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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-20-2011 @ 7:02AM
Led ++ said...
Again, I see this talk about minimalism while imo the UI isn't exactly minimalistic. No offence, but imo it's just plain ugly too.
I mean, you're using a HuD but you still show your player and target frame, not to mention your Grid even shows when you're not in a raid/party. You really need the same information two or three times? The same applies for your buffs. You show buffs in your top right corner, you show the exact same buffs on the useless unit frame you have AND you show the important procs in a bar next to your HuD. I mean, overkill much? Get rid of the unit frames, and you could filter out the procs in your top right corner. Same applies for the debuffs you apply, you show them as a bar to the left of your HuD AND you show them on the right of the HuD AND you show them on the useless target frame.
Next is the overall look of your UI. Nothing fits together. You use different fonts for basically everything, you use different bar textures for basically everything. Actionbars are square but your buffs are round. Pixelfonts are at the wrong size. Nothing seems to fit together, or is even aligned a bit. Why don't you remove the useless player and target UF, place your chat there. Place your minimap in the bottom right corner, and the DPS meter above the minimap for example.
The only thing I remotely like is the power auras (the three little things in the middle of your screen), tho that's probably because it looks neat.
Also, to all you FuBar/TitenPanel/whatever users. Do you really have to see that useless info all the time? Just let it pop up on mouseover.
Just my 2 cents.
Reply
5-20-2011 @ 1:53PM
skodnoise said...
Wow angry much? Lol. Where to start...all of the "redundant" items do completely different things.
Healbot is for casting spells that I don't bind on myself (more relevant on healy toons), the unit frames are for checking exact values of target health and other similar functions and the HUD (only visible in combat) is to assist with my tunnel vision. Since I wrote this I have turned off MY buffs on the unit frame but target debuffs that aren't cast by me aren't covered by either my HUD or Quartz should be visible somewhere at least. More information is not a bad thing, especially since I have an ENORMOUS monitor, so I don't mind having the same info a few different places.
The minimalism comes from how the UI is tucked into corners and doesn't dominate the image of the game world (plus the lack of addons I don't actually use), not the fact that the UI is completely gone.
As for the broker bar, it's full of information I want to know constantly. You might ask, why show how much gold you have, you could open your bags (assuming I didn't have ark and actually could see that number in my bags)? Well I'm willing to use 10-20 pixels of my enormous monitor to avoid having to press buttons to get simple information.
When you get closer to the center of the bar there IS info that's extremely relevant to me. My repair status, my latency, time to die counter in the center (so I don't have some ugly frame in the middle of my screen) plus guild and friend counters with mouse over detail that includes notes. The last one is AMAZING to me, normally to quickly view a character's note you have to open the guild panel, select the right screen, fish them out of it somehow, click them, and then you get the note. I mouse over a number and then get on with my life, lol.
As far as the layout, I don't like to build up since there are things that "bloom" on the sides, every little thing has a place. I don't particularly see the problem with having the chat box on the right hand side, nor having the minimap closer to the center of the screen. Perhaps I could move the action bars into the corner and flip them with the unit frames, but again this was one place where function outweighed form. When you're trying to max your potential in raids the time it takes my eyes to move around the screen is valuable and I'd rather look near the center to spot check CDs than all the way into the corner where my less useful during combat unit frames are.
Finally, you comment on inconsistent font and texture usage. Pardon? Except for my chat font and the default pMinimap font I make sure every font in my UI is Enigma and every last bar texture is Armory. Also, I like round buffs and square action bars....why should they match? They're the same BF set as each other and are designed to compliment themselves.
Hope that clears some things up :)