10 suggestions to vastly improve the user interface.

kirrasha · April 2014

Give me SkyUI with the stuff OP mentions, and I'll keep my sub alive for atleast 6 months.

Xandarth79 · April 2014

Any DPS meter will still allow you to be judged and far more accurately. Your argument is invalid.

RasterEyes · April 2014

There currently is a Recount add-on that can be downloaded, but it only shows you your own DPS. I think they made changes to the API that makes monitoring other players' stats pretty much impossible, I'm not sure on the details or if that statement is technically correct.

kharrah02rwb17_ESO · April 2014

Agreed

WhiteQueen · April 2014

+1. I agree with everything mentioned.

Also, consoles? Geez. That's like, the worst reason ever. I don't even know why we have to have the same interface. Sure, bigger market, blah blah blah. But why not spend a little extra time and program in different interfaces for PC and consoles?

Darzil · April 2014

Xandarth79 wrote: »

Any DPS meter will still allow you to be judged and far more accurately. Your argument is invalid.

If only they told you DPS against the right targets at the right times, and separately against the wrong targets or at the wrong times ! (After all, I presume none of us want boss fights that are single target DPS races)

Bansheedragon · April 2014

2) Shift-click any player name in the chat window to get information about that character (class, race, level, location). Currently it looks like shift-clicking doesn't do anything different than an ordinary click. At least maybe have character info be an option in the right-click drop down, maybe?

I dont see the point of this one.
What use could it be for you to have this information?

RasterEyes · April 2014

Bansheedragon wrote: »

2) Shift-click any player name in the chat window to get information about that character (class, race, level, location). Currently it looks like shift-clicking doesn't do anything different than an ordinary click. At least maybe have character info be an option in the right-click drop down, maybe?

I dont see the point of this one.
What use could it be for you to have this information?

If someone in my guild is like "Hey anyone wanna quest or dungeon with me?" instead of having to ask them all this info I can just shift click and know what location they are questing/dungeoning in and what lvl quests they will be doing and just tell me basic info about their character I may want to know.

Shadowshire · January 2015

These are all good suggestions, regardless of whether they have been implemented in other games. The WoW UI is certainly a good model for PC games, with its point-and-click GUI. But nothing is perfect, so there are addons such as ELV UI that remedy some of the native UI flaws.

With regard to Inspecting another player's character, though, I suggest that it only be allowed with the consent of that player. Whether that would prevent abuse of it would have to be detemined by experience. When someone is a sadist, they find ways to hurt other people regardless. The problem isn't the tools, but those who abuse them.

One thing that I found aggravating about the Blizzard (WoW) Community Forum was its link to the "Armory" and the requirement to post messages as one of your characters. That allowed any other player access to the Armory data about your character. So, regardless of the subject or content of your message(s), almost always there would be at least one "reply" from some idiot offering criticism and/or advice about your character, especially the gear. On some occasions, that might be beneficial, but often it was just a way of trolling the player who posted the message. Sometimes the only replies and discussion that ensued were about that matter and the original post was entirely ignored.

Shadowshire · January 2015

With regard to whether a player's name should be exposed in the game, it seems to me that every MMO should implement three types of names for the player.

(1) The account name, for business transactions and customer service;

(2) the player name, for logging-in, for support, and for in-game "social networking" communication among friends, and;

(3) the names of the player's characters, to be used in all other in-game contexts. A player character is enrolled as a member of a guild, but the same player can have multiple characters as members of the same guild. So, whether a player chooses to be known only by their character's name in a guild, and/or when using voice communication, would be at their discretion. Most guilds are more "social" than focused on playing the game as a team(s), so identifying yourself by your player-name could be the most appropriate.

It would be nice to have in-game voice communication, but I think it would also increase the cost of providing the game. I don't know the current prices for Ventrilo, but most guild-masters have an account that all of the guild members can use to communicate. Or they use a free service such as Raidcall, which uses IRC channels instead of VOIP. Those aren't as well known but, in my experience with Raidcall, it worked well once I got past some issues in setting up the account. On the other hand, the firm is located in either Russia or the Ukraine, and you might want to take extra security precautions when dealing with them (e.g., using Sandboxie).

DeLindsay · January 2015

+1 from me. I also wouldn't want an Inspect option though, as said above it leads to ridiculous elitism.

Xandarth79 wrote: »

Honn wrote: »

9) Option to "inspect" another player
This simply wont happen & if it does there will be hell to pay in the forums.

There are only two groups of people who oppose inspection of gear.

Loot ninja's (who thanks to the loot system in this game are not a problem in this game) and bads wanting to do content they don't have the gear to do. If you think not having inspection will stop gear checks you are delusional - a far more effective method of determining whether or not someone is bad is to simply dps/heal check them.

That also catches bad players in good gear. There is no good argument against gear checks.

You are the exact type of reason why players don't want an Inspect option. Having crap gear does NOT in any way mean you are a bad player. Having great gear does NOT in any way mean you are a good player. Enchanting your Jewelry with +13 (Epic) Spell/Weapon dmg instead of +14 (Legendary) because you don't have the gold for 3 Kuta's does NOT make you bad nor change your DPS/HPS by even 0.1%, but I can 100% guarantee players will bash someone who does that if they can inspect. Or maybe someone hasn't fully improved all 11/12 pcs of their VR14 gear to Legendary yet, same problem, some players will bash them for that too. Maybe they have full VR14 Legendary except 1 VR13 Epic because the VR14 hasn't dropped for them yet, some players will use that as an excuse to bash them for being bad.

There is no good argument FOR having an Inspect option other than "Hey what's that chest piece you're wearing, it looks amazing?" Outside of that it's for elitists to spread their sense of perfection on the masses, against their will.

Gyudan · January 2015

RasterEyes wrote: »

5) Our UserID should not be displayed in game. The only benefit with this is that when you "ignore" someone it ignores their entire account, and when you "friend" someone you will see them online even if they log in on an alt. These are two minor benefits versus a list of major problems this introduces. Firstly, this creates huge confusion when interacting with guildmates. I know the people in my guild by their UserID because that's what it shows in the guild chat, but when we group up for things it shows their character name and I have no idea who is who. Secondly, the obvious immersion killing problems this creates for role players (this is an MMORPG after all). Thirdly, there are privacy issues. I like to make all my account names formulaic so I never forget them, they are always the first initial of my name then my last name. I don't want everyone in an MMO I am playing to know my legal name and I certainly don't want my badass fantasy RPG character to be known by my boring real life name. Fourthly, maybe I want a character that people on my friends list don't know about, an alter ego per se. Fifthly (is that a word? I dunno if I've ever gotten this far before =p), the security issues, although this isn't as big of a deal as some make it out to be (most hackers use key loggers or phishing scams anyways), it is still just one more reason why displaying UserIDs in game is a bad idea and just seems like lazy programming to me. I think the two aforementioned benefits can be achieved without actually displaying UserIDs with just a little creative thinking.

This would actually be very confusing when interacting with players who use more than one character. I like the current system and only answer to my userid in chat, not character name. The only way your suggestion would work is if all characters were completely separate, without access to a common bank or common guilds, which is definitely something I do not want.

RasterEyes wrote: »

6) In game voice chat. We're already paying a subscription to play this game, we shouldn't have to also pay subscription for a Ventrilo server as well. And most the free voice chat applications for gaming out there are not cross platform and are usually windows only, and this is a cross platform game, so... Also, this is the year 2014, this function should be in all MMOs at this point, period.

This is not really necessary right now, since there are many voice chat softwares available for everyone. Maybe later we can envision a plugin working with a few softwares that would display a speaker icon in place of the chat bubble over the character's head when he's speaking, but that's not that important imo.

RasterEyes wrote: »

7) A search field for the guild stores. Seriously? No search field for the guild stores? This makes buying materials (probably the most commonly bought things in an auction house) a real hassle. Currently we can only filter by item category, so we have to rummage through literally hundreds or thousands of irrelevant materials to find the few stacks of mats we actually want. What is this all about?

@ZOS answered this by bringing up issues related to server strain.

RasterEyes wrote: »

9) Option to "inspect" another player. I'll see some guy in really badass looking gear and be like "Who are you wearing" like some red carpet fashion critic, and I should be able to find that out without having to ask the player to link all the gear he/she is wearing in chat. In addition to seeing the player's paper doll of gear, being able to see that player's class build would be nice too for those of us who are into theorycrafting.

This could easily be abused to keep people away from group instances because they don't have the FOTM build. I'd rather not see that, at least not as a feature that would be available by default.

RasterEyes wrote: »

10) Trying on gear. I'd like to be able to see what my character would look like wearing a piece of gear without actually possessing the item or before equipping a BOE. So before buying, binding, or crafting the item I could see what it would look like cosmetically. Maybe it could be an option from a right-click drop down menu on the item's icon or something. It would be really useful in this game, especially considering the same piece of gear can have at least 14 different possible racial styles. Being able to zoom/rotate your character while in the inventory menu section would be nice little bonus as well.

Try eso-fashion.com

The other suggestions seem decent though.

DeLindsay · January 2015

Eso-fashion.com is only as good as what players have uploaded pictures of. For example, there are MANY sets that only have Female or only have Male pictures and only of 1 specific Race. A set of armor looks quite different on a small Female Bosmer than it does on a huge Male Orc. Or what if you want to know what it looks like to wear a Heavy Chest + Medium Legs + Light everything else, eso-fashion can't really help with that.