MMOG (and other game) interface design is inhumane

[Jayce]

Auto-close moves you into range for whatever ability you're using.

The type of interface sinij is looking for does a lot of the work for you, so you're just pressing combat buttons in the right order.  Almost no movement is necessary on your part.  I much prefer the wsad stuff to all that bull.  (Oh and SB did mark where you were moving.. it just went away after you clicked, I guess that's what you meant?)

That seems strange to hear from a PvPer.  I thought it was all about skill?

And yeah, there is a yellow circle on the ground where you clicked until you get there.  I find it particularly useful to know how far you're going, since the direction is obvious.

[cmlancas]

WoW interface is one of the worst out there, partially due to WASD movement choice. WASD has no place outside of FPS. In WoW it takes TWO hands just to move your character... what you suppose to use for macros?

Eh?  There is a "click to move" toggle in the interface menu, in addition to the default key layout which lets you move around fairly comfortably with the mouse alone (you just can't strafe).  Even if there wasn't, WASD only needs one hand to work.  I can't think of a movement scheme would work better in WoW.

Have you tried click to move in WoW? "You are out of range", "You are facing wrong way" and that just in PvE... Shadowbane had working click to move, WoW for some reason decided to sabotage it and not have auto-close and auto-rotate enabled with it and as a result its useless.

Wow, especially in PvP, requires circle strafing and overall super touchy on positioning/direction. For example you can completely shut down newbie caster by simply jumping through while spell is in progress, if you don't turn with mouse you will get 'facing wrong way' every time.

Really? I completely disagree. In general if I was not in a super-heated battle I would use the right click+left click. Otherwise, if it was WASD, it would be because I was punching in macrokeys on the g11. To each his or her own though.

[Sky]

Wow. You guys are way more picky than I am. I think WASD movement+mouselook is great, I guess I'm used to stretching my laft-hand fingers quickly to activate abilities from being a musician or something. I almost never mouse-click things if possible, just try to use the mouse for looking around.

[Jayce]

Wow. You guys are way more picky than I am. I think WASD movement+mouselook is great, I guess I'm used to stretching my laft-hand fingers quickly to activate abilities from being a musician or something. I almost never mouse-click things if possible, just try to use the mouse for looking around.

I might be mistaken, but it seems to me more like looking for a chance to bash WoW at every turn.

I try to bash it once in a while so I don't feel like such a fanboi, but I have trouble finding faults!  And if you invent them like Sinij does, you look like an asstard.

[Venkman]

There is nothing wrong with WASD and mouselook in WoW and the like. It gives the impression that a player's skill is part of the equation. Which, by the way, is true anyway. Anyone who thinks it's just about the numbers, particularly in PvP, hasn't done much PvP in WoW. Target-locking and stats only get you started.

The big issue in my opinion is how conversation happens. The default method of conversation for the genre is and will remain for some time text. There are a lot of reasons VoIP hasn't taken hold here, almost none of which apply to text. Regardless, text conversation means attention shifted away from action, which means downtime.

Maybe VoIP will become the default communication method someday. But I think we're years away from that. As an interim solution, I wish a company would license voice-to-text technology, allowing people to talk into a mic but for it to come out as text in a chatbox or speech bubble.

But I suspect I'm in the minority here for that wish :)

[Abelian75]

He looked over his nephew's shoulder playing his 60 in WoW, and wrote an article based on that experience rather than playing himself.

For the record, this is not actually true.  Atul is a friend of mine and I assure you he is not only a longtime WoW-player, but further, the two of us spent a summer at college working approximately 10 hours a week, spending the remainder of our time holed up in our dark, cave-like dorm room, eating nothing but ham salad sandwiches and playing EQ until dawn.

None of that is to say that your opinions on MMO UI's and whether or not they are crap are necessarily wrong, but regardless I can assure you this is not some random outsider's perspective you're reading.

[ajax34i]

I'm used to WASD - modified (movement ASD,WE,C targetting TR, activating combat FGB) so I prefer a UI scheme that supports WASD but also supports re-mapping each key to a different spot (which, BTW, WoW does support).

I notice how we're starting to talk about the control device (G15 keyboard) as being part of the UI, or at least having the UI be designed with it in mind.  That's fine, not everyone has a G15, but a lot of people do, so there should be some default option available to make use of it.

Personally, when I look at a game's UI, I break it down into two parts:  the control system, and the information system.  For the control I prefer WASD, like I said.  For the information system, the part of the UI that tells me what's going on in the game, in MMOG's you really only have 3 things:  stuff that's happening to you, whack-a-mole with the bars, and the graphical depiction of the world around you.  I think that as long as each of these aspects is treated as its own subcomponent, and optimized separately, the overall UI should end up being good.

For example, I like the pretty world, but I prefer a compact whack-a-mole area, and I prefer color changes to it rather than a sea of numbers or a sea of bars, or tiny debuff icons popping-up that I have to react to.  I'd rather have a compact grid, with no wasted space, with colors.  That's different from what I want for the stuff that's happening to me:  I want numbers for that, and color-coded text in a window, and many options to customize what's displayed and what's not.

So anyway, I think my point was sub-components of the UI, treat them as separate.

[Slayerik]

I love my Nostromo... and the SWG launch interface was the best I've seen yet. Why? It was simple, low-key, and unobtrusive. No gaudy riots of color. I was upset when they not only put in the nasty one that is in now, but even *removed* most of the mono-color simple line drawing icons that I liked. Hell, at one point I was serously tempted to create a printed layout that would lay or hang in my line of vision that contained the macro or button for the skill I wanted to use. Then I could run "fullscreen" so the GUI would not be seen at all.

Nostromo FTW

I used "Click to Move" in WoW while I was travelling a lot. Right click on the horizon and the dude runs forever. I never had the problems Sinj did.

[Sky]

Maybe VoIP will become the default communication method someday. But I think we're years away from that. As an interim solution, I wish a company would license voice-to-text technology, allowing people to talk into a mic but for it to come out as text in a chatbox or speech bubble.

I'll propose the reverse. Maybe putting in OSX-like 'characters' (like the creepy guy who calls out the time on my mac) to do text-to-speech conversion. That way you could put in an easy-cheesy text filter to remove potty talk (or whatever else goes on your blacklist, like "Britney Spears" or "Rick Astley" or "LFG"), and have more appropriate voices. That hotzorz femelf actually sounds like a femelf and not a 43yr old office drone (I would so not hit that). With games like EQ2 where you pick a default voice set, it could base off that. Then you could turn on group/guild/raid/whatever voices as needed, or use all local voices (though that would be annoying in an Auction House, I guess).

[Venkman]

It's an interesting idea, but we read much faster than people can speak, and it's easier to have many different threads of information in text form. Text also maintains the anonymity, something that even the huge virtual-spacey games keep to. People like their text, relegating VoIP to core groups of RL friends or people who are really serious about the games.

[Sky]

My little idea there was /all about/ maintaining anonymity and not breaking the atmosphere. Not VoIP, but a text reader. You'd still have text, but you could turn on a text reader for flavor.

Now select that paragraph, and navigate Application Menu (Safari for me) > Services > Speech > Start Speaking Text. That's all I'm talking about. It would be kinda cool, I think. Not for normal communications, I'm just proposing a cool atmospheric gimmick using existing technology.

[Soukyan]

My little idea there was /all about/ maintaining anonymity and not breaking the atmosphere. Not VoIP, but a text reader. You'd still have text, but you could turn on a text reader for flavor.

Now select that paragraph, and navigate Application Menu (Safari for me) > Services > Speech > Start Speaking Text. That's all I'm talking about. It would be kinda cool, I think. Not for normal communications, I'm just proposing a cool atmospheric gimmick using existing technology.

I like that idea. Probably only because I've become hooked on text-to-speech because my inner geek wants more ways to listen to book content while doing other mundane tasks. If I can't find an audio book, I just get the ebook and have my Mac read it to me. And with the ability to adjust the speed of the reading as well, it comes in rather handy.

Oh! As a matter of fact, you lead into a really good idea, Sky. EQII wanted to add to the immersion by including all the voice-over quests and such, right? Well, if they advanced text-to-speech a little bit more, they would no longer need huge audio files to accomplish the task, they would just need to set a text file for each quest that triggers the appropriate voice and invoke the text-to-speech engine to read it. Imagine the possibilities for games here. While I am sure this idea has come up in meetings with designers and developers already, devs take note! Even in the current incarnation, space based games could make use of it, albeit campy use.

[Sky]

When I was in the shared office I used to crank up my speakers, write some jokes in textedit and have the computer speak them while I went on break.

[sam, an eggplant]

When I was in the shared office I used to crank up my speakers, write some jokes in textedit and have the computer speak them while I went on break.

Last time I had to share an office, I ate herring straight out of the can, raw white onion, and white bread for lunch. For weeks. It only took two weeks.

Now I'm alone again, naturallllyyyyy!

[sinij]

That seems strange to hear from a PvPer.  I thought it was all about skill?

In a way it is, but not desirable skill. Its very limiting on latency, where any bit of lag will drag down even seasoned PvP into mediocrity. Its also detracts from decision making, it becomes a lot about 'how' and very little about 'what'. I believe movement-based combat should stay in FPSs.

Examples to illustrate my point:

Movement-based combat: You attack other player, trying to position yourself behind in order to avoid attacks. Timing your movements with your auto-attack timer, so you are in range only during brief period it takes to attack. You wait for best opportunity to use your stun/snare and make sure that you are never in position where you could die in just one stun/snare. You try to jump through, use LOS obstructions or go out of range to counter enemy attack. Usually there is lot of running around. You don't get to kill anyone without limiting their mobility first. Kiting is major part of the game. Best defense is simply running away, that is if you get away. Movement speed is major combat attribute, alongside with hit points in importance.

Decision-based combat: You attack other player, first carefully probing to determine preexisting damage shields and damage reflect/mitigation buffs. You follow with debuff for your favorite opener combo. You time your combo and take notice of your opponent's actions. While opponent start with his opening you make quick decision between defending by counter-spelling, defending by interruption, defending by mitigation or pressing with your own attack. In the middle of your attack your opponent realizes what you are doing but doesn't have time to properly counter it. His own attack harmlessly redirected by your mitigation buff. Now your opponent has a choice of taking big chunk of damage, putting him 'one away' from death or blowing one of his long cooldown spells to stay well. Its 1:0 in your favor ether way but battle isn't over.

[Phred]

Bullshit.  I have a character at 70, and I never used any mods.  You might need them to raid effectively (I haven't done any of that), but that's not something you're going to be running into "a few days" after rolling your avatar, unless you're catassing to an inhuman degree.

Which is not to say that I don't think the hotkeys are out of freaking control, but that's more a problem with the "Ding/Grats" Diku system, where you must get some new fob every level or the game dies.  My Shaman has (with the default UI) something like eight different toolbars, each with twelve slots, and every one of them is full with some dongle or other (and there's still a few more items I'd like to stick to it if I had room).  That's the way the game is set up, and there is no interface short of jamming a plug into the base of my skull that is going to let me hit any one of ninety-six hot keys whenever I need to without just slapping down an ugly pile of buttons somewhere.

And you wouldn't even be able to play like you were if it weren't for mod creators pointing out the ridiculousness of the old base ui when it had no side bars. Or scrolling combat text, or half a dozen other things that have cross-pollinated from the original barely usable ui to what it is now. Oh, and there are 2 extra bars you can only gain access to via a mod, iirc.

[Chenghiz]

Bullshit.  I have a character at 70, and I never used any mods.  You might need them to raid effectively (I haven't done any of that), but that's not something you're going to be running into "a few days" after rolling your avatar, unless you're catassing to an inhuman degree.

Which is not to say that I don't think the hotkeys are out of freaking control, but that's more a problem with the "Ding/Grats" Diku system, where you must get some new fob every level or the game dies.  My Shaman has (with the default UI) something like eight different toolbars, each with twelve slots, and every one of them is full with some dongle or other (and there's still a few more items I'd like to stick to it if I had room).  That's the way the game is set up, and there is no interface short of jamming a plug into the base of my skull that is going to let me hit any one of ninety-six hot keys whenever I need to without just slapping down an ugly pile of buttons somewhere.

And you wouldn't even be able to play like you were if it weren't for mod creators pointing out the ridiculousness of the old base ui when it had no side bars. Or scrolling combat text, or half a dozen other things that have cross-pollinated from the original barely usable ui to what it is now. Oh, and there are 2 extra bars you can only gain access to via a mod, iirc.

Molten Core was entirely doable with the default UI of the time (I certainly made it work). Kharazan and up is probably doable with the default UI today, perhaps with the exception of threat meters. I'll give it a shot this week and see how it is.

[Venkman]

My little idea there was /all about/ maintaining anonymity and not breaking the atmosphere. Not VoIP, but a text reader. You'd still have text, but you could turn on a text reader for flavor.

Now select that paragraph, and navigate Application Menu (Safari for me) > Services > Speech > Start Speaking Text. That's all I'm talking about. It would be kinda cool, I think. Not for normal communications, I'm just proposing a cool atmospheric gimmick using existing technology.

I've played around with text-to-speech quite a lot ina previous life, particularly on the development side. We talk about the costs for including voice in an MMO where the aggregate datasize is basically only limited by the size of the 'net itself. Imagine that on a standalone consumer product though, where the amount of sound that can be stored is measured in single-digit minutes. :)

TTS still doesn't sound natural enough to be used for voiceover text if you're striving for immersion, as EQ2 was. However, like Soukyan, I think you've got a pretty good idea here for players who want to try and replace attention given to a textbox over to actually, like watching the action.

This should not be impossible to emulate either, but you'd need to probably get a WoW mod developer involved. This would also be easier to experiment with right away on a Mac because they include TTS in the core OS and they have many voices. Windows XP has "Sam" and that's it. On the Mac size, I always liked Zarvox, mostly because it sounded like a Cylon, but secondarily because it didn't clip the individual words as much.

Anyway, who's got an active WoW account, knows a Mod developer, and wants to head this up? We need:

A mod that will read the chatlog
The mod would look for chat lines that start with something like "<speak>"
The mod would then launch the TTS service and play it back

Now, if the mod could not do this, then we'd need an external program running in the background to read the chatlog and do the same thing as a separate process. I'm pretty sure that'd be fine by EULA/TOS standards because it's just the chatlog.

[Chenghiz]

WoW mods can't, as a code limitation, interact with external executables as far as I know.

[Soukyan]

Anyway, who's got an active WoW account, knows a Mod developer, and wants to head this up? We need:

A mod that will read the chatlog
The mod would look for chat lines that start with something like "<speak>"
The mod would then launch the TTS service and play it back

Now, if the mod could not do this, then we'd need an external program running in the background to read the chatlog and do the same thing as a separate process. I'm pretty sure that'd be fine by EULA/TOS standards because it's just the chatlog.

Well, I don't have an active WoW account and have not for some time. LoTRO on the other hand... Perhaps I can whip something up with it. The problem is that it requires using Windows. I suppose I could resub to WoW to test this out on the Mac. The benefit is that I don't care if the WoW account gets banned for EULA/TOS violation. ;)

[Venkman]

WoW mods can't, as a code limitation, interact with external executables as far as I know.

I recall something similar. However, would a third-party program reading the chatlog in realtime be possible? That's about all we need here.

[MrHat]

I was going to add, I don't think text-to-speech and speech-to-text and voice masking is as advanced and easy to implement as we'd like it to be.

[Drifting DarkAngel]

WoW mods can't, as a code limitation, interact with external executables as far as I know.

I recall something similar. However, would a third-party program reading the chatlog in realtime be possible? That's about all we need here.

'possible, but you'd probably get tagged by Warden and banned quickly.

[Jayce]

WoW mods can't, as a code limitation, interact with external executables as far as I know.

I recall something similar. However, would a third-party program reading the chatlog in realtime be possible? That's about all we need here.

Not that I know of.  You'd probably have to intercept the network stream, leading to Warden problems.

BTW, good summary Sinij.  Sounds a lot like UO pre-trammel PvP, which I liked, but I also like WoW PvP.  So it goes.

[WindupAtheist]

I couldn't get into WoW, but I find it impossible to hate on since I really gave it a thorough go.  It's not the sort of virtual worldish game I'm looking for, but it's not trying to be.  What it tries to do, it succeeds at very well.  It's the world's best apple.  Hating it for not being an orange doesn't seem fair.

I hope I make sense, I'm really drunk.

[unwesen]

So I was thinking back to my old MUD days and my current system administration days. Aliases. Macros. Hell, commands. There are many MMOGs that have already implemented this idea, but I think it is worth mentioning that providing your users the ability to execute all game commands in text format and giving the ability to create their own macros, shortcuts, hotkeys, aliases, etc. is the way to go. Now, I am not sure how this could have been applied to the WoW quest discussed in the article, as I don't know if the hotkey used was a one-off spell, or scroll, or potion, or if it was some other game mechanism that may or may not be easily accessible as a text command.

That's roughly how you write Addons in WoW (that's an oversimplification, but it'll do). The problem with something as mentioned in the article is that you have a moderately steep learning curve, and are under a huge amount of (time) pressure to get your thing done. Learning curves are fine, as far as I am concerned, but if there's a lot of pressure, work has to be done to make things easier on the player. Hell, just placing the buttons smack in the middle of the screen, with big icons and descriptive title would have been a good help.

I think - but absolutely can't prove, it's a gut feeling - that with UIs as complex as WoWs, which really get close to regular Desktop UIs in terms of what standard widgets are available and how you can expand on them, there's a feeling that you need Desktop-UI-like behaviour as well. Close windows with a little x in the corner, not a close button, and that sort of thing. Out of that feeling derives the need to place new buttons close to the button bar, so it's consistent with the look & feel of the game. And that's an understandable feeling, but only works for UIs you're likely to see & use a lot.

I don't know, I'm guessing... I'm just thinking that maybe the consistency idea was more in the designer's thoughts than the usability idea.

[caladein]

WoW mods can't, as a code limitation, interact with external executables as far as I know.

I recall something similar. However, would a third-party program reading the chatlog in realtime be possible? That's about all we need here.

No, the chat and combat logs only get written to disk on a non-forced garbage collection which is very infrequent (think tens of minutes at minimum).

[Venkman]

Hmm, ok. That's not good.

Per above, we know WoW mods can't call external programs. However, isn't the text-to-speech stuff built right into the Windows OS? Could a mod access the info in that way (what is that called, "making a call to the API" or somesuch?)

[Soukyan]

Aside from my WoW "hacking" meanderings and attempting to get my Mac to read a quest log to me, I found another article somewhat pertinent to the original topic, if only for the fact that it uses another game (Guild Wars) as an example in "humane" interface design.

Aza Raskin writes an article titled Never Use a Warning When you Mean Undo for A List Apart.

In the article, he discusses the ease with which users can accidentally click OK to an "are you sure?" warning and often times lose work that we meant to save or keep. He refers to a method that Guild Wars uses to attempt to regain the users attention to what could be an irreversible action.

In the game Guild Wars, for example, deleting a character requires first clicking a “delete” button and then typing the name of the character as confirmation. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work. In particular:

1. It causes us to concentrate on the unhabitual-task at hand and not on whether we want to be throwing away our work. Thus, the impossible-to-ignore warning is little better than a normal warning: We end up losing our work either way. This (losing our work) is the worst software sin possible.
2. It is remarkably annoying, and because it always requires our attention, it necessarily distracts us from our work (which is the second worst software sin).
3. It is always slower and more work-intensive than a standard warning. Thus, it commits the third worst sin—requiring more work from us than is necessary.

But Aza goes on to state that the issue is not how to get the users attention in a more effective manner, but rather to provide the user with a method for recovering from an accidental loss/deletion. GMail is a good example of this that is given. When you move an item to the trash, there is no "are you sure?", but rather an "Undo" link provided to reverse the action should you realize you did not mean to do this.

I am not missing the fact that the entire Recycle Bin (Trash Bin) paradigm is meant to save people from their own mistakes, but that's not the point. Looking at game interfaces and character deletion, for example again, suppose a player clicks Delete and types the character name in Guild Wars to delete the character. Once complete, the character is gone. One could argue that the game company may be able to recover it after some phone calls and some trouble, but lets assume that is not an option or not one that the game company is going to entertain very often because, let's face it, they gave you a warning. Looking to another method used by the game Eve Online. If you delete a character there, there is a waiting period during which you can undelete that character. If I remember correctly, the time for character deletion is 24 hours, but I want to say that it may be on the order of days.

In any case, it's a compelling thought, and it is interesting to look at how games implement these features into their user interface. Just more food...

[tmp]

His example of Mario is false too, IMO.  You can't tell me that you knew which button, the helpfully labeled "A" and "B", threw a fireball the first time you played?  "Fireball" has both the letters "a" and "b" in it, no help there!!  However, the first time you did it, you learned it and never had to think about it again.  Likewise, I suspect the second time you do the quest he mentioned, you know how to manipulate the pet bar.

The game pad buttons are generally colour-coded which helps to make them more intuitive -- say, a red button is "agressive" and fits naturally with functions like attack or fireball. In similar manner "A" comes before "B" and so "A" tends to be associated with primary function, etc.

On the subject of this pet toolbar thing, I wonder if part of the point wasn't... if the whole purpose of quest is to forge some gizmo with special breath, and the ability to control the pet is on short timer and one pretty much only uses one dragon function to that... why have toolbar with multiple buttons to begin with? The whole thing could be just as well entirely removed and turned into cut-scene that happens once player succesfully takes over dragon mind. Which could even make it more "immersive" experience without the awkward break that has player struggle to understand odd piece of UI, taking their attention from actual quest they are trying to complete.

[Venkman]

I have no sympathy for people who complete a three-step character delete operation "accidentally". There are some behaviors we shouldn't be required to design around.

[Soukyan]

I have no sympathy for people who complete a three-step character delete operation "accidentally". There are some behaviors we shouldn't be required to design around.

I'm not so sure that he was necessarily saying that it was a bad mechanism, either, but rather that it was one that makes the user stop and take notice as it isn't the usual, "Are you sure?"/Click OK method.

[Amaron]

because overcoming an inhumane user interface shouldn't be a requirement for mastering a video game.

Someone just played PSO Blue Burst!

[Jayce]

I have no sympathy for people who complete a three-step character delete operation "accidentally". There are some behaviors we shouldn't be required to design around.

Yeah, but if you are paying CS personnel to answer the phone and talk to those losers who you have no sympathy for, you'll have even less sympathy for them, but they will still cost you money.  Giving an undelete period is a lot more idiotproof method.  And there are a lot of REALLY GOOD idiots out there.