I think you're a tad optimistic about their communications in this area. They have said they're going to change it. What they haven't acknowledged on these forums is that they're changing things for those of us who cannot play the game due to their UI change. For all we know all they're doing is addressing the problem that some folks are having with telling which abilities are going to be available when the GCD is up and nothing else. Am I a pessimist? Apparently in this case I am, but then again, they've earned it. A bit more communication would have gone a long ways.

 

Oh as for the colour of you posts... just tell people you're not posting in yellow, you're posting in Golden Rod. Let them prove otherwise.

If this entire thing pans out and Bioware gives no explanation as to what will change prior to implementing the fix, then I'll be inclined to agree to a lack in communication on their part. Until then, we just have to wait and see how they handle the situation, a situation in which they are well aware of.

Golden Rod... I like that better.

Absolute rubbish. As a sentinel I can no longer plan what my next ability is going to be and now must resort to just randomly smashing keys and hope I catch something on a GCD.

PLEASE fix this, real game breaker here with this UI change.

They totally sux

as a bounty hunter powertech i spam abilities a lot and all of.my abilities seems to be grayed out most of the time.

Gimme back my colors

Changes are definitely going to be made to the UI in response to initial feedback we received after the patch was deployed. (Very little feedback was received on the PTS Forum before the patch was deployed to the live servers, otherwise changes may have been made before the patch's deployment.)

 

The primary purpose of this poll is to get more accurate numbers on player sentiment. Threads are very helpful for us to get an immediate idea of areas that need attention, but accurate numbers as opposed to post counts help us present a more accurate picture of those affected (threads/post counts can easily be inflated by multiple posts from the same person, opposing points of view, and so on).

 

If you'd like to give us constructive feedback on changes to the UI and the global cooldown animations, we'd welcome that in this thread. Discussions about the poll or other aspects of development aren't appropriate.

I am going to pop in here and again say that we NEED the ability to transfer our existing characters over to the PTS, this way we can accurately help you before patches go live. I would have no qualms over popping over a couple times a week for a couple hours to play around with the new features and test out mechanics to help you, feedback on new ui etc. But I am NOT going to level another character to do it.

Just make EACH OPTION a choice in preferences. You cannot design a cooldown/UI to make EVERY SINGLE PERSON happy. Just make 3-4 options to encompass a wide range of styles, and let us choose which one we want to us.

This seems like a really common sense solution. You cannot make a single solution fit a million molds. Diversity = happiness.

You guys really need to look at going with a circle timer the vertical timer is just awful. Just as importantly the box needs a color on it to indicate it's locked out like being red or something.

Limited player made UI mods. You don't have to make the whole gamut of mods available, just things like window placement, cool down visuals etc. Both WAR and WOW had plenty of those that worked fine.

Personally, I do not want to see anything about the global cooldown on a skill if that skill is on cooldown or if the skill has other unmet requirements. The global cooldown effect should only show if that is the only thing keeping me from using the skill.

This sums it up well for me. As a sage healer, trying to see if Healing Trance or Rejuv or Salv will be off of CD, or whether I can cast Force Armor on a target or not (because the ops debuffs are so tiny) is difficult while the obnoxious GCD animation is flashing over the top of it.

It reduced my reaction time, in that I had to wait a quarter or half second to see through the GCD sparkles to the ability underneath in my decision of what to cast next.

It made me not want to play.

I find the new cooldown animations far better than the previous. I coud not tell near the end of a specific cooldown when it was complete without a mouseover. Now I can see it clear as day. The GCD took a little time to get used to but compaired to previous, much improved.

It is flashy though and I can see where that might annoy some.

Just make EACH OPTION a choice in preferences. You cannot design a cooldown/UI to make EVERY SINGLE PERSON happy. Just make 3-4 options to encompass a wide range of styles, and let us choose which one we want to us.

 

This seems like a really common sense solution. You cannot make a single solution fit a million molds. Diversity = happiness.

thats can be solved with moddable UI like in wow.

If this entire thing pans out and Bioware gives no explanation as to what will change prior to implementing the fix, then I'll be inclined to agree to a lack in communication on their part. Until then, we just have to wait and see how they handle the situation, a situation in which they are well aware of.

 

Golden Rod... I like that better.

Did they give us an explanation as to what they were changing before they made this "fix"? How about when they screwed up the cooldowns in 1.1?

Biggest design sin in the world is overcomplicating something that doesn't need to be complicated. An ability has two states - ready or not. Grey it out if it's not ready/available and color it in if it is.

I realize that there is a cooldown element to be considered, both GCD and ability cooldown, but that is factored into whether the button is grey or colored. If people want some visual indication of timing for when the ability will be ready, do what Warcraft does and make it very subtle, start with a totally gray button and then instead of using the blue haze, just drag the curtain down the button, adding color as the cooldown expires. WoW uses what looks like a clockwise "refilling" of color, you can do a vertical one, just to be different.

Either way, the blue haze is a mess. The blue flash of light is also terrible. I'm either looking at my bar or not and if I am, I know when the ability is ready.

Finally, you really need to allow the community to mod the UI so that this is less of an issue for you. It's a MASSIVE oversight that you haven't allowed for this in a franchise you want to last a decade. If I'm on the biz end of BioWare or EA, I am going to the lead designer and demanding that be put in the next few iterations.

I'm really enjoying the storytelling, unique crafting, and smaller grouping requirements. Great job!

Agile FTW.

PS - Fix the GTN, it's almost unbearable.

The major fact is: The change makes people sick as well as work horrifically for people it doesn't. they are taking down servers tonight but its to fix a problem in Ilum which is already a worthless zone without kills counting. Meanwhile people like me cant play at all until they do something but I guess that isn't a priority.

Agreed. I played for 2 warzones yesterday when the servers came back up and I couldn't do any more after that (my eyes freaked out and got a headache but I didn't get physically ill thankfully). Between guessing which abilities I can use and having a stupid eye reaction to the light/contrast differences, it's just unplayable for me. It also seems like I have more ability delay than before or maybe it's just the stupid flash taking too long to go off. I honestly can't tell.

I was willing to deal with almost any bug. Willing to deal with a lack of Legacy system. Willing to deal with a lacking UI for healers (imo it'd be nice to QUICKLY tell who currently has the ball on my team in Huttball for example). The lag on Ilum is okay because Nvidia has a driver in beta that might help me in that area. I can also deal with people abusing their Sage/Inquisitor health tap ability then heal up for extra trophies in warzones. But THIS is not something I can deal with.

I vote for the second GCD version. I know the longer CDs had issues with display. I honestly wasn't too bothered. My normal abilities showed me if people were in range, LOS, had appropriate resources, weren't on temp lockout due to being interrupted, etc. All while still showing the GCD bar over that. For me it was PERFECT. Give me the option to go back to that please.

Did they give us an explanation as to what they were changing before they made this "fix"? How about when they screwed up the cooldowns in 1.1?

Apparently it was on the PTS and someone actually warned them about the illness factor So yes. And I'm not asking them to tell us how they're changing it, all I want to know is they're making changes that should eliminate the problems that are making some of their paying customers ill.

I dislike the new UI a lot.

 

There are two main problems:

 

One: The Global Cooldown causes ALL abilities to flash when it's up. This means all of your bars will flash white every 1.5 seconds.

 

Two: Using ANY ability causes all of your abilities to go grey and they don't fade back in until after the Global Cooldown is up. This is a huge problem when you're a class that spams abilities every second, such as a Jedi Sentinel. Basically, the abilities never light back up and are in a constant state of fading grey and flashing. Because of this, you can't tell what abilities are ready, whether or not you're in range, or if you have enough resources to use the ability.

 

I play a Sentinel and it is almost impossible to determine when abilities are off cooldown. During my hardmode raid last night, my entire UI was constantly greyed out or flashing, which made it impossible to determine which abilities could be activated.

 

I could not monitor Merciless Slash, Cauterize, Overload Saber and Zealous Strike properly. I basically had to guess when each was ready to use. The other raiding Sentinel in my guild was having the same issues.

 

And don't get me started on the flashing every 1.5 seconds...

This individuals statement rings true! Especially for my Agent Op Healer. During play, I have to try and pop off a quick follow up heal that triggers off my Tactical Advantage, and the Global cooldown and the constant greying out of my castables is really dampening my game-play in both PvE and PvP.

Did they give us an explanation as to what they were changing before they made this "fix"? How about when they screwed up the cooldowns in 1.1?

Those are changes that are opinion-based. This particular change resulted in a minority group of people having physical side-effects. No explanation was necessary for the first change, but due to the popularity of this topic and the physical side-effects some had, I think an explanation of upcoming changes is more warranted.

All you had to do to avoid this mess, was add a On/off function.. Reverting back to the old way, or turning on this new one.

I don't see why when you implement a new feature that isn't standard.

During the GCD animation, it is VERY difficult to discern which abilities are "available" for use after the GCD finishes. You CAN tell if you look incredibly closely, but it needs to be obvious, not subtle.

Even worse, you can't immediately tell which abilities are "available" even after the GCD animation is finished because they fade in. There is no reason for the "fade in"... It's slowing down the pace of combat for me in a remarkable way (which is bad).

For players with high latency who have to essentially queue up their next ability during the GCD in order to execute a series of abilities in a row without a long delay in between each, it slows the pace even further.

Solution: It needs to be apparent at a glance which abilities are ready but just waiting on the GCD, and which will still be unavailable after the GCD.

I am sure this has been mentioned before but honestly:

Before you go making changed like this and completely overhaul the entire thing you need to put in place a way for people to turn it off who don't want it. Don't be making mandatory complete overhauls of a system, i thought the idea was to fix responsive not add a laser light show.

Basic Addage here:

K.I.S.S Keep It Simple Stupid. Thats it, make it completely functional first, then add in graphics changes or other other things that you can Choose or Choose Not TO Use.

For me, just put Timers on the buttons counting down, Simplest thing ever, So im not trying to see a tiny sliver of a box that is grayed out because of the GCD. Just get rid rid of the GCD counter and put countdown timers.

But again, Make it optional

By now you realize that you have a diverse player base, not everyone is going to like everything, but do not force feed it to them and expect them to like it. This is not a single player console game, if you treat is as such you will continue to cause large uproars like this.

Personally I think they just need to hire some the "amateur" UI addon makers and let them go to work.

Of course allowing addons would do the same thing think about it BW

bioware, stop wasting resources on TRYING to make a good UI. you'll never make everyone happy.

 

implement player made addons. end of story.

QFT. This, absolutely this. For the record the UI as it was in Vanilla launch was the best so far. Stuff didn't light up until it was off CD and you had the resources for it. That was the best system for Marauders. Ever since then it's been a total disaster for me, this last one gives me epilepsy.

WTB addons so I can have my bartender and OmniCC, kthx.

Voted good because there was no option for 'nice, but needs some work'.

In particular, the abilities which are only unavailable because of GCD running need to be better distinguishable from abilities that are unavailable for other reasons(and usually for a longer time) like no resource, out of range, conditions not met, etc. so that players can queue the next ability during the GCD instead of having to wait until after GCD finishes before they can see what abilities are available.