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Old 10/19/08, 2:02 PM   #551
TangoDigital
Von Kaiser
 
Undead Warlock
 
Kel'Thuzad (EU)
Originally Posted by Nephthys View Post
I also think that czokalapik's right that sounds can be a hugely useful UI tool. There's a huge amount of opportunity for sounds to be better used by the UI.
True that. This is part of the reason why in my UI you won't find anything except healer grid center screen. Glancing at playerframe f.e. is something I rarely ever do because I have set up a wide array of sounds for all kinds of events ranging from low HP/MP warnings to raid alerts to cooldown / proc notifications. Sound is very important. Not using it to full effect is a huge mistake.

TangoDigital

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Old 10/20/08, 5:04 PM   #552
Dristig
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Orc Death Knight
 
Crushridge
Wow, i never thought I'd get to post this in a wow thread but here goes...
I'm actually a professional UI designer and in my opinion that application of Fitt's Law from the Druid forums is largely invalidated by the time sensitive nature of a healers task. Fitt's Law is built around the idea of getting to a specific element .The key is that the user knows which element they are looking for.

Healers typically aren't looking to heal one specific guy. If they were they could turn off the entire UI and use one healthbar + macros to always heal the same target with their favorite heal. The way most healers use Grid is as an easier way to determine which person needs attention. In other words the visual acquisition of information is more important than the physical acquisition of the target with the pointer.

Ironically even though I do UI as a career and have a lot of education in design I try to use as much of the stock UI as possible. I acknowledge that it isn't that great but ever since Discord Mod died I haven't had the heart to get back into heavy UI modification.

Last edited by Dristig : 10/20/08 at 5:04 PM. Reason: Grammar

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Old 10/21/08, 12:58 PM   #553
Azurai
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Human Death Knight
 
Bonechewer
Here's an honest question: Why do people cluster UI elements around the bottom of the screen? Most people play with the camera only slightly elevated above the ground, leading to very limited periphery but a large distance viewable directly ahead. Doesn't it make sense to sacrifice space that is 99% of the time needless sky in lieu of the limited amount of area for viewing the space directly around your character?

This seems like a questionable UI convention from, well... the beginning of 3D RPG GUIs in general. Viewport mods work in some way to remedy this problem, but I'm not sure losing 3" at the bottom of your screen is necessary at all when you have all that pretty sky as prime real estate. I think I'll try making a top-centric UI, as awkward as it might be getting used to it seems a pretty intuitive next step in maximizing situational awareness without forcing a '2d isometric-esque' camera solution on a 3d game.

Last edited by Azurai : 10/21/08 at 1:04 PM.

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Old 10/21/08, 1:35 PM   #554
Nephthys
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Undead Rogue
 
Hyjal
Originally Posted by Azurai View Post
Why do people cluster UI elements around the bottom of the screen? Most people play with the camera only slightly elevated above the ground, leading to very limited periphery but a large distance viewable directly ahead. Doesn't it make sense to sacrifice space that is 99% of the time needless sky in lieu of the limited amount of area for viewing the space directly around your character?
If that's where you place your camera, then yes, a UI with elements at the top might be very useful.

But not everybody plays with that camera placement. I play with the camera looking down at my character at an ~45 degree angle. It might be a caster/melee thing. As a rogue, the placement of units in the immediate vicinity of my character is extremely important. I need to make sure I'm behind the tank's mob, in melee range, not standing in fire, and not in range of any mob's cleave. The 2D isometric camera placement is well suited to seeing those things. It'd be nice if I could see more of a boss besides its feet, but what happens at a distance isn't so important in terms of gameplay.

I put my most-important UI elements a little below the center of my screen. That area is very close to the on-screen action I need to monitor and is usually dead space otherwise. Especially during raids, when I usually have the camera zoomed out much further than when soloing or in 5-mans.

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Old 10/21/08, 2:14 PM   #555
Azurai
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Originally Posted by Nephthys View Post
But not everybody plays with that camera placement. I play with the camera looking down at my character at an ~45 degree angle. It might be a caster/melee thing.
Right, but even if your focus is purely situational awareness and having no UI elements around your character, any camera angle will produce more visibility the way the camera is facing than behind. At the top of your screen, every inch of UI translates into more viewable distance lost total, but less in the immediate vicinity.

For example:

Excuse the crappy beta UI, but the point being in order to see a total of X yards in every direction around my character in every direction, you'd need less space up top, not down bottom. While I also understand the necessity for viewing things at range, the question remains is the Magnataur obscured by the default minimap in my picture (for example) more relevant at 60 yards in front of me than the one only 15 yards behind me who's horns you can't see poking up because my bars (exchange for any UI element) are there?

Certainly movement speed is a large factor here, but relatively few encounters involve frequent use of speed higher than 100% and that can of course be remedied by panning of the camera. To me it seems like gaining back that 5-10 yards of uncovered visibility 10 yards behind you is worth losing the 30 yards of visibility that is 60 yards off. I've not used trig in years so I will not deign to try and mathify this beyond rough observations from normal camera angles.

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Old 10/21/08, 3:38 PM   #556
Dristig
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Crushridge
Originally Posted by Azurai View Post
To me it seems like gaining back that 5-10 yards of uncovered visibility 10 yards behind you is worth losing the 30 yards of visibility that is 60 yards off. I've not used trig in years so I will not deign to try and mathify this beyond rough observations from normal camera angles.
AH-ha here is your problem it is not actually 5-10yards it is much less. You actually illustrated it well in your screen shot but didn't follow through to the logic conclusion. The more extreme your camera angle the LESS area you are obscuring at the bottom of the screen. The opposite is also true. The UI plane is 2d but the world is 3d as long as we are constrained by statically sized UI elements the bottom of the screen will always obscure less of a 3d world than the top.

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Old 10/21/08, 3:40 PM   #557
Nephthys
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Undead Rogue
 
Hyjal
Originally Posted by Azurai View Post
At the top of your screen, every inch of UI translates into more viewable distance lost total, but less in the immediate vicinity.
This is true. UI elements at the top definitely obscure less of the area around your character than those at the bottom. Not having the action bar along the bottom would definitely help notice if there's a pat coming up behind you or if you're getting too close to the next group.

But in PvE situations, things in front of you are pretty much always more important than those behind you. Mainly because you clear a path through mobs/instances and place yourself where you want to be during a fight. Your own screenshot illustrates this pretty well. And as a tank, the top of the screen is what's going to tell you if there's a mob loose in the casters.

In my mind, the biggest dead space for melee dps (and where I prefer to put my UI) is the bottom red box you've got marked in your screenshot. It's a big chunk of space that's just showing you where you were a few seconds ago. If there's a mob or fire there, ur doin it wrong.

Of course, if you're doing PvP or proximity AoE or are a tank, I can see that space becoming very important.

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Old 10/21/08, 8:59 PM   #558
Sovereignty
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Blood Elf Paladin
 
Draenor
Originally Posted by Dristig View Post
Healers typically aren't looking to heal one specific guy. If they were they could turn off the entire UI and use one healthbar + macros to always heal the same target with their favorite heal. The way most healers use Grid is as an easier way to determine which person needs attention. In other words the visual acquisition of information is more important than the physical acquisition of the target with the pointer.
I'm not entirely sure that's accurate, just from a general logical test. Reactive healing is a two part equation: noticing the unit that needs to be healed (in your prose "visual acquisition of information") and execution of said heal. Execution comes in either one or two parts: a single click, or a mouse-click and keyboard press. Either way, a acquisition of the target with the mouse is a primary function and equally as important as acquiring visual information.

The first action is necessary for the second, and in a temporal hierarchy it certainly would come first; however, your response misses the implicit question presented. Instead of viewing the process holistically, the question of mouse-movement is consigned to a vacuum. In this case, the user already knows where his mouse has to go (i.e. he has already acquired the necessary visual information) and is now only concerned with the time it takes to move his mouse to execute the proper mouse-click.

This is why I claimed the question "misses the boat" in terms of usability, since the question of use is never consigned to a vacuum. The importance of acquiring information and acting upon it are in parity.

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Old 10/22/08, 9:39 AM   #559
Dristig
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Crushridge
No they aren't. Aquiring the information can't be learned because the information is different every time. However the action of clicking on your preferred size Grid frame is a learned ability and in fact healers become expert at it in a short period of time /played. I'm coming at this as a UI professional who deals with Fitt's law all the time and a former raid healer.

Fitt's law is often a red herring. If we only listened to what it had to say about UI design every page of an application would be a single HUGE button. Obviously that is wildly impractical and ignores many other factors about learned behavior and mental symbols. As mentioned in my first example Fitt's law does not account for repeat use of the same UI.

I also ran back and read your other post that seems to agree with this position so I'm a little confused.

Last edited by Dristig : 10/22/08 at 10:35 AM.

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Old 10/24/08, 6:41 PM   #560
Dristig
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Crushridge
I tried to build an experimental ui based on a lot of the ideas in this thread It's pretty interesting so far I'm not sure its a huge improvement but I definately like parts of it.


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Old 10/25/08, 3:37 PM   #561
WitchBoy
Glass Joe
 
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Troll Shaman
 
Cenarion Circle


Since as a healer I'm generally in the back and like to associate the party in a top-oriented fashion that collaborates with watching what's going on ahead of my character. Watching bars is all fine, but environmental awareness is important for preemptive measures. Proaction>Reaction. The interface elements I associate more with my own character go at the bottom (although I admit to using target-of-target frequently as a healing tool in conjunction with mouse-over macros). I like having lots of horizontal screen estate for more awareness of what's happening around me. Actually showing action bars is mostly a matter of personal taste, although I do use clicking on totems, given their abundance. Although it isn't apparent in the picture, buffs stack on the right side of the cast bar. Additionally, I reserve a large deal of space for the chat box, as communication is an essential aspect of the game.

As far as aesthetics go, I keep things relatively clean with distinct areas created not with arbitrary background panels, but by integrating interface elements into an emergent region. Floating elements and empty spaces distract from that unity.

Last edited by WitchBoy : 10/25/08 at 3:46 PM.

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Old 10/25/08, 6:59 PM   #562
Beardstorm
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Draenei Warrior
 
Stormreaver (EU)
This is a bit of an old screenshot post 3.0, my account has been dead the last couple of weeks.



My general thinking about action bars is that I may as well have them there since theres never going be any action happening in that area of the screen anyway and I won't ever move anything really useful into that area (e.g. threat meter, quick click buttons, health bars). Must say that I've found it much easier having everything I need nearish my character and I don't feel that my current setup obstructs anything that may hurt my little warlock. Although I was toying with the idea of moving everything down a little.

As another point, the text isn't the easiest to read, but since as I don't PvP in WoW it's not a big deal so I'd much rather give myself something (I think - beauty is in the eye of the beholder blah blah) nice to look at, which in a very vain way I find makes the game more pleasant to play.

When playing my resto druid Grid is normally positioned above the target bar to also keep target//targets target in easy reach. And both are setup to show health missing.

Couple of things still to fix:
i. Trimming omen to only show tank(s) and myself.
ii. Fix the text in the target frame in pitbull to get the whole mob name in there and mob health displaying as "xxxx/yyyy | zz%"
iii. Remove all the crappy action buttons I no longer need
iv. Grid normally is hidden, as is the minimap just happens I resummoned a couple of people so they are still there.
v. Seperating my castable buffs from everyone elses to make it easier to tell when to rebuff would be nice, if anyone knows of a nice mod then please do send a PM, will be much appreciated.

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Old 10/27/08, 11:27 PM   #563
Kaubel
Sledgehammer Emeritus
 
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Tauren Druid
 
Mal'Ganis
Originally Posted by Zygar View Post
Note: This thread is NOT the “Post your UI” thread; this thread is for discussion of interface design, and UIs that break the mold. If you have a UI that does something different, post it, but please – only post it if you’re prepared to explain what makes your UI special.
You folks need to keep this in mind before posting here, because I won't be in a good mood if I have to clean the place up.

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Old 10/29/08, 3:14 AM   #564
Kumar
Don Flamenco
 
Blood Elf Rogue
 
Exodar
Originally Posted by Azurai View Post
Here's an honest question: Why do people cluster UI elements around the bottom of the screen? Most people play with the camera only slightly elevated above the ground, leading to very limited periphery but a large distance viewable directly ahead. Doesn't it make sense to sacrifice space that is 99% of the time needless sky in lieu of the limited amount of area for viewing the space directly around your character?

This seems like a questionable UI convention from, well... the beginning of 3D RPG GUIs in general. Viewport mods work in some way to remedy this problem, but I'm not sure losing 3" at the bottom of your screen is necessary at all when you have all that pretty sky as prime real estate. I think I'll try making a top-centric UI, as awkward as it might be getting used to it seems a pretty intuitive next step in maximizing situational awareness without forcing a '2d isometric-esque' camera solution on a 3d game.
Talking strictly about PvE here, as a Rogue, I have most of my UI elements on the bottom of the screen with only Unit Frames (Me + Target & Target of Target) at top.

Since I look down at a 45 degree angle, max zoom out I find myself focusing easily on the top part of the screen, while I can easily manouver my mouse to click any action bars on the bottom. Moreover, the target itself is generally positioned in the center of my view.

I need the top half clean in this case, as the things I want to see there are:
1. Target's Cast Bar
2. Combo Points
3. All my Timers (SnD, Rupture, etc)
4. DBM Timers and Warnings.

I found having either the map or any other UI elements in my "area of concentration" during the fight causes distractions.

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Old 10/29/08, 8:49 AM   #565
pdpi
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Tauren Druid
 
Argent Dawn (EU)
Originally Posted by Azurai View Post
Right, but even if your focus is purely situational awareness and having no UI elements around your character, any camera angle will produce more visibility the way the camera is facing than behind. At the top of your screen, every inch of UI translates into more viewable distance lost total, but less in the immediate vicinity.

(snip image quote)

Excuse the crappy beta UI, but the point being in order to see a total of X yards in every direction around my character in every direction, you'd need less space up top, not down bottom. While I also understand the necessity for viewing things at range, the question remains is the Magnataur obscured by the default minimap in my picture (for example) more relevant at 60 yards in front of me than the one only 15 yards behind me who's horns you can't see poking up because my bars (exchange for any UI element) are there?

Certainly movement speed is a large factor here, but relatively few encounters involve frequent use of speed higher than 100% and that can of course be remedied by panning of the camera. To me it seems like gaining back that 5-10 yards of uncovered visibility 10 yards behind you is worth losing the 30 yards of visibility that is 60 yards off. I've not used trig in years so I will not deign to try and mathify this beyond rough observations from normal camera angles.
Ok, irrespectively of technical issues, which Dristig is probably better equipped to comment on, here's my take on all this.

First, from a soloing perspective, the bottom of the screen is behind me, and is usually where I came from. Odds are there's more new information forwards than there is backwards, and it's easier to plan my next few kills if I see the mobs in front of me that I haven't killed than the corpses behind of the ones I have.

Second, in a raid environment, as ranged dps or as a healer you'll often be at max range possible from the boss, which means forward visible range is important, or, as a tank, you'll often have your back to the wall, which means seeing what's behind you is unimportant, and your camera will be completely screwed up anyway so you'll probably turn it elsewhere -- that's what I do.

Which brings us to non-standard camera positions: at least to my intuition, when I move the camera, I'm more worried about what's to the far side of the center than what's at the near side. I put my camera to the left of my toon to see his right side, etc. Altering the proportions of top and bottom skews the visibility towards the part that I don't care about. I have a feeling that this is a point that can be generalized to most of the population.

Of course, using Aperture or another viewport-changing addon helps, but the "top or bottom" question remains, which brings us to my final note: I find that my eyes are not centered on the display, but, rather, looking straight forward aims slightly higher than that. So having my viewport raised rather than lowered makes for a more comfortable viewing of the game world, which takes precedence over the other UI elements.

Last edited by pdpi : 10/29/08 at 8:51 AM. Reason: formatting

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Old 11/01/08, 12:29 AM   #566
Azurai
Von Kaiser
 
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Human Death Knight
 
Bonechewer
So I decided to just do a top-heavy UI to see how it felt and I must say it turned out to be less awkward than I anticipated. Here's a small picture to see how it turned out:



I play a resto/enh shaman ('til wrath anyway) and the first thing I noticed was the general inappropriateness of the Grid location for healing. It detracts from the purpose of gaining peripheral vision to have it in such an odd spot away from the action, but I digress... For DPS, the uncluttered bottom compared to my previously nearly stock UI with tacked on addons makes a big difference. Originally I had the bars hidden, but the new 3.0 abilities, rotations and keybind changes had me uncomfortable enough to bring them back up for the time being. It also allowed me to slip YATA in to the top bar, at least.

Overall, for dps and tanking I think I'll keep it. I still can make some improvements on the minimalism of the UI when I get the free time. Honestly, the hardest thing to get used to is the chat window location but I'm sure the world would be a better place if less raids wiped to someone typing to a friend. Overall I'm happy I traded a few feet of sky for nearby terrain. This might not be as big an issue for people who practice utility and minimalism as an art form, but compared to the default or the common 'big-block' UI it seems to be a huge upgrade for most purposes.

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Old 11/07/08, 6:15 AM   #567
Nizghalad
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Orc Warlock
 
Hyjal (EU)
from a caster dps point of view, I think the main problem in having a lot of information at the top is that the peripherical vision of a human is very limited towards the top, while it's a lot better towards below the center vision. Sorry for the english, I hope this is understandable.

Thus it's easier to track information which is placed below the point you're looking at usually.
If what you're primarly looking at is the environment, a cast/health/... bar is then best placed just below your character.
If what's important is the health of the raid, it might be better to have grid just above your character, so that you can still get some info about your surroundings.

Having your eye direction always oriented at the top of the screen could cause problems, so using a viewport to "lower" your character in order to have grid somewhere around the middle might be a good idea.

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Old 03/04/09, 6:45 AM   #568
Ichikayi
Glass Joe
 
Human Death Knight
 
Darksorrow (EU)
Originally Posted by royaljester View Post
one thing. do you need your target debuffs to show that many? If not, why not filter (I know pitbull has that option) only ones that you need to see. Also, move the debuffs to the left side of the unitframe and then move the unitframes/actionbars agaisnt the right side of the screen. I know it puts them more out of the way, but you save room overall.

Also, you might scale down your buffs, unless you REALLY need to know which buffs you have up (which id suggest gettign a class timer or something besides buff bars) then you can scale them wayyy down and take up less room there as well. Other than that, I think it looks great, its clear and concise, just maybe tweak with positioning and scaling a little to give it a roomier feel.
What's the addon called which provides the bar above mob/enemy/boss?
If you press Ctrl+V, you get something equivalent, but what Illundai's got there's much better imo!

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Old 03/04/09, 10:14 AM   #569
Trevear
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Night Elf Rogue
 
Elune
Wrong thread and read this post as a potential answer.

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Old 03/13/09, 3:17 AM   #570
Jedo
Glass Joe
 
Dwarf Priest
 
Twilight's Hammer (EU)
Hey guys.

I searched for PVP interface / player vs player interface and it couldn't yield any results due to search terms being too short, and player player interface yielded with practically every thread :S. I felt it was too bold of me to try and create a specific thread about PVP interfaces and problems arising with them, with so much threads about interfaces hanging around already, so here goes.

So, I've been using my interface for quite some time, feel pretty happy about it, but looking at some of the interfaces posted on this forum I can definitely see there is much, much room to improve. But also, I'm running into some problems.

The interface SS is here

Addons list:

Afflicted
Align
Aloft
ArenaPointer
Atlasloot
Auctionator
Bagnon
Bartender4
Beql
Buttonfacade
Cartographer
Chatter
Classtimer (have it disabled though, but would like to use it)
ClearFont2
CooldownButtons
CrapAway
Doom_Cooldownpulse
ErrorMonster
FuBar
GatherMate
Gladius
MSBT
OmniCC
Pitbull
PowerAuras Classic
Quartz
Questhelper
RatingBuster
Recount
Routes
SellFish
SimpleActionSets
Simpleminimap
SpellAlerter
Talented
TipTac

Well, anyway, a bit of explanation: I guess the player/target UF's are pretty self explanatory, focus is right of target, Gladius is above focus in arenas, raid frames are basically the same place as party only somwehat smaller so they can all fit there, castbars from the top down are focus, target, player. Afflicted timers are all over the place, generally above my character's head and to the right of my character. CooldownButtons are above player frame and below player cast bar.

So, anyway, this interface was built around seeing what Caith UI looks and trying it out for like for 2 days and not being able to stomach not building my own ui and therefore not knowing it inside out.

Anyways, as I PvE and PvP, I'm having some problems synchronising my UI for both with it still staying functional for both aspects of the game, and before just creating 2 separate wow folders/2 separate UI profiles or some other drastic solution to my problems, I thought the best thing to do was ask here about guidelines to improving my UI since I plan on doing some work on it as 3.1 hits seeing as I will probably have a few days for all the addons to be fully functional.

I have always LOVED minimalistic UI's with a bunch of free space to have a better view of what is happening in the game.


Problems/Questions:

My UI seems too cluttered:

I have a feeling I can always free up some more space and cut down on the size on some of my UF's, cooldown timers, anything. The SS doesn't do my interface enought justice seeing as no combat text is shown and no enemy buff/cooldown timers are shown and no raid frames are shown. The general look is still there, but in combat it generally tends to feel more cluttered. ANY, and I mean ANY suggestions regarding freeing some more space in it are extremely welcome.

Enemy debuffs:

I need all debuffs visible in PVP, for better execution of CC effects on my enemies. I need to see my rogues blinds durations, sap durations, my hunters wyvern/scatter durations, mages CS's, poly's and everything. This leads to me leaving debuffs fully enabled on my target frame. This gets very annoying in PvE, especially when I play my DK alt, I can't make heads or tails of 40 debuffs on my target. I guess that's where classtimers get in, but I still haven't been able to find a good, functional and easily trackable spot for them yet.

UI scaling:

Is there a sweet spot? I've always played with it set to 1, tried Caith UI for 2 days, my eyes started hurting/tearing/something. She's got around 0.8 iirc, and my eyes just couldn't take it. Everyhing seemed out of focus, I couldn't set the right size of fonts I wanted etc etc. What are the general pros and cons of UI scaling in comparison to scaling addons themselves and/or changing the size of UF's, bars, minimap? But what I'm most concerend with is the sweet spot issue. Is there a specific scale where fonts and generaly the ui doesn't seem like it's out of focus?

Castbars:

I like my big castbars, because they help in PvE and PvP. But I'm starting to get the feeling I would save a lot of space just enabling and setting up UF castbars in Pitbull, although I would probably lose a lot of visibility with that. I'm thinking of dropping quartz alltogether and just sticking with Pitbull. Good idea/Bad idea? Suggestions?

Focus frame:

I like the layout where player/target are somewhere around mid-screen because I feel it helps to keep my attention around my character, where I feel I should be looking to stay with the action. However, with the current position of my focus frame, in PvP I'm not sure I even notice it's there :S. It feels awkward, too far away from the middle, I'm never "seeing" it although I always have mages and/or opposing healers focused to try to avoid incoming poly's, mana burns etc. Any positioning suggestions?

I would specifically LOVE to hear from people that are still rocking the Blizz UI positioning(top left). What do you feel is the downfall of mid oriented UF's? Any other UF positioning suggestions are welcome. Also, suggestions/ss's of unorthodox UI compilations/positionings are very welcome! A quick view of the last few pages of post your UI netted me with only IshtaraUI as really beautiful and acceptable :S


Anyway, I'm sorry if questions like these have been adressed, haven't been here in a while, and these forums tend to fill up pretty fast, and I will be browsing these forums for solutions in addition to hoping people have been in the same problems as I am and have some quick fixes/suggestions and/or are willing to discuss them


Also, I seem to be having a significant performance drop in comparison to having an addonless wow running. I can really feel it. Seeing as I don't know what addon(other than questhelper which is really a resourcewhore) could be causing this, or if it is an addon at all rather than addons as a collective, anyone know of a known culprit amongst my addon list that usually drops performance?

P.S.

I'm REALLY sorry if this is the wrong topic for this kind of post. If this belongs in the UI Help Center/Somewhere else feel free to delete/move it there.

Last edited by Jedo : 03/13/09 at 3:22 AM.

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Old 03/13/09, 10:58 AM   #571
Ajuga
Piston Honda
 
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Undead Mage
 
Jaedenar (EU)
That's a lot of questions!

My UI seems too cluttered:

I have a feeling I can always free up some more space and cut down on the size on some of my UF's, cooldown timers, anything. The SS doesn't do my interface enought justice seeing as no combat text is shown and no enemy buff/cooldown timers are shown and no raid frames are shown. The general look is still there, but in combat it generally tends to feel more cluttered. ANY, and I mean ANY suggestions regarding freeing some more space in it are extremely welcome.
Downsize, downsize, downsize. The castbars should still be visible even with 50+% reduction. The largest of your unitframes could be reduced 20+%.
About the timers and scrolling combat text: filter away as much as you can without losing vital information. Perhaps you already have the information through another addon?

Enemy debuffs:

I need all debuffs visible in PVP, for better execution of CC effects on my enemies. I need to see my rogues blinds durations, sap durations, my hunters wyvern/scatter durations, mages CS's, poly's and everything. This leads to me leaving debuffs fully enabled on my target frame. This gets very annoying in PvE, especially when I play my DK alt, I can't make heads or tails of 40 debuffs on my target. I guess that's where classtimers get in, but I still haven't been able to find a good, functional and easily trackable spot for them yet.
Do you have to see and recognize every debuff on your enemy? If not, then size them down a lot and show the vital ones through timers or DogTags.

UI scaling:

Is there a sweet spot? I've always played with it set to 1, tried Caith UI for 2 days, my eyes started hurting/tearing/something. She's got around 0.8 iirc, and my eyes just couldn't take it. Everyhing seemed out of focus, I couldn't set the right size of fonts I wanted etc etc. What are the general pros and cons of UI scaling in comparison to scaling addons themselves and/or changing the size of UF's, bars, minimap? But what I'm most concerend with is the sweet spot issue. Is there a specific scale where fonts and generaly the ui doesn't seem like it's out of focus?
I have it at the lowest setting. You'll have to tweak every fonts size till they're just right no matter what UI scale you're using.


Edit:
Focus frame:

I like the layout where player/target are somewhere around mid-screen because I feel it helps to keep my attention around my character, where I feel I should be looking to stay with the action. However, with the current position of my focus frame, in PvP I'm not sure I even notice it's there :S. It feels awkward, too far away from the middle, I'm never "seeing" it although I always have mages and/or opposing healers focused to try to avoid incoming poly's, mana burns etc. Any positioning suggestions?

I would specifically LOVE to hear from people that are still rocking the Blizz UI positioning(top left). What do you feel is the downfall of mid oriented UF's? Any other UF positioning suggestions are welcome. Also, suggestions/ss's of unorthodox UI compilations/positionings are very welcome! A quick view of the last few pages of post your UI netted me with only IshtaraUI as really beautiful and acceptable :S
Having the most important UFs in the middle/bottom middle is, in my opinion, the way to go. If you don't notice your focus frame it's a simple matter of making it bigger and positioning it better. I think Caith did it pretty well (between player and target along with tot).

Last edited by Ajuga : 03/13/09 at 2:51 PM.

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Old 03/14/09, 3:39 PM   #572
7Sam
Von Kaiser
 
Tauren Warrior
 
Darksorrow (EU)
It is a bit tricky to get all the necessary information properly displayed while not blocking your entire view and its even harder for pet classes.

I tried finding a way to display the following information while not blocking my entire screen:
* Party: Name HP+Mana+Cast Bar.
* Party's pet: Name+HP.
* Party's Target: Name+HP.
* Focus: Name+HP+Mana+cast Bar.
* Focus's Target: HP+Name.
* Target: HP+Name+Cast Bar+Buff\Debuff+Cast bar style Player made Debuff (such as rend\corruption\hamstring etc).
* Player: HP+Mana+Name+Cast Bar+cast bar style duration for some abilities (player made, such as Battle shout), + Debuff.
* Player's Pet: Name+HP+Mana+Cast Bar+Debuff.
* Player's Pet's Target: Name+HP+Cast Bar+Debuff.
* Minimap.
* Two(2) chat frames (one for whisper\guild\raid\party, one for the rest).

3*18=54 Action Buttons at bottom, 2*12=24 action buttons at left side.

* Omen or Proximo depends on raid or arena.

My first several attempts ware.. trashed shortly after brief play session, and I now resorted to using Paint for my UI blueprints, so, what do you think of the following UI? (warning, Microsoft Paint used by a noob):


http://i44.tinypic.com/qzpv83.jpg

Last edited by 7Sam : 03/14/09 at 8:43 PM.

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Old 03/14/09, 4:49 PM   #573
Shaewyn
Piston Honda
 
Draenei Mage
 
Malygos
Responding to the questions about 'UI bias' (top vs bottom)

I think that this is largely a preference thing, obviously.

However, for myself, I think of it this way (mage perspective):
I have several UI elements - non-world elements, that is, that I need to see.
- My Mana (my health as well, but this is less important.)
- Enemy Health
- My cast-bar
- Specific buffs and debuffs for both me and my target (procs/cooldowns/critical debuffs/etc)
- My cooldown timers

I vastly prefer to have all of these clustered close together, so I can see all necessary information with minimal distraction - it's not good to have to go searching around the screen while in combat looking for relevant information.

Because, being ranged DPS, most of the stuff I need to know about in the world (as opposed to UI elements) is over there or obvious (see: giant blue void-zones), I find upper-center screen area is better used for visibility.

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Old 03/16/09, 8:50 AM   #574
sun
Glass Joe
 
Blood Elf Death Knight
 
Ysondre (EU)
This is an UI block i've been working on that has everything important around at a glance :
Addons that you can see : Underhood+Dominos+LBF pHish+Inline Aura+Omnicc+Acherus Runes.



Now for the rest of the UI, at the moment i've put a chat frame on the left and on the right of this block, but this could change, the most important part is the "playerframe/targetframe + actionbar" block since everything else flows from it (in my view).

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Old 07/06/09, 9:37 AM   #575
Led ++
Piston Honda
 
Led ++'s Avatar
 
Undead Death Knight
 
Draenor (EU)
It seems this thread has died but still I'm going to post. Let's just start with the actual UI.

http://img2.abload.de/img/wowscrnsho...09_1536pu4.jpg
(which shows Target, party, threat, buffs/debuffs, target castbar, ... just look at it)
Also note that this is made purely out of a tanking perspective!

The positioning of Unit Frames:
Probably THE most important feature of the UI. My own player frame is in the middle and my target frame is more to the side. This for a few reasons:
1. It doesn't make the middle of my screen filled up with to much information.
2. As a pally AoE tank I have to know if I'm tanking all the mobs around me, therefore the nameplates. With the target frame in the middle it would be to crowded.
3. In short, I dont care about my target's status that much. I just have to know if I'm tanking him or not and if my debuffs are up.
Colour scheme is pretty straightforward. All the frames have the same Healthbar colour and Power type colour. The difference between Healthbar and Background color is big enough so I can identify my and my targets HP really fast. These days you see way to many people using black Healthbar colour and Dark Grey-ish as background colour. This imo makes it rediculously much harder to be able to quickly see your and your target's or party status.

Names are in classcolour, this is more than enough for me to know what kind of Mob I'm tanking. Alot of people use a classcolor text, classcolor healthbar and a text stating the class. Seriously, don't do that. I also dont show level. I know what level range mobs are, plus the tooltip can provide this information if you really want to know.

Debuffs:
Target debuffs on top, buffs on the leftside of the ToT frame. I show 30 debuffs with mine always first. Normally I also only show timeleft text ONLY on my debuffs. This for easy monitoring. I also show 14 buffs, but I barely have to use it.

My UF's text is:
MissingHP : MaxHP / MaxMP : CurMP
I dont care how much MP I have lost, I only care how much I have.

Party:
My party frames are always uber easy and small. Since I'm tanking I only want to care their HP status (which the healthbar provides) and if they have aggro or not. If one has aggro his name text will change red and/or show deficitHP. Otherwise it just shows name text in classcolor. I know I could tweak them a bit so it's even more easy to spot if they have aggro or not but at this time it's easy enough + The nameplates provide me this information to.

Nameplates:
The nameplates show the most important information in a very easy way:

1. The mob I have targetted sticks out more then the rest.
2. The name for easy monitoring of what the mob is.
3. The raid icon so I know which mob my party should be nuking.
4. The status of the mobs through Healthbars. Healthbars are quite small as I hate the huge nameplates blizzard has by default.
5. The status of my aggro, being the most important feature. Yellow means I am high on threat, no problems. The green-ish means I'm losing threat and will lose aggro if I dont do something about it. A red colour means I have lost aggro (not shown on the pic as I'm an uberleet tank) and the mob will attack another player. I failed, I have to taunt.

As you can expect, in a party environment the nameplates are a core feature of the UI.

Cooldown tracking:
The cooldown monitoring is right beneath my player frame in a single line. I know, it can get cluttered, but I know my skills. I know the rotation so even when looking at Hammer Of The Righteouss I can estimate how long my Consecrate will be on CD to. It's just to give me a quick glanse.
People like Rob will probably say that CD timers on your actionbars are better. Well I make my UI's both for functionality and good looks (Sue me) and CoolLine looks better and works good. You could show actionbars if you wanted. It's just personal feeling.

Buffs and debuffs:
Another important part in my tanking UI imo. The most important buffs (like Holy Shield, Redoubt, Divine Shield, Hand of XXX, Divine Plea and a few others) are shown right underneath the CD tracker. Makes tracking the CD and Duration of specific spells uber easy, plus I dont have to find the most important spells in a list of let's say 30 buffs.
Buffs that will expire first are always tracked first. Some people have all of their buffs (30 minute buffs, 10 second buffs) just placed randomly. Why on earth would you do that I wonder.
The text color is also based on timeleft.

Debuffs are right beneath my most important buffs. Also for easy monitoring. I only show 10 debuffs with the idea being when I have more then 10 debuffs something is very wrong and I'll probably die anyway. Textcolor is based on the school of magic. (poison = green, magic = blue, ...) Obviously for curing when I'm solo'ing.

Threat:
While the nameplates are for AoE tanking, the threatmeter is more useful for in depth information of my current target or when single mob tanking is the case. I use no bars as I find that way to bloated and it fills up your UI like crazy. I just show the name, the threat% and the value in short. It lets me quickly now how far I'm above the rest of my group, giving me the ability to save on spells or not. Simple but all the information I need without bloating my UI.

Castbars:
The picture only shows the target's castbar. My castbar is beneath that one and is smaller in height + shows no text at all. If you don't know what you're casting, you're doing something wrong. I dont use Icons as I have the text.
My castbar also has a different color, making it easier to track. The focus castbar is above the target's castbar, also a bit smaller on height and showing the same text as target's castbar, the colour again is different then both mine and my target's castbar for easy monitoring.

Scrolling combat text:
I dont show ANY SCT beside the damage I do. The AoE damage is also disabled as it can get VERY spammy with a prot paladin at times.
I dont care how much damage I get, which debuffs and buffs I get, how much I get healed for, .. as all of this information is available somewhere else in a more easy way. (UF's, buffs, ..). I only use blizzards default SCT for the damage I do, mainly to see if mobs are immune to some spells, to see if my HoR or SoR got dodged, missed, evaded, parried, whatever.

Actionbars:
I dont use them (well ofcourse I do but they are hidden). Everything is keybound. I know my keybinds, I track my CD's in a different way. I only show 1 "little" actionbar on the bottomright showing my Blessings (even they are keybound btw), the Hand of XXX spells (also keybound) and some things I just have to click once in a million years like seals, Greater Blessings, Undead tracking, Resurrection, you get the idea.

Conclusion:
If I may say so myself, I find my UI one of the prettiest, clean, minimal yet functional UI's out there. I show all the information I need to know in a easy to track way. The things I dont have to know I dont show. My design is useful to use and think I managed all this while still making the UI pretty to look at.


I thank you if you read it all.

p.s. Sorry for my bad english sometimes, but I'm struggling with a hangover.

http://thepiratebootybay.com/ THE best Addon site out there!

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