Possibility to open FFXIV up to a moddable UI?

I do not know if it has been brought up or not yet but I thought having a moddable UI would be a great idea for FFXIV as it seems to be a great success in a few other MMORPG's.

Any other ideas and thought's on this?

I believe Yoshida (or was it someone else?) said that they're looking at the possibility of opening up XIV to custom mods. Could be wrong about this. I'm going off memory here and am not going to try to find a link for this.

PLEASE GOD NO!

We spend enough time looking at our health bars and whatever else, let's not add more stupid bars and timers to look at, which is what will happen if we are allowed to mod the UI.

I know this was mentioned pre-release via Tanaka, I don't know if it is still under consideration as it hasn't been mentioned this.

You'll always have the argue of what is considered the fine line of modding or <something negative here>

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Originally Posted by gifthorse

PLEASE GOD NO!

We spend enough time looking at our health bars and whatever else, let's not add more stupid bars and timers to look at, which is what will happen if we are allowed to mod the UI.

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Um... What? Lets go through this step by step for your brain
1. Oh I can mod UI
2. *turns of HP*
3. I like my mod.

....

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Originally Posted by viion

Um... What? Lets go through this step by step for your brain
1. Oh I can mod UI
2. *turns of HP*
3. I like my mod.
....

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What will happen is eventually it will become mandatory to have certain timers, bars, and other monitors to be functional in the game and then your UI will be cluttered with crap.

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Originally Posted by gifthorse

What will happen is eventually it will become mandatory to have certain timers, bars, and other monitors to be functional in the game and then your UI will be cluttered with crap.

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Why will it? You have what you want :S ... If theres no reason to see your Hp, then hide your Hp.........

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Originally Posted by gifthorse

What will happen is eventually it will become mandatory to have certain timers, bars, and other monitors to be functional in the game and then your UI will be cluttered with crap.

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I doubt this actually many people came up with things for FFXI to display spell recast and timers on screen, of course it made FFXI more user friendly. I never used them because I was pretty sure it's against the ToUA.

Edit: I do believe it would be nice to see *some* moddability to the UI however.

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Originally Posted by Zenairis

I doubt this actually many people came up with things for FFXI to display spell recast and timers on screen, of course it made FFXI more user friendly. I never used them because I was pretty sure it's against the ToUA.

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*snicker*
that's EULA ;)

Sorry forgot which it was in (not sarcasm) but still.

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Originally Posted by Balbanes

*snicker*
that's EULA ;)

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It's agains WotG.

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Originally Posted by gifthorse

What will happen is eventually it will become mandatory to have certain timers, bars, and other monitors to be functional in the game and then your UI will be cluttered with crap.

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DeadlyBossMode is watching you :X

I agree with gifthorse. I would be happy if they made a very simple skin system though. We could at least draw the shape of our own UI and place buttons on it accordingly. It would be fun if SE bought and implemented Winamp's modern skin system, for instance.

Personally I'd like the ability to go back to a FF3/7 styled UI XD

I must admit the ability to take some on screen info and put it into the menu bar is something i would be 100% behind.
I play on a small screen and there is just to many widgets on it!

It would be easier for the devs to allow us to mod our UI than to build a decent UI, if we look back on what they have already produced...

Go look in your game folders. Pleeeenty of widget files in there. For instance:
ActionGuageWidget.tpl/.form
MiniMapWidget.tpl/.form
TargetSelectModeWidget.tpl/.form
ItemSearchListWidget.tpl/.form
Bolded = added after launch

So as it seems, the UI is ready for it, it's just a matter of SE flipping the switch on for customs. Though with the future UI changes, they probably won't until after that.

I like the possibilities that modifiable UI implementations open up (though I am against it, more later). In the long-run it can greatly better the game in general by not only providing good ideas to the developers of the game, but also testing them.

But the reason why I'm against implementation is that this also opens up the possibility of "boss mods", which can make encounters significantly easier depending on what SE's framework allows (i.e. tracking ability cooldowns, UI "announcements", etc). Granted, this can be dealt with by making encounters very hard and intensive (which is good IMO), but somewhat impossible to defeat without the mods (or a professional group of players to work with :) )

I would like to see this also, as a ranged class it would be nice to have the distance from target displayed instead of the message "you are out of range".

I would also like to see what the community could come up with, obviously its not going to happen because SE are so anal, plus purest and console players would cry like babies.

It's the very reason why this game won't progress very well because its being held back by either the devs or the fans.

That being said I doubt this game has enough players to even have a decent modding community.

Boss modding is easily countered by making the bosses moves 100% random, plus unlike WoW that uses timers, I think FFXIV's monsters use real time skills and abilities.

I am also for this idea. I tend to think that SE doesn't always get it quite right so it would be nice if the users/playerbase can actually contribute instead of QQing all the time (90% of these boards).

If they are for test servers they will probably allow this IMO.

I like my small examples (keyword) i made in this post....

Post:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-Layout-Addons

Now, its just something i messed around with. (didnt put much effort into it)

And as some of you can see it's more or less based upon a "WoW" addon for a custom UI.
The possibilities with these kinda things are endless.

Cant play without deadly boss mods telling you what to do?

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Originally Posted by Laughlyn

I like my small examples (keyword) i made in this post....

Post:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-Layout-Addons

Now, its just something i messed around with. (didnt put much effort into it)

And as some of you can see it's more or less based upon a "WoW" addon for a custom UI.
The possibilities with these kinda things are endless.

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:O, I want my FF14 to look like that ;.;

Deadly Boss mods weak, not sure who you talking too.

But i couldnt care less about "Boss" help mods, im interested in artwork, customization etc.

People all over these forums claim WoW was hard,... lol u ppl should gtfo,
if any mmo out there is easy mode on everything its freakin WoW.
Just like Reika above just mentioned, Boss mods to help u tell you where to stand & wtf to do.

FFXI never had such crap, but WoW...lol.

Nah...im for the custom designed UI & its parts.
Mods... gtfo, u want hardcore play WoW with no mods.

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Originally Posted by Laughlyn

FFXI never had such crap, but WoW...lol..

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I played both FF11 and WoW for a long time and think WoW's boss encounters were much harder, especially the hard mode stuff.

well thats true to some extent, they had option set difficulty at LK dungeons.
But with all the addons etc it just went into easy mode.

WoW was a great game, but well...i hate comparing, its a diffrent game,
diffrent lore etc, WoW dont appeal much to me.

FFXIV, well...its new & still in progress so would be unfair to compare this to WoW or FFXI really.

There were FFXI windower, but wasnt as advanced as WoW's addons.
I think a customizable UI would do FFXIV good, maybe some addons too. (ofc they had to be accepted by SE first thou) Things like: Range Distance for ranged class etc, ingame calendar, show / hide menus.

No. No. No.

I do not want FFXIV to turn into this.

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Originally Posted by Eekiki

No. No. No.

I do not want FFXIV to turn into this.

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LMAO, thats some crazy ... Oo

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Originally Posted by Laughlyn

well thats true to some extent, they had option set difficulty at LK dungeons.
But with all the addons etc it just went into easy mode.

WoW was a great game, but well...i hate comparing, its a diffrent game,
diffrent lore etc, WoW dont appeal much to me.

FFXIV, well...its new & still in progress so would be unfair to compare this to WoW or FFXI really.

There were FFXI windower, but wasnt as advanced as WoW's addons.
I think a customizable UI would do FFXIV good, maybe some addons too. (ofc they had to be accepted by SE first thou) Things like: Range Distance for ranged class etc, ingame calendar, show / hide menus.

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Yup agreed, in theory customisable UI shouldn't effect any other part of the game, SE only needs to release API for the UI nothing else, so boss fights shouldn't even come into this discussion.

The problem is certain mods become "standard" and "required" -- this is true for every MMO that allows them and it quite frankly kills game enjoyability if I have to start using certain mods in order to be "efficient".

I do miss the days of gaming when you can just..have fun.

Seems like playing arkanoid mmorpg lol

I really hope we don't get moddable UIs. All I ever heard from friends playing WoW was that you couldn't play if you didn't have x, y, and z, mod, and you had to have it set up in such and such a fashion to even enjoy the game. Let the UI designers do their thing.

This will never happen due to PS3.

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Originally Posted by LlenCoram

I really hope we don't get moddable UIs. All I ever heard from friends playing WoW was that you couldn't play if you didn't have x, y, and z, mod, and you had to have it set up in such and such a fashion to even enjoy the game. Let the UI designers do their thing.

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As I said above there is a big difference between letting modders change the UI and giving them the access to manipulate game mechanics to their advantage.

Think of it as someone with the addon having the same information just arranged differently on the screen.

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Originally Posted by Warp

This will never happen due to PS3.

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PS3 can allow mods but it is more trouble than it's worth to keep the equality because the PC will get quicker and more community driven mods while the PS3 would only get sanctioned ones.

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Originally Posted by LlenCoram

Let the UI designers do their thing.

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There it is. If the UI is designed properly to begin with, there will be no need for UI mods.

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Originally Posted by Jennestia

PS3 can allow mods but it is more trouble than it's worth to keep the equality because the PC will get quicker and more community driven mods while the PS3 would only get sanctioned ones.

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Not if they are submitted to SE for testing and cross platform optimisation.

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Originally Posted by Jennestia

PS3 can allow mods but it is more trouble than it's worth to keep the equality because the PC will get quicker and more community driven mods while the PS3 would only get sanctioned ones.

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I should have elaborated, but that's what I was thinking as well.

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Originally Posted by Jinko

Not if they are submitted to SE for testing and cross platform optimisation.

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SE is going to hire and/or create a team to check community UI Mods? Get real, it's not going to happen. I honestly cannot even think of any other info that needs to be displayed on the UI.

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Originally Posted by Warp

SE is going to hire and/or create a team to check community UI Mods? Get real, it's not going to happen.

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LOL yea your right, I was obviously thinking of a company who wanted their game to succeed.

I think there should be more UI aspects implimented, like... real world clock perhaps.

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Originally Posted by Jinko

LOL yea your right, I was obviously thinking of a company who wanted their game to succeed.

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If you think that a mod-friendly UI is something they need for it to succeed on the PS3, you're grossly mistaken. It's banking on the PS3 release and it's players.

If you want to have a new widget, just bitch about it enough on the forums and maybe the UI team will look into it (lol).