Discussion: User Created UI Addons?

[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."

[Antipika]

blablabla

I don't really see how gear swapping changes anything. Gear swapping can be considered as a rotation. If you fail to gear swap properly it's like failing to rotate a spell properly or use your charge/fury properly etc. So you're still a bad player in any case.

As for WoW and such relying only on gear/rotation, it's wrong, it relies on everything

- Gear
- Spell rotation
- Positioning
- Mechanics anticipation (move at the right time etc.)
- Raid consumables (Food/Potions)
- Spec tree (could be considered like sub job in a way)

As for the F2P part, which game are we talking about? XI? Yeah well game from 2002, different market at the time, game mostly popular in Japan etc. Tons of factors that justify why the game is still ok with a pay to play model. As for XIV, we all know it's not profitable at the moment...

According to what was said in previous dev posts, they are about 300 persons working on the game in Japan. Add to that the dedicated staff in America and Europe. (our GMs, Reps and so on). Now add the total development time put into the game, we can safely say that a lot of people were working on XIV as early as 2008. XIV is not profitable with the few amount of players it has right now. And it won't be profitable if it remains that way, hence why the game is taking a new direction and try to attract more players. A wider audience even if it means becoming a bit less original.

No one wants a game like XI again. And most of us are done with the so-called Square Enix Originality©. We have seen what's XIV 1.0 was all about in term originality. Sure it was unique... uniquely terrible.

[Asiaine]

No one wants a game like XI again.

I do. I liked it. There goes your 'no one' ^.^;;

And most of us are done with the so-called Square Enix Originality©.

I'm not. I like originality. I like people/companies that are willing to take a chance and try something new rather than be a clone. You think WoW just said: Let's clone (whoever is popular). They took a chance and succeeded.

Sometimes you succeed, sometimes you fail. But without taking a chance, you are already a failure.

We have seen what's XIV 1.0 was all about in term originality. Sure it was unique... uniquely terrible.

Can't be that terrible. You're here. I'm here. Lots of people here.

For a little taru, you sure make galkan sized generalizations.

Back to topic!:
I wonder if I can have dedicated chat boxes on a seperate screen.

[Antipika]

If you want XI back, what do you do in here? >>http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/ The game is still running you know.

As for taking a chance, the game already used it. It failed. When you can't be original on certain game aspects, don't try. SE learned its lesson for the UI and we are now getting a standard UI that will do the job, even while being less original.
--
Can't be that terrible? Yeah first AAA MMO in the history which went completely free for months while a pay to play model was announced. Even Wada-san saying it caused damage to the whole franchise. Not terrible you said? Half of the dev team changed few months after release. What is terrible then? You just have low expectations I think.

[Tonkra]

I'm one of the very few people on these forums who actually work in this Industry. I'm sorry, but this is one subject you cannot give a community the benefit of the doubt on. Every MMO that has ever had Mods has had Cheat mods. That is just the way people work. They make things as easy as possible instead of playing the game as intended.

You cannot give the community the ability to Add features to a game and not expect them to Cheat.

thats a good point. and thats what i meant.

im ok with offline rpgs, people can mod or cheat their asses off in offline singleplayer rpgs if they want to.. nobody will ever be disturbed by that. i dont mind if they cheat the game itself.

from the developers it is NOT intended to let the players see how far they are away from a specific monster, otherwise they would have implemented things like these for their own UI (range metre as an example) why making those numbers visible for players? its like making visible the next chess stroke from the PC in a chess game... i cant seriously understand those people to make everything more easier, as it was supposed to be.. how about a UI feature where you see the cooldown of the enemies abillities? well that would be somethin?

a game where you experience the gameplay on YOUR OWN. i think you forgot what a game is supposed to be.
where are the arguments that you SHOULD be able to see unvisible informations like these? nobody from the +pro side could ever tell me (in an objective way!)

If you want XI back, what do you do in here? >>http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/ The game is still running you know.

you could also say the same thing to the wide WoW audience in here "what do you do in here?"

such an WoW arrogant behaviour in here, seriously. and you know.. WoW is also still running.

[Antipika]

you could also say the same thing to the wide WoW audience in here "what do you do in here?"

Wanting an UI that works = wanting to play WoW? It's not even like WoW invented that also.

[Tonkra]

Wanting an UI that works = wanting to play WoW?

ehm and in her opinion the FFXI UI is something that works = wanting to play FFXI? (how you told her)

its just annoying to see such ignorant postings from people who seriously want to have "World of Final Fantasy", it makes me just sick. i cant hear it anymore.

my opinion remains the same. people can cheat and mod their "asses off" in singleplayer rpgs because no one is disturbed by it. but in my opinion people should not make hidden numbers visible, if it was not intended by the developers! if so they would have implemented that in their own UI. what about a UI feature which makes the re-use timer of monster/boss abillities visible? -> easy win? as i said, im not a fan of UI "addons" in an Online Game. We can easily play without that shit (we did so in many Final Fantasys)


yea.. and people complain about a stat booster in the re-release version of FF7... its so true.

[Antipika]

What you still fail to understand is that even if something is not implemented, players will find way around it and use parsers etc. You can parse XIV actually, without even breaching the ToS (the logs are exported by using a native functionality and the parser doesn't need to hook itself directly to the game process).

As for:

ehm and in her opinion the FFXI UI is something that works = wanting to play FFXI?

The FF XI UI doesn't work. The game is getting a new UI for a reason. Also how many PC players did use third party tools on XI? Lot of them, which obviously mean that there was an issue with the UI from the start. If the vanilla UI is fine, why would I bother to breach the ToS and use third party tools?

And don't tell me that only min/maxers did so. Even people not caring about endgame and such had Windower+plugins installed. It wasn't (only) about performance, it was about convenience.

[Tonkra]

The FF XI UI doesn't work.

your opinion. not hers. your opinion is also that WoW has the best UI system. which isnt my opinion also... so...

What you still fail to understand is that even if something is not implemented, players will find way around it and use parsers etc. You can parse XIV actually, without even breaching the ToS (the logs are exported by using a native functionality and the parser doesn't need to hook itself directly to the game process).

Well parsing should be also not allowed, why shall it? you make invisible numbers visible for players.. isnt that kind of hacking/cheating/modding/manipulating around the game client, whatever? for what do you need it?

Tell me please why people should be able to see these things, if they are not implemented by the developer?

Bots are also not implemented and are highly used...

And one serious question.. do you need mods, to play a game? do you need mods/cheats, to be successfull in a game? did you need mods in offline final fantasys for being effective? just tell me, why we should need ugly user interfaces? to have advantages against players who dont use it?

in an online game? seriously is this your intention? i mean there was also a big base of players in Diablo II battlenet, which cheated their asses off. i think such a clientele enjoys having mods in MMorpgs too.

but please eleborate.

[Laughlyn]

some really interesting reading so far, and some infinite loopy posts but ok .

Anyone wonder how this game would be with no UI whatsoever?
Call it a "mod" (if you like) to completly remove the ingame HUD.

Meaning... no HP/MP/TP bar, no minimap, no actionbar, no communication...etc

(Try disable HUD in Dark Souls & see how freakin awesome that is lol)