What are your thoughts on a mod-able UI?

I feel we should be allowed to use third party, SOE approved, mods along with anything SOE gives us as a default or as their own mods. These allow new and fun ways to experience the game if done correctly. I do think that SOE should be involved in their approval in some way. I do not want mods that play the game for me. But I would like to see things such as custom maps, bags, banks, spell and casting bars, etc. I am a little less excited about things like spell timers and DPS meters. While not entirely opposed, I would hate to see it get to a point like in WoW where certain mods are required or you will not get access to areas of the game. My hope is with say a DPS meter, this will be less of importance and thus not a requirement in an emergent AI setting.

My thought is if you are a player that does not like the idea, the use the default style. As long as I am not somehow getting an advantage over you by using a moded UI, then really there should be no problem. Let us style the layout how we want.

And for an extra special idea, let us create player made mods and put them in the Player Studio along with the other creations to make a profit.

A customizable UI is a good thing. As long as that customization doesn't allow people to add features to the game like being able to track mobs, run abilities, or automate things.

If there's a risk of something 3rd party or self made not working after a major patch, that's a choice the user has to make.

A very changeable UI is very important for me. As I run a 3-screen surround setup, being able to make the optimum use of screen space and setting up the right windows on the right screens is invaluable. Mods and customization options are great ways towards helping with that. Everyone has different needs. It is perhaps not cost-efficient for Sony to develop options to ensure my play experience is perfect, but by giving us the tools, it is a catch all situation to allow all of us to create / use tools that aid our experience.

Secondly, most of my non-screen-space related mods are around combat. Being able to highlight procs or buffs (or lack of) in an intuitive fashion is beyond invaluable. Based on information though, EQN will be different enough not to require this.

Primary features I want from a stock/moddable UI:
*inventory sort/search/filter
*new items highlight/find
*chat timestamp/colour coding/multi-window etc
*resizing/relocating most UI components

Let me say this, there are two parts to this that think people will intermix....
Scripting/addons and UI -- for example wow is a utterly wretched experience with ui addons and is a big reason I left the game, pvp was a joke when I would play and could see someone running scripts / macro's at me so as a casual pvp'er it became unfun and every game since that has had extensible addon support has really been a turn off for me in it's pvp.

So that said here are my UI comments.
I HATE not seeing my buttons and commands. Auto hiding/ not showing commands until a condition is met is horrible ui design to me. Fading chat boxes, see through boxes etc are all horrible.

In EQ and WOW, I play with a view ports enabled, and I only show about 50% of the game world, the rest I have hard coded chat windows for guild, tells, ooc/world, combat logs buttons gallor covering all aspects of what my character can do. I hate fading chat boxes because i turn watch tv for a minute turn back, in that time I received an important message, but since it's faded away while i wasn't looking, I don't find until someone else messages me later.

Now that said I like macros, just not the extent that WOW allows macros. some of the need for macros could be lessened if hot buttons had values.

So a hot button has:
The action to day spell/ability etc
Pre cast message: ex - I'm starting to cast big bomb spell at target
Post cast message:
message for success: ex - Divine barrier applied to target
message for failure: ex - Divine barrier fizzled on target
timer notification when some condition, time, buff fades etc, flash this.



When grouped /raided I like a UI that let me see what abilities I can do on each of my group/raid mates next to their portrait.
How about being able to bind abilities to players, say when a player is designated a tank, your buffs bound to tank role show next to their name)
sorry kind of scattered post but kind of busy atm.

Customizable UI -Yes. This one is almost a no brainer..

BUT, I went with option #3, as there are some things i don't want to see... Like DPS counters... Approval by SOE would limit things that are designed to exploit the game.

That said...it doesn't mean you can slack off. I wanna see a good clean UI by SOE that fits the game. I shouldn't feel I NEED to go looking for another UI, but I can if I want to.

Like if I make a gnome, and I want my UI to have some fun little clockworks in it, I can do that.

At the end of the Day, I should be able to see 90% of the game screen, not have to stare at my hotbar, and still be able to get all the info i need.

IMO you should be able to add customizable UI's However the base UI should be VERY robust and customizable to start with. Rift had an excellent starting UI completely customizable, resizable, and had tons of fade/color options. When they eventually allowed add-ons there really were not many needed other than boss mods and with EQN's AI boss mods would be really hard to make, and DPS meters which are good and bad at the same time.

I guess I had assumed that we were talking only about modding the UI, not creating add-ons such as those mentioned like DBM or the like. Or /fly and world edit in Minecraft.

If we're only talking about shuffling around, resizing, and streamlining (or gussying up) the UI, then I maintain my preference that it be modifiable.

I personally prefer a very streamlined UI, and I feel that movable windows are a must. I like easily-readable and resizable fonts.

I don't really care whether I have 3rd party UI streamlining or SOE streamlining... as long as I can minimize the UI, still read it, and move it at will.

That's why I selected option 1. Whatever... as long as I'm not stuck with massive dragon-ringed hotkeys, cow-ringed minimaps, or etc. As long as I can relocate things. As long as I can minimize windows... and so long as I can easily read the fonts.

Games have a tendency to want things to "look pretty" which I don't necessarily object to. But I'm a utilitarian kinda gal. So please allow for folks like me who think your elf portrait is lovely enough--but not on my UI, thanks.

I would like a U/I that is moddable, but only through the games developer, no third-party mods. There is to much of a chance of things being modded that change the playing field. It is not so bad in PVE, but it can be brutal to PVP.

I believe this is the only solution that would actually work. Unfortunately I can't see the developers even doing anything like that. They want this game to be as convenient as possible. However, this will lead to us eventually having DBM and even if there are no quest markers I still expect someone to create another quest helper. And so we are back at this MMO just being like the rest. It is just inevitable if you allow third party mods without supervision.

I always mod my UI to fit my own preferences. I like to make things as minimalistic as possible. The in game tools that SWToR used were a good start for in game customization but I also like good ole' xml modding. If we can get the power of xml modding but be able to do it all in game then you have yourself a winner.

can we talk about how badly showEQ and macroquest ruined things on EQ1? ESPECIALLY on pvp servers. lets not make it easier for people to harvest data directly into their UI.

YES to moddable UI!! There's plenty of virtue in being able to get the most relevant information to the player's eyes as fast as possible, as well as scaling and repositioning elements so they aren't in the way and can be accessed in the most ideal places. UIs designed with aesthetic themes could also be doe, even having a UI art for every class to make it feel like each class is a unique experience.

At first I was going to go for "I want to find the UI that is best for me, whether it’s a player-creation, what SOE provides, or a mix of the two." since it essentially says what I want, however...

I voted on "I would be open to using a third-party mod, as long as SOE had approved it in some fashion." because I remember back in the WoW days that many of the most useful mods ended up being restricted or banned on the grounds of unfair advantage. As well, I don't wanna see sneaky abusers getting 3rd party mods up that may somehow let them record a user's conversations, locations of goods, or even prompt the user for their account name and password as part of a fake security check. To prevent awesome UI mods from being banned after release, and to prevent harmful UI mods, I would prefer SOE approval for all UI mods.

To reiterate, the short version for me is:

Allow for custom graphical UI elements and such: 100% absolutely. This should be very robust and the default UI should be great as well.

Allow gameplay mods that perform actions and such: No, just no.

As long as it's not used for cheating, players should have the power to make their UI look however they want. Just no damage meters, please.

I would like to add a couple of caveats for EQ:N's UIs whether Default, Custom, or Modded-3rd-Party:

• I personally would LOVE to see default in-game maps significantly reduced, if not completely removed from all UIs. Take us back to the old days of EQ1.

• Create a Cartography-type skill requiring players to explore and make their own maps. Skilled cartographers could even sell the maps they have created on the player market. Players could study those player made maps but have their field of vision significantly reduced adding to the immersion of the game.

• DO NOT show MOB locations or headings, at least not to players without tracking. Where-as I might actually consider the location or potential locations of certain familiar NPCs to be permitted.

• Please don't show players what exact spells are being cast by MOBs. That just seems like cheating.

• Please DO NOT give people using Mod-able 3rd Party UIs access to tools and information that is unavailable to the rest of the populations. I would assume that goes without saying...

Being able to fine tune our User Interface based on our own personal styles and specific playing needs allows for a more immerse, personally rewarding, and enjoyable game.

Having the ability to modify my UI has a massive impact on my overall gaming experience. It's something I'm always tweeking and refining. It's borderline a problem the amount of changes I make to my UI .

I'd prefer all modifications to be kept in-game for security issues and simplicity for the user. That being said, if the developers aren't listening to the consumers needs, and a third party comes along and makes a modification to the game that would enhance my overall gaming experience, then I'd be in favor of that option.

The elements of the UI or HUD needs to support two screens.

I am making a logical guess that EQN is going to be launched on PlayStation Four also. I do not want a weak UI dumb down for other game platforms.

The UI needs to scale up and down for each player and migrate on two screens.

Have seen no discussions about UI and HUD skins being for sale on PLAYER STUDIO?

The basic game should be loaded with a strong default with high visibility then about three art centric options.

Let players make UI skins in PLAYER STUDIO.

I'll be fairly disappointed if the COMBAT UI needs tweaked at all.

I can count a lot of games where the UI is absolutely fine for combat and I don't need to change it. Hell, of the games I've most recently seriously played, (Planetside 2, DOTA2, Bloodline Champions), NONE of them needed any changes in the combat UI.

(Guild Wars 2 combat interface was generally fine, as well, if you really think about it.)

This has to do with the design of combat not the UIs themselves. It's not that these games were designed by "master UI designers" it's that the complexity of the games does not come from oodles of buttons and cooldown counting, but spacing, mind games, and that enough can be found out from the game by visual clues that you look at your screen, not the UI!

The game should be mostly on the screen and not in the buttons and cool down timers. Most games require mods because the important information ends up looking like this.

Allow skinning via Player Studio, for sure! Dota2 allows you to mod the LOOK of the background for the UI and that's fine, especially since they sell it through the steam store and players can contribute to that. But if we really need to mod because the layout is too complicated, uses space badly or doesn't give you an edge that another UI could... then I think we've got fundamental problems with the combat system.

(As an aside, I think some information hiding about what your opponent is doing is just fine and mods that keep track of when your opponents used abilities, when they can use them again, etc. are a nuisance because once allowed they become mandatory and often hides the fact that some abilities are not prioritized and presented properly. It's less stressful to not have these kind of mods, too.)

SOE is tasked with the production of PC games, not console games. I doubt that it will be seen on any other platform.

This was a tough one for me to vote on as it needs to be a bit more specific as to what customization means.

1.) I want SOE to handle the bulk of the UI and functionality. Allowing to much into the hands of 3rd party causes issues with "non approved" applications to be developed.

2.) I do strongly agree in having the options of re sizable and graphical changes to the UI via 3rd party. This does not affect the gameplay and lets users be creative in the artstyle of the UI. For example if I want my group window to have a nice border and say align with an edge of my chat bar I can create the graphics to have it seamlessly make it "look" like its attached and very clean.

3.) I am very against having UI mod applications. I have seen this in other games and it has come down to the fact people rely so much on these 3rd party program mods they forget how to even play the game in the first place. Their should never be a mod in place that automatically say heals the lowest member of the party or gains hate if you hit a specific % etc. Let the player play for themselves not let a 3rd party application do it for them.

I would love to see a UI Mod application developed for us that is easy to use. Landmark will let us edit the landscape I hope EQNext will have a UI Mod application to say change the graphics of windows etc. I would LOVE that!