One of the first things you'll notice about this game as you start playing is the ugly autoattack. They still haven't removed it or revamped the skill/spell cooldowns in a way so that you can only use skills/spells to deal damage with. Another thing you'll notice, perhaps more prominently, is EQ2s rather unprofessionally designed user interface. This default user interface is massive, and ugly. And as you progress up the ladder in terms of levels, need to group up with people, and do raids, you seemingly need more widgets covering your screen, so much that you can barely see your own character whilst playing the game. You might even dabble in EQ2interface where you download means to constantly see your stats on screen, all the various levels and xp, and money, bags, every piece of information in the whole world. And it does not help that they have not revamped the skills/spells, meaning most classes require 5-6 hotbars full of these redundant skills/spells. First thing to remember, though, is that the user interface should only show you the bare minimum of what is required to play the game. There's a handful of quests in the game that are based on what time it is in-game, so you can safely remove the frame around the minimap (turn it back on again that one time you come across a quest that requires it to be 1 hour past midnight). What is being said in the chat is not necessary for you to read unless it is directed at you, so you can safely make the chat disappear unless you're typing in it, or people are actively speaking. The chat doesn't need a background. You can hide skills/spells that aren't regularly used such as buffs that are toggled, teleportation, consumables, etc, and make it so these hotbars will only appear when you hover over them with your mouse. You don't need to see your health/power information twice over. If you go into your settings you can make your health/power appears over your characters head when it goes below 99%, thus you can safely remove the giant health/power bar, or make it so that it will only appear when you hover over it with your mouse. You don't need to see your number of concentration points. If you can't toggle another buff, then you know why you can't toggle it, and don't need visual aid to confirm it. You can keep your detrimental bar, and perhaps even make it a bit bigger because it is absolutely necessary to pay attention to it during raids. But, your buffs, no. You don't need to see buffs on you except for the buffs that you are holding active so that you can right-click them and turn them off, but meanwhile these buffs can remain hidden until you hover over it with your mouse. I have not shared the silly user interface mod that I've made, that turns the experience bar into a few tiny numbers, but you can find similar mods on EQ2 interface. If you want to create your own UI, I recommend that you create a new UI mod folder with a eq2ui_skininfo.xml file in it so that you can make changes to your UI and load it using the /loadui command without having to exit and reenter the game every time you've made a change to your UI (for testing purposes), because the UIBuilder just doesn't work properly, never did, never will. Second of all, you don't need to be that precise with your use of skills in order to be successful. I've been raiding on and off with the guild Mithril on Everfrost for 12+ years now, and I've used macroes. It is perfectly acceptable to shove all your single target attacks in one macro, so long as you try to align the skills in a way so that you will use mitigation debuffs first, then order the damage skills from high to low cooldown. You can create another macro for encounters, and a third one for area of effects. Some skills are also not required to use at all, because all they do is add primary stat debuffs, which frankly doesn't do anything against a group monster or raid boss with several hundred thousand points in said primary stats to begin with, meaning you won't lower its damage much if anything at all. What you can do, however, is try to keep your superior buff, debuff and damage skills away from the macroes so that you can monitor it more closely. What you will be left with is something like this: I'm a Troubadour without any buffs. Because my buff hotbar is hidden until I hover over these hotbars with my mouse. My buff window is also hidden until I hover over it. Now, go enjoy Norrath!
Yeah, it is so easy to design a ui everyone will like. At least this game has a customizable option. I personally don't like yours but I am not you.
The nice thing is that the UI is customizable. And if you really want to, you CAN turn off your auto-attack. Go to your character sheet and set your auto-attack to none. You'll lose out on all your weapon procs and anything that procs off an auto-attack. But if you dislike auto-attack as much as you suggest, the option exists to disable it for your toon(s).
Great post, I'm also doing the same with my ui (very minimalistic, most windows fade out if not in use etc). It's a much better experience than to watch a screen full of buttons and stats. I have never understood the need for having so much information on the screen in this game.
Well I want all that information on my screen, but I love that this game is customizable so we all can make it what we want.
I'm pretty happy with the default UI. I like a lot of info on my screen. If I wanted a 6-8 skill UI, I'd go play GW2...which I do from time to time as it is fairly mindless fun.
