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Want to Test RotHC (and live in Austin)?


Rankyn

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That's brilliant!

 

Any chance there's a way of visually differentiating the HoTs and DoTs you've cast on the target frame (or in the raid frame) , like making them larger, different background, underline... something?

 

Even just physically separating buffs from debuffs (as they are on the target frame) on the raid frame would be ideal.

 

Raid healer here hoping for more. :)

 

Don't know if anyone has mentioned it already or if it's already on your list of upgrades, but I would really love if my keybinds could be saved and loaded like the Interface Editior.

 

I roll alts out the *** so it gets tedious to have to redo all my keybinds a billion times.

 

 

Both of those changes aren't as simple as they might seem. With that said though, they're definitely on our list of improvements to be made eventually. No ETA at the moment though.

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Hello,

 

I'm Cory Kolek, also a UI programmer here at Bioware Austin. I originally implemented the UI Customization feature, and I'm always looking for ways to improve it. I just finished adding the option to change the scale of your buffs and debuffs within the operation, party, player, and target frames. This change has recently entered testing, so look forward to it in a future Game Update!

 

Nice. That should come in handy, especially at high resolutions.

Since you're a GUI guy, would you be the person to work on chat bubbles as well?

Edited by Glzmo
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Nice. That should come in handy, especially at high resolutions.

Since you're a GUI guy, would you be the person to work on chat bubbles as well?

 

I don't have much else to say on the topic than what was already said in that thread.

 

I can get a bit more technical on the topic though. As it was said before chat bubbles were a huge performance hit on the game when we had initially implemented them in beta. We're talking upwards of 400Mbs of video memory used on chat bubbles alone. Nameplates had the same issue. We fixed nameplates but have not had time to do the same with chat bubbles. If you played in beta and saw our initial implementation of them they weren't very pretty or as fully featured as we'd like them to be. So, yes, we would like to implement them again, but when we do we want to do it right.

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I don't have much else to say on the topic than what was already said in that thread.

 

I can get a bit more technical on the topic though. As it was said before chat bubbles were a huge performance hit on the game when we had initially implemented them in beta. We're talking upwards of 400Mbs of video memory used on chat bubbles alone. Nameplates had the same issue. We fixed nameplates but have not had time to do the same with chat bubbles. If you played in beta and saw our initial implementation of them they weren't very pretty or as fully featured as we'd like them to be. So, yes, we would like to implement them again, but when we do we want to do it right.

 

Chat bubbles is like the group finder. MMO things that is so normal they are standard features in

any MMO from launch today. And one dont need to be a roleplayer to like chat bubbles.

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I don't have much else to say on the topic than what was already said in that thread.

 

I can get a bit more technical on the topic though. As it was said before chat bubbles were a huge performance hit on the game when we had initially implemented them in beta. We're talking upwards of 400Mbs of video memory used on chat bubbles alone. Nameplates had the same issue. We fixed nameplates but have not had time to do the same with chat bubbles. If you played in beta and saw our initial implementation of them they weren't very pretty or as fully featured as we'd like them to be. So, yes, we would like to implement them again, but when we do we want to do it right.

 

Put it on your "To Do" list!?

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I have no use for chat bubbles personally, other than role-playing I don't know what else anyone would use them for. But for the sake of those that do like them I hope they will be implemented eventually. I think we can all agree that the last thing we want now is more GPU memory hogging. SWTOR spikes above 3gb for me sometimes.
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Since a few people are mentioning usability improvements, how about health text on focus target bars? Would be absolutely fantastic instead of so many calls for percentages in operations.

 

^ agreed, and Focus Target of Target. I think I already may have said that here (or some other thread).

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That's brilliant!

 

Any chance there's a way of visually differentiating ...

 

Even just physically separating buffs from debuffs (as they are on the target frame) on the raid frame would be ideal.

 

There is a lot of potential mileage in the separating idea. You could also slice and dice it this way:

 

  1. long term buffs (class buffs, stims) and stances (ion cell, soresu form)
  2. self applied short term buffs and procs (including heroic moment)
  3. 3rd party applied short term effects (sage bubbles, speed buff)

 

#1 doesn't change much during combat (opponent can switch stances but other stuff stays the same). #2 and #3 are dynamic. Looking at my bar, I'm mostly interested in seeing what debuffs a 3rd party has applied (#3) while for targets (friend or enemy) I'm mostly interested in #2 and #3.

 

currently, if I have a ton of procs and (de)buffs, it is hard to find one I'm looking for as I really don't understand how they sort (today).

 

Mentally, I have something I want to check for and I want to know where to look for it rather than have to scan visually.

 

Of course as a player gets more skilled he learns to see and recognize the corresponding animations (when there is one -- e.g. taunt and defensive CDs). Presumably many things do not have animations (e.g. stacks of sunder armor -- a key variable in the smash equation).

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Hello,

 

I'm Cory Kolek, also a UI programmer here at Bioware Austin. I originally implemented the UI Customization feature, and I'm always looking for ways to improve it. I just finished adding the option to change the scale of your buffs and debuffs within the operation, party, player, and target frames. This change has recently entered testing, so look forward to it in a future Game Update!

 

 

OMG TY TY TY TY from the bottom of my little healer heart. I have been begging for this since day 1. Can I have your baby?

 

That's brilliant!

 

Any chance there's a way of visually differentiating the HoTs and DoTs you've cast on the target frame (or in the raid frame) , like making them larger, different background, underline... something?

 

Even just physically separating buffs from debuffs (as they are on the target frame) on the raid frame would be ideal.

 

Raid healer here hoping for more. :)

 

Do this and I will offer you 2 babies!! *winks* Edit: There have been many suggestions about how to be able to manage buffs/debuffs on the raid frames on these forums and addressing this would be a HUGE quality of life improvement for healers. (I personally would like to spend more time watching the play then tunneling all the buffs/debuffs many which i can't or don't need to see to do my job)

Signed,

Happiest healer ever with this news!

 

P.S. Having the option of our own and other party member's companions on the raid frame would be a big blessing for those of us that use those instead of party frames in small group settings.

Edited by Desiirea
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Hello,

 

I'm Cory Kolek, also a UI programmer here at Bioware Austin. I originally implemented the UI Customization feature, and I'm always looking for ways to improve it. I just finished adding the option to change the scale of your buffs and debuffs within the operation, party, player, and target frames. This change has recently entered testing, so look forward to it in a future Game Update!

 

Woot!! Awesome :D This sounds so great, hope that the testing goes well!

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Hello,

 

I'm Cory Kolek, also a UI programmer here at Bioware Austin. I originally implemented the UI Customization feature, and I'm always looking for ways to improve it. I just finished adding the option to change the scale of your buffs and debuffs within the operation, party, player, and target frames. This change has recently entered testing, so look forward to it in a future Game Update!

 

 

Other UI related features which personally I'm wondering about:

 

- Shift click item GTN search (as opposed to typing item names all the time).

 

- GTN divided stack sale (manually dropping one item at a time, and copy pasting prices is pretty 1999).

 

- Target of target buff/debuff scales (you mentioned target frames, I hope these include target of target as well as those in particular are miniscule).

 

- Option to relocate outgoing damage + incoming heal / damage figures, as well as floating direction? As it stands they cannot be relocated from what I've seen; Personally I prefer both of them just dropping downwards from each side of my character rather than damage dropping downwards and away from my character as I move, healing upwards and away as I move and damage floating away from my target.

 

- Ready check function to be implemented?

 

- Option to separate and enlarge the energy/heat/rage/whatever bar from the character bar and enlarge it at a location of liking? Personally I prefer displaying that directly underneath my characters feet so I can centralize my eyes on my character. Without needing to clutter that area up to the extent of having an entire player frame there.

 

- Option to display combat logging ingame in a chat tab? It's being recorded anyway, why not give us the option to see it ingame?

 

- Perhaps not fully the UI field, but in terms of combat logging as well: For shielded people is there the intention to let absorbs they have show from which absorb skill and recieved by which player the absorb is done? This makes interpretting absorb logs for healer classes a lot more valuable. As currently all what can be seen is how many absorb skills a healer used, and how much a recieiving character absorbed. However, if you have 2 healers throwing absorb skills you cannot distinguish between those effects. Same goes for if the person getting absorbed has own absorb skills as well, there's no way to tell from who the absorbed effect came.

 

- Addition of companions to raid frames if group capacity is not yet reached and companions are allowed. It's currently a great loss not having that option in flashpoints if you're with 3 people and 1 companion. The companion just by the fact of not being in there, makes it a lot harder to deal with. Whilst the raid frames are by far preferable over the party frame.

 

 

 

Just from the top of my mind a few UI and related improvements I'd like to see.

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Hello,

 

I'm Cory Kolek, also a UI programmer here at Bioware Austin. I originally implemented the UI Customization feature, and I'm always looking for ways to improve it. I just finished adding the option to change the scale of your buffs and debuffs within the operation, party, player, and target frames. This change has recently entered testing, so look forward to it in a future Game Update!

 

 

One thing that I would love to see would be the ability to flip the Unit frames 90º so they appear vertically.

 

You can can currently flip them 180º (so for example your life drops from left to right, instead of right to left (the default)). I would love to have the unit frame vertically so that when my (or my target's) life goes down it really does go "down". :)

 

Is something like this in the works?

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Hello,

 

I'm Cory Kolek, also a UI programmer here at Bioware Austin. I originally implemented the UI Customization feature, and I'm always looking for ways to improve it. I just finished adding the option to change the scale of your buffs and debuffs within the operation, party, player, and target frames. This change has recently entered testing, so look forward to it in a future Game Update!

 

 

Can you add options within the UI customisation tool to centre elements vertically and horizontally? It makes having everything lined up correctly so much easier. Having to drag elements small distances just to get them centred and lined up is really annoying.

 

Also an option to move an element in small steps to help with precision placement would be great.

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I don't have much else to say on the topic than what was already said in that thread.

 

I can get a bit more technical on the topic though. As it was said before chat bubbles were a huge performance hit on the game when we had initially implemented them in beta. We're talking upwards of 400Mbs of video memory used on chat bubbles alone. Nameplates had the same issue.

Thank you very much for the update and actually giving us some background information. It's very much appreciated. The technical background even more so, as nobody has ever told us what exactly had been going on.

I remember the chat bubbles from beta and they weren't causing much of a performance problem for me. Then again, I had a video card with 3GB of memory back then and 12GB of system RAM and my second PC had a video card with 2GB video RAM and 8GB RAM (my current GTX 680 video cards both have 4GB and I have 32GB system RAM, not that it matters for a 32 bit application - when's the promised native 64 bit client coming anyway?). so memory wasn't much of an issue for my beta test systems.

 

We fixed nameplates but have not had time to do the same with chat bubbles.
When do you think your team find the time to do so? An approximate timeframe or patch number would be helpful.

 

Do any of your team still remember how you fixed the nameplates? It shouldn't be all that hard to apply the same or modified fix for the bubbles, right? Also, at the guild summit last year your lead designer said you had fixed the performance issues chat bubbles had - whatever happened to that?

 

If you played in beta and saw our initial implementation of them they weren't very pretty or as fully featured as we'd like them to be.
True, when I used them in beta they were very basic, but at least we had them and it was way better than not having them at all. Through them myself and others were actually able to enjoy playing, conversing and socializing with other players, which often isn't the case due to the lack of this feature in the live game.

 

Wouldn't it be possible to put the old chat bubbles from beta (possibly with the fix the nameplates got back int he day applied) back in as an unofficial, unsupported feature in one of the next patches that can be enabled via .ini file (like it was for some time in the last few stages of beta where the feature had already been removed as an in-game option) until you find the time to properly implement them with all the jazz? That way, people who have the computers with enough horsepower could enable and use them at least until the feature is redone properly and can be made an in-game option in the preferences menu. Of course, this alternative "inofficial" implementation would be moot if you have already slated chat bubbles to be fully implemented in the next two months or so, but if they aren't slated to be tackled for longer, then you may wish to go with this compromise.

 

You need to realize that chat bubbles are a feature that for socializers and roleplayers is as important as group finder is for PVEers or the warzone queuing mechanism is for PVPers. Why doesn't it have the same priority as these features enjoyed? Before launch and after we were told chat bubbles were top priority. How could it even drop off the priority list for a whole year?

 

So, yes, we would like to implement them again, but when we do we want to do it right.
That's wonderful news. I hope you will make the time to do so in the next month or two.

 

That said, I feel strongly that it's high time to put this feature on top of the priority queue for GUI features and finally implement it right and hope you'll put top priority on doing so.

 

I also hope the team that will be working on the bubbles will pop into the Chat Bubbles: Please add them and a toggle option to enable speech bubbles for /say, /yell and /emote chat! thread and tell us of their plans beforehand so we can give you guys feedback, point out potential flaws or give you some ideas on what you could do. I really want to work with you on it.

 

Thank you very much once again and keep up the good work and I hope we'll see actual movement on the chat bubbles implementation front really, really, really soon!

 

PS.: I'd like to invite you, Cory, to reply to this post over in the Chat Bubbles: Please add them and a toggle option to enable speech bubbles for /say, /yell and /emote chat! thread and join our discussion there, as I do not wish to derail the discussion on the actual topic of the current thread any further. Thanks again! :)

Edited by Glzmo
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Hello,

 

I'm Cory Kolek, also a UI programmer here at Bioware Austin. I originally implemented the UI Customization feature, and I'm always looking for ways to improve it. I just finished adding the option to change the scale of your buffs and debuffs within the operation, party, player, and target frames. This change has recently entered testing, so look forward to it in a future Game Update!

 

 

buff/debuff will be stand alone? moveable without hp bar and avatar picture?

please can you also add a chance to hide avatar picture? it's completely useless ^^

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Hello,

 

I'm Cory Kolek, also a UI programmer here at Bioware Austin. I originally implemented the UI Customization feature, and I'm always looking for ways to improve it. I just finished adding the option to change the scale of your buffs and debuffs within the operation, party, player, and target frames. This change has recently entered testing, so look forward to it in a future Game Update!

 

 

Awww, THANK YOU! :p

 

Also, can you make more quickbars/toolbars for us, with all these Cartel Market stuffs I no longer have a place even on my 6 bars? Please?

 

I do not think that it is very difficult for you... :)

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What about in addition to resizing buffs, debuffs, HoTs and DoTs, we also get an option for differentiating our own DoTs/HoTs from other people's? It's always a pain when I drop into a warzone with 3 other operatives and can't tell which HoT/DoT stack is mine in order to refresh on time and not waste energy doing it early. :<
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LOL! Live IN Texas? There are a few things I'd do ON Texas long before I'd even consider that, I don't care how much a job there pays or how much fun it's supposed to be.

 

9 times out of 10 these statements are made by people who watch too much TV and have never been to Texas.

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What about in addition to resizing buffs, debuffs, HoTs and DoTs, we also get an option for differentiating our own DoTs/HoTs from other people's? It's always a pain when I drop into a warzone with 3 other operatives and can't tell which HoT/DoT stack is mine in order to refresh on time and not waste energy doing it early. :<

 

+1

 

Either separating buff/debuff stacks you own into their own little section would be great, or adding some sort of little countdown timer on the skills in your skillbar if selecting a target which has them active. Both would be ideal to help distinguish between the major pack of buffs/debuffs certain targets may have at times.

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Hello,

 

I'm Cory Kolek, also a UI programmer here at Bioware Austin. I originally implemented the UI Customization feature, and I'm always looking for ways to improve it. I just finished adding the option to change the scale of your buffs and debuffs within the operation, party, player, and target frames. This change has recently entered testing, so look forward to it in a future Game Update!

 

 

Are you going us to allow to select which buffs to hide? For example i would be quite happy if i will not be shown the target class buffs and medals.

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Chat bubbles is like the group finder. MMO things that is so normal they are standard features in

any MMO from launch today. And one dont need to be a roleplayer to like chat bubbles.

 

That may be so, but it still doesn't change the fact that implementing them in a way that would wildly affect the players system performance is a very bad idea.

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Since we're talking about the buffs/debuffs maybe a simpler albeit short-term solution would be an option to hide permanent buffs in combat. For example I want to know who needs a class buff before a boss fight. But once combat starts I really don't need to see that every player has the Sprint buff nor do I care which stance a Juggernaut is using.
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Are you going us to allow to select which buffs to hide? For example i would be quite happy if i will not be shown the target class buffs and medals.

 

yes, this speaks to my earlier post about wanting to be able to glance down at the (de)buff bar to check for the presence or absence of something specific.

 

I think the most general statement of the problem is: Even when there are lots of buffs, I should be able to find whether (de)buff <x> is present or not and how many stack very quickly.

 

Getting rid of uninteresting buffs is one solution. grouping buffs by types (of some sort) and then putting them in a fixed area is another.

 

turning off some buffs also frees up screen real estate but I think that is less important than improving the ability to find key information quickly.

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Hello,

 

I'm Cory Kolek, also a UI programmer here at Bioware Austin. I originally implemented the UI Customization feature, and I'm always looking for ways to improve it. I just finished adding the option to change the scale of your buffs and debuffs within the operation, party, player, and target frames. This change has recently entered testing, so look forward to it in a future Game Update!

 

 

Just want to say I really like the UI customization so far.. It's solid, easy to use, bug-free in my experience, and does its job well without any hassle.

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