Star Wars™: The Old Republic’s™ Lead Interface Artist Michael Voigt gives you a tour of the new User Interface customization options coming in Game Update 1.2: Legacy.

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You absolutely nailed it with the new UI.

Great job.

Used "retro" style on the PTS and it just felt right.

On the other hand, I've been using the SWTOR default UI for so long now,

I might just keep on using that. We'll see. Not much longer now.

I'm loving that you can copy the UI to your other toons with the click of a button. 1.2 needs to come faster!

Also, so many trolls on the Facebook update of this. I'm not sure why they follow things on Facebook just to troll them.

Also to the "should have been in at launch" crowd: I'm glad we got this so quickly after release. It's just been 4 months, and that's actually a really short amount of time. But, I'm older, so maybe 4 months to me is a short amount of time. I guess if you are only 15, 4 months is a huge chunk of your life.

Finally we can customize our UI! I'm so excited update 1.2. Everyone working on the game does a spectacular job! Keep up the good work. I can't wait to see what else you have in store for us.

Lord Azulu from the Master Gnost-Dural server

If anyone is interested in a written write up of a UI customization in 1.2 that goes into a bit more depth, I wrote one a couple days ago

http://dulfy.net/2012/03/30/ui-customization-in-patch-1-2/

There is also the UI share thingie on sithwarrior/mmo-mechanics where people submit their UI can you can download them

http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/uifileshare/

Wow, a feature that comes standard in most all other MMO's I'm so excited!

Dude how can you seem like you're being nice when you say that! They had more important things to have ready for the launch back in December. you should be lucky we even have the game dude!

Wow, a feature that comes standard in most all other MMO's I'm so excited!

so true

Dude how can you seem like you're being nice when you say that! They had more important things to have ready for the launch back in December. you should be lucky we even have the game dude!

Hey Jr we built your car and its good to go!

Sorry, but you won't be able to change the radio station because we were too busy trying to create a unique and amazing color of paint to use on the outside of your car rather than put in any kind of radio tuners etc. Don't worry though, we are confident we can improve upon this issue within the next 6 months.

Wow, a feature that comes standard in most all other MMO's I'm so excited!

Rift is the only MMO that comes to mind that had an official UI system out of the gate. I know the often compared to WoW, last I played was the beginning of Cataclysm, you had to download a mod or two just to do what you can here. This UI customization reminds me of Rifts, which is a good thing.

Rift is the only MMO that comes to mind that had an official UI system out of the gate. I know the often compared to WoW, last I played was the beginning of Cataclysm, you had to download a mod or two just to do what you can here. This UI customization reminds me of Rifts, which is a good thing.

Downloading mods is preferable to not being able to do anything at all. Have you seen the size of the proc icons!

This is absolutely one of the features I'm looking forward to most in 1.2.

My only major critique is that we desperately need more than 4 action bars.

I would recommend a minimum of 10 bars we can use based upon the customization options. For example, that way I could take one of the bars, shorten it to a stack of say 4 buttons and super enlarge them for abilities I don't have on keybind but that I want easy access to. I can't do that with the current layout because there are only 4 action bars, so it would be foolish to reduce any of them down from the maximum amount of 12 buttons. By level 50 all 4 bars are easily filled up.

Hey Jr we built your car and its good to go!

 

Sorry, but you won't be able to change the radio station because we were too busy trying to create a unique and amazing color of paint to use on the outside of your car rather than put in any kind of radio tuners etc. Don't worry though, we are confident we can improve upon this issue within the next 6 months.

Hey Jr, we're building you a car. Should be ready in a couple years for you....

**6 months later**

Hey Jr, I know you're excited, and you ask a lot about the car, but we're still working on it. It's coming along nicely.

**6 months later**

Hey dad, I know you're not done with the game yet, but I really really want my car. Come on, how long can a car take?

**3 months later**

Ok Jr, we've got the car so it's driveable, different from all your friends cars in a lot of ways, and you'll have a great time driving it. You don't have to drive that same kind of car all your friends have been driving for years. But we'll have to continue to work on it to get it just right. But enjoy for now!!

Awesome dad, this is a blast!

**4 months later**

Ok Jr, all you've done for the last 4 months is complain about stuff we hadn't gotten done on your car yet. So here's a new stereo.

Oh sure dad, NOW I get a nicer radio. Couldn't have put that in from the start. Sheesh.

But Jr, we've been busy building you a freaking CAR!

You suck, Dad.

Downloading mods is preferable to not being able to do anything at all. Have you seen the size of the proc icons!

Sure downloadable mods are nice, but not needed if you can include a decent built in system. I also know many people who refuse to download mods on other MMOs due to fear of loggers. Which is a viable fear, sites like curse aren't 100% safe a built in system is.

Also to the "should have been in at launch" crowd: I'm glad we got this so quickly after release. It's just been 4 months, and that's actually a really short amount of time. But, I'm older, so maybe 4 months to me is a short amount of time. I guess if you are only 15, 4 months is a huge chunk of your life.

I think you nailed it on the head there Looking back at other "unnammed" MMOs...they were nowhere near this developed 4 months after launch.

congratulations you are now about where EQ was before the LUA interface launched in 2003, but with some features that are very bartender ish. So you're not quite a decade late to the party.

Lipstick on a pig may be all you can do with the time and resources you have, but please don't tout it as a great addition to the game. This is better than nothing... barely. But it in no way solves the problem, which is that you need to expose either a heroscript or LUA api to design the interface (or something else, but those two are the most obvious options).

Your lead UI designer needs to change how they think about the UI. Completely. UI is a data visualization problem. Right now you're treating it as an artistic representation problem. Change your thinking and you'll get on the right track. Players need different sorts of data, they can be raid leaders, role (i.e. healing) leaders, position coordinators, colour blind, have a learning disability, have a bizarrely shaped monitors, they may be master economists, loot masters etc. You're basically moving around the visualizations your artistic vision provides. That's simply wrong. The data you provide may be neatly dressed up, but it's sorely lacking for all but the most basic functionality.

Examples of things I would probably consider adding: (Note this is in no way a feature request, it is intended to be illustrative of why you're not going to get there without making a fully customizable UI)

Different icon packs for people with learning and vision disabilities. You do know your icon choices are particularly bad at this, and a classic example of being bad for people with learning disabilities right? Good.

Stats packages for GTN trading and tracking your currencies across characters.

Cross character, and potentially cross account inventory information.

A raid frame with everyones target listed

Raid gear tracker (so the raid leader/ML can see what gear people have equipped)

Automatically linking loot in a UI element when master looter is enabled

The ability to remove customization buttons around ability bars so they aren't accidentally clicked. You know you have people with fine motor control problems trying to play this game right? Ya the lock/unlock buttons should not be anywhere near the actual abilities...

Maps... pretty much anything should be changed on them (mini and regular). It looked like you were using developer art in september for the labour day beta. The joke has gone on long enough, it's time to let someone else have at it.

I could go on, but I think that conveys the point I'm trying to make. At a minimum I'd like the longer term technical vision of how the UI is going to work from the players end. But in the interim you should be contrite about the changes being made as 'the best we could do with the time we have' not drumming them up as something excellent. They aren't.