Richard Bartle on MMO design (IMGDC 09)

[Hindenburg]

You guys don't reposition the health/energy bars near the center of the screen as soon as you start playing? Wut?

[Montague]

So wait, I'm confused here. Copying a functional UI is a bad thing?

I'm assuming the next comment is how people picked up WASD improperly as movement keys and all those copying fuckers didn't just see a functional keyboard layout and go "hey, this is a good idea"? As far as I can tell, MMO UIs are moving heavily into the "this is your basic UI. Now mod the fuck out of it however you like", just like keyboard controls became X is standard, and you can bind whatever if you don't like that.

But to misphrase an old catchphrase: what does this have to do with shadowbane?

It's indicative of games being designed to please everyone except the fucking player.

With all due respect to those in the industry, but when I sit down at night after a long day at work to fire up an MMO I could not give a shit less how much your Publisher, the programmers, the IMGDC, your spouse, or your dog loved your "sleek and original" UI. The only thing I care about is does it enhance my fun, or at the very least does it not get in the way of my fun?

The poster boy of this type of designer thinking is Mythic. Let's teleport dead and almost-dead players out of Open RVR combat because our servers are shitting the bed. At Blizzard, that concept wouldn't have made it out of the "LOL, wouldn't that be great! But no seriously, what do we do?" stage but Mythic actually rolled it out live on one server. The only way that something like that makes sense is if you totally discount the player's perspective and are just looking for a quick and dirty solution to the problem.

[Phred]

So wait, I'm confused here. Copying a functional UI is a bad thing?

I'd say copying a functional UI badly is a bad thing.

[Vash]

So wait, I'm confused here. Copying a functional UI is a bad thing?

I'd say copying a functional UI badly is a bad thing.

Thinking the UI from a popular game is functioning adequately and then copying it badly is a very bad thing.

[kildorn]

But aside from LOTRO's tiny icons (which WoW used to have, anyways), what part of that UI is copied badly? They seem.. nearly identical. One could say they missed the point of some of the features, but they didn't miss the direct rip of said features.

[Yegolev]

I submit the feature of WoW's UI that Turbine missed was "is moddable"... however that is probably not in line with the discussion.  Personally I found the WoW interface to be a great impetus to obtain a mod, and in fact it caused me to download and examine Lua.

[Phred]

But aside from LOTRO's tiny icons (which WoW used to have, anyways), what part of that UI is copied badly? They seem.. nearly identical. One could say they missed the point of some of the features, but they didn't miss the direct rip of said features.

I think they fell down pretty hard when it came to icon design. If I remember the basic introduction to mac programming I read, the original intention of icons was simple, easily distinguished, distinctive identifiers for spells. The abundance of crosshatch shading in LoTR's icons made seeing cooldowns difficult and telling which icons were in a usable state pretty difficult too. It's easy to find icons that violate the principle in both games but WoW's stand out more because they are so rare, while large numbers of LoTR's icons were a mess.

When I brought the issue up in beta I was told the icons were from sketches JRR had put in the original manuscripts, which due to his credentials as an icon designer, supposedly made this a good thing. 

[tmp]

I might even go as far as say top left corner health bars are obsoleted as soon as you get a big widescreen monitor.

Would say that's an exaggeration and going too far -- that's considering number of modern games which run in widescreen configuration and still utilize that very placement to good effect. And given much more hectic nature of these games (say in Devil May Cry, Demon's Souls, plenty FPS titles although these sometimes pick bottom screen corner) their 'health bars' are just as important for the player to keep eye on.

Now granted, with console games people usually sit far enough from the TV they can comfortably see the whole thing; but if you don't apply the same approach to the monitors then you're doing it wrong.

[Tarami]

No disrespect guys, but I think the GUI you're looking for or expect MMOs to have can brew its own coffee and regularly flies to the moon on its free Sunday afternoons.

Frankly, WoW's boxed GUI has to be considered close to perfect or at the very least the best in its class. It does everything it needs to do in order to let you play the game, right as it comes on the discs. That you can really kick the shit out of it with add-ons is just a cherry on top of it all, it's not the assumption under which the basic UI was built. That most people can play most (probably all, if people weren't so convinced it was unpossible) of the game and yet be confused by a minority of the features is the mark of an excellent UI.

There can always be more options. But configurability is not usability, as the saying goes.

[Ratman_tf]

No disrespect guys, but I think the GUI you're looking for or expect MMOs to have can brew its own coffee and regularly flies to the moon on its free Sunday afternoons.

Frankly, WoW's boxed GUI has to be considered close to perfect or at the very least the best in its class. It does everything it needs to do in order to let you play the game, right as it comes on the discs. That you can really kick the shit out of it with add-ons is just a cherry on top of it all, it's not the assumption under which the basic UI was built. That most people can play most (probably all, if people weren't so convinced it was unpossible) of the game and yet be confused by a minority of the features is the mark of an excellent UI.

There can always be more options. But configurability is not usability, as the saying goes.

One of my big bitches nowadays is font size. Tabula Rasa, for example, had a really shitty font in a very small size. I'm sure it was pretty low on the totem pole of things to fix, but it bugged me every time I played.
Eve is guilty of this too.

Yeah, most games let you change the default font, but hey. I can also just quit and go back to WoW...

[tmp]

One of my big bitches nowadays is font size. Tabula Rasa, for example, had a really shitty font in a very small size. I'm sure it was pretty low on the totem pole of things to fix, but it bugged me every time I played.
Eve is guilty of this too.

EvE font was one of few things that made me eventually quit the game. At some point they've replaced their original font with something that tended to be nearly unreadable on some screens and just very confusing on everything else with little visual difference between some letters... and then basically ignored forum shitstorm that followed. As far as i can tell they're still using that font; dunno, maybe it's some developer's girlfriend that had made it.

Funniest part is, some Korean MMOs go as far as to allow players to pick their own font for the game. Hopefully rest of the world one day manages to catch up with that.

[UnSub]

Ironically, the UI was probably the least important thing that Bartle covered. If he covered it at all.

[Ratman_tf]

Ironically, the UI was probably the least important thing that Bartle covered. If he covered it at all.

UI isn't sexy. It's more flashy to talk about virtual worlds and theme parks and quest chains. People take a good UI for granted until it's missing.

[Tarami]

One of my big bitches nowadays is font size. Tabula Rasa, for example, had a really shitty font in a very small size. I'm sure it was pretty low on the totem pole of things to fix, but it bugged me every time I played.
Eve is guilty of this too.

Yeah, most games let you change the default font, but hey. I can also just quit and go back to WoW...

Yeah, I wasn't necessarily defending universally bad GUI decisions, just generally good UIs. Because generally good is about as close as you can ever get. Eventually UIs get crushed under their own weight.

[Rendakor]

No disrespect guys, but I think the GUI you're looking for or expect MMOs to have can brew its own coffee and regularly flies to the moon on its free Sunday afternoons.

Frankly, WoW's boxed GUI has to be considered close to perfect or at the very least the best in its class. It does everything it needs to do in order to let you play the game, right as it comes on the discs. That you can really kick the shit out of it with add-ons is just a cherry on top of it all, it's not the assumption under which the basic UI was built. That most people can play most (probably all, if people weren't so convinced it was unpossible) of the game and yet be confused by a minority of the features is the mark of an excellent UI.

There can always be more options. But configurability is not usability, as the saying goes.

Gonna disagree here. Un-modded, WoW's UI is obnoxious. Having action bars that you can't move scattered across the screen makes more complex classes REALLY difficult to play. Hell, the inability to move windows (or even have up certain windows at the same time) still gets under my skin. And remember when talking about WoW's UI, you have to consider the launch vs now arguement. Many of WoW's UI features were originally addons that were eventually implmented into the core UI (SCT comes to mind).

I'd argue that both CoH and EQ2 have far better default UIs than WoW.

[Hindenburg]

I'd argue that both CoH and EQ2 have far better default UIs than WoW.

And I'd argue that Dead Space has the best UI ever made, and developers should try their hand at organic UI's.

[Yegolev]

I would not be so quick to laud WoW's default UI simply because it lets you press all of the buttons you need to in order to play.  The original EQ interface did the same thing.  Hell, I liked the Horizons UI more than the WoW one, which seemed a big step back to me and I could not wait to mod it.  I currently have a similar but less intense problem with the LotRO UI, but I am doing my best to ignore it and hope for a rumored UI revamp.

[Draegan]

The only thing about WOW's UI that I like is that I can do whatever they want with it with addons.  I completely change everything about it.

Unit Frames, MiniMap, Scale, Color, Combat Text, Hotbars, buff/debuff location-size-output display, etc.

There isn't anything about the original UI I use.  But I would be an "advanced player".  However!  I have to admit that it does a good job giving the casual player enough information to do their daily quests and pay their 15$ a month with.

I believe the UI is the most important part of your game before it's launched.  The first 30 minutes or so of a new player's experience are the most important.  If you're UI in klunky, broken, too big, too small or if I can't change it to my liking is going to scare off a potential user.

A good UI will enable a player to stick around just a little longer.  However that "longer" may be just enough time to find out your RvR is a piece of shit.

[Hindenburg]

WAR's UI did a lot of things right. Wish more mmo's allowed you to move, resize and hide everything in the screen.

[Vash]

Un-modded, WoW's UI is obnoxious.

So obnoxious that if it wasn't possible to mod the crap out it, I likely wouldn't be playing it anymore.  The fact that after all these years you still can't move or scale the different parts of the base UI shows what a relic it is.  It's been fairly obvioius Blizz has just been mailing it in with the UI since release and letting the huge mod community handle things for them.  Plenty of people still even use the mods that they tried to shoehorn into their UI because Blizzard's version/implementation just ends up being an inferior bastard child of the mod that inspired the change. 

There's nothing that says your game can't have a simple/basic default UI for a new or casual player and have tons of customization options and additional features for more advanced players.  It would be nice to have a fully functional and asthetically pleasing UI without having to download/update over a dozen addons every time the game is patched.

WAR's UI did a lot of things right. Wish more mmo's allowed you to move, resize and hide everything in the screen.

About the only area it was lacking was displaying buffs and debuffs in an easy to identify manner, which you figure would have been a priority with all the powerful debuffs like Gork Sez Stop, etc.

[Bzalthek]

Unless I'm raiding, I find UI addons to be more trouble than they're worth.

[Tarami]

I haven't played WoW so seriously the past couple of years that I've felt the need to use many addons. I run it vanilla with a couple of RP mods that don't really affect the basic UI at all.

And sure, I love tinkering with addons too. It's satisfying and whatnot. However, being able to configure everything isn't synonymous with a good UI. If that were the case, they could just give us a Lua script prompt. I praised WoW's UI because it's relatively free from ornate doodads (unlike WAR), it's fast&snappy and very consistent. Just compare WAR and WoW when something like moving items around in the inventory. LotRO doesn't do this nicely either. EQ2, can't remember.

Many of you may feel it's underdeveloped, although I think it's closer to simple than underdeveloped. It gets the job done efficiently without having to place a mass order for trinkets from the bells & whistles factory. The whole deal that panes and significant parts of the UI are fixed is as much an advantage as a drawback. Much of the bitching when it comes to WoW's UI is probably thanks to it being fully adjustable through addons. So many things you "have to have" when you can have almost anything. To implement it all is simply just not realistic for a developer.

Sure it could be better, it always can. I don't think that was the point, however, because what the UI does, it mostly does well.

[Yegolev]

Oddly enough, I think we have reached the point in the discussion on UI where we are seeing a separation of the "casual" and "hardcore" in a similar way to the Bartle presentation's separation of world and game.  The LotRO UI (since that's what I'm more familiar with today) is mostly just fine and is more than adequate for my wife to play, but I think she might still use the arrow keys to move around.  Even so, she complains about the shop interface which is indeed overly simple and apparently targets a simpleton of very low ability.  Beyond that you have resolution-scaling problems, including text-size problems which make it hard to read things, which add to the feeling of "underdeveloped" rather than something intentionally designed for newbies.  There is likely a bit of both in there, with devs not spending much on UI development due to there being a perfectly-usable stock type that most people will at least grudgingly use, so putting a team on UI development seems a waste.

However, I don't see any reason other than economics for there to be more than one UI design in a pulldown, even if it's something incredibly simple like "Default | Large Icon | Minimalist".  You can have tons of options while also having a select few presets.  Really.

Edit for making sense.

[Lantyssa]

We've certainly hit that divide.  For The Masses, and that's who you're appealing to if not making a niche game, Tarami is right that WoW has a good, simple UI.  It does what is needed, and for the time was a stellar improvement in layout.  (Let's remember our games history!)

Many of us want more, and while it not being built in can be frustrating, we do have the option to make mods.  Yes Blizzard adds more on occasion, but they're going to be conservative because The Masses don't need those features.  They don't make the default UI for us.

[Hindenburg]

being able to configure everything isn't synonymous with a good UI.

Sure as fuck helps, though.

[Draegan]

I just want the ability to make the UI the way I want it.  Clean and simple.  But some people like dood-dads and art etc.

Everyone has their own tastes, so I think the ability to do what you want is best.

[Rendakor]

I fail to see how the ability to move and resize windows is an "advanced" user feature. What exactly is WoW's UI a stellar improvement over? It is inferior to CoH and EQ2, both of which launched (at least a week  ) before WoW. Having played both of those, WoW's UI felt like playing in the stone age. Don't the masses like resizing windows?

[Yegolev]

It's better than the EQ UI.

[Rendakor]

Ahh, fair enough. My EQ1 experience was not long enough for the UI to be memorable; the time was 2 hour laggy slideshow of death by ants, after which I swore off MMOs for a time and returned to MUDs.

[Lantyssa]

... both of which launched (at least a week  ) before WoW.

Which had significantly longer beta periods.

[Mrbloodworth]

Seems i missed a lot of this thread. I have played both Wow, and LOTRO. If i am not mistaken, wasn't it turbine that basically refined the modern MMO UI with AC2? That, Wow is basically based on?

To me, World of Warcraft's UI is, to put simply, broken. Not in terms of fluff, or usability, but that fact that so many of you NEED to mod it to find it useful. Its also for that reason i love the LOTRO UI, its consistent, non mod able (To the point of advantage, or game play changing such as maps, and mini maps), it has a great variety of options in the realm of icon size, text size and positioning of elements (CTRL + \)  in the options panel). The "shop window" is way more streamlined (sorting/locking of items) than the bag hunt system for Wow. I absolutely love the fact that in LOTRO they do not overwhelm your screen with hundreds of ability's that are simply not useful...... What i am trying to say is, there are simply LESS icons on you screen,. by design! How is that not better?

Some things to consider, some the the game play elements of LOTRO would be negated by UI mods, there are skills that would no longer become class features if you could mode to the extent of warcraft.

For the functions it needs to perform i would say that the LOTRO UI system is eloquently designed refinement with a lean to usability, and simplicity. The quest log is simply brilliant.

I think, however some here wouldn't not recognize a good UI design, to many of you are to accustomed to modding the UI, and for all intents are now conditioned to play, or use it "One way". Any game that is not laid out to that layout (that you modded) is now somehow inferior. Ignoring that un-modded, it does what it needs to, and does it well. Sometimes exceptionally for what its required.

There is good and bad, but being somewhat of a UI designer myself, i recognize when comparing Wow's to LOTRO, LOTRO is simply more refined. Maybe this means "For dumb shitts" to some. But there is something to be said for simplicity, and restriction of customization.

The only other UI's that i give big props to, is that of AOC. Of course, it was required to facilitate different functionality than the other two, but its layout, presentation, and usability was fantastic. I even stole some elements of it fro a project i was working on.

being able to configure everything isn't synonymous with a good UI.

Sure as fuck helps, though.

Only if the UI was inadequate to begin with. Now i know someone will come in saying "i like clicking this or that, and i can play with out it", that's conditioning, conditioning you imposed on yourself, by modding over something that was inadequate, if, it ever truly was in the first place..

[Hindenburg]

You can't really carry the argument that less options = good.

[Mrbloodworth]

You can't really carry the argument that less options = good.

I most certainly can.

[Draegan]

Your whole design philosophy about UI's is what drives me insane when I try to play a new game.  You're too rigid in your thinking.  Every person likes a different type of UI you need to allow people to create their own, or give them the in game tools to do so.  You're never going to win.

The less option available for customization the worse your UI is.   

[Arinon]

I always felt that for PvP games there is something to be said for keeping a consistent, relatively uniform UI for everyone.  It's your platform for competing and taken in that context a lot of user created UI mods are flat out cheating.  I expect I'm in the minority here though.