Wishlist for new UI enhancements after announcements

[Vahlnir]

What is wrong with the current ones? They Work? maybe it is accepted in other MMO's like wow... go play those instead then if can't beat the game with what is in it.

So keep using what works for you and let others make some requests.

[Faafetai]

What is wrong with the current ones? They Work? maybe it is accepted in other MMO's like wow... go play those instead then if can't beat the game with what is in it.

The statement Yoshi P made was that they are working on adding new quality of life ui improvements and other things. So that is why this thread was made. Why go to another mmo when the one your are spending all of your time in has actively stated they are working towards improving functions? When new ui customizations come out you can pretend they do not exist if you really want to, but they were the ones who said it. Everyone didn't just decide they would make a thread about ui enhancements for no reason. This is literally one of the only ways to tell them what the player base actually wants. They don't have anything in game to vote on such things and suggestions help desk is a black hole.

[RitsukoSonoda]

The statement Yoshi P made was that they are working on adding new quality of life ui improvements and other things. So that is why this thread was made. Why go to another mmo when the one your are spending all of your time in has actively stated they are working towards improving functions? When new ui customizations come out you can pretend they do not exist if you really want to, but they were the ones who said it. Everyone didn't just decide they would make a thread about ui enhancements for no reason. This is literally one of the only ways to tell them what the player base actually wants. They don't have anything in game to vote on such things and suggestions help desk is a black hole.

No issues with making a wishlist of things you would like them to add to the UI. IMO the issue is that some of these are less suggestion and more demands or claims of the current UI being defective because they found a 3rd party mod the liked.

[Vav2021]

Recently an announcement was posted about the use of third-party tools. In it, the following was included:

Basically they plan to Sherlock* the most popular UI addons.

* Sherlocking means building into the base software functionality that was previously handled by third party software or addons, and is a reference to Apple's practice of adding features that mimic the functionality of third-party apps, rendering them obsolete.

What new features would you like added to the base game? Here's a wish list, which I plan to update as people respond to the thread:

• Target/NPC HP displayed as a count (I.e. 75k/150k), rather than only as a percentage (I.e. 50%)
• Barriers on all health bars (I.e. player, target, target of target, focus, raid, above characters' heads, etc.) rather than just on the party frames (Mockup image)
• Speech bubbles on players
• Display onscreen the name of the song currently playing
• Cooldown tracking window
• Buff/debuff timers in the party list
• Display ping and FPS
• Favourites tab in the orchestrion window (You could also favourite unlearned songs, allowing it to double as a wish list)
• Single button ability combos
• Allow players to change the colors of AoE telegraphs
• Allow players to move the notification and boss dialogue messages
• Large font for ability cooldown timers
• A "what killed me" timeline window that you can open whenever you die. WoW has this by default.
• Differentiate between physical and magical damage in flying text
• Distance indicator from target
• Flash the taskbar icon in Windows or bounce the dock icon in Mac OS if the duty finder queue pops or you are attacked while tabbed out.
• Option to filter or disable notifications (I.e. "Your iron ore sold on the Market Board for 100 gil") while in combat, or defer the notification until combat ends.
• Mouseover casting
• Ability to filter icons on the minimap. WoW has this by default.
• Allow player to set name display rules for Free Company members.
• Better right-click reporting options
• Personal damage meters (You can only see your own DPS, and not other players)
• Adventure/Duty guide like in WoW. It could show a list of dungeons, raids, and trials by expansion, what bosses are present, what abilities the bosses have, and what loot they drop.
• Progress indicators built into AoE telegraphs. For circle AoEs, a second circle would start at the center and grow, when it reaches the edge the AoE will go off. WildStar had this.

(Note: I do not use any third party addons.)

Chat bubbles, and the ability to make an RP profile. That's literally all I want. That's my "Will get you banned" desire. Just chat bubbles, and an RP profile option.

[Roda]

Sorry for the late reply, just saw this quote.

I genuinely don't get the appeal of this. Why do people want this so badly? Actually curious.

Basically, if I wanted to interact with other people solely through a scrolling chat window, I'd go on IRCs or discord or whatever.

A good ui, to me, is one that makes my interaction with the game-world more intuitive and natural, not one that pulls me out and separates me from it.
And that's chat bubbles+chat box vs JUST a chat box for me.

Talking with people has a directional component to it, having just a list of things said doesn't feel like I'm interacting with the other players' characters since it's completely divorced from who is talking and the actions they are making when they speak, and with strangers, it makes it hard to tell who's talking and putting the situational context to what they're saying (Think, someone saying "come here" in the middle of a fight to help you find a safe spot) It's why trust members have speech bubbles when they say things instead of just listing their thoughts in the chat box alone, and why ambient npcs have them too, it makes them feel more alive.

[Kolsykol]

I honestly disagree about the damage meter even if it's just personal based on principle alone.
I also don't think it'd be personal and I mean if people think it's already an issue with Statics I think it'd become an even bigger thing with people wanting screenshots or something.
Parsing is already a thing and it's not going anywhere and I honestly think it should be separate and outside of the game.
Making it official is just one step towards the toxicity it brings even if it's not today it'd be another step to it tomorrow.

You actually can create macros that act as cooldown timers, I really want more macro spots because all of mine are already taken up by them and it's only on a few Jobs rly.
But what I do is I have a separate Hotbar where I put them that is more in line with where my eyes will be most of the time during a fight and it makes it easy to keep track.
What you do is type /micon "Stardiver" as an example and it creates an unclickable icon so you don't click it by mistake.

Unless you mean being able to see other peoples cooldowns.
I've seen people make buttons like these but much larger too for a single button they want to keep track of.
I just find it makes it so I don't have to look down on my hotbar as often ( and it's easier to keep track when it's a handful instead of two full bars ).
It has always been an issue for me in other MMO's and made for bad eye strain of having to look down constantly, finding out about the macro made it way more pleasant for me to play.

[Shougun]

Wewh, finally beat Elden Ring at 20 mins a day .. lol.. (that and studying programming)... Coming back to see a lot of fun stuff has happened lol. Unfortunate they had that housing issue initially but glad the system exists now so there is less stories of people waiting 8 hours straight to get jumped by a house transfer or a bunch of bots (even if some of the houses in lottery may be bought by bots too, can't fully escape the bot xD).

In their post they did mention the increasing player skill, and I strongly, strongly, believe the third party tools have been an element of that. When people can understand a fight before doing the fight, have reminders on many of their tasks they're responsible for, get highly accurate info on a dime... I know some people have argued it doesn't impact stuff like that, and I massively disagree. Although I'm not really against the idea of addons either, and I think the fight against them in many ways is futile. By 'against' I mean "no addons, and we're not going to help you do what you think is clearly an extremely helpful feature". It did take many years, which is certainly nothing! But we did indeed get DBM, and now you're not really going to be able to monitor or guide it very well since it was made outside of the sphere of SE's influence unlike if it was an addon. Of course some features may be basically like cheating, and maybe those never get added, but otherwise I think any tool that is popular enough that people are going to go get it should be examined thoroughly on why (and probably have a strong 'enough' stance against things that are deemed unacceptable- which means punishing people who show it off). That said perhaps they should do some more warnings than bans for this first wave as we move farther away from don't ask don't tell into "will try to do better, but you're not allowed to use stuff outside the game and we will enforce it where possible outside of installing spyware on your pc".

I wanted add as an aside to potentially augment / further enhance the scope of the project- is that they mentioned people use these tools in high end duties to help give them more info. Yes totally true, but also a lot of people who are casual use it to empower their experience as well. So hopefully they're not just looking at strictly combat / high-tier type UI concepts. Looking through people's posts you can see a lot of this already where quite a few desires have nothing to do with combat.

After re-reading the list of addons available for two of the major tools FFXIV has here are some disorganized thoughts on what I'd like to see (not compressive, just quickly put together - some ideas are more like features than specifically just UI):

To me perhaps one of the not immediately logical but pretty neat if do able potential QoL is a sort of master search / 'everything' tool bar. You can have as much in windows via dedicated apps (one literally called everything, it's a good search tool for windows if you wanted an actual search that searches lol). These are insanely useful, I've read through all the addons that FFXIV has because I felt people were being disingenuous in terms of the power you could get from 3rd party tools (and I maintain they were after reading it, absolutely some huge powerhouse tools out there) but one that caught my eye that I think could be cool is like that.

So you could type wolves and the wolves den teleport would pop up and you could just hit enter and teleport there. Or you could type blm or black and your gearset would pop up and you could change your job. Perhaps given SE might not know all the fan favorite acronyms a place to add your own dictionary links might be wise.

It may sound weird to type stuff but when it's done right and quick you'd be surprised how much time you'd save, as well as how little brain power is needed lol. Rather than hunting around your desktop for an icon you just type the name and boom it's there. One might mention window's search bar for that, and eh.. sort of.. but it's also kind of bad lol. "firefox" windows search bar: "did you mean to search bing for firefox?".... -_-;.. SERIOUS?!?! There are much better desktop tools. Which reading the addon I mentioned before must have been inspired by such concepts as my desktop variant that searches the entire computer is very similar sounding.


- Wanted to place an example of a recent element they added to the game so both the aetheryte map and obtained checkmark are good examples of awesome casual QoL

- Improvements to the macro system, including ways to easily share macros (at least copy paste them to websites others can use, even if it's not like share with player in front of you lol). There would need to be some rules to prevent 1 button play for me type things, but consider allowing players to build PvP like options that do not cause issues. Like if a player wants to combine a skill into one button where when you press it the other button appears, currently it could fail and there are delays both of which can have massive impacts to your play. Fix stuff like that, honestly I adore the PvP system (and the new changes are pretty nice, though that is aside the point lol). Maybe it wont be as insane as the addon stuff I've read is possible, like "does target have debuff? if no assign debuff skill to x" which is pretty crazy powerful (and likely too powerful).

Yet mouse over improvements, with the error fixing the input delays and errors, would be nice and I don't think is too powerful. So you could have a mouse over macro that has a fail case following it that will cast on your target (say if you target the monster and cast cure, normally it would cast cure on yourself- with this macro it would cast cure on your mouse over target first and if that was either no one or a monster then it would still cure you and it would do all of that without the issues you currently would have with it).

Maybe to help empower macros might be always on macros or something that can't take actions but can change stuff on the hud / notify you. Like if someone dies, play sound. Etc. This gives the player power to set up and share what they find helpful. Can give them a nifty name like sentinels lol.

There is still room to make a stronger and more share-able macro system without it becoming a bot, I think. Alternatively they can continue to combine and bring down buttons, but I know some people like that bloat (I /personally/ do not, I think button bloat is unnecessary and not really that fun- but that is a personal point, where skill doesn't need it either like playing MOBA games, 5 buttons still high skill ceiling).

Auto-complete like when you're coding in most software, in this way players can more easily write a macro. As an example as you type an ability name it will offer for you to auto-complete it, if you're typing <mo it's suggesting <mo> for mouse over, if you're typing <mouse it's still suggesting mouse over because the alias is spelled out in the system. Other alias ideas might be slapping map to everything that has to do with map. So <fp> still works but if you were like.. wth was that again? typing <map would provide you all the map related options.

- Related to the above in macro auto-complete, but perhaps consider similar system for auto-translate. if you type < for example the game might assume anything after it is for auto-translate and begin auto-suggesting functional results. <he would suggest <hello!>.

- Empower the auto translate further so if you type a map name <Ul'dah> not only is it of course translated to each user but you could also click that translation to open your map to Ul'dah. Where it makes sense add such functionality.

- Add custom map markers to maps, for example you might mark where you can find a certain enemy for your hunts (more notes on that later). Including the option to pick an icon, a label (not needed), and then perhaps enhance the map for filtering so you could filter all monster icons or whatever.

- If possible enhance and make easier the ability to create custom menus. I made my own menu out of macros so I can easily change jobs, expand / minimize, emotes, etc.. and while not rocket science it would be nice if it was easier and not having to use a weird sort of "stuff these in a hidden bar of another job" like variable system. For example I saw one addon allowed players to have the hotbar hide and appear from view via hovering, use a lot of icons and differing shape (or custom), etc.

- Allow players to assign debuffs to be visible for the in game environment such you can see your debuff (even when you're not targeting them, and yes I'm aware there is a monster list lol). Or if someone is dead you could see the raise icon (not a debuff but a case could be made for that status specifically). Certainly optional, but can be handy to quickly see something particular.

- highlight nameplates that have esuna-able debuffs

- junk items that have no purpose but to be sold, or no longer have a purpose (like 1.0 quest items), to be marked as such (and rules to never use such items for things after they're marked as such)

- chat bubbles. Any answer on why probably sounds insane, but I swear to Thal it adds an extra element of "mmmph!" to chat. It feels so good to "see" people talk, either those to you or even those outside your party. Yes it would need options, like anyone, friends, party, fc, etc, and that makes it annoying to code / add I'm sure- but I loved this feature in WoW and you can see it on npcs in FFXIV, and there is an addon that does this as well. If FFXIV added it, I would turn it on right away.

- Not really an addon, but I believe hunts could be a lot easier to manage- there is vaguely an addon that does this and maybe that feels a bit too cheaty.. but improving the organization of the hunts and perhaps some of the totally wrong locations or telling you if it's a FATE enemy could help. May consider a hunt compass for b ranks, might not be laser accurate but 'good enough', alternatively may improve the whole b - s rank system. Like you follow their tracks, kill monsters, visit locations, variation of 'mad lib' like quests far more personal for B ranks. And there have been many ideas for A and S (or just continue to accept that massive trains may exist). Slapping next a bunch of times on essentially a linked list of monsters, waiting at location to find out it's a FATE, etc, like things.. to be changed. Including perhaps a UI element that links to the hunt NPC (like, after 8 years you might forget where the hunts board was for ARR lol). Relating above (map) and below (libra / bestiary) you might unlock tracking notes as you complete the hunts (not until you find and kill them)- thinking for the more general monsters, B, A, S ranks would obviously need different approaches (or none at all lol).

- The above search all things search bar, not exactly sure what the addon does but I suggest the team to check it out on a secured PC (don't get hacked at the company lol). Besides teleports, jobs, would be nice for crafting, items, etc. Like if I wanted to craft green tea I'd just type that and two options in the dropdown might be the green tea in my inventory and the recipe itself that would open if I selected it (selecting the item in my inventory would just open the inventory). Typing an area name would open the map, quest name open the quest journal, duty content.. duty finder, etc etc.

- Kupo tetra tutor? There is a card addon that basically tells you how to play against NPCs (NPCs only). Doing exactly that in game isn't really acceptable, but it might be cute to have a paper clip (microsoft word buddy lol) kupo who you can ask to help at like a minor penalty to MGP and will give tips. Easy might be like he gives lots of tips and cautions you on bad moves (and maybe says why), normal might be some deck building tips against npcs with rule sets, and hard is no help at all. This isn't massively important to me but I imagine the reason that addon exists is because given the low chance of cards and certain rule sets being a huge pain in the butt that the addon exists. Another easier suggestion might be rewarding more mgp and increasing the reward chance of cards, cause I can tell you some of the harder npcs made me feel like "man this is a waste of time, this is so annoying not getting the card and barely making any mgp" meanwhile the more reasonable rules make the card game pretty fun (either because they're more logical than luck based, or because the speed of completion feels more like I'm actually earning decent mgp).

- Much more free form housing object placement. Like having collision as an option is important but also just let players turn it off and flip stuff upside down and placed in the middle of the air at a 20 degree angle because because. It'll make the creativity potential increase while the stress drastically decrease. Adding scale to that as well would be insanely powerful. But just removing collision and z restrictions, as an option, would be neat.

- Under perhaps accessibility section add pixel marker for your personal collision (determines if you're hit by an AoE for example), I saw a streamer use it and it allowed them to be insanely precise and was kind of neat (but also a little ugly lol- hence a nice option).

- Semi-related to the compass for b-rank hunts, and perhaps improvements to the system overall (given it's safe to assume people are using 3rd party super radars and huge trains), maybe also consider slight QoL additions to the vista system. Maybe annoying for those that did the ARR ones already but personally I think they should add minor cutscene and other elements to the system, and avoid it being "BE HERE AT 12 WHILE IT RAINS OR GO POUND SAND". For example if the devs think a space looks really pretty at 12 while it rains, when you get to location the time will quickly pass to that situation - give you some gorgeous views, give you some reward, and call that good. But I suggest maybe expanding the idea, like you might have monsters in some vista, mini-games (chocobo race, platform, etc). Bigger rewards too. It's obviously fairly shallow system currently but I feel it could encourage a bit more specific location enjoyment (obviously far more than a UI at that point). Not all the vistas would be special but I think they should try to get at least half to be unique... for those who've already done it all the new ones that have actions you could do again for bonus rewards. If any old ones had increased value then you could revisit it for the value again. I've done quite a few but the reward for some often feels underwhelming for the effort involved and occasionally feels like an exercise in feeling silly for wanting to complete a task "I am completing this because I am completing this", like the million object pick up in some open world games except occasionally worse when you've a challenging vista. Not that I think they should make insane systems on it, but say for example a small (REASONABLE) jumping puzzle that starts at the node and locks you out of flying (ARR ones for example are now usually easy because flying). Not sure if the chocobo system is port-able to other locations without issue, but starting a race at the point, etc.

- some sort of system that can give feedback on performance, may compare to others via anonymous aggregate data.. may not- but a means for players to improve in a way that isn't so simple that it basically tells you if you did absolutely awful or subpar and that's it for info. I get not sharing the parse info, but something would be nice.

- map links to currency (click a currency and you can get a link to where to spend it, poetics might be a weird menu but at least beast tribe would be fairly consistent)

- Libra / bestiary might be neat but insanely memory hungry idea (unless it's just for bosses/dungeons)... Bouncing off the OP comment on the adventure guide, you could have it such enemies you fight get their loot and such logged (abilities for bosses, perhaps even DBM basic options you can turn on, optionally, after you've seen them, like stack, etc- ultimate excluded). When you search an item for source it'd include results from your log.. In effect an sRPG code. But uh.. that is a monumental task if including more than just bosses (even then it's still not nothing).

- Off the above, and same memory concerns, logs npc shops you've been to so you could see if you can purchase an item and from where. If you want to buy that iron ore for 2k gil or 200gil.. :P

- Since I've already broken the barrier of just UI ideas a few times now, and the libra thing is pretty intensive.. just thought to say an item log, like they described they were working on in the past (and stopped due to challenge), would be pretty great lol. Our glamour log has an interesting side effect of being effectively an item bank, but I think being able to track what you have, don't have, and essentially 'collect it all' would be more fun still. I like the primal weapons for example but because I don't want to store them I only buy my favorite even though I've been interested in buying others before. I did suggest what I think is an acceptable memory friendly solution to having many thousand variable system though if that helps at all with the unreasonableness of the request inside a UI thread lol. (The short of it was converting items into a materia like aether token and then after spending X of that at a crystal library you'd gain the entire catalog for glamor, and you could use future tokens to purchase from that glamor- meaning the system acted as both a way to store 1 variable for an entire content but also a safety net for the majority of content in the game).

- More screen control, being able to reduce / take away other player special effects is awesome for screen readability. I'd love to see that for player pets and such as well. I think (smn) pets is a great one because it adds less stress on other players for having a summoner with large summons but allows you to have your own be huge so you can feel the classic vibe (say you could set other player pets to small, and yours to large). Or say if you allowed players to add transparency (which could be useful for both pets and effects in general, maybe I want to have the vague idea of what you're casting but also not be drastically attention drawn by it). A functioning example of this would be in diablo 3, where your team mate summons are slightly blended with the background (color so you can see them but they hardly demand your attention. Which also allows SE to give more leeway to design of summons or things that take that into account. I absolutely love how flashy effects are in this game but because they're super flash I do turn down other people's effects so I can still also play the game acceptably lol.

I'm glad they said what they said though and are taking the challenge, a while ago I suggested that it was a shame that such extreme QoL was off in a corner of space that only a few enjoyed and some of that info was very very good QoL without damaging the gameplay intent. Not saying because I said it so they did, simply to me it seemed like "this would be the reasonable way to go up against it" and as such is vaguely what they did. Further evidence to me that the FFXIV team is trying to be on the ball, and responsive to feedback (in the game, maybe not in the community postings lol). I am aware here and there issues may disgruntle people and some of that is impossible and some of it may be mistakes, but in general I quite like the team's effort. I don't mind the 4 month schedule as I've set myself up to basically purposefully lag behind in the game, and as such I always have an insane number of things I can do, but also I always hope it allows the people who actually work on the game a better QoL of their own. Said to hear awful hours, pay, and or environments part of some companies- particularly when you have other individuals of the company who are making out like the king of the world (some issues that we are all aware of that were in Blizzard for example lol).

None of the above are deal breakers to me, obviously lol, but say for example as a PC user being able to type "ul'd" and have ul'dah appear as a teleport option sounds incredible and the fact apparently the addon exists makes me ache a little lol. Some QoL would be better for PC than console, but say for example highlight name plate or pvp combo / more powerful macros would do well for both. Said it before but also potentially condensed abilities allows for more abilities, since a job that is bursting at the seams probably doesn't have much room but a job with sub 20 skills could get a new skill as soon as the devs thinks it's interesting.

I look forward to the potential ideas they have for the game though, definitely encouraging them on this matter and hope they can be 'artsy' about it where logical. I think the achievement log is quite cute. I wish my map was cute lol (it may just be me in all the game population but I still really dislike that it's essentially an image viewer and as such you can see through the UI in points where the image of the map has ended but the UI window of the tool has not, the space the UI exists but no map exists).

Hope everyone is doing well

[Ravor]

I have to disagree if they add so much stuff to be put in the UI instantly, the current states of the UI is already good enough, i agree for them to add some UI improvement or modification, but putting a lot of them will also forced other player to force other player to put them on if they are built in game, for example, there is a reason why dps meter wont be put by the dev, once these dps meter is in the game officially, most player will force other player to use it, it will be justification by player to forced other player to use it, "the dev put dps meter in the game, it means its part of the game experience", i always welcome more quality of life, but too many UI or information on screen will be bad experience for most people, look at some other game like elden ring, all you need is your hp and mp(and enemies) and current item hold/can be used, that is what mostly all displayed and most player can finish the game, they dont need dps meter, they dont need range indicator, they dont need so much information displayed on screen, its part of the gaming experience intended by the game developer

[Aniya_Estlihn]

look at some other game like elden ring, all you need is your hp and mp(and enemies) and current item hold/can be used, that is what mostly all displayed and most player can finish the game

Friend... respectfully, I disagree. Elden Ring is an open world game where none of this extra information is needed for you to make progress. In a combat-oriented MMORPG like XIV, the more information you have in combat, the better the experience will be as a whole. This is not something that can be argued against, it's simply a fact. This has nothing to do with the intended experience by Square Enix, as they themselves know that the UI is wholly lacking in multiple departments.

[eagledorf]

Please correct latency causing skills to execute slower. A player in Japan can literally use skills faster with the same skill speed than a player in another part of Asia because the game does not account for ping in how it handles skill queueing, it's frankly unbelievable.

Also, this game doesn't correct for frame rate in skill queueing either. If you have a high frame rate you can have a lower GCD, this is mainly a problem for fast jobs like MNK or in a very long fight (like ultimates).