Wishlist for new UI enhancements after announcements

[Larirawiel]

I want:

3D avatars of the player and of the current target. Only two bars are boring.



Cheers

[Shurrikhan]

There are few elements that cannot be tweaked and this should be fixed from a long time now...

I feel like there's still an ocean of difference, though, between "let's give these few restricted elements the same (very limited) options available to the other elements" and being able to truly customize one's UI. The latter is a matter of being freely able to create and attribute any element one wants.

Imagine, for instance, upon selecting "Create Element," you could then select from among...

>> Element Type

[Number], [Icon], [Bar Gauge], [Diamonds Gauge], [Chevron Gauge], [Custom Gauge], [Cursor Overlay]

>> Element Set

[No Set], [<Set 1>], [<Set 2>], [<Set 3>]

>> Visibility

[Always], [Show Only When...], [Hide When...], [Replace... When...]

>> Attach To...

[Free-Standing], [Select Parent Element], [Select Parent Set], [(Copy Parent Scale)]

>> Parent Anchor

[Top-Left], [Top], [Top-Right], [Left], [Center], [Right], [Bottom-Left], [Bottom], [Bottom-Right]

>> Element's Anchor

[Top-Left], [Top], [Top-Right], [Left], [Center], [Right], [Bottom-Left], [Bottom], [Bottom-Right]

>> Offset

[X-Offset], [Y-Offset]

>> Dimensions

[Length], [Width], [Height], [Padding]

>> Styling

[Direction], [Fill Direction], ([Fill Starting Position]), [Background Color], [Border Style], [Border Thickness], [Border Color], [Fill Color], ([Fill Color 2]), ([Fill Color 3]), [Gradient], ([Highlight Color]), ([Cooldown Style]), [Glow Appearance], [Flash Appearance]

>> Attributes

[Timer], [Resource], [Unit Value], [Other]

etc.

If you want to show your Bloodletter charges as a few red diamonds (a la Addersting count under SGE's Simple Mode gauge) but have them be vertical and fill clockwise starting from 3:00, instead of showing only after completion, you can.

You just go Diamonds -> None -> Show Only When... (Cooling + In Combat OR Applicable Target) -> Hotbar 1 -> 90° | Clockwise | 0° | Black (30% Alpha) | Black | 1 pixel | Red (#8B0000) -> Timer (Bloodletter).

Voila, custom timer created, all using the stock XIV assets.

But addons are not the way, we should be a bit more vocal about the issues we have with it (and allow us to have more UI presets ffs 4 really...) because for people like me, I play on 2k on ps5 and 1080p on the pc, I kind of need my presets on both platforms. It is super annoying right now when I make some changes for one reason or another and I need to tweak the system settings two times separately.

As long as XIV does enough to make redundant the plugins we can generally consider benign, I'd be fine with there no being no addons. But, for now, there's a large gap between the two experiences even in terms of basic QoL and accessibility. There's a lot of work to do for a game that's been largely complacent about its 2000s-era UI to catch up with enthusiastic modders who actually care, quite specifically, about the particular QoL features they provide.

[TobiasReed]

Assign display name rules to your own FC. My FC members are not every other person I see, I'd like to make them a different display color.
While in an instance with NPC's fighting alongside you, put them in the party so I can use the party UI on them.
Make it so that markers put above characters heads does not block the view of countdowns or other mechanical identifiers on that character. Ex the mini bosses for the new 24 man.
An option to only see my debuffs or debuffs that effect me on characters I target. I don't need to see my allies dots, I only need to see my dots, and maybe trick attack.
An option to move the cast bar of my target/focus target independently of the health bar.
An option to copy a hud layout and paste it into an additional hud layout slot. Currently if I want to do this, I need to completely remake the existing hud.
Mostly see this in pvp, make "target closest enemy" actually target the closest enemy.
I don't know if we can currently move the dialogue box for NPC's in an instance. But the default place for it can cover mechanics. There's a boss in StB that has a text box cover the look away eye.
An option on the mount roulette to specifically exclude certain mounts. I don't need a limited favorite list. I just don't like certain mounts all together.

Heya,

Unless I have misunderstood your requests, I am certain you can already do some of these currently.

For only debuffs you inflict, go to Character configuration, UI Settings, HUD, and scroll down to Targets. The first checkbox should read "Display only detrimental effects you inflict." You will only see the debuffs you place on enemies.

For the enemy cast bar, you need to go to Settings, HUD Layout, Click on the list and find Target info. Select the little gear symbol called UI Element Settings. There should be an option to "Display Target info Independently". Then when you go back to the selection of the HUD elements, you can select Target Info (Progress Bar) and move that around independently of your target health.

Lastly, copying the HUD layout is easy. To the right of the HUD numbers, 1, 2, 3, and 4, there is a gear. Click on that gear and it will bring up a window to copy the base settings to a new slot. The first row if the HUD you would like to copy, and the second row is where you would like to copy it to.

Not sure if that helps, but it was something I noticed in your requests. Again, sorry if I have misconstrued what you have said. Just wanted to help if I could.

[Shougun]

To be fair, you can have a hyperminimal UI without also being limited to a hyperminimum of available information.

On WoW, for instance, my only visible UI outside of combat (areas) was my mini-map, a line of buffs (filtered) at the bottom-center of my screen, and a minimized party/raid list. The last appeared as simply portraits and a counter; those within 80 yards got portraits, increasing slightly in size until within 40 yards, while the rest were reduced to a +<n> counter. Mousing over the area would expand it to show all others, so I could easily right click on them for whispers, promote them to leader, etc.

When they were in combat (areas) or when their HP was below 95%, a segmented circle border would form around their portrait, each segment equal to an amount of HP, so that I'd effectively have visual indication of both %HP and true value. That border's color would transition fade from light green to darker green to gold to orange to red for better at-a-glance reading.


Once an enemy was selected or I was in combat, I could see my on-cooldown CDs and my 5 core rotational skills, an enemy HP bar, name, %HP, and abridged remaining HP value. These on-cooldown CDs would appear below the rotational skills, centered and forming two rows for role-centric (Primary) and utility (Secondary) CDs. Refreshed CDs would flash (with color based on CD type) and linger a brief moment to better catch my eye, but I otherwise just understood that if they weren't on the list of things on cooldown, then they were ready to go. A couple high priority CDs I'd also have move to the top of the bars and glow upon refresh.

Mini-menu? Flyout from the right, now with larger buttons and some further shortcuts. If I were able to change jobs or had further reason to swap gear-sets on the fly? Would have been a fly-out from the left.

Thus, in total, I'd have all the information I needed for my 25-28 skills (depending on spec)... with only 5 persistent buttons showing on my screen, while being just as readable, after a couple hours getting used to the new layout, as my old brick hotbars (a 3x12 layout keymap I'd copied over from XIV).

My monitor (3440x1440) has 4,953,600 pixels. My personal combat UI, in total, took up a little under 4k pixels before procs/CDs, and around 5.8k pixels at most, despite using large, highly readable icons. The party list, with or without buffs/CDs (tracking just a few core CDs from each spec), took up another 6.2 to 8k pixels. The minimap was the largest expense, at another 32.4k pixels. Details, if I was running it, would take up about another 14k.

In total, though, my UI covered barely some 1% of my screen. It was incredibly readable, gave me what information I needed (and M+ tends to want more information than anything in XIV), and was still quite minimal / uninvasive.


Now, all that is a matter of combat UI, rather than, say, guiding players towards Recommendations, Challenges, Daily Roulettes, etc., let alone providing in-game guides, additional information like how various gear is stat-ed or look and where one can acquire them, and so forth, as nicely put together through WoW's Adventurer's Journal, but the idea that having a solid amount of information would necessitate a claustrophobic, UI-ed-to-death mess seems a failure of imagination.

(And the thing that was so nice about addon support like WoW's, was that one could tailor absolutely everything to their personal preference.)

I get you, perhaps my wording should have been more strict- but what I mean is that Elden Ring lacks a lot of info (intentionally for the most part, intentionally esoteric), and that isn't really a good option in FFXIV where you are bombarded with things you need to understand in quick sequence (hence why third party addons are popular in the first place). Just because you /can/ have access to info doesn't mean it has to look awful and fill your screen, which I think is your point. We do not disagree

I also wanted to add to that Elden Ring, in my post, that some of the lack of info is rather frustrating, imo, and not to a gain of the game. Like some of the esoteric / hidden nature is nice, and this feeling likely diverges from person to person- but the fact there is no journal at all just throws me for a loop and forces me to use third party websites just to reasonably follow along (as I imagine many many people do). Of course for that game a quest journal that draws on the map exactly each step, where, how, when, etc might not fit well and that's fine- but freaking nothing? Imo that's not good minimal / lack of info lol, the lack of journal imo is not a good choice.

So my post was two points, A. the games are different, so there will be some different needs, B. I'm not convinced all of the lack of info was good. Particularly to move on point B we have this wonderful map with custom markers and waypoints that shows your position in the world and labels many locations for you. That's not OG "souls" at all, but it's so freaking helpful and I can imagine how much more frustrating the game would be without it.

Of course this is opinion, and in general I think the game is absolutely a blast (and the other souls without maps or journals were too), just that I'm not convinced having even basic notes on npc would ruin the experience of figuring stuff out yourself (and if anything enshrined the idea that I have to use a third party website in order to follow along because the game doesn't offer the ability to even vaguely do that). Or say for example, and I agree to this choice in Elden, that most content should be explored yourself before a map is given as the map can take away a lot of that journey... but.. once you've explored it.. GIVE MAP lol. The map locations deep within a space was a not bad solution to this (Elden Ring), though personally there was a game a while ago that used triangulation to draw on your map and I always thought that was really cool and wonder if it might fit into a game again. The basic concept was you get three landmarks / get to high points, and then you can draw in the map between those points. The map becomes visible when discovered via WoW / FFXIV is alright though it usually opens up huge huge areas of the map lol (also personally the event in WoW is much better than FFXIV, because of the sound effects and at least from my memory better exp reward- so if SE was reading, I feel you could get a far more "oooooo" experience by playing around with the reward structure of discovering areas in game via a better sound effect and reward).

Also in agreement example in Skyrim there is a bunch of HUD you don't need up 24/7, but you still want access to, there are mods that allow you this by adding compass buttons and smart UI that hides itself when not needed. Smart, immersive, non-screen aggressive UI definitely doesn't need to be "no UI". I think I had a mod in Witcher that did something similar, the aggressive effect on using your witcher sense toned down a bit, added a tap vs hold feature where the tap showed some info around me and the compass and then the press was full on witcher sense.

[Nav_Fae]

I hope SE doesn't spend resources and money on chat bubbles.
SE is the kind of company that would penalize content someplace else (like a song for phase 2 in savage) because we got chat bubbles instead and claim it cost them a quarter of their budget.

[Shougun]

I hope SE doesn't spend resources and money on chat bubbles.
SE is the kind of company that would penalize content someplace else (like a song for phase 2 in savage) because we got chat bubbles instead and claim it cost them a quarter of their budget.

Honestly worth it, imo. A system that pervades the entire game non-stop vs a single piece of content. Also honestly think that is false choice, but maybe you were just having fun and not saying literally "chat bubbles, turn the page I take your song". lol. Also noting that I do love the music in game, so it's not an insult to that- I just think I would be experiencing the bubbles in basically every single time I play the game and thus having a far reaching impact meanwhile you compared it to something that WOULD be cool but the impact likely very localized unless it was an extremely banger song haha.

It's way better not to give players, or each other, the chance to organize SE's resources though. If players found out that you could have a glamour log or ultimate in the next two expansions, I am very certain that would be the end of ultimate content. But making those type of decisions based on our own preferences without greater picture vision, is probably a bad thing .

Better to try and sell SE on the idea and they'll find out if they have the desire / resources.

[Corue]

Honestly chat bubbles add so much life to the game. Makes it far more lively than a bunch of characters stood around flapping their mouths.

Not that I would know what the chat bubble mod looks like of course.

[DragonFlyy]

- Personal Orchestrion so we can listen to our music whenever and where ever we want.
- Inventory search bar on all inventory windows that would highlight the searched item.

[Packetdancer]

While you can't solve it entirely, the amount of delay is definitely way more than most online games I have experience with, or at least these specific issues have never been this pronounced.
It's just another thing on the pile, really.

It's less that there's more inherent delay (though there does seem to be some truth to that) and more that FFXIV's handling of replicated state where movement is concerned is... uh. How to put this.

Okay, without going into theories behind how you handle network replication of movement in online gaming, the non-technical analogy here would be that, so far as I can tell, that FFXIV puts less importance on where you're going as opposed to where you've been.

That might sound like a really subtle difference, but it is not.

Prediction of where you're headed based on existing movement -- and moving your character ahead-of-time in the server representation and on other remote clients -- is very key to the illusion that there's no major perceivable network delay in a lot of online gaming. Many games are deciding where you probably are before you actually tell them you're there, and then adjusting your movement to correct your position if they're wrong. This means your friend in some game might seem to be moving smoothly with no latency or lag, but in actuality the movements you see might be slightly different than what your friend is actually doing, with the game adjusting what you see as their movement somewhat on-the-fly to correct their movement and bring it in alignment with where they actually are.

Now, handling movement prediction is a pain, no question; I've been working on a game in my spare time with a free-running/parkour system, and let me tell you, handling that in multiplayer with solid network prediction has been an adventure. And not always the good kind.

But FFXIV's movement model is a lot simpler, and there definitely are some improvements they could make... though they would probably not be trivial to implement at this point.

Edit: Holy flipping heck, Shougun. And I thought I could write long posts... that one a few pages ago is one for the record books!

[Sky_Sumisu]

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