Poll: What do you think about the new changes made to global cooldown UI in 1.1.2?

I basically agree with all the constructive criticism that I've read so far on this thread.

As a Sith Juggernaut, I'm having a really tough time deciphering when my abilities are ready for use. Please correct this. I had no issue with the way the GUI was before.

That being said, the poster above me who suggested the cooldown radial to sweep across the ability rather than top to bottom is an excellent idea.


Finally... I'm really tired of reading all these posts that "Bioware sux" or "Bioware doesnt give a fux."

Give it a gosh darn rest. The game's been out for a month and a half, and as the front-page news suggests, there have already been 27,000 years of in-game playing. Just think about how many support tickets/issues the team has had to deal with. They can't continuously hire new people to deal with these things, ad infinitum.

I think they are doing a stellar job, and aside from a few hiccups, I'm enjoying my investment and my time in-game immensely.

Also, remember that this is a PC game, where the dev team has to optimize the game for billions of possible hardware configurations. This isn't a console. If you want optimization out of the box for a incredibly complex game... go play your xbox. Oh wait, right. That thing is running on 6 year old tech, and can't even come near the complexity of gaming on a PC.

Quit your ************, and let Bioware do their thing.

Though this is about Ilum hopefully they will change the UI back as well. Maybe I'll be able to play without a headache soon, but I'm not getting my hopes up

When we can copy chars over to the test server then you will get plenty of feedback.

I voted for "They're terrible," but with a caveat.

In WoW, a mandatory addon I used was called OmniCC. It simply added a numerical countdown to abilities that were on cooldown. This would be absolutely perfect, in my opinion. In addition, the post-GCD 'flash' that abilities do now is distracting and a little annoying. It doesn't necessarily show you what's off cooldown when it ends, but rather after it ends.

I wouldn't say terrible or good. Playing as a marauder the old system was terrible as abilities on 30 seconds to a minute cool down are used constantly and it was unclear when an ability with a relatively long cool down was ready or had a few seconds left. This new system can be jarring at times, but I find it easier to use abilities on long cool downs the second they are available and not before. An option to manually adjust the lights and whistles to each players preference would be better, a modable UI would be ideal.

This doesn't have to be a war. Can't everyone just agree that an individual choice is the best solution? Everyone gets what they want. Shouldn't that be the end of it?

Half your customers want hamburgers and half want hot-dogs. Add them both to the menu.

Instead of arguing with eachother we can just unify behind this idea and show Bioware there's only one real option for them.

There are 2 different factors into making something castable, as I see it: CD and "everything else", which includes target type, range, and resource constraints. I don't think separating "everything else" would add much value.

The goal should be that you can immediately deduce the status of both of those factors (CD and "everything else") with a peripheral look at your ability bar.

The first version only distinguished between "castable" and "not castable" and didn't distinguish whether it was due to CD or due to anything else. This was sub-ideal because it wasn't clear when an ability came off cooldown if you would be able to cast it due to other constraints.

The second version made it clear on the "everything else" category -- lit if there were no "everything else" constraints, unlit otherwise. The issue with the second version was that it was hard to see the CD on abilities with long cooldowns. For abilities that only had a GCD, this wasn't a huge issue because if you couldn't tell you would likely be in the "queue" window, but for longer CD's (especially >1 m) the sliver of a bar left could still mean 3+ seconds left before you could cast the ability, and that sliver was really hard to see unless you were staring right at the ability.

The newest version once again makes it similar to the first iteration, where it is hard to tell if you have an "everything else" restriction on an ability if it is on CD, because the CD graphic also dims the icon (just not as much as the "everything else" restriction does). Additionally, the new graphic is a bit obnoxious with the flashing.

My suggestion on how to fix it would be the following:

1) If the ability is castable immediately, lit up, with a thin non-obnoxious white border around the icon (such that it doesn't appear to "flash").
2) If the ability is not castable due to range, target, or resource constraints, give it a clear red color shift.
3) If the ability is not castable due to cooldown, dim it 50% and do the normal CD overlay that "empties" over time.
4) If the ability is on CD *and* is restricted for any other reason, do both filters (red filter, dim, and the CD overlay).

For an added bonus, if the ability is otherwise castable except for the CD, and the time remaining on the CD is less than the "ability queue" setting, give it a yellow border, so we know if we click on it, it will cast when the ability is off CD.

Another option would be to do the CD graphic for GCDs but anything effected by only a GCD would not lose the white border.

Best option would be to give us the choice to customize the overlays for CD/"everything else" as I would imagine one size will not fit all here.

Sounds to me that they pretty much have to at this point :P

That isn't the issue. Here is what they are dealing with when they have no current ETA as to when they can fix it:

a) Shut down the servers for the extreme minority of players experiencing physical effects from the UI changes until they are able to implement a change (no you can't just "roll back" changes that easily) that corrects the issue at hand.

b) Keep the servers running, those who have physical effects can choose not to currently play while Bioware investigates the issue and looks for a proper solution.

Option a) keeps EVERYONE from playing while option b) only keeps those with physical problems from playing. NEITHER option will expedite a solution to the problem, as that solution will come at the same rate regardless of option chosen.

That means there is absolutely no logical reason to bring down the servers for a patch UNTIL the patch is ready to go. Just because a fix isn't ready within 24-48 hours of people raising concern over it doesn't mean Bioware doesn't care or that they are doing nothing about it. The conspiracy theories aren't productive and do nothing to help with the problem at hand.

I disagree with these two ideas for reason already mentioned in my post, but I'll mention them here directly.

The number for cooldowns is too confusing. As a Marauder, I often have 10 abilities on CD at a given moment. Numbers are not intuitive - its a far better idea to have something like the vertical descending shadow effect you suggest for GCD.

However, the vertical descending shadow has problems of its own. When the shadow is near the bottom of the frame, it becomes very difficult to tell precisely when it comes off CD. My suggestion would be to have a radial animation, much like the animation of Pacman dying. When the timer has low value, you will still be able to see it because a large portion of it is not near the edge but also spans to the center of the frame.

Also, when abilities come of CD, a small sparkle/flash animation should play. Something far more subtle than what was in 1.1.2, but something. But this flash should not play for the GCD - that's just too much flashing!