The new concept screenshot is a real-time in-game render!

[Jynx]

Simple UI with minimal addons. The left boxes are healthbars for all 40 people in the BG. More than any raid would have, yet they're not all over the screen like some people here would have you believe they have to be.

Even that "Simple" UI is hella cluttered...I want to play a game not play with spreadsheets of information.

I guess when UI addons come out I'll be "That guy" who doesn't have the boss mods. Oh well good for the people who can't learn to play a game. Seriously I got nothing against most UI mods, automating stuff like healing though...I think thats just cheating the game and gives a massive advantage over other players.

[Shipp]

Even that "Simple" UI is hella cluttered...I want to play a game not play with spreadsheets of information.

I guess when UI addons come out I'll be "That guy" who doesn't have the boss mods. Oh well good for the people who can't learn to play a game. Seriously I got nothing against most UI mods, automating stuff like healing though...I think thats just cheating the game and gives a massive advantage over other players.

How is it cluttered? I could have moved a few addons more, but I queued as I logged on and didn't tweak anything, nor did I close recount in the lower right corner while I was healing. All you see is the complete 40 health bars I need to heal above the chat box and the timers on towers for the BG on the right side of the screen. There isn't a spreadsheet of information at all. You need to know tower timers if you're defending them. You can see all of the screen fine.

There's no "clutter" about that UI besides recount not being moved all the way to the right besides the right tool bars and the decursive boxes (that I doubt many people even noticed) being moved over to the right as well. There's far more clutter on my XIV screen since I can't resize half of the crap. The only time XIV looks decent is when I hook up my HDTV. That WoW SS was on my regular monitor that isn't WS.

[Jynx]

How is it cluttered?

Pretty much any information that invades the edges and center of my screen is intrusive to me. Perhaps it's just me though, I don't want my party member screen to take up a massive chunk of the left side of my screen.

While I admit re-aranging the screen would make it look 10x better it's still far too much information for my tastes. If I need to "Know" tower timers and need a UI addon just to know them then something is wrong. A developer shouldn't be adding content that requires the community to add a UI addon just to be bearable.

Then again I'm sure it would be possible to do with a normal UI isn't it? Or has WoW become so dependant on custom UI's that anyone who doesn't want to use them is left in the cold because they are playing the game the way it was intended to be played...

PS3 players are going to be shunned as if they were all loldrgs back in the early days of FFXI if UI mods turn to be a "Required" staple of the PC atmosphere. I'm sure I'll do fine without UI additions I'll learn the timers without a popup box to remind me, I'll use the normal party interface to view my party stats, I don't need a parser when I'm playing I can parse and check the stats AFTER the fight, I pray I don't need 600 random icons scattered around my screen (Probably all bound to some inane hotkeys).

It's good that we will have the option, but I think I'll opt out unless people can make some UI elements that I find are less intrusive than current ones, or perhaps just aesthetic changes.

What I'm worried about is PC players gaining a immesnly huge advantage over the console and vanila UI players, stuff like "Healbots" and whatnot don't really ring as "Fun" to me.

[Shipp]

Pretty much any information that invades the edges and center of my screen is intrusive to me. Perhaps it's just me though, I don't want my party member screen to take up a massive chunk of the left side of my screen.

I don't think you are quite grasping it... I have 40 people's health bars in that box. That is the WHOLE BG's health frames. If I was raiding, it would either be 10 or 25, which is much smaller than that. It's not simply a party's frame, it's the whole freaking raid's frame.

While I admit re-aranging the screen would make it look 10x better it's still far too much information for my tastes. If I need to "Know" tower timers and need a UI addon just to know them then something is wrong. A developer shouldn't be adding content that requires the community to add a UI addon just to be bearable.

Obviously no clue how WoW works. Towers take a few minutes to cap. If I see a huge horde of people running to the tower and there's 10-20 seconds left until my faction takes it, I can jump down and run away. If it's more, I need to stay and defend. It's not required, though not using timers is the same level of stupidity as not using macros. Do you have to have them? No. Though you're pretty inefficient if you don't.

You're looking at PC MMOs through the looking glass of XI/XIV/multiplatform MMOs. It is simply more efficient to have your playerbase use addons and slowly add them into the game at your leisure than to try to tackle every angle possible. Raidframe UIs were popular, so Blizz added their own eventually.

Then again I'm sure it would be possible to do with a normal UI isn't it? Or has WoW become so dependant on custom UI's that anyone who doesn't want to use them is left in the cold because they are playing the game the way it was intended to be played...

You're making a critical error. WoW has not been meant to be played with the custom UI and no addons since around Vanilla/BC. Starting in WoTLK, Blizzard started designing elements of the game around the majority using addons. The minority who refuse to use them don't get invited to raids anyway, or at least most of the don't. And no, it's not possible to have tower timers with the standard UI, nor recount, nor any number of things.

PS3 players are going to be shunned as if they were all loldrgs back in the early days of FFXI if UI mods turn to be a "Required" staple of the PC atmosphere. I'm sure I'll do fine without UI additions I'll learn the timers without a popup box to remind me, I'll use the normal party interface to view my party stats, I don't need a parser when I'm playing I can parse and check the stats AFTER the fight, I pray I don't need 600 random icons scattered around my screen (Probably all bound to some inane hotkeys).

Again, looking at WoW through XI/XIV glasses. XIV will never become like WoW because combat is way too slow. WoW's combat is constant casting, constant key presses, constant moving out of the fire, constant situational awareness. Now, can you tell me anything that happens in XIV that requires situational awareness other than what you're fighting? No, you can't. Imagine if every boss fight was like Ifrit. You're constantly having to move out of the fire, constantly having to pay attention to him dropping pillars to DPS down, etc. THAT is how WoW is. FFXIV will never be like that. Most Ifrit posts I've seen already complain about "animation lag" from his ground move killing people. It's not "animation lag" it's people not moving their asses out of the fire, because they're not used to having to be aware of situations like that. I fought Ifrit a few times, and not once did I have a problem moving out of the cracks on the ground. Didn't have an add-on telling me to do it either, so that argument that WoW addons make it easier is null.

People use DBM because it is too much to juggle to watch your cooldowns, watch for fire spawning under you, watch for range if another player has a bomb-type debuff, watch for threat, watch for boss abilities, watch for buff abilities popping up from players or if the boss has a unique mechanic, watch for adds, etc. You never have to have as much situational awareness for that in XI/XIV, and never will be specifically because it is nearly impossible to do without addons. WoW doesn't have to limit itself to only have boss mechanics that people can do without addons, because 100% of the community has the option to download the addons. XI/XIV never will have that option due to PS2/PS3, thus SE can never tune boss encounters to be like WoW or any other modern MMO.

It's good that we will have the option, but I think I'll opt out unless people can make some UI elements that I find are less intrusive than current ones, or perhaps just aesthetic changes.

That's fine, and your choice. However nearly all addons in MMOs are customizable and you can set them up however you like.

What I'm worried about is PC players gaining a immesnly huge advantage over the console and vanila UI players, stuff like "Healbots" and whatnot don't really ring as "Fun" to me.

It's clear you don't understand what "healbots" are since it's called "Healbot" and has nothing to do with a bot. No matter how I explain it, you're going to complain about it, because you already have your mind made up that it's a horrible addition to a PC only game.

Healing addons such as Healbot and Vuhdo(what I personally use) take away the standard party/raid frames and consolidate them into a box that you can customize the height/width of. These addons allow you to keybind your healing spells to the mouse, along with combos, like Shift+left click, etc.

Normally, with the default UI, I would have to take my mouse, go to the person I want to heal, click that person's unit frame, then click/keypress the healing spell. These healing addons streamline the process. They take out the unit frames and just show the healthbar. From here, instead of having to select who you want to heal, you simply press the same healing spell while your mouse is hovered over the healthbar, or you click on the bar with your mouse to use the healing spell you have bound.

Ex. I want to use Chain Heal on my Shaman to the tank in the party.
Default: I have to select the tank by clicking on his unit frame in the party window. Then I have to click chain heal on my toolbar or hit my keybind for it.
Healbot/Vuhdo: I mouse over the tank's healthbar, I hold alt and left click (my personal keybinding for chain heal).
Grid+Clique: I can either mouse over the tank's healthbar and press a keybind that would be the same bind as in the "default" example, or I can do the same as the second example.

Combat in WoW is much faster paced, hence the need to streamline aspects like this. You simply do not have the time to highlight each player you're healing in a raid. FFXIV will never be like this, because there is no need. Like XI, damage isn't being done to your tank every .5 seconds like it is in WoW. You can easily toss a cure out, then wait 5 seconds before having to toss another one out. Combat simply is slow enough to warrant this type of gameplay. Addons only become mainstream when they start becoming needed. That isn't because the players have no skill, it's because things happen to fast for human response time + cooldowns to be able to keep up, or there are too many things going on at once to keep track of all of them without assistance.

[Jynx]

That's fine, and your choice. However nearly all addons in MMOs are customizable and you can set them up however you like.

Fair enough, I mistook what a Healbot was and it sounds perfectly reasonable. You say I keep looking at this from a XIV/XI/Console MMO viewpoint...perhaps that is becuase we are on the boards of said type of game and discussing it's effects on said type of game.

I personally think making it so players who modify their UI have an advantage over those who opt out is lazy game design. Addons should never be "Needed" and I personally think that is one of WoW's biggest faults, just my opinion though.

Considering we are playing a game revolved around PS3 players being involved as well I do hope the limit the type of addons that can be created, as much as I'd love a few myself I don't believe in having massively unfair advantages over people who couldn't mod the UI even if they wanted too.

Having every single person in the zones healthbar on your screen is a strange concept for me, I can imagine if in XI if Whm's could see every persons HP on the battlefield it would have changed the dynamic of ballista alot just because of that add-on and it seems the same thing has happened with your example. Oh well it will still be interesting to see how XIV grows.

[Mishakai]

I personally think making it so players who modify their UI have an advantage over those who opt out is lazy game design. Addons should never be "Needed" and I personally think that is one of WoW's biggest faults, just my opinion though.

Considering we are playing a game revolved around PS3 players being involved as well I do hope the limit the type of addons that can be created, as much as I'd love a few myself I don't believe in having massively unfair advantages over people who couldn't mod the UI even if they wanted too.

I played WoW from release until about 8 months ago...

The only add-ins I ran were the ones my guild "required" and I left the UI for all of them off when I played. I only had them installed so a "check" would show that I had it...

I tanked everything, no problem.

I will always argue that people who believe that add-ins are required to perform suffer from a severe intellectual deficiency.

[Dragon]

I just can't imagine how PS3 users will get to benefit from custom UI at all. What SE should do is make it where you'd have to submit a UI first, and then they can approve it and make it available for download through PSN and PC for others to use. I'm not sure how else this would work out for PS3 users.

Even so, you do make sense when you say that most PS3 users will be playing with a controller, but there will also be many that will be using a USB keyboard. Though, that is not even the point of what I was saying. I am more concerned about how PS3 users won't be able to benefit from custom UIs. Whether they are for aesthetics or for lolhax.

Also, if you think about it. What if end game content had parties that required their members to have certain mods? PS3 users would be at a disability, perhaps rendering them from experience such hardcore content.

The only thing that can possibly stop PS3 users from using addons are memory issues, that's it. The PS3 has native keyboard/mouse support from USB-wired to USB-wireless to anything Bluetooth. There is almost nothing stopping a game from being played on a PS3 as it'd be played on a PC.

With that said, I hope they do require an approval process for any custom UI.

[Fensfield]

The only add-ins I ran were the ones my guild "required" and I left the UI for all of them off when I played. I only had them installed so a "check" would show that I had it...
...
I will always argue that people who believe that add-ins are required to perform suffer from a severe intellectual deficiency.

I don't mean to be snarky or anything, but.. yet you played with a guild demanded you have them? Why else would they "require" them unless people who would be a big part of your time with that guild believed 'add-ins are required to perform'?

Just the idea of a Free Company having demands like that makes me feel uncomfortable. I mean, not least because of the privacy issues around players being able to run checks on my client.. Even if it is only to look for certain add-ons, it seems pretty rude.

Still, I doubt I'll be using them to any great extent, especially given I prefer my UI be as spartan as possible. Anyone demands I operate them probably isn't someone I want anything to do with anyway.