User interface and quality of life problems! ESO 2.0 is good... let's make it better.

Attorneyatlawl

This is feedback I submitted in-game shortly before ESO's original launch in early 2014. It is just as relevant today, for better or worse. With the major issues that cropped up with the Tamriel Unlimited such as server latency/lag problems being improved upon quickly and some of the remaining issues being caused with exploits done by malicious players being tracked down to be fixed soon(tm) as we can see from @ZOS_BrianWheeler 's responsive feedback and communication lately to the community on these problems, and EXP still being tweaked around with to find the right balance as @ZOS_GinaBruno and @ZOS_JessicaFolsom have mentioned on the forums here recently, I wanted to bring these other topics back up here that could dramatically improve the game experience for existing and newly-joined players. I've been seeing many of these requested in-game by new players as well when going to the starter zones to bank such as Daggerfall City on a consistent basis.

Without further adieu... here's "recycled content" as we players love to call things ! (I understand this is a very extensive post. For that reason, I have included the classic "tl;dr" section at the end for those who want to get a few of the main points without reading through yet. ).

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Please put back in/add the following UI features, for these reasons:

Nametags/plates: So we can tell who's who, and locate vendors or NPC's easily while playing. Essential for coordinated gameplay and improves community by allowing for guild pride, seeing what guilds have players out and about actively, and recognizing people you run across often in-game. Make them invisible like alliance indicators are for enemies in sneak/stealth, and fade with distance. For enemy players, show their alliance rank, race, and faction as a "name" rather than their character name. An example would be, "Pact Dunmer Corporal".

Combat log: Essential for catching bugs and understanding what is happening in the game while fighting. How are we supposed to even know what our abilities are meant to do when we have no numbers at all and are guessing on pixels in a tagless health bar? Please also add an option for showing the hitpoint numbers on health bars.

Scrolling combat text: Essential to tell what's happening in real-time... "Why did my mega-super attack only just chip that guy instead of smashing him?" It can be hard to pinpoint exact moments of a fight in a combat log after the fact, whereas this provides immediate feedback to the player for what's going on. Did I not even actually get the spell I intended to off? This disambiguates combat and reduces player confusion/frustration.

Minimap: It's annoying to have to constantly stop and open the big map to tell where things are and the landscape, rather than being able to glance at the corner of the screen and still be aware of the game world during a quick look. Frustration = annoyed customers = less favorability towards the game = lower player counts.

Buff/debuff icons: Please provide us with small icons that we can place where we want that indicate specific types of buffs or debuffs being active on us and our enemies. For self ones it would be great to be able to say tell the game "highlight this buff when it's active on me" for our abilities. These are essential to understand when our abilities are active, penalized, enhanced, etc. by ourselves or other players/NPC enemies. Again, less is not more: lacking this info is simply less.

_______________________

And later, I created a reddit topic that was well-received months after launch, with the following feedback and ideas for solutions:


Hello peoples!

There are many issues with ESO as I'm sure everyone can agree, even those of us who really enjoy the game. There's a lot of discussion, well-warranted, about class balance, but I rarely see actual game mechanics or other problems discussed. I think it's time to bring some attention back over to three of the more major ones.

Who the heck are you? What do you know! This is all whining you noob!

I'm "Please Don't Nerf Me" aka Attorneyatlawl, DPS'er in the first HelRa clear on US DC and second Archive DC US clear by a nice margin. I'm a major member of Mostly Harmless Guild, and I know the vast majority of people or am connected to them, who do high-end PVP and PVE in this game and was a first-pick hand-invited PTS player as well as V12 on live with a V9 alt coming up on 12 fast, fully geared out in high-end oranges (legitimately earned, I am extremely anti-cheat/exploit as I'm sure people can attest who have seen me in chats before!). Generally well-regarded as a friendly guy, or so I'm told...

Major issue #1: Community and lack of online feel

Running around in a town or major hub in ESO feels lifeless, and I never notice if I run by someone I know because I have no way to see them unless I tried spending five minutes hovering over everyone in a crowd of 50 people at the bank who all look like npc's standing still and looking basically the same. People rarely talk in anything but zone chat and you have no way to know where they are or notice if they're near you. Additionally there is no way for guilds to represent themselves as either (or both) a pride and prestige thing.

Literally if there were no overhead health bar options I wouldn't ever notice if someone was a player or an NPC except for them jumping or running over to a wayshrine. I can't tell what guilds tend to have people running around a lot in PVE or PVP because there are no tags and no way to know their guild without finding out through some other means like being in the same one and seeing them on the roster or guild chat, and you don't really feel a connection to the action or recognize people because there's no representation of their names readily available at a glance nor their guild affiliation(s).


How do we fix this? Why's it a problem?

I suggest fixing this by adding an option that can go above the healthbars for people who want them onscreen as a setting, and allowing people to choose which guild they want people to see them tagged with with a quick toggle button in their guild screen for those who use guild tags. I'd also like to see names available in the same fashion for a character. Right now there's a big disconnect between chatting with someone and ever noticing you're near them, no need for some giant jumbo glowing nameplates but a simple small text tag on the same scale as the already-well-done overhead health bars would do wonders. As to why it's a problem, I already have touched on that but this is an online game and having a social connection, feeling like there are other players around, etc. are all vital to keeping it healthy and fun. You can simply not enable them if you don't want this extra info but it certainly wouldn't clutter anything up for those who do. I'm sure someone will respond "But, you would have an advantage!!!" but then why do we allow options for people to get addons, or zoom to third-person, or have a health bar for example in the first place? Because on the whole it's not really that impactful and it's your choice whether to use them or not. Everyone would have access to these options evenly.

Major issue #2: Game info opaqueness

Tooltips often are inaccurate at best, and provide very little info about what the ability is affected by. Examples of this include nightblade class abilities that require melee crit to boost their critical hit chance, and others like the bow passive Long Shots say things like "With a bow equipped, bestows X% bow damage vs. distant enemies" but actually only affects bow attacks. Without a combat log tab or proper tooltips most players have no idea or way to know this stuff, and while I absolutely love to theorycraft and test, you shouldn't have to maintain a fleet of addons to simply actually play and find out for yourself how things work. Same thing for basics like seeing your individual resistances or how much they mitigate for you. What does 500 armor mean? What are you going to do, count pixels?

Finally, things like being able to see what buffs or debuffs you have on you/have applied to enemies yourself is critical for competitive play. Spell effects are too spammy and often look identical, and while you can keep track roughly on a target or two manually, in any real action like a raid or pvp it's completely unrealistic to do so for multiple debuffs on multiple targets. The addons available are inadequate and provide artificial timers based on when you cast an ability, that usually aren't in sync by margins of a second or more and are very limited as to what they can track that you have done with your character or had done to you.

Solutions...

Give us some better in-game options to see basic game information. Beef up the character sheet stating simple things like Armor: 1450 (27.5%) to represent how much mitigation it provides. Give us an option to dedicate a tab to a combat log so we can see what actually happened to our character and when. Give us the option to have buff indicators/debuff indicators. These don't have to be giant star-trek control panel things, just allow us to move a small panel where we want it that shows us buffs, and another small panel with debuffs where we want them. Let us turn on text labels for our health, magicka and stamina bar, addons have shown this done and it's very clean while providing a much easier at-a-glance info set and letting you focus more on playing rather than fighting the UI. Again, all as options, not required or forced on. Yes, addons do handle some of these things, but others cannot be done or done well and it's an aggravation to have to update 20 addons every patch off of third-party sites instead of having well-integrated and consistently-up-to-date in-game options. Allowing easier access to gameplay information helps make for a deeper game and bolsters the RPG elements, rather than frustrating people who want to dive in.

Major issue #3: Customization/game options

Give us some basics like an FOV slider for first and third person, camera zoom distance, not having to go download addons to simply move our health bar, and other quality of life improvements like a text search for guild stores by default. I know some of these things can be done with addons or are already mentioned as coming in the case of a first-person FOV slider at least, but most aren't, and as talked about above... addons are a hackish solution at best and dependent on a random addon developer's interest in the game not waning, plus never as well integrated as a native feature in addition to being an inconvenience/hassle for players to have to go get/update constantly. Little things like these would help the overall polish of the game so, so much and make it feel like a complete product rather than a half-finished interface and experience. This kind of thing is just outright missing, and really degrades the quality of ESO as a whole.

TL;dr

In short, the three major points are:

-Clarify game information with better interface options.
-Beef up the actual online feel of the game with more community options to see and recognize players and their guilds.
-Polish the preference-type options like a zoom distance slider for third-person, FOV slider, and simple things along those lines. Little things but big bang for the buck in terms of development effort/player satisfaction.
Editor's note in 2015: Third-person camera options eventually arrived, yay!

Thanks for reading everyone and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
(Originally posted on reddit here by me: http://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/271juz/class_balance_is_always_an_issue_but_what_about/)


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UPDATE 6/5/2015: I'm copying some of the further additions to this thread below for accessibility and visibility:
(and hopefully, a response from the previously mentioned people or @Mursa, @ZOS_AlanG, and co.? )

Atropos wrote: »

Great thread @Attorneyatlawl. I seldom check these official forums but I saw a couple mentions in this one so I wanted to drop by and endorse your campaign. At this point, I no longer expect UI reform to occur, but it doesn't hurt to dream.

In my opinion, UI is the aspect of the game regarding which ZOS is most intractable. When it comes to class balance, feature requests, RP/Lore clarifications, or other types of feedback there has been a willingness on their part to meet with player groups and share ideas and feedback. Whenever I have raised the possibility of a UI/API themed feedback discussion it has not been pursued on ZeniMax' end.

As an addon author, also, I've found that ZOS has been extremely reluctant to promote addon development and encourage the addon community. They've done guild spotlights, build features, artwork showcases, and community event sponsorship but have never expressed any public encouragement of addons or addon developers.

My opinion is that many of the biggest UI deficiencies in ESO (nameplates, combat log, buff timers) are things that should be handled by the game UI itself (as options if not by default). Perhaps the lack of addons for the console community will provide enough impetus for ZOS to justify building some of these features where before they could simply punt them over to addon developers.

I think we can realistically hope that some of the polish and style of certain facets of the console UI (which in cases is better than the PC UI in some ways) will get reverse-ported back over for PC players, but I'm not expecting much more than that.

-=-=-=-

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

By contrast, most RPG titles (and I'm not even talking about MMORPG ones, but just roleplaying games) provide you basic combat information like:


-How much health you have (percentage, number, or both)
-How much "mana" or other combat resources you have (percentage, number, or both)
-Icons to show what debuffs, buffs, boons or curses, and damage or healing effects are active on you and your target(s), as well as how long is left on them (usually a preference allows for either a timer in seconds, or a depleting border or other intuitive visual indicator to show it's running down).
-A way to track multiple quests or objectives on-screen instead of having to stop what you're doing to open a journal and paw through it.
-A mini map or radar type display on the HUD so you can see what direction you're facing easily in absolutes, the nearby terrain, and icons for things like weapons vendors or quest objectives.
-A combat log to review what happened during a fight, and if desired watch it while playing too.
-A way to target friendlies for your effects, instead of the game determining for you whether your heal hits you, your friend, or some random guy who happened to walk by while you were fighting and didn't even need healing if you had wanted to heal him rather than yourself.
-Nametags, and in online games, guild tags as well (also called "nameplates").

-=-=-=-

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

Optional features would be exactly that: optional, so if you didn't want to see further gameplay information on your screen, you would see no change as compared to how you play today. As far as using add-ons, they unfortunately have their own sets of issues as has been covered inside of this thread including maintenance, accessibility to players, stability, and integration in general, and largely aren't permitted by the API to have much of the combat information you'd expect. I'd encourage you to read through some more of this thread to find out more .

I also do feel it bears re-iterating that the default interface in ESO is most definitely not a "cleared UI" as many assert. It is actually rather bulky with many decorative elements that aren't beneficial for usability or features, without allowing gameplay insight. With a handful of community addons, it can be made much more minimalistic while gaining usefulness and adding some of the missing functionality.

-=-=-=-

A history of how ESO's UI changed over the course of beta through the present.

(An abbreviated and slightly edited segment is below):

Attorneyatlawl wrote:

From October through March, more and more User Interface options were removed such as the optional minimap, combat log tab for the chat box, and even addon abilities such as seeing what abilities hit you instead of just the amount of damage you took, and many of the game's most loyal supporters and guilds at that time such as Atropos from Entropy Rising, Wykkyd from Mostly Harmless (myself, Attorneyatlawl from the same), Izkimar from Best In Slot, amongst many others such as Erlex, wrote a good deal about how this was hurting the game both from a gameplay standpoint and that it might damage its chances of subscription success once it launched[/b] as most people, having read about what the game was before buying it, would see it was an MMORPG and expect it to have basic accomodations like the minimap, a combat log, and health bar text, etc., or being able to see what their skills could morph into once they leveled them. Issues such as addon authors quitting the game over time, hassles with keeping addons up-to-date, and the API (interface defining what can be done with addons by their authors, which originally allowed for cast bars if wanted, as well as buff timers once the stock options were removed, as well as seeing what hit you in a combat log addon). Some supported the idea of them being removed and never being brought back, asking that this be made into a clear statement officially, and others who had more mixed viewpoints at that point in time have become more amiable towards these kinds of options being re-implemented when I have talked with them more recently.

-Throughout the lifetime to date of The Elder Scrolls Online, there has been wide discussion of interface improvements both for functionality (examples such as a minimap, combat log tab, etc.) and ease-of-use/convenience items (a reply-to-mail button, category filters for your inventory, a better Guild Store interface that remembered your search and let you search by item name and other typical features, etc.). Earlier on, there was a fair amount of vocal single-player Elder Scrolls fans that continued to debate and assert that they would hurt the game's quality to have as options for each player to decide for themselves if they wanted to use, and therefore they should not be implemented because it would not be "true to the Elder Scrolls series", damaging their immersion in the game (even being optional). Prominent theorycrafters such as TehMagnus (for example, here: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/1376600/#Comment_1376600) and myself, along with Cyrodiil PVP players that are well known for their twitch and youtube gameplay streams, supported interface improvements. Addon authors such as Wykkyd that are household names in the addons department, have also stated their support.

Over time, as the game has matured, many (most?) players have become at the least not opposed to preferences like these being allowed as in-game options rather than needing to go download dozens (yes, literally) of add-ons and maintaining them, particularly as they have almost always broken with major bugs each time a large game patch came around, and most of the original add-on authors quit playing and updating their add-ons eventually. Many more players have understood the need or want for default versions of these features being optional, and supported the feedback when it has been made over time, through the present, but there has been no communication regarding the interface at large from functionality or quality of life issues except for mentions of some (a handful is a phrase I recall seeing, but I can't remember for sure) of the most popular add-ons for the PC Elder Scrolls Online being integrated into the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions, with a PC addition of these same features being uncertain, and not coming for awhile after the console ports were released.

Some fans have felt strongly enough about this topic to organize players to pose for quick mockups like this one by Lfehova :

(Full-sized picture link: http://i.imgur.com/ZGn7NID.jpg)


Which shows their idea on how optional overhead nameplates and guild names could be integrated with the currently optional overhead health bars.

-=-=-=-

Obscure wrote: »

My Priority Personally Preferred Options For Core UI:

- Combat Log (include source)
- Damage Numbers
- Resource Numbers
- UI Frame/Object position
- Buff and Debuff icons (with improved visual and/or audio cues)
- Inventory Filters
- Loot Drop (just full on integrate that add-on into the build)
- Quick slot bar with hot key cycling

An ESO without the above options, which I currently use add-ons for, is simply not complete. I'm traditionally not an add-on user (though I mod the crap out of Z other TES games), but ESO lacks volumes of options other games have had to allow me to fine tune the UI to a minimalist UI. Minimalist ≠ Incomplete

Darkonflare15

To be fair buffs of skills are visual which I kind of like it.

Attorneyatlawl

Darkonflare15 wrote: »

To be fair buffs of skills are visual which I kind of like it.

I like the idea, too. In theory. In practice, having both the visuals and the option to enable more readily-understood buff/debuff icons is really needed for clarity. In a battle of a few people, with all of your four fire attacks sharing the same burning animation on a target and everyone throwing around tons of spells, it's simply not practical or accurate to judge by tells. This only gets worse in trials or any non-solo activity in Cyrodiil .

IcyDeadPeople

I recall reading some of your posts on this subject back in the day on PTS. At the time I liked the minimal vanilla UI compared to what seemed garish or busy in other MMO UIs.

However, having played this game well over 1 year now, it's hard to imagine how anyone can function in PVP without tons of add ons that explain how much damage your attacks are doing, when they crit, etc., and all the other important info missing from the character sheet. If nothing else, at least to be able to confirm whether our passives and active abilities are working properly.

I don't mind using add-ons for this, but I imagine for those of us with weaker PCs the game would run smoother if we didn't need to rely on so many add-ons. And of course, these features could be optional, in case someone prefers a more uncluttered UI.

Attorneyatlawl

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

I recall reading some of your posts on this subject back in the day on PTS. At the time I liked the minimal vanilla UI compared to what seemed garish or busy in other MMO UIs.

However, having played this game well over 1 year now, it's hard to imagine how anyone can function in PVP without tons of add ons that explain how much damage your attacks are doing, when they crit, etc., and all the other important info missing from the character sheet. If nothing else, at least to be able to confirm whether our passives and active abilities are working properly.

I don't mind using add-ons for this, but I imagine for those of us with weaker PCs the game would run smoother if we didn't need to rely on so many add-ons. And of course, these features could be optional, in case someone prefers a more uncluttered UI.

Thanks for the comments, @IcyDeadPeople . I actually, contrary to what might be expected and in many cases correct for the segment of player I fall into, prefer minimalistic interfaces. The default ESO user interface is actually bulky and can be made more compact, clean, usable, and informative with UI addons currently, though. As I discussed, it gives very little important information during gameplay, and has many large, non-functional decoration with inconsistent usability. I'll post a screenshot of what the UI can look like in a clean fashion while providing informative and contextual info later today as a mockup.

Aeowyn

This is very useful feedback, and I appreciate the constructive tone and thought put into it. I agree with all your points.

Guild tabards as a costume helps a little bit when running through town, but giving players an option to see more of those tags (if they toggle that feature on) would help players and guilds get to know each other better. I've run through town or stopped at guild traders right next to a guildie and /bucketsplash'd a few times to try and get their attention. If there were a way to toggle which of your five guilds you'd like to wear/project, it'd be handy.

I'm very curious to see what kind of UI tweaks will be in the console version, and how much of that might be available for us here on PCs. I never really cared much about my damage or healing statistics during 90% of the content; but Vet dungeons and Trials that have hard/soft damage and healing checks or the group wipes made them a necessity for me. Since then, I've enjoyed using the feedback to try out new sets of gear - and that has only opened up with more options through different play styles in 1.6 (yay!). I can't begin to imagine trying to tackle the same content on a console without this informational feedback. And if ZoS (presumably) improves this experience for consoles, I imagine it would make it back to PCs as an interface options (right? yes please?).

This game is beautiful. I've been playing since beta and still catch little subtleties to the game design that give me pause in appreciation. This last element of UI polishing can be done with the same tasteful class as the rest of the game. We'd love to see it.

Upvote for Attorney's post.

Smiteye

Aeowyn wrote: »

This is very useful feedback, and I appreciate the constructive tone and thought put into it. I agree with all your points.

Upvote for Attorney's post.

A good write-up, indeed... and constructive. A true and dignified rarity online!

SLy_Kyti

I'm a major member of Mostly Harmless Guild,

Sorry I got stuck after reading this ^ ^ and wondered who the Minor Members might be...and then I started whistling the song from Pirates of Penzance... Ya know...Major General...then couldn't read any more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r44wLW7q8GI

youtu.be/r44wLW7q8GI

Attorneyatlawl

Haha @SLy_Kyti .

Takhistis

What's with all the lag talk? I play GMT+1 on EU and NA from 6pm till 1AM without any lag o.o

pugyourself

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

This is feedback I submitted in-game shortly before ESO's original launch in early 2014. It is just as relevant today, for better or worse. With the major issues that cropped up with the Tamriel Unlimited such as server latency/lag problems being improved upon quickly and some of the remaining issues being caused with exploits done by malicious players being tracked down to be fixed soon(tm) as we can see from @ZOS_BrianWheeler 's responsive feedback and communication lately to the community on these problems, and EXP still being tweaked around with to find the right balance as @ZOS_GinaBruno and @ZOS_JessicaFolsom have mentioned on the forums here recently, I wanted to bring these other topics back up here that could dramatically improve the game experience for existing and newly-joined players. I've been seeing many of these requested in-game by new players as well when going to the starter zones to bank such as Daggerfall City on a consistent basis.

Without further adieu... here's "recycled content" as we players love to call things ! (I understand this is a very extensive post. For that reason, I have included the classic "tl;dr" section at the end for those who want to get a few of the main points without reading through yet. ).

---

Please put back in/add the following UI features, for these reasons:

Nametags/plates: So we can tell who's who, and locate vendors or NPC's easily while playing. Essential for coordinated gameplay and improves community by allowing for guild pride, seeing what guilds have players out and about actively, and recognizing people you run across often in-game. Make them invisible like alliance indicators are for enemies in sneak/stealth, and fade with distance. For enemy players, show their alliance rank, race, and faction as a "name" rather than their character name. An example would be, "Pact Dunmer Corporal".

Combat log: Essential for catching bugs and understanding what is happening in the game while fighting. How are we supposed to even know what our abilities are meant to do when we have no numbers at all and are guessing on pixels in a tagless health bar? Please also add an option for showing the hitpoint numbers on health bars.

Scrolling combat text: Essential to tell what's happening in real-time... "Why did my mega-super attack only just chip that guy instead of smashing him?" It can be hard to pinpoint exact moments of a fight in a combat log after the fact, whereas this provides immediate feedback to the player for what's going on. Did I not even actually get the spell I intended to off? This disambiguates combat and reduces player confusion/frustration.

Minimap: It's annoying to have to constantly stop and open the big map to tell where things are and the landscape, rather than being able to glance at the corner of the screen and still be aware of the game world during a quick look. Frustration = annoyed customers = less favorability towards the game = lower player counts.

Buff/debuff icons: Please provide us with small icons that we can place where we want that indicate specific types of buffs or debuffs being active on us and our enemies. For self ones it would be great to be able to say tell the game "highlight this buff when it's active on me" for our abilities. These are essential to understand when our abilities are active, penalized, enhanced, etc. by ourselves or other players/NPC enemies. Again, less is not more: lacking this info is simply less.

_______________________

And later, I created a reddit topic that was well-received months after launch, with the following feedback and ideas for solutions:


Hello peoples!

There are many issues with ESO as I'm sure everyone can agree, even those of us who really enjoy the game. There's a lot of discussion, well-warranted, about class balance, but I rarely see actual game mechanics or other problems discussed. I think it's time to bring some attention back over to three of the more major ones.

Who the heck are you? What do you know! This is all whining you noob!

I'm "Please Don't Nerf Me" aka Attorneyatlawl, DPS'er in the first HelRa clear on US DC and second Archive DC US clear by a nice margin. I'm a major member of Mostly Harmless Guild, and I know the vast majority of people or am connected to them, who do high-end PVP and PVE in this game and was a first-pick hand-invited PTS player as well as V12 on live with a V9 alt coming up on 12 fast, fully geared out in high-end oranges (legitimately earned, I am extremely anti-cheat/exploit as I'm sure people can attest who have seen me in chats before!). Generally well-regarded as a friendly guy, or so I'm told...

Major issue #1: Community and lack of online feel

Running around in a town or major hub in ESO feels lifeless, and I never notice if I run by someone I know because I have no way to see them unless I tried spending five minutes hovering over everyone in a crowd of 50 people at the bank who all look like npc's standing still and looking basically the same. People rarely talk in anything but zone chat and you have no way to know where they are or notice if they're near you. Additionally there is no way for guilds to represent themselves as either (or both) a pride and prestige thing.

Literally if there were no overhead health bar options I wouldn't ever notice if someone was a player or an NPC except for them jumping or running over to a wayshrine. I can't tell what guilds tend to have people running around a lot in PVE or PVP because there are no tags and no way to know their guild without finding out through some other means like being in the same one and seeing them on the roster or guild chat, and you don't really feel a connection to the action or recognize people because there's no representation of their names readily available at a glance nor their guild affiliation(s).


How do we fix this? Why's it a problem?

I suggest fixing this by adding an option that can go above the healthbars for people who want them onscreen as a setting, and allowing people to choose which guild they want people to see them tagged with with a quick toggle button in their guild screen for those who use guild tags. I'd also like to see names available in the same fashion for a character. Right now there's a big disconnect between chatting with someone and ever noticing you're near them, no need for some giant jumbo glowing nameplates but a simple small text tag on the same scale as the already-well-done overhead health bars would do wonders. As to why it's a problem, I already have touched on that but this is an online game and having a social connection, feeling like there are other players around, etc. are all vital to keeping it healthy and fun. You can simply not enable them if you don't want this extra info but it certainly wouldn't clutter anything up for those who do. I'm sure someone will respond "But, you would have an advantage!!!" but then why do we allow options for people to get addons, or zoom to third-person, or have a health bar for example in the first place? Because on the whole it's not really that impactful and it's your choice whether to use them or not. Everyone would have access to these options evenly.

Major issue #2: Game info opaqueness

Tooltips often are inaccurate at best, and provide very little info about what the ability is affected by. Examples of this include nightblade class abilities that require melee crit to boost their critical hit chance, and others like the bow passive Long Shots say things like "With a bow equipped, bestows X% bow damage vs. distant enemies" but actually only affects bow attacks. Without a combat log tab or proper tooltips most players have no idea or way to know this stuff, and while I absolutely love to theorycraft and test, you shouldn't have to maintain a fleet of addons to simply actually play and find out for yourself how things work. Same thing for basics like seeing your individual resistances or how much they mitigate for you. What does 500 armor mean? What are you going to do, count pixels?

Finally, things like being able to see what buffs or debuffs you have on you/have applied to enemies yourself is critical for competitive play. Spell effects are too spammy and often look identical, and while you can keep track roughly on a target or two manually, in any real action like a raid or pvp it's completely unrealistic to do so for multiple debuffs on multiple targets. The addons available are inadequate and provide artificial timers based on when you cast an ability, that usually aren't in sync by margins of a second or more and are very limited as to what they can track that you have done with your character or had done to you.

Solutions...

Give us some better in-game options to see basic game information. Beef up the character sheet stating simple things like Armor: 1450 (27.5%) to represent how much mitigation it provides. Give us an option to dedicate a tab to a combat log so we can see what actually happened to our character and when. Give us the option to have buff indicators/debuff indicators. These don't have to be giant star-trek control panel things, just allow us to move a small panel where we want it that shows us buffs, and another small panel with debuffs where we want them. Let us turn on text labels for our health, magicka and stamina bar, addons have shown this done and it's very clean while providing a much easier at-a-glance info set and letting you focus more on playing rather than fighting the UI. Again, all as options, not required or forced on. Yes, addons do handle some of these things, but others cannot be done or done well and it's an aggravation to have to update 20 addons every patch off of third-party sites instead of having well-integrated and consistently-up-to-date in-game options. Allowing easier access to gameplay information helps make for a deeper game and bolsters the RPG elements, rather than frustrating people who want to dive in.

Major issue #3: Customization/game options

Give us some basics like an FOV slider for first and third person, camera zoom distance, not having to go download addons to simply move our health bar, and other quality of life improvements like a text search for guild stores by default. I know some of these things can be done with addons or are already mentioned as coming in the case of a first-person FOV slider at least, but most aren't, and as talked about above... addons are a hackish solution at best and dependent on a random addon developer's interest in the game not waning, plus never as well integrated as a native feature in addition to being an inconvenience/hassle for players to have to go get/update constantly. Little things like these would help the overall polish of the game so, so much and make it feel like a complete product rather than a half-finished interface and experience. This kind of thing is just outright missing, and really degrades the quality of ESO as a whole.

TL;dr

In short, the three major points are:

-Clarify game information with better interface options.
-Beef up the actual online feel of the game with more community options to see and recognize players and their guilds.
-Polish the preference-type options like a zoom distance slider for third-person, FOV slider, and simple things along those lines. Little things but big bang for the buck in terms of development effort/player satisfaction.
Editor's note in 2015: Third-person camera options eventually arrived, yay!

Thanks for reading everyone and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
(Originally posted on reddit here by me: http://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/271juz/class_balance_is_always_an_issue_but_what_about/)

All nice points but they won't help you. No one likes attorneys.

Attorneyatlawl

Eep! I'm not an attorney though, I swear !

Ley

Not a bad list but most, if not all of these things can be obtained using addons. I wouldn't mind them being directly integrated into the game but at the same time the addon system is fairly simple and is good enough for me.

For the most part the guild, community and personalization tools have been vastly improved since launch and I imagine will continue to be improved.

Again not a bad list but you should try out the game a bit now, with all the updates, maybe a few key addons and you may find it more to your liking.

IcyDeadPeople

Ley wrote: »

Not a bad list but most, if not all of these things can be obtained using addons. I wouldn't mind them being directly integrated into the game but at the same time the addon system is fairly simple and is good enough for me.

For the most part the guild, community and personalization tools have been vastly improved since launch and I imagine will continue to be improved.

Again not a bad list but you should try out the game a bit now, with all the updates, maybe a few key addons and you may find it more to your liking.

Hopefully the developers are looking at some of these add-ons and considering similar UI features.

Something like Social Indicators is very unobtrusive, for example, simply adds a small icon next to the target player name to show whether they are on your friends list, and the name of any shared guild.
.

Ley

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

Hopefully the developers are looking at some of these add-ons and considering similar UI features.

Something like Social Indicators is very unobtrusive, for example, simply adds a small icon next to the target player name to show whether they are on your friends list, and the name of any shared guild.
.

I think you'd be more likely to get something like that by asking the addon community. In fact something like that may already exist; I haven't checked. I know there are addons that display name tags. Addons are your friends, get many and you shall be happy.

wraith808

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

show previous quotes

Darkonflare15 wrote: »

To be fair buffs of skills are visual which I kind of like it.

I like the idea, too. In theory. In practice, having both the visuals and the option to enable more readily-understood buff/debuff icons is really needed for clarity. In a battle of a few people, with all of your four fire attacks sharing the same burning animation on a target and everyone throwing around tons of spells, it's simply not practical or accurate to judge by tells. This only gets worse in trials or any non-solo activity in Cyrodiil .

There are those that shy away from add-ons, but there are those that put this functionality in the game. Now, there are those that in response to that statement would say... but what is the harm in putting it in the base game. As an idea, none other than the fact that it would discourage other implementations and we'd probably end up with only their implementation. But from a project planning and development perspective, there are only so many features/improvements/defects that can be implemented in a cycle, and if there is a viable alternative in add-ons (and there are), then I say spend the time on things that are not implemented. I do think they should open the API more to allow a more full implementation of the buff/debuff feature, but other than that- fry the bigger fish is my preference.

IcyDeadPeople

Ley wrote: »

show previous quotes

IcyDeadPeople wrote: »

Hopefully the developers are looking at some of these add-ons and considering similar UI features.

Something like Social Indicators is very unobtrusive, for example, simply adds a small icon next to the target player name to show whether they are on your friends list, and the name of any shared guild.
.

I think you'd be more likely to get something like that by asking the addon community. In fact something like that may already exist; I haven't checked. I know there are addons that display name tags. Addons are your friends, get many and you shall be happy.

Yes, I mentioned Social Indicators as an example of one of the add-ons I hope they are looking at.

wrlifeboil

Much ado.

Attorneyatlawl

wraith808 wrote: »

show previous quotes

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

Darkonflare15 wrote: »

To be fair buffs of skills are visual which I kind of like it.

I like the idea, too. In theory. In practice, having both the visuals and the option to enable more readily-understood buff/debuff icons is really needed for clarity. In a battle of a few people, with all of your four fire attacks sharing the same burning animation on a target and everyone throwing around tons of spells, it's simply not practical or accurate to judge by tells. This only gets worse in trials or any non-solo activity in Cyrodiil .

There are those that shy away from add-ons, but there are those that put this functionality in the game. Now, there are those that in response to that statement would say... but what is the harm in putting it in the base game. As an idea, none other than the fact that it would discourage other implementations and we'd probably end up with only their implementation. But from a project planning and development perspective, there are only so many features/improvements/defects that can be implemented in a cycle, and if there is a viable alternative in add-ons (and there are), then I say spend the time on things that are not implemented. I do think they should open the API more to allow a more full implementation of the buff/debuff feature, but other than that- fry the bigger fish is my preference.

Ley wrote: »

Not a bad list but most, if not all of these things can be obtained using addons. I wouldn't mind them being directly integrated into the game but at the same time the addon system is fairly simple and is good enough for me.

For the most part the guild, community and personalization tools have been vastly improved since launch and I imagine will continue to be improved.

Again not a bad list but you should try out the game a bit now, with all the updates, maybe a few key addons and you may find it more to your liking.

I'm not sure where the idea came from that I haven't played the game recently or in the past . I've been playing since the full-time October 2013 beta through the present (with my first weekend-beta having been the July 2013 one), bar several months I had RL health problems that just didn't allow it this fall/winter until around a month and a half ago again, a couple of weeks prior to 1.6 going live while 1.5 was still around.

The problems with leaving it to addons are numerous, and I covered that under "major issue #2: game info opaqueness" in my solutions header.

"Yes, addons do handle some of these things, but others cannot be done or done well and it's an aggravation to have to update 20 addons every patch off of third-party sites instead of having well-integrated and consistently-up-to-date in-game options. Allowing easier access to gameplay information helps make for a deeper game and bolsters the RPG elements, rather than frustrating people who want to dive in."

In particular, just watching the zone chats while leveling a new character up these past few days, I've seen a very large number of people asking how they can enable X such as a minimap or how to get a combat log tab, or what Y does from the mundane to the more advanced of new-player questions like "how do I know how much my Puncture is adding to my other skills with the debuff?", or how to see how much damage they're doing even at all.

This is a pretty large problem that aside from just creating annoyances to players new and old, also cripples their ability to make a reasonable decision as to how to build their characters. It is actually probably one of the biggest fish to fry that can be worked on by the team, I'd say.

The stock UI is, on the whole, very uninformative, much too flashy & preferring style over substance (I'm looking at my gear.... I press "K" to get my skills window up, instead of letting me see my gear or character stats while referencing my skills, instead those slide out over the course of over a second with an animation and are removed entirely from my screen). Even basics such as showing what you sold in the mail with your money from a guild store/trader, or a reply button on the mailbox, are ignored in favor of "minimalism".

I'm a huge fan of minimalism, but the way the UI is setup and its available functionality that you can enable without having to go out of your way to keep updating add-ons as minipatches break them, bugs arise, and authors retire from volunteering their time, leaving their addons without updates afterwards... I don't think I've ever seen someone in-game mention to me that they thought it was set up to a good standard.

I do see dozens of people each day asking what they need to go download to stop some notification from pestering them, or to see how much health they have left while fighting, among other things, all of which are industry standard functionality for RPG's and MMO's as they are essential to skillfully playing the game itself. As I mentioned before, some elements are simply too integral or user-unfriendly to deal with, to leave out of the game itself. And some, such as overhead guild tags/representation & nameplates, or actual buff/debuff status rather than timers based on when you pressed a button with no updates from the game itself, simply cannot be done at all even with third-party downloads. And if someone doesn't want them on their screen for whatever their reasons are? They don't ever have to go into the settings window to enable them until/unless they want to. If a raid group they hook up with asks them to use a DPS meter addon or enable settings to tell what health enemies are at, etc.? No different than needing to go get both from an addon site now if you wanted to do the Trials with them, just more convenient to do so or leave. Players' social behaviors do not factor into this .

Attorneyatlawl

Just to illustrate what I said above, here's a new character I gave a little gold to expand his packs with, and then went out to adventure in the world with, zero addons installed... I enabled all of the information the game allows for with its stock functionality. This is to see what a new player might notice when starting out in Elder Scrolls Online and fighting his first few enemies. If the text is too small, click the link to see the picture at full size .

Link: http://i.imgur.com/XQITCGe.jpg
1. Hello, world!



Link: http://i.imgur.com/jwxan03.jpg
2. How strong am I?



Link: http://i.imgur.com/v6eAa4Q.jpg
3. What's my gear doing? My inventory?



Link: http://i.imgur.com/SpRskSG.jpg
4. Fight! Fight! Wait, what's even going on here?



Link: http://i.imgur.com/17fmYDp.jpg
5. Uh... I thought he was supposed to be dead.



Link: http://i.imgur.com/hVNCJSs.jpg
6. Victory! What did I get?

Smiteye

Wonder if we'll see this stuff in 2015 or if it'll be a year like camera options. They did a good job on those but it was left a long time .

Ysne58

You do make a good argument for this At.

IcyDeadPeople

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

This is to see what a new player might notice when starting out in Elder Scrolls Online and fighting his first few enemies. If the text is too small, click the link to see the picture at full size .

This is brilliant, thank you for taking the time to put this together. It may seem hard to believe, given I am obviously so OP (wink), but I had many of these same questions the first time I played ESO.

It wasn't until I was invited to join a guild and get on TS that I was able to learn a little more about how the game works from folks who were more knowledgeable.

A lot of the fun in this game is researching the math and coming up with creative build ideas, but before reaching that point there are some of these basic concepts you can't exactly learn from the UI.

pppontus

Couldn't agree more.

Attorneyatlawl

Thanks for the great feedback all. I will be making a mock up if I have time hopefully today .

Smiteye

Looking forward to that! Still surprised no @ZOS remark.

The_Drexill

Guild tags and a combat log with death spam ala daoc would make this my favorite game.

Attorneyatlawl

The_Drexill wrote: »

Guild tags and a combat log with death spam ala daoc would make this my favorite game.

We had a combat log.... with colored killspam for each faction. It was glorious. I miss it just as I miss DAOC . Another casualty of the UI being gutted during beta, here.

Rook_Master

I think your screenshots with accompanying text do a great job of showing how the missing information affects new players.

I've been using some addons for so long now that I almost forget what it's like to play without LootDrop, Advanced Filters, MiniMap, etc.

wraith808

... but I was a new player at one time. And it was after 'the gutting'. And all of my guild mates from my smaller guild are in the same boat. Absolutely zero percent of us were confused. Is this 'new user experience' that you outline an actual problem? Or a perceived problem? Just wondering.

Attorneyatlawl

It's an actual problem, including both new players who want to find out what's happening to their character or enemies, to endgame players who find a severe and almost complete lack of vital gameplay information in the user interface as well as numerous day in, day out annoyances with it. While you can get some of the deeper gameplay with volunteer-authored addon scripts , it's no substitute for having a proper UI in the first place, and like most games then leaving extensive or unusual customization or lesser used features to the realm of addons. If you went into a vet dungeon without addons and no one telling you what to do who knew from them, the game itself provides just a small scrap more than "nothing" for information to improve your character, your build as a whole, or your own skills. Other than the bare basics you intuitively can learn such as blocking, dodging, or bash interrupt (many don't even get that one though...), there's precious little clue in the game itself how to play the game better.

Tell me, if you go into a trial and no one has done it before, nor are they using any addons or have read any info gleaned from players using them, how would you be able to tell how much damage is needed raid wide to beat the enrage timer? What would you do to learn the percentages of health specifically for different abilities and when they will be gains for execute skills? If the tank is taking too much damage, how are you then able to accurately assess by how much and then make an informed decision on how to remedy that without guesswork and no conclusive info other than "we now killed the boss" once you succeed?

The reasons I generally see posited as to why the UI doesn't have or shouldn't have standard RPG features is that it creates too much clutter or takes your attention away for some people from the artwork . However, given that the improvements need not be mandatory, just like chat bubbles are optional and the world didn't end upon their implementation as many insisted it would but rather added an extra tool for small groups or for role playing gatherings to enjoy themselves more with the benefits having the option to choose provided, that argument isn't actually relevant since you can toggle them on or off at will. The other chief argument is that "groups will 'force' me to use this" to which I can only say two things. First off, if an addon exists already for the thing they want you to have for gameplay info, how is it different if they insist you install the addon versus going into the game options to enable it, other than being easier for you to do if you want to play in their group? Second, and finally, no one can actually "force" anything. You can simply choose to leave if you don't meet the other people's requirements or expectations in info, skill, and/or playstyle. It's their group, not yours. You have the exact same abilities to form one of your own and try to find people of a similar mindset to your own preferences, however. This doesn't mean yours will succeed at the given task, of course... if it does, great, if it keeps not working well, maybe those other groups had a point, right?