistaken.

Having the bar up would be nice to view CD out of battle...

But in terms of displaying all your abilities you have equipped... FFXIV is a much slower game than WoW.. you don't need to be mashing all of your buttons at once, hitting hotkeys and abilities on the fly....

The stamina bar and cooldowns both reduce the speed of battle significantly...

This has been one of my biggest issues with FFXIV. I am a PC gamer and a keyboard/mouse user.

I don't like using controllers. I haven't been a console gamer in a number of years, and controllers feel large and unnatural in my hands.

When I played FFXI, I played exclusively with my keyboard, only because the mouse was pretty much unusable. All MMOs since then, I've played with a keyboard/mouse setup.

Anyone who played FFXI will most likely tell you it feels like a console game, since it was first released for PS2 and then ported to PC. This time around, FFXIV was released first for the PC, to be later released on the PS3. Out of the box, FFXIV does feel more keyboard/mouse friendly than FFXI. To me, that was a very welcome change.

From what I understand, the fact that SE creates MMOs with consoles in mind is a cultural difference. From what one Japanese friend tells me, they have gaming cafes with consoles set up and often play by the hour, whereas we come home and boot up our computers.

Still, getting SE to fully understand that the majority of the NA MMO market are PC players hasn't been easy. Watching mouse improvements evolve through beta was painful, and was something people complained about daily. We almost didn't get a hardware mouse (which would have been a gamebreaker for many).

Yet, there are many who will play on PS3 or even on PC with a controller - people play in different ways, so the idea of a dual UI has been kicked around for a while to stop trying to split the middle with a one-size-fits-all setup. I'm personally in favor of this. In fact, after the battle system is sorted out, I think it needs to be a top priority. No longer will the UI feel clunky if it's tailored to your playstyle. You have an option to choose one of two UI layouts - Keyboard/Mouse or Controller.

As a Keyboard/Mouse player, these are the top things that are missing for me:

1. All action bars showing all the time. I don't want to use my arrow keys to flip through them. It's awkward, and precious time lost. They should all show on my screen.

2. Drag and drop functionality. I should be able to drag and drop abilities to/from my action bars. The extra clicks not only take extra time, but they're not intuitive. People used to ask all the time, "How do I put abilities on my action bar?"

3. Complete key bindings. I want to be able to fully bind everything. Even if it means putting the camera controls on my arrow keys and using the escape key to open my menu.

4. Mouseover tooltips. Everything should have a tooltip pop up when you mouseover it so there is no guessing what something is/does. This has improved with time. Keep going. :)

5. Right-click functionality. I should be able to right-click on an NPC to get him to talk to me, not double-left click or hit enter. I should be able to right-click on an aetheryte, not go through an interaction menu.

6. Mouse camera tweaks. The mouse could use some sensitivity tweaking. It's still not as responsive as it could be. Plus, it's still not a proper mouse look. Left-click-drag should pan the camera. Right-click-drag should actually pivot your character.

I believe (although not 100% sure) that in one of the Yoshi-P updates he said something about have two UI's running in tandem, one for mouse/pc users and one for gamepad users. I do think the current UI is more geared to gamepad users the biggest gripe I have is constantly having to double click to perform one action so I would click on the ! when near an Atheryte crystal which would open up the right hand menu and then I need to click on the ! in that menu to access the Atheryte.

That kind of double clicking is only a small issue but when you have to do it lots of times in game it does get annoying!

hit I, open inventory

hit J, open journal

hit e, use whatever you're at when the (!) bubble appears

etc etc.

and another hotbar would be nice too, optional of course for people who cannot stand one more addition to the UI

also maybe two more buttons on the existing hotbars, I really just dont have enough room for everything I want on my primary bar on gladiator when i have a shield.

I have been begging for the OP's mentioned tweaks since I began playing the game. It has always been the most lacking feature in the game, imo. I have never played XI, so playing an MMO with a gamepad is completly foreign. My r/l friends are used to XI and and play with both hands on the keyboard. I can't wrap my head around doing it this way. :(

Please, as others have said, give us keyboard freedom!

I agree with alot of whats being said here but i would also like to mention the fact that the action bar only allows one icon to be used for each ability, while there are many times i wish i could have an ability on two different bars, so that the issue of only being able to see one bar at a time would become less of an issue.

I came from 6 years of XI on PS with my gamepad and keyboard.
Now in XIV i play with my Board and hardly ever my mouse.

I find the board very easy and helpful for me to be able to do anything I want.
I like having a lot more buttons than a gamepad.

And i too sometimes think we have too much crap on the screen, i try to hide a lot of it behind my textbox. I want to see what my character is doing, not just the icons for the things he can do. I find one bar of actions just fine, and i push one button to get to the other bar's.

What I want to see is a way to change the size of all the stuff on screen, not just the textbox and hp bar, but the size of the action bars too and the map would be neat. I memorize the keys i asign them to, so i dont need a huge button in my face saying "im over here". And being able to toggle them on off easily... togle my mp gage off cause im not a mage, toggle my map off cause i already know where i am. Toggle my textbox off cause im not speaking to anyone.

Thoughts.

I'm all for the customization of the UI. Everybody has their own tastes and we should be able to tweak the UI freely, imo.

And as long as they open up key mapping, I dont care what else they do to the controls, just let me control what button does it.

I would like to use the buttons on the side of my mouse for common functions as well as middle buttons. I have a very expensive gaming mouse that is useless in this game. And there is no substitute for the turn speed and freedom of a mouse, imo.

Customize. Customize. Customize.

Just keep working on the UI until everyone has what they want AND the option to turn it off. Expand to 3 visible action bars, click to minimize to one. Option to remove each UI component 1 by 1. Maybe a list of UI components and you just check boxes for what you want to see right now.

Hot keys for everything! Don't set them if you don't want to.

You want to make the the game awesomely awesome? Add everything anyone asks for in a UI - and the option to turn it off. You can't go wrong.

PS: THIS is basically the way to make your game universally enjoyed. Let everyone control it how they are want, fully customizable. Focusing on Jumping or Maps before UI is questionable at best.

PS: A separate UI for controller makes a lot of sense.

It is my belief that no keyboard was ever touched in developing the UI. As a result, it is the worst UI that I have ever seen in a MMO. There are lots of stuff I would like to see add/changed with the UI. But let me start with one thing, then we go from there.

Hot Keys. I'm only using 3 out of 7 buttons on my mouse because I can't assign keys. I'm only using 1/3 of the keys on my keyboard for the same reason. when I goto a harvest nod, I wanna be able to click a mouse button and start harvesting. Why do I need to go into the main menu???? Many many actions in game are like that.

Give me my hot keys and I promise I will stop complaning for a month. :)

Greetings stubborn keyboard users. I too had left the gamepad behind over 10 years ago when I began my MMO career and left the consoles behind. Custom keybinding played a huge role in optimizing my gameplay. In the last game I subscribed to nearly every key was set up with a custom binding, including multiple functions depending on modifiers such as CTRL, ALT, or Shift being held while pressing the buttons.

After my first few hours in Eorzea, I realized that this wonderful game was meant to be played using a gamepad. Since I was paying no monthly fee, I decided to use that $20 to buy a Logitech Gamepad F310 and after hours of daily gaming my hands no longer cramp up from stretching to hit all those custom keybinds I had used for years.

I love using the Gamepad, everything is so intuitive and easy to reach I fully recommend you get one for yourself and experience the game the way it was meant to be played.

Best wishes for custom keybinds as well though.

Really, my only UI wishes are:
When ever you click the 'action' icon
Be it Aetherite, Fishing/Mining/Botany Node, Trade Request, Party Invite ETC it takes you directly to the relevant window for that action icon.
Not open menu, only to have to select the same bloody icon again from the menu.

Being able to fully customise my own key binds.
and..
Increasing the number of rows on the skill bar from 3 to 5 would be nice too.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Fieros

I love using the Gamepad, everything is so intuitive and easy to reach I fully recommend you get one for yourself and experience the game the way it was meant to be played.

---

1. This thread is about how keyboard/mouse users feel about the UI, not gamepad users.

2. A sub-point of number 1 is that some people do wish to play with a gamepad, that everyone has their own preferences. You like playing with a gamepad, great. But not all of us do. So instead of having one interface for two styles of play that really fall short for both, they should really consider two that are specifically tailored to each.

3. I do not wish to use a gamepad. I am a woman with small hands. Gamepads are large and hurt my wrists to use. Plus, having to pick up a controller and put it back down to type commands and talk to my party is horribly inefficient.

4. I refuse to buy any additional 'gadgets' to play an MMO on my PC. If I wanted gadgets, I'd play Wii games.

Well Mr/Ms Fieros. It is great that you find this game so wonderful and intuitive. And it is fantastic that you don't mind the endless menus, the clicking and scrolling. More power to you.

But this is a PC game. How retarded is it to release a PC game to be played with a control pad? I prefer my keyboard and mouse any day of the week. Twice on sundays.

I too have a recommendation for what people can do with a Gamepad. Would you like to hear it?

Best wishes.

I would like to see all 3 action bars on my screen at once, yes.

I have been playing FFXI for 8 years now. I imported the game cause I wanted it so badly and I use keyboard only. I like having the keypad (on a full keyboard not gamepad) to move around with and using the arrow keys to control my camera. With my right hand, I can control all movement and camera function.

AS to point #1: Drag and Drop. I think this would be good but maybe not in the context that you are thinking, or maybe it is in that context. Within the actions equip menu, we should have drag and drop function to equip abilities and actions. This may be what you are asking for but from my first reading your post, it sounds like you want to drag the action from a menu to the main screen UI action bar.

As to point #2: main menu system. The menu side bar comes from FFXI. I'm ok with this except for the arrow keys being dedicated to control it. Other MMOs use hotkeys to access all the various menus.

I think SE should add an option for us to select the controller type we are using. The old keyboard interface from FFXI, the gamepad interface FFXIV uses now, or keyboard and mouse interface people are using. Players can use a keyboard on a console too.

The pop up action bar system is so frustrating.

All I would ask like others is to have the option to toggle on or off the three actions bars (Normal / CTRL / ALT) so I can have all three visible all the time (no pop up). There is unneccessary processing being done to redaw these elements on screen which can never be good and this is happening a lot when you are getting into the high levels and using abilities from every bar.

Macros cannot be assigned to the main bar so usually have my heal (with aoe toggle) on a macro, given that is one of the most used spells for a mage I'm bouncing between the main bar and the ALT bar all the time during a fight and to be honest its frustrating more than anything else.

When I press ALT / CTRL the system shouldn't have to be wasting cycles working out which bar is on screen and then wasting GPU cycles processing the slide up animation of the bar. Just keep the bars on screen if I want to and lets have a much more responsive system.

I'd love to hear reasons why we can't have options for always up hotbars, the ability to map the hotbar keys from more than one bank to another keybind, etc.


I've heard a lot of people crying that they don't want what they have to change, I don't want to change that! I just want options to make it more usable for people on the computer, you know, the only people playing the game currently. THANKS!