I’m interested in knowing what you all believe is the best user interface in an MMO. (Can also be standard RPGs.)
Which MMO do you think has the best UI? Why?
What would you like to see in your ideal interface?
Mod-able? Able to be arranged on screen? Right-click, context menus? “In your face” system messages, or in-chat messages?
What’s the best hotbar design? What’s your favorite design for inventory windows?
Let me know your thoughts!
They all suck IMO.
Skyrim was probably the worst I have seen In a long time…
I’ve been playing with Drathal’s HUD (later merged with ice hud) for 5 years during my WoW time, and never could use another interface. To the point where I don’t know if I could have continued playing WoW without it 
For the skill bars, I really love Guild Wars 2’s one. Simple, dynamic, and not too crowded.
World of Warcraft has the “best” UI because you can completely customize it to whatever your tastes or needs are. However, if you don’t have the resources to throw an entire team at the UI, that’s not really all that realistic for most games.
Overall, I like a UI that lets me move elements and especially lets me resize them. Remember that not everybody has the same size monitor and some of us older gamers can’t handle tiny text and icons. (There have been games I simply could not play because the UI is too small for me to see comfortably.)
I haven’t really played many MMOs. I’ve played WoW. I think they did a good job with their pouch system, and how items need to fit, etc. I like that you can have different sets of row buttons…I had one for just walking around and another for combat… etc.
However… Personally… I’m kind of tired of rows of icons… I feel like every time someone posts (on here) “check out my MMO” the first thing I notice is 8 empty boxes at the bottom of the screen.
Related… Love or Hate the Windows 8 metro UI. At least they are doing something different. It’s nice to break away from (again even on our phones and tablets)… Rows/columns of icons.
Firefall, you can move everything around, scale it, do w/e. Most of the components have options and if you don’t like 'em you can easily create your own with LUA + xml.
EVE online. Just very clean, and very customisable, as complicated as it is, it still makes the game very usable.
Not helpful.
Only slightly more helpful. But! If we’re going the “worst UI” route, then ok; what didn’t you like about Skyrim’s UI? Any thoughts on how you’d do it differently?
I partially agree. The standard “hotbar” (along with the lower left chat, upper right mini map) does tend to make all MMOs look the same. However, they do also say that you shouldn’t change things unless you have a very good reason. People are used to those layouts and straying from them without a very good reason may confuse your players.
Interesting perspective. We live in an age where everyone is trying to make all of our buttons smaller. Having large icons can make a game look too child-like or amateur. Scalable UIs is definitely a solution to this (though tricky to pull off).
I like AION and Guild Wars 2 MMO interfaces.
Skyrim was an MMO?
Apart from the fact Skyrim doesn’t apply to this thread, I liked Skyrim’s UI.
Now, anyways, I really like Everquest 2’s UI.
I did also say that standard RPGs count too, since they tend to have a lot in common with MMOs.
Guess I might have ready a bit more… closely.
Just keep it simple with an easy overview.
Well I have studied interface design, and I’ve been designing user interfaces for several years. I know the basic do’s and don’ts, but I think we can all agree that an MMO interface is a much larger beast than most other designs. There’s a ton of information that needs to be accounted for; from inventory, to character profile and equipment, guild information, party info, chat windows, world interactions, etc.
Obviously, you want to give as many options to the user as possible, to allow them to set up their interface to suit their play style. But most players keep the default layout. Those same people will even complain about the layout if they don’t like it, stating that they shouldn’t HAVE to rearrange it themselves. So the default options are very important. And, of course, too many options will overwhelm your players.
I am very much a fan of “alt text”, right-click context menus and a “need-to-know” layout. I also like to have several ways to accomplish an action or get to a particular window. For instance, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to search to figure out how to leave a party. Personally, I think that if I click on anything related to the party (other party members or icons, my own avatar, or some window related to groups, guilds and parties) it should give me all of the immediate options for dealing with parties (setting my chat to party speak, leaving the party, etc.)
I’m trying to solve a similar problem. I’m looking for the most desirable UI for RPGs, and I like Skyrim’s because it’s clean and simple, yet not perfect but works. Now there are lots of people complaining about it, and some mods have emerged to “fix it”. Look at these screenshots, which one is the best for you?
The last one looks pretty neat, but for me it’s overloaded with a huge header. Why do I, as a gamer, want to see such a huge navigation menu? If I opened the inventory is to see all the items, just that. I can navigate using shortcuts or a proper navigation menu. I like the one in the middle because it’s more similar to the original, but introduces some handy functions.
So, how would you please most players?
Stole the words out of my mouth.
I may be the minority (or the majority that refuses to play most MMOs precisely due to this) but I hate the 10 or 8 hotkey bar. At most I feel you can only reach 1-3 quickly enough to feel natural, 4 pushes it a bit but is doable. When you get to the 5th, you are already either using the mouse or too conciously thinking about it, breaking inmersion big time.
I think combat wise, I like a bit the model DCUO went for, where you mainly use left/right mouse buttons in different orders to execute combos, and each pattern has it’s own combo move (and you learn/unlock these combos as you level.)
I want as few things in my screen as possible but In an MMO I say a mini-map is a must. Actually… this applies to almost every open world RPG.
Chat… I hate chat. Getting worse with newest MMOs where combat is so active you cant type without halting all combat.
I think issue with all the Elder Scrolls since Morrowind is how they are aiming at a console usable UI first and just port it for PC. They go a bit extreme on Gamepad Oriented navigation and a lot of things end up being unnecessarily hard to navigate for a system that has a mouse attached. Ideally the game would have a distinct UI for PC and Consoles.
I think most people here are not thinking console (not until the Ouya arrives and proves itself anyways) so I’d say for now best bet is simply to make things clean but also easy to navigate with point-n-click methods.
EverQuest 1’s UI was my favorite by far. It wasn’t ‘pretty’ since it was designed a long while back, but you could customize each and every window in-game to suit your needs. They could be dragged, resized, font made larger, different colors, etc. Game UI doesn’t get any better than that. (Not to mention the metric shit-ton of window options you had)
I agree. I understand the purpose of hotkeys, and I know that a large number of people use them, but I never have. My hotbar has always just been a convenient place to hold buttons for me to click.
That was the one thing I liked abut DCUO; the combo cutton abilities. Of course, it was designed with consoles in mind, but that system also caters to the button mashers who aren’t necessarily watching to see when a certain series of attacks activates a new ability for chained attacks, etc. They just want to wildly click, kick some ass and look good doing it.
Agreed… even if it makes no sense in a fantasy game.
Ironically, I think chat is what breaks immersion most in MMOs. I don’t think it needs to be removed. Obviously, its a social game, so you need to be able to talk to other people. But why the crap am I “hearing” people 3 blocks away? And how is my elven companion talking to me from another continent? Did they have text messaging 1000 years ago?
