Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

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Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

Much of what the op wants can be obtained via add-ons. As for the rest of having it added into the game I suggest looking at the history and you will see THIS IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!!!!!

If you look at the history from alpha/beta testing you'd see they had a full feature UI and decided TO TAKE IT ALL OUT because this is TES and we have a fairly normal TES UI.

There was even heated debate concerning what could be seen through thr API which some saying LEARN TO PLAY vs using all that added info and others saying GIVE ME A SCREEN OF NUMBERS and all this other information.

In the end the developers said very clearly and strong NO WAY.

That's not quite how it happened, @Giles.floydub17_ESO, in actuality. Let's set the record straight here with a history of the game's beta testing & development in regards to camera and User Interface (UI) issues in response to "community" feedback:


-In the beginning, there were toggleable options, for your own preference, to enable or disable overhead nameplates as well as guild nameplate tags optionally (additionally you had toggles for them being on at all, enabled on players from your faction, enabled on guildmates, enabled on enemies, enabled on enemy players, etc., everything you'd need to allow for basic gameplay and community in an online game), scrolling combat text, a combat log in a chat box tab including damage sources for enemies attacking you, and debuffs, as well as some other accomodations like not having the chatbox fade away along with its text/messages when inactive. You additionally could enable labels on resource bars like health and magicka so you could tell how much you had left.

-There was no 1st-person view, but people complained vociferously and it got added.

-Then non-MMORPG, single-player fans of Elder Scrolls lore came and complained loudly that they wanted everything not in the newest Skyrim single-player game taken out because they didn't want to be "forced" (quote-unquote, as there's no such thing) to toggle options on or off in the settings window because some random group they run into might ask them to in order to play with them (in which case you could simply just not group with them).

-ZOS, in response, began stripping some features like a minimap (how is it more immersive, exactly, to cover your entire screen in a giant map and be unable to see the game world constantly when needing to navigate, I to this day do not know), as people who didn't research the game being an MMORPG and claimed they would not play if it wasn't all removed. Nameplates were disabled with a statement being made that they would return in an improved form, which to date has not happened.

Mind you, things like the minimap and buff/debuff icons & indicators even were stock options in the UI in the previous Elder Scrolls games such as Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but a vocal campaign insisted it would not work, enough so that they decided to change course to hopefully placate the bad press from the complaints and not damage sales. Understandable enough, it is a business after all .


- Then, loud complaints came in about how the first-person view didn't have good enough options and looked poorly animated (hypocritically, and when 3rd-person camera view issues were mentioned such as Field of View (FOV), zoom distance, and centering the camera, they were dismissed as unimportant by the same people begging for first-person improvements to that mode's FOV because "I don't use 3rd-person anyway"), and ZOS had a big to-do announcing how they were improving it in response to public feedback.

-Over the next several patches from October through March, more and more User Interface options were removed, 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 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 had more mixed viewpoints at that point in time such as @IcyDeadPeople and @Ysne58, who since I believe have become more amiable towards these kinds of options being re-implemented when I have talked with them more recently.

Finally, there was a very.... we'll term it "lively", to be polite, debate in the closed beta community as to whether we should be able to see enemies' magicka and stamina with addons while targeting them. Contrary to many others, I actually did argue for that specific functionality to be disabled, as I felt it crossed to being "too much" information about your opponents' cards to play when fighting them.

-During this testing period, feedback and questions were made as to whether the Minimap would be returning as the ability to enable the older stock one was removed. @ZOS_GinaBruno clarified a relatively short time later that Zenimax's intention for the launch of The Elder Scrolls Online was to support the compass system for navigation and that it was unlikely to come back before then.

-A week or two before launch, @ZOS_PaulSage finally broke the silence and provided an official statement about their intentions for how the API would be used, and how they intended to change it prior to launch. There was of course continued debate, some people were very happy to hear that most game info would be restricted, while others were concerned enough about ESO's direction to cancel their pre-orders as a result. Soon after, the final beta version before the release candidate (in other words, what you would play after the official head start launch of the live game servers) came and had these changes. It came to light that more than what was expected to be removed, was indeed removed. Other items that weren't expected to make the cut remained, such as seeing what items your group or raid party members received when looting boss monsters and other enemies via addons.

In addition to disabling the ability to see enemy resources remaining, we also could no longer see our own combat information such as what hit us, even through addons (just the amount we were attacked for, no mitigation information such as "You were hit by Flame Atronarch's Cinder Bolt for 343 Fire Damage (54 reduced)". Additional items that were never enabled included being able to make nameplates through addons (you cannot place tags or user interface objects in-world in relation to the camera, and never could, which is understandably needed to prevent additions like Deadly Boss Mobs (DBM) as I'm sure some may have heard about in World of Warcraft being widely hated).

-Elder Scrolls Online launched as a AAA subscription-based MMORPG title at the end of March 2014 for the head-start period, and the beginning of April for those who did not pre-order. In an early major game version (I believe it was version 1.1, the first major patch, but I may be mis-remembering... however, it was very shortly after the game's release), 1st-person camera improvements like a Field of View slider were added, but no comment was made on 3rd-person equivalents.

-Since, there has been little said by Zenimax in regards to considering either opening the functionality addon authors can use, or improving the default user interface to a more industry-standard level of options, other than two I can recall: one of nameplates not being a disliked idea during an "Elder Scrolls Off The Record" fansite interview with Mr. Sage, and another by @ZOS_JessicaFolsom mentioning that they were not off the table for implementation soon after. There haven't been to my knowledge (and if anyone has seen them, please feel free to link them here) any further statements regarding the entire issue publicly.

Finally, a few months ago in 2015, the Version 1.6 Public Test Server notes described additional camera options for the third-person view, adding and enabling option sliders to allow you to center the camera instead of the default far-off-to-the-right over the shoulder view, adjust its height upwards or downwards in relation to your character, and a Field of View slider (which gives the impression of being further away from your character, even though it does not actually move the camera, because it appears smaller in relationship to the extra game world you can see to your sides). Unfortunately, a maximum zoom distance preference was not added in this patch and remains unimplemented.

-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.

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And that brings us to today. Thanks for reading, and hopefully this clears the air on some of the misconceptions floating around on this topic . I have made my best effort to present things mostly objectively in this accounting, and of course anyone mentioned can correct the record here if they feel that I didn't show what they meant when paraphrased into this post .