New UI suggestions

This thread makes me want to dig up my old WoW UI. It was super minimalistic.... until I entered combat. WoW has soooo many ways to make highly technical people gain massive advantages over players who don't invest in their UI. It's really effective but actually makes the game more imbalanced and less fun. Note that I haven't played WoW in a looong time and I don't know if that's true anymore.

This issue of UI bloat is a natural result of EQ being less movement based and more ability and buff based. So you can largely reduce your information to looking at ability timers, buffs and certain trigger notifications. Other games require the player to examine the world and move with the action, and that has a lot of merit. In order to require that, EQ would need to move away from broadcasting actions in the combat log and instead give visual notifications and reduce the importance of buff synchronization.

Everquest's edge grab to resize is maddeningly intolerant at times. Oddly, it always seems to favor the side of the window you DON'T wish to move, but have to adjust from the one side you CAN get ahold of, then move the window over. It's even annoying like that in 1080.

I'd also like to add- make <all> windows resizable so we can fit them into our layouts properly please?

Target's target, Mercenaries, Action pane and so on.

Also- why does the default UI <NEVER> show the mercenary window, even with an active, charging us PP stance?

Also - why does the UI display <any> mercenary window on a /copylayout when the copy-ing character has NO merc?

Also - Untabbed chat windows do NOT need a tab with a title just repeating the window title. just give the space back to actual chat lines.

Good luck

Personally I don't need the UI, the addon system would be nice though.

The edge grab really really needs to be increased a bit.

The ability to not have a place in a chat window to enter text, as I only need that on one chat window and it just takes up screen real estate to have it on every chat window.

Also, really permit us to remove extra space hogging things on chat windows. I don't need a title on each window if each tab in the window has a title. That's just hogging up space. Space is at a premium in the UI so every millimeter counts.

Along those lines, I wish you could filter everything to multiple windows/tabs.

For those who like to parse, you have to have everything going on somewhere. That means you have to pick a spot where everything goes and it can only go there.

For social bugs, it means your chat can only take place in one specific window/tab.

In the Vanguard UI, you specifically listed what items went to what tab/window. You want tells in your main chat? Done, but you want them somewhere for quick reference and not scrolled to oblivion? Also done.

I ran with group, say, tells, raid, guild in one window/tab, a separate tells tab, a separate raid chat tab (with player raid channels also), a "chat channels" tab, but also guild channels and global channels tabs. My combat abilities (spells, melee, etc..) but also an "everything combat" tab for parsing.

/log <window_tab_name_> was a thing. So I didn't have to bog down daily playing filling up logs.
For EQ, that would mean you could set a tab that specifically had values used for raid triggers, while excluding chat "spam" combat spam, etc..

They also only had a text entry field... YOU chose what window/tab it was on and how many tabs you wanted a text entry field for. Want one on a tells tab? Done. Want one on your main chat window? Done. Don't want it anywhere else? No problem!

Every tab could be set up what whatever you did or did not want.:



Again.. DBG OWNS THIS.

Can we get this entire thread pinned to keep all the suggestions in one place?

It makes me sad and has made me sad ever since they shut it down.

Vanguard is a huge game. It innovated in many ways. You'd need to get a few people to fix the engine performance, fix the memory leak, and relaunch the game. You now have an entire game without having actually made it yourselves!

For the filtering/parsing stuff, what would be great would be if there was an option to have things only go to the logfile and not to the screen.
When parsing we need to have everything turned on but there is a lot of it that is just spam, we don't actually need to see it.

So, if we had a 'log only' filter option that would be great.
It would also cut down on ui lag since the client wouldn't be displaying 100k spam messages every second.

p.s.
The logfile really needs some love.
Even after deleting the logfile before starting the game, there are instances where simply turning logging on causes the client to grind to a halt.

This is with the game running in an SSD and nothing else running, antivirus is not scanning the EQ folder, etc.

Being able to send things directly to the log file and skip the screen would be a great option.

Other than colours and with the addition of an easy way to add/join chat channels, EQ2's chat window configuration is not dissimilar to the Vanguard one except chat colour control is in a different location.

Filters are an option from the chat window


Window options are an option from any window


and Chat colours are in Options under User Interface > Chat Colours (and there are lots of them).


However, both Vanguard and EQ2 were built considerably later than EQ. They were follow ons to the early MMOGs like EQ where thought had been given, since those early games, on what would be more beneficial in the UI controls and UI. Both of those games are significantly less text based. EQ is following on BBS ASCII UIs and is significantly better than those

In the Player Window there are icons to show if you are Main Assist, Main Tank, Puller, etc.

Please add a stick figure representing if you are Standing, Sitting, Crouching, Mounted, Prone/Feign Dead, etc.

Here is a very very poorly drawn example:



I've suggested this years ago but Daybreak has a very poor system for feedback suggestions and it most likely has been forgotten, especially since developers come and go and the Veterans' Lounge has 381,582 messages. As a result, I have to suggest things many times, because there is no tracking of feedback and suggestions that players can see and comment on and search and check if it has already been suggested. You know, like bug tracking and feedback tracking web software that exists...

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Could we get an indicator in the group window for looter ?

I miss, from VG, the little arrows pointing to the direction of your group members.. let alone the distance from target readout.

A small treasure chest would work.

Yes, it says on the Loot window who the master looter is, but if you haven't gotten any loot yet do you really want to open that window?

toggle campfire smoke graphics

I like the current default UI. A few tweeks: take all the odd shaped elements out, like the group/chat window title area. Make all windows resizable and snap together. Make a lock all window command with X to close disabled once locked. Do something with the loot window it is way to big, if i need something or don't just one button for each and let us move the columns where we want them. Merge all task/quest/dz etc to one window, tab it if you have too. UI scalable and better fonts sizes. Please do not get rid of the window selector, but i would like to be able to put what i want on it.

Very nice UI, I would like that. What game is that from?

The ability to have a group UI and a raid one you can swap between would be amazing.