What I would like to see is dual-targeting. You can target one enemy and one ally, beneficial abilities are applied to the friendly target while attacks are directed to the enemy target. I find this especially useful as a healer so I can watch the enemy cast bar for various reasons - special attacks, interrupts etc.

I believe that add-ons for this game would be a terrible idea. If your having a hard time healing a Flashpoint, or an Operation then that's an awesome thing. Who wants a game in which the role you are playing is easy? I mean World Of Warcraft got so easy due to add-ons that it just became boring. Struggling in Star Wars: The Old Republic is a very good thing, and at least that aspect of the game should be left alone.

I believe that add-ons for this game would be a terrible idea. If your having a hard time healing a Flashpoint, or an Operation then that's an awesome thing. Who wants a game in which the role you are playing is easy? I mean World Of Warcraft got so easy due to add-ons that it just became boring. Struggling in Star Wars: The Old Republic is a very good thing, and at least that aspect of the game should be left alone.

 

Have u read atleast 1/4 of these posts?

I havent seen a single request for a boss mod (ie where most of wow's raiding woes come from)

id say 80% of the wants of the poster base is as follows. Mouse over healing,Macro's,Buff/debuff scaling.

 

None of those make the game easier , just more intuitive and let people focus on whats going on around them instead of staring at bars.

You guys who think UI's or addons make games easier are just plain uninformed.

 

The challenge should be in mechanics, decision making, reaction time, educational aptitude, and general intellectual prowess. "Of all the people who have the debuff, who should I dispel?" Is a fun and potentially difficult decision to make; spending that same amount of time clicking everyones name to see who has the debuff, is IRRITATING gameplay, and not difficult at all.

 

WoW has massive numbers of addons, and still gave us instances like Sunwell, and a few bosses in WoTLK and Cataclysm that were incredibly challenging. Look at heroic firelands, how many US guilds finished it before nerf? A hundred? With insane amounts of addons, all the information you could need, and everyone pushing crazy DPS through so many different kinds of sim tools support. Yet the game was still really difficult for the average person.

 

The challenge shouldn't be in trying to understand what the crap is going on or playing with a UI that could have been better designed by first year MMO players. It's really stupid that some people still have to press their DPS cooldown, press their trinket, and press their next ability. One button should do all that for you, it's a waste of time and DPS otherwise. Gamers are forced to get nagas just so they aren't completely irritated by the lack of information and complex intricacy-- not difficulty, needless complexity-- brought on by this games UI.

 

The fact that it's impossible to find debuffs doesn't make them harder to dispel, or even harder to deal with. It just means healers need to cycle through everyones portrait, or players need to clutter up vent with information like "i've got the debuff". It also makes mechanics like multiple debuf management and passing of specific debuffs between players nearly impossible. Quite frankly this game doesn't have enough freedom of information to even present difficult encounters designs.

 

This is a very passionate issue for me, because quite frankly bioware has just made a terrible design decision in this aspect to not open up the API. Even games like the secret world which spent way less time in development are opening up the API.

 

It's reasons like this, that SWTOR is dying very quickly. Bad development decisions lead to unfun gameplay.

 

I don't think that anyone is saying the UI is perfect as is. In fact most people who have said no to addons have gone on to say they want improvements to buff/debuff display for exactly the reason you list. Having to hit multiple buttons to use an ability changes nothing about the gameplay other than slowing the pacing down which isn't a bad thing either. faster actions does not mean more in depth play, it means faster actions. Opening the API is a mistake. Investing in improving the UI tools available to the players is vastly superior to opening the game up to exploits (how many times has WoW had to squash yet another version of the one button that does whatever needs be done?) and results in an uneven playing field everyone should be using the same UI. And that UI should be supplied by the developers. Should it be better than what we have? Yes but opening the API is a lazy workaround to that issue.

Not gonna change topic itself, but what veeeery badly needs at first place this game is MORE action bars. At least 2 or 3 more.

 

Oh yes! Please!

 

And I am not the unique asking for this, btw.

 

No. You're not!

You guys who think UI's or addons make games easier are just plain uninformed

 

I'm not uninformed. I am experienced.

 

As mentioned previously, certain addons would make the game easier as it is. This forces the developers to intentionally build future content around the use of these addons. Over time, two things happen: it gets to the point where encounters without these addons become extremely difficult and raiders discriminate against those who do not use the addons making it far more difficult for the average consumer to experience the end game content until the next release when they can tone down older content. There is little point going into the various reasons why people choose not to use addons (not the least of which is malicious software hidden in addons - which happened to Curse at least twice).

 

I personally attended the Athens Game Conference in 2006 where the Project Manager for WoW was the keynote speaker. He flat out explained the unintended consequences of allowing community addons during his presentation. Sure, there are pros to go with the cons, but his point was certain types of addons forced Blizzard to take the game in directions they didn't necessarily want to go. I would hardly call that uninformed.

Edited July 13, 2012 by InnerPieces

I am tired of the "I do this / like this / am fine with it therefore it's fine for everybody else" argument. *really*

 

And yes, we are looking back to years of WoW addon history and a very complex API that might have opened up things that were not intended by the developers and were crushed later. So there are 0 exploits within SWTOR right now? Is an API the sole Evil?

 

Maybe you want to have a look at Meet Your Makers Black temple movie. There you can see a single guild with lots of different interfaces and hardly one alike the other.

 

I just don't see why disparity is such a bad thing. I just feel like I am stuck in a Windows versus X-Serve fight. Some saying the Interface needs to look the same to everybody else so people will feel at home. The other will say, I want to use a window manage that fits my needs, I want to change the context menus to the ones I use most, ...

 

 

I was never a fan of "you need that addon for our success". But it's just the same as "you need that gear (score) to compete" / "show me the achievement".

 

You can keep your basic UI and you can like it / but why should I miss things that I need for my game play.

 

Humans are the same under the law - but for their personality all are different.

I was never a fan of "you need that addon for our success". But it's just the same as "you need that gear (score) to compete" / "show me the achievement".

 

Thankfully we don't have any of that either (yet).

 

I'm not opposed to cosmetic or convenience UI changes at all. I'm simply not partial to addons that alter gameplay (like 1 click, multiple skill triggers and things that make a role literally a no brainer: like healbot) if it isn't incorporated by BioWare for everyone at the same time. I am also not agreed with overly abusable addons like Recount (which is a shame since the intention of recount was to help you improve yourself, not as a scorecard for number racing) and Gearscore (which was always bad, but became a dominating force as to who was "better" or "worthy.")

 

I want BioWare to open up addon development, but with severe and strict restrictions on what can be implemented.

Thanks oredith and Meltheran! This kind of detailed feedback on what you're looking for is really helpful. Hope to see more similar posts from others!

 

totally agree, what they say are additions that make a lot of sense.

Ok putting aside the addons vs built in UI argument and getting back to concrete UI elements... I don't think we will solve this debate (which has been going on about swtor since early beta) in this thread and we should use this thread for concrete UI improvment ideas since the devs seem to have looked upon it and seen it...

 

I would like to suggest a "enemy ops bar"... basically any enemy that shows up as a red dot on your radar should have a bar on a target ops panel like the party ops panel so you can click on them to target them easier/etc.

I think bioware must allow using interface addons, like Curse.com site. Healer, tank addons. is a difficult heal proper some times. its rise progress of many people.

 

 

All this does is bring more trouble then it's worth. Let that crap WoW keep it.

All this does is bring more trouble then it's worth. Let that crap WoW keep it.

Did you forget about Skyrim, Aion, Minecraft, Rift, Dragon Age, IPhone, IPad, Android, Firefox, ....?

 

I would like to see a readycheck for Parties and Ops as well.

I personally attended the Athens Game Conference in 2006 where the Project Manager for WoW was the keynote speaker. He flat out explained the unintended consequences of allowing community addons during his presentation. Sure, there are pros to go with the cons, but his point was certain types of addons forced Blizzard to take the game in directions they didn't necessarily want to go. I would hardly call that uninformed.

 

So you mean, they opened up the API, didn't have to spend millions developing the UI, the players took the direction in the way that the majority of players wanted the game to go, and the game ultimately survived?

 

It seems like the opposite of all those things are happening here, especially the game surviving part.

The game does not need macros or addons, they trivialize the game and have all kinds of un-intended side effects. There just needs to be more UI customization options like colour and design and being able to hide parts while out of combat etc.

 

Not only that, but its a huge security risk with keyloggers etc, which is something we really don't need. The risk and problems far outweigh the benefits.

Edited July 14, 2012 by NasherUK

Here are a few things I would like to see added to the game:

 

1. The ability to re-skin many aspects of the current ui: unit frames, map frames, hot bars, and raid frames.

2. A moveable hot/dot tracker. I hate being forced to watch my target unit frame so I don't clip a dot or hot.

3. Some sort of minimalistic HUD interface that allows me to track my health and resource bars and my targets health and resource bars. It should look like closed parenthesis (( i )) that center around the characters. The right side would be the player's health and the left side would be the target's health.

4. The ability to detach, re-size, and move buffs and debuffs.

5. Mouse-over targeting and healing. (Click healing would be a nice addition also)

6. Some sort of threat management tracker would be great. It would allow everyone to see their threat and adjust their play in order to allow tanks to constantly retain threat.

 

For the most part I'm ambivalent concerning the arguments that we need macros and third party add-on accessibility. I can see the arguments for both, so I will accept whatever BioWare decides is best for the game.

Edited July 15, 2012 by Epyionn

If you got the idea from WOw, then please go back and play that game. Let this game be a unique experience and stop asking for things you see in that game.

 

^

I'm tanking just fine, I'm healing just fine. Addons need to burn in hell, because the dev team eventually needs to balance content around having addons, or to extend their basic UI functionality, making addons obsolete.

I think bioware must allow using interface addons, like Curse.com site. Healer, tank addons. is a difficult heal proper some times. its rise progress of many people.

 

Definitely not. Addons ruined WOW and I hope Bioware does not follow that route to "easy mode". I never used any of the silly things anyway. In game Macros would be nice though.

3. Some form of threat indicator. (This is MUCH less of a problem since 1.3.) Even something like healthbars changing colors, I would say we don't need exact numbers. (For Tanking Green=Have threat, Yellow=About to Lose Threat, Red=Lost Threat)

 

Humm, you sure you don't want the game to grab aggro for you when you're about to loose it ?

 

I mean, it would be bad if you had to do your tanking job, wouldn't it ?

Here are my priorities for things I want to see added/addressed in the UI:

 

#1 Buffs & Debuffs on Unitframes AND raid frames

 

Healing and not being able to tell when your HoTs will expire is REALLY frustrating. Buffs & Debuffs should be scalable & filterable separate from other aspects of the unitframes & raid frames. If somebody wants their debuffs to be 3 inches across and in the middle of their screen, they should be allowed to have them there. DPS should be able to select to only see the boss's ability debuffs & their own applied debuffs if they so choose.

 

I would ideally like to be able to position my HoTs on the left side of a raid frame health box(medium size), the debuffs I apply to the person in the bottom left (small size), and then the debuffs from the ENCOUNTER on the right (large size). That's just how I would want it set up, not how everybody would want it.

 

#2 Clicking a Nameplate Targets the Unit

 

It is a pain in the butt to click on bodies sometimes and tab-targetting doesn't always work. I should be able to click on a nameplate and target that person/mob. We've had people die on Nightmare Pilgrim because of this malfunction.

 

#3 Mouseover Healing

 

This was mentioned earlier in this thread. I am restating it for emphasis. It's significantly lower than my #1 priority.

 

Overall, currently... issue #1 can make for a lot of frustration in the game. I'm not asking for addons. I'm fine with not having them. I just want raid frames and unitframes that function they way they should.

As a healer, I would also like to see Target of Focused Target.

 

Hell, as a dpser, I would love to see Target of Focused Target. Then, in delicate ops, I can focus the tank and more quickly make sure I'm killing the thing he's actively tanking. When there's a mosh pit of friends and enemies, that functionality is important.

I would like to see the function of an adequate key-binding, because I use the mouse with more buttons, and would like to use them. So many abilities should not be scattered all over the piano keyboard.

opening ui cusomisation and seeing the whole screen glow with tons of features just scared me off.

i would have preferred to not see any of them by default and just a list of options on what to turn on.

also, what i´d like to see is better way of keeping tracks of buffs and debuffs, make buffs and debuffs aplied by me blue/red and buffs/debuffs aplied by everyone else yellow f.x.

mouseover no thx.

threathmeter no thx, maybe an indicator on who have agro

a readycheck would be nice

wouldn´t be against some form of poweraura feature. keeping peoples fokus on the game instead of on bars is ok.

Here are my priorities for things I want to see added/addressed in the UI:

 

#1 Buffs & Debuffs on Unitframes AND raid frames

 

Healing and not being able to tell when your HoTs will expire is REALLY frustrating. Buffs & Debuffs should be scalable & filterable separate from other aspects of the unitframes & raid frames. If somebody wants their debuffs to be 3 inches across and in the middle of their screen, they should be allowed to have them there. DPS should be able to select to only see the boss's ability debuffs & their own applied debuffs if they so choose.

 

I would ideally like to be able to position my HoTs on the left side of a raid frame health box(medium size), the debuffs I apply to the person in the bottom left (small size), and then the debuffs from the ENCOUNTER on the right (large size). That's just how I would want it set up, not how everybody would want it.

 

#2 Clicking a Nameplate Targets the Unit

 

It is a pain in the butt to click on bodies sometimes and tab-targetting doesn't always work. I should be able to click on a nameplate and target that person/mob. We've had people die on Nightmare Pilgrim because of this malfunction.

 

#3 Mouseover Healing

 

This was mentioned earlier in this thread. I am restating it for emphasis. It's significantly lower than my #1 priority.

 

Overall, currently... issue #1 can make for a lot of frustration in the game. I'm not asking for addons. I'm fine with not having them. I just want raid frames and unitframes that function they way they should.

I agree ^^

 

I enjoy healing and recently started to learn how to dps. Both are interesting in their mechanic requirements. Very exhilarating when a group performs well together and manages things flawlessly. However, that scenario is few and far between. I usually only experience that in my own guild group with our mumble chat for voice communications.

 

I think the one thing I really miss is seeing a proc box pop up or an ability box start flickering to indicate it is now ready to use as an instant due to a recent proc activity. The other thing I really wish could be done is have the buff/debuffs more noticeable even on raid frames. Currently the raid frame setup is clunky and very difficult to use.

 

I've turned tab targeting off...it really can cause a wipe if you tab the wrong mob at the wrong time. Mouse over is something I really could use, but I think particularly useful would be a "target-of-target" capability where you target your tank for heals and in between heals can cast damage through him to whichever mob he had targeted.

If it wasnt mentioned already, along with the clicking nameplates to target, I would like to see clicking a target icon to select an enemy or friendly etc. However this might cause problems with trying to select enemies standing behind another enemies target icon.

So, first off, I'm a healer. Specifically speaking, the addons I'm missing the most are TidyPlates, DeCursive, and Bartender4 (though this was more-or-less already added to the game).

 

So far the ops frame is fine except that I can't see debuffs easily enough to cleanse them in a timely manner. With a DeCursive-esque addon then this could be more readily dealt with then relying on my poor, bewildered tanks and dps to call them out to me. It's really supposed to be my problem, not theirs.

 

TidyPlates is awesome for tracking and selecting (which is a big issue right now) targets in PVP. It lets me see what debuffs/bleeds/ other effects are up, health of each target, and all those other little things you need to know at a glance instead of having to tab through targets till I find who I need to be attacking.

 

Essentially, addons will only help. However, if there's one that I would prefer would be left out (if at all possible) is Recount. It polarizes DPS into essentially having one massive pissing contest, and makes healers start to hate each other. Just you wait until Recount makes it's way into the game and Sorc healers start linking the meters constantly. It'll be Druids all over again!!!