Discussion: User Created UI Addons?

[Promethevs]

It's a very stupid idea. What you get is a small few addons that do noticeably improve the game in some way or another. The vast majority are trivial improvements, copies and variations of other addons, or just plain bad user interface additions.

I don't understand how you're justifying that crowd-sourcing UI design is a "very stupid idea." Even if the vast majority of addons are trivial or bad, it's the good ones that are popular, and there's nothing stupid about improving your user interface beyond what your dev team finds worthwhile devoting resources to. Bad ones don't get used, and come at no cost beyond the developer's time input. There's a reason why WoW has such a high reputation when it comes to user interface (because it's extremely flexible and personalizable, and people like that).

Customization through "trivial" addons is also never a bad thing - logging in to play on an aesthetically pleasing UI still improves the gaming experience over playing with an ugly UI with the same functionality.

As for whether the devs think they have enough time to set up a system for customization and find that worthwhile... well, that's up to them. I wouldn't be calling them "very stupid" if they undertook such a project, though.

[Laraul]

I don't understand how you're justifying that crowd-sourcing UI design is a "very stupid idea." Even if the vast majority of addons are trivial or bad, it's the good ones that are popular, and there's nothing stupid about improving your user interface beyond what your dev team finds worthwhile devoting resources to. Bad ones don't get used, and come at no cost beyond the developer's time input. There's a reason why WoW has such a high reputation when it comes to user interface (because it's extremely flexible and personalizable, and people like that).

WoW has a reputation for user interface customizability, not a high reputation for it's actual user interface. And plenty of people play WoW with out user interface addons. And even among Blizzard's titles, what other games allow you access to UI APIs for standard customization? Why is D3 lacking a way to allow the same interface customization that WoW does? Hmmm?

What people want in a UI are three things...

• Effecient to use and work with
• Easy to learn (intuitive)
• More Satisfying to use

If an interface does well with all three of these, you quickly find that people don't bother to personalize it because they see no need. But when one or two of these are lacking, well that's when you start seeing people demand "I wanna customize my interface with all this stuff that sounds real cool if I don't think about it."

[Promethevs]

WoW has a reputation for user interface customizability, not a high reputation for it's actual user interface. And plenty of people play WoW with out user interface addons. And even among Blizzard's titles, what other games allow you access to UI APIs for standard customization? Why is D3 lacking a way to allow the same interface customization that WoW does? Hmmm?

What people want in a UI are three things...

• Effecient to use and work with
• Easy to learn (intuitive)
• More Satisfying to use

If an interface does well with all three of these, you quickly find that people don't bother to personalize it because they see no need. But when one or two of these are lacking, well that's when you start seeing people demand "I wanna customize my interface with all this stuff that sounds real cool if I don't think about it."

You basically repeated what I said in your first sentence. "There's a reason why WoW has such a high reputation when it comes to user interface (because it's extremely flexible and personalizable, and people like that)." Except, my overarching message was that you're more likely to get the most satisfying UI when the UI is as customizable as possible.

On top of that, even when I have my UI set up to show everything that I want it to show, sometimes I like to switch the look up just for kicks. I personally find that to be extremely satisfying. The notion that people like different things, and even a single person over time might like different things, is already a pillar of justification for UI customization.

On the other hand, your justification seems to be that, in your opinion, you shouldn't have to put your own time into customization, so it's a "very stupid idea." At face value that's a very weak argument, first because it's unrealistic to expect that absolutely everyone is satisfiable by a single dev team, and secondly because even if it existed it wouldn't harm you in any way to not use the feature. What do I think appropriate reasons against it might be? 1) it might take more time than they think is worthwhile, and 2) they might have some artistic notion of game experience that they're trying to protect, and even 3) they might think it's unfair ground for PS3 players if PC players get to go crazy.

As for why D3 is lacking customization, D3 was rushed and is generally considered by most of the player base to be a bad game with a terrible UI. However, let me turn the question back to you: how does the absence of customization support that "customization is very stupid?" Perhaps I'm not the one who isn't thinking things through?