Monthly Development Update: March 2012

[Kuegen]

and there are a large number of features modern MMOs have in their GUI that AO does not.

Like what?

Maybe I just havnt played the right games or something, but in every other MMO i've played, their GUI seemed incredibly lacking. The only thing they had was fancier borders or whatever.

I suppose it's also a matter of monitor size, I have plenty of room even with 6 chat windows and 7 hotbars.

[lainbr]

Lindelu is really late today ;o

[Malosar]

Edit: nvm, delayed

[Mastablasta]

Like what?

Maybe I just havnt played the right games or something, but in every other MMO i've played, their GUI seemed incredibly lacking. The only thing they had was fancier borders or whatever.

I suppose it's also a matter of monitor size, I have plenty of room even with 6 chat windows and 7 hotbars.

GUI display of org activity, player locations, whois, grouped friendslists, buttons and input fields instead of CLI.

Like I said, AO's GUI has a lot of good features, but it's lacking some accessability features that are present in modern games. And yes, I also find modern game's GUIs lacking in features and functionality compared to AO's. But some of them have a pair of quite good features that AO would only be the better for.

[-Bugsplat]

player locations

This is a really obvious one when you come back to AO after playing other games for so long.

[sunrunner5]

This is a really obvious one when you come back to AO after playing other games for so long.

We have /list, but that only works on the zone your character is in (and doesn't display those who are flagged anon). We have the LFT window which works across zones, but that only works with a limited level range and only if they have actively flagged themselves as LFT. We have a buddy list that tells us if someone is online or offline (but nothing else about them).

We have a number of other functions provided by 3rd party software ... but those are limited by their dependence on Funcom provided services to function (such as PoRK; tis a pain when that doesn't update); services that only provide a limited amount of information to begin with.

[Mastablasta]

We have /list, but that only works on the zone your character is in (and doesn't display those who are flagged anon). We have the LFT window which works across zones, but that only works with a limited level range and only if they have actively flagged themselves as LFT. We have a buddy list that tells us if someone is online or offline (but nothing else about them).

We have a number of other functions provided by 3rd party software ... but those are limited by their dependence on Funcom provided services to function (such as PoRK; tis a pain when that doesn't update); services that only provide a limited amount of information to begin with.

Yeah, but obviously the game knows where you are, why isn't that a feature in a more fully fledged friendwindow? I could dig that, but would still like the present low-key version which functions more like an IM program. If only it could also group people better. And supported textinput, instead of /ccaddbuddy stuff. CLI is fine and all, but in most cases you just want a + and - button instead, for new people. Then when you're all advanced you can use CLI

[sunrunner5]

Yeah, but obviously the game knows where you are, why isn't that a feature in a more fully fledged friendwindow? I could dig that, but would still like the present low-key version which functions more like an IM program. If only it could also group people better. And supported textinput, instead of /ccaddbuddy stuff. CLI is fine and all, but in most cases you just want a + and - button instead, for new people. Then when you're all advanced you can use CLI

Two possible reasons:

• 1) AO doesn't wish to provide that level of information.
• 2) AO isn't capable of providing that information to the players without additional coding, and their dev-hours are assigned to tasks they consider to be more of a priority.

I believe 2 is the correct reason, and that there are many (many) things they consider to be a higher priority.

[Mastablasta]

Oh, I'm sure 2 is the option we're looking at. But there might be a bit of 1 in there as well. AO was always social, and automating everything... not very social.

[MassDebater]

The problem with AOs gui is you can see people, know where they are, and what you want to do to them, but you can't. That is the simplest way of describing why it needs to be improved.

The tabbing system is the worst. Need a clickable text list of everyone within 40m of your character.

Need a switch target to fighting target hotkey.

Need to be able to target people straight from the raid interface list rather than drag their hp bar onto screen.

[Mastablasta]

I must say I've experienced worse tabbing systems than the one in AO, but good suggestions all round.

[drainbamage]

Need to be able to target people straight from the raid interface list rather than drag their hp bar onto screen.

Being able to drag entire teams from the RI would be nice as well.


I find it baffling how some people can defend AO's UI. I mean, yeah, it's "customizable" in the sense that you can freely move and resize all the poorly designed and uninformative windows. Like a toaster with ten different settings that all result in burnt toast.

It takes more work to get the default UI into a usable state than any other MMO I've played and even then it's barely tolerable. To top it off a lot of the problems are things that the user simply can't fix because they're hardcoded.

[Thorneee]

The GUI is not great, but when customized, I find it more convenient/useable than most MMOs I have played.

[Mastablasta]

Being able to drag entire teams from the RI would be nice as well.


I find it baffling how some people can defend AO's UI. I mean, yeah, it's "customizable" in the sense that you can freely move and resize all the poorly designed and uninformative windows. Like a toaster with ten different settings that all result in burnt toast.

It takes more work to get the default UI into a usable state than any other MMO I've played and even then it's barely tolerable. To top it off a lot of the problems are things that the user simply can't fix because they're hardcoded.

You find it baffling? I find that many MMOs I try out I have to sit and go "why can't I do this?" on many things. Customizable is something that most games don't have, other than maybe you can move your windows around on the screen, but some don't even let you do that. Some get better with time, others don't. A few allow for programmers and others to customize the content of the GUI, but most don't.
I wonder what games it is you're referencing?

I'd also like to hear what windows that see general use that are so poorly designed and uninformative? I mean, the most used parts of the GUI next to the chat, which is poorly setup by default, and could use more different channels for certain messages. Other than that, you can do all kinds of things with it, but it's relatively obscure how you do it. Usability poor, but functionality is way up there compared to many others.

The inventory and subcategories of it, the character wear window and hotbars would come next. Hotbars... hm, dunno, mostly due to old icons they are weird. Could be better, with resizability, bindings to any entry in them accessible from a rightclick or similar.
Inventory? Superior to all games I've tried bar the lack of a search feature. Other games get around really bad inventories by having search. Could be improved by having different types of sorting, but that would require items to be categorised in the database. Unlikely to happen.
Wear window? Quite standard. Nothing untoward there, with a few features I've not seen in other games, like locking of items. Social tab also not something most games have.

I can defend it, because I literally have not seen many games do better. They put a fancy border and a button in there, but functionality is low in many things, and I'm perpetually surprised when I find even basic commands and features I know from AO present. I wonder why that is... yes, it takes time to set it up, and if you're not willing to experiment or spend time on that, you probably have something sub-par. But then, the default GUI settings of AO are not really different from other games. The difference is AO's can do so much more than those, and it doesn't hint at it.

[MassDebater]

Ah yes text search, and custom settings for which slot an item is hot swapped to.


Remove backpacks, make inv and bank 21 times bigger. Tagging of items.

[lainbr]

Ah yes text search, and custom settings for which slot an item is hot swapped to.


Remove backpacks, make inv and bank 21 times bigger. Tagging of items.

Or make they work like WoW bags. Items go automaticaly there if inv is full, you can TS stuff from bags. And... for oh my god sake make rclick put items in shop machine if its open!

P.s.: AO GUI may be bad (well it is, not apealling, too big stuff ocupping usefull window space) but at least you can put the freak fcking chat on the right side on the screen! BIG BUMP for easy movable stuff. Do never change it plz ^^