Interesting Question...

[MyMeatStick]

Posed by Higby,

What FPS game has the best user interface? Worst?

I reply'd with "One that gives us the option to move it around to our own accord"

What do you guys think?

[Stardouser]

Actually...now that you mention it, I wonder if they will let people modify custom interfaces like is done for Everquest; and you can download them?

[Grognard]

Not an FPS... but the customizability of Rift was excellent.

[Senyu]

Letting people customize is one of the most important and powerful features in any part of the game. It can be applied to many areas including the HUD/Interface

[Nobel]

Star Wars Republic Commando

[MyMeatStick]

Actually...now that you mention it, I wonder if they will let people modify custom interfaces like is done for Everquest; and you can download them?

Love the idea of designing my own HUD, but it would probably lead to some sort of exploitation and PunkBuster Would go crazy :(

[Death2All]

Letting people customize is one of the most important and powerful features in any part of the game. It can be applied to many areas including the HUD/Interface

This.


Trying hard to develop a UI that you think is good and functional for players is completely irrelevant when you allow them customize it. They should take the latter route. Doesn't matter how good or functional you think it is, someone will always want to change it. Giving the player the power to do that is probably the utmost priority when making a UI in my opinion.

[MyMeatStick]

This.


Trying hard to develop a UI that you think is good and functional for players is completely irrelevant when you allow them customize it. They should take the latter route. Doesn't matter how good or functional you think it is, someone will always want to change it. Giving the player the power to do that is probably the utmost priority when making a UI in my opinion.

My thoughts exactly.

[sylphaen]

Unfortunately, the best UIs are the ones someone would remember the least... I can't remember ever having loved a UI but I could point to things which irked me in them.

Unless PS2 is a simplistic shooter, I would assume customizable UIs for MMOs is a must have...

[DayOne]

EVE actually has a pretty good HuD which is good because EVE is ALL HuD.

[NCLynx]

Letting people customize is one of the most important and powerful features in any part of the game. It can be applied to many areas including the HUD/Interface

This.

Unfortunately I'd have to say one of my favorite game interfaces ever was my WoW one. Due to addons the amount of customization I could put into it was insane.

I don't know if PS2 has any plans for addons at all, I would doubt it as I'm sure someone would come up with an addon that could just completely break gameplay lol but it still stands. If I have even remotely the amount of customization I had in WoW, i'll be happy.

Worst interface? Early LoL, that interface was so clunky/huge/bad.

[ArmedZealot]

This.


Trying hard to develop a UI that you think is good and functional for players is completely irrelevant when you allow them customize it. They should take the latter route. Doesn't matter how good or functional you think it is, someone will always want to change it. Giving the player the power to do that is probably the utmost priority when making a UI in my opinion.

Customizing the UI also has a big impact in terms of hacking and botting. It would be wise to allow customization only to a point and limit the players freedom with that in mind.

However, rather than just coping out and answering the question with "Just allow the player to customize it", I'd put in votes for Republic Commando + Crysis.

SW:RC has a UI based around the helmet HUD design that gives a very visceral and immersive experience for the player in terms of gunplay, which is something that I have advocated before. It makes you feel like you are actually a soldier in a suit of armor rather than a camera with a gun attached to it. Not only did it help to immerse the player, but it was mostly out of the way and didn't interfere with the gameplay at all.

If we move away from the immersive experience that SW:RC offered, Crysis is a game that has a pretty clean interface. Nice small indicators all in relevant places and with a reasonable color scheme. Along with this came cool voice overs from the suit and even a well simulated augmented reality interface. The little things like this could help PS2 a great deal.

Both are good examples of how the small things help make playing the game a more enjoyable experience. An interface is more than just what you click, its how you communicate with the game world and how it communicates with you.

However I think it would be a good idea not to mix the two. Crysis 2 had both elements, a UI that was wrapped to give it depth and it shook when the player moved and reloaded. This, in my opinion, made the game look a little unprofessional because of how they were done. Not to mention the red screen and damage indicators.... Do not put these in PS2.

EDIT: And to those of you saying EVE and WoW have good interfaces, are you blind?

http://i.imgur.com/iXPjb.jpg

This has no business in the FPS genre including PS2.

[Death2All]

Words

Or they could just simply make all of the HUD elements modules that you can re-size or position like you could in first game, which worked fine.

I'm not expecting some amazing add on capabilities with PS2, I just want to customize my HUD in the most primitive way possible.

[ArmedZealot]

Or they could just simply make all of the HUD elements modules that you can re-size or position like you could in first game, which worked fine.

PS1 has a terrible interface.


I'm not expecting some amazing add on capabilities with PS2, I just want to customize my HUD in the most primitive way possible.

I'm not saying you shouldn't. I'm just saying it should stay fairly primitive to help prevent cheating and botting.

[WaryWizard]

I don't play a whole lot of FPS games, and those I did are mainly on xbox. I would say get a minimalist default with customization. Have mini map in a corner with health and ammo nearby. Chat should probably be on the other side of those. Most of the things I think should be kept at the bottom half(just my preference). For customization, you can make it where you can move stuff around(after activating edit mode so as to avoid accidents) and add a couple other tidbits here and there. I have no idea what will be part of the ui other than health ammo map and chat, so I can't add much more to it.Also, being able to change things length and orientation from horizontal to vertical would be nice(health is mainly what I'm thinking about). I could see some people stretch their health all the way from left to right.

[Death2All]

PS1 has a terrible interface.

Opinion.

I loved it. So that "statement" is void.

And whose saying it has to exactly resemble the original? They keep the current graphical interface, just let us resize or reposition it if we don't like. I really don't understand why anyone would argue against that.



I'm not saying you shouldn't. I'm just saying it should stay fairly primitive to help prevent cheating and botting.

I don't see how customizing your UI has relevance to hacking or botting.

People bot and cheat in every game no matter what. The inclusion of customizable UI isn't going to make any difference.

[ArmedZealot]

Opinion.

I loved it. So that "statement" is void.

Yup. I was just stating mine. PS1's interface was clunky and cumbersome even compared to most FPS's at launch and when it grew in maturity. Add in obnoxious indicators like the yellow COF and the red screens and it made for a bad experience. Maybe you could explain why you liked it so much?


I don't see how customizing your UI has relevance to hacking or botting.

People bot and cheat in every game no matter what. The inclusion of customizable UI isn't going to make any difference.

You are right in that hackers will hack no matter what, but it shouldn't be made easy. Allowing the UI to be customized has a drastic effect on how you receive information from the game and how programs do so as well.

[Gonefshn]

Give me a minimap you can understand, current ammo / health and my squadmates and keep it as discreet as possible. That's all I can ask.

[Death2All]

Yup. I was just stating mine. PS1's interface was clunky and cumbersome even compared to most FPS's at launch and when it grew in maturity. Add in obnoxious indicators like the yellow COF and the red screens and it made for a bad experience. Maybe you could explain why you liked it so much?

Underlined = Personal being stated as if it's a known fact.

What did I like about it? I loved the yellow hit marker. It was such a bright an obnoxious color that I could easily identify when I was hitting someone. I enjoyed it much more than the subtle hit indicators we're used to seeing in more modern games. And those red damage flashes could be toggled off by the way. I think you would've known that if you played the game a tad bit more.



You are right in that hackers will hack no matter what, but it shouldn't be made easy.Allowing the UI to be customized has a drastic effect on how you receive information from the game and how programs do so as well.

Again, how does adding customizable UI's seemingly open the gates of Hades for all the hackers and botters?


Allowing the UI to be customized has a drastic effect on how you receive information from the game and how programs do so as well.


...:huh:

What the hell? How? How does it do this???

:confused::confused::confused:

[ArmedZealot]

Underlined = Personal being stated as if it's a known fact.

What did I like about it? I loved the yellow hit marker. It was such a bright an obnoxious color that I could easily identify when I was hitting someone. I enjoyed it much more than the subtle hit indicators we're used to seeing in more modern games. And those red damage flashes could be toggled off by the way. I think you would've known that if you played the game a tad bit more.

My bad for offending you. If you enjoyed it then hopefully you can enjoy PS2's as well. Thankfully I think the new interface design is quite tasteful.


Again, how does adding customizable UI's seemingly open the gates of Hades for all the hackers and botters?

...:huh:

What the hell? How? How does it do this???

:confused::confused::confused:

I'm not going to explain how bots and what not work, there are threads that have. But I'm not arguing that the interface shouldn't be customizable, I'm just saying it should be limited. Moving your map around and resisizing it should be OK, but changing it's theme with a user made one shouldn't be.

[Death2All]

I'm not going to explain how bots and what not work, there are threads that have. But I'm not arguing that the interface shouldn't be customizable, I'm just saying it should be limited.

I think you're just hung up on this whole hacking/botting issue. The issue is neither here or there how easy it is to hack/bot. It's that it exists at all. That onus is on SOE to do their best job preventing/banning hackers/botters.

It's foolish to throw away customization to prevent hacking or botting that's going to persist anyways.

[sylphaen]

Has there ever been another FPS that had command structures and needed large-groups management information ?

PS1 did okay on that part even though there is a lot of potential for improvement.

Playing in a team is a lot about information and communicating it so if PS2 offers great systems to offer that, all is well.

For instance, sound is very important. I would love to have a dedicated voice-chat channel to open up with driver/gunners when I enter a vehicle. Having to manually bind channels to specific users on an external voice-chat tool is just a hindrance.

UI should be about providing and sharing information in smart ways. Objective locations showing up on the HUD along with status info above the minimap is a good example. Being able to turn it off when you don't want to see it would also be a good thing.

Another example who some people might say it's not UI:
in Enemy Territory, when you were shot, the screen view would turn towards the closest medic and you could see if you had a realistic chance of being revived.
in PS1, you could only see adv. medics if they had they medical applicator equipped (showed up as a + on the minimap). They could also only locate people waiting for a revive by equipping their med-app (showed up as a yellow triangle on the minimap). This meant 3 things:
- you couldn't really tell if the medic was equipping its medapp on/off to locate and revive you or just to heal himself.
- for a 3D game with a 2D minimap, it was a challenge to actually locate and reach someone before they tapped out.
- keeping the medapp out to locate people (and thereby signaling that you were committed to revive them) meant you would get shot if someone got the drop on you

That would be a good example of something that could be improved on in PS2. If medics could be seen all the time on the minimap and if you could see how far they are when you die, you would know whether you should wait for res or tap out. At least, you can take a better decision than the PS1 "when in doubt, tap out!".

Along with the release pop-up message showing up when you die with the mouse-select mode activated: my mouse-fire key was the mouse left-click so I clicked the release button by mistake countless times when it popped up during a fight. Quite irritating... For the medic too.


Similar to medics but for MAXes and engineers: in PS1, MAXes showed up with a different shape on the minimap so engineers could locate them and provide repairs. When a MAX asks for repairs, it should pop-up on the minimap and offer contextual information on the HUD for engineers. Even better, what about giving MAXes a different color on the minimap when you play engineer ? It would make staying close together a bit easier. I also don't want to hear "I need repairs" messages when I play medic (even though it provides contextual information and a greater feeling of immersion).

What about being able to customize that behavior ?

What about being able to highlight specific teammates so that it's easier to keep track of them on the minimap ?

What about offering location of ammo depos when you use the "locate ammo" key ? (I do hope ammo resupply wont be the infinite drop boxes from BF or Enemy Territory)

What about being able to see who needs transports on the minimap when you have a vehicle ? What about higlighting vehicles that are full when I look for transport ?

What about improving the vehicle control UI from PS1 ? It did not have a "kick all passengers" toggle and doing it one by one was annoying.

What about offering a finer control on who can access which spots on the vehicles ? I may have dedicated gunners that are non-squad, non-outfit without wanting anybody from my empire jumping in the seats.


While I'm sure it is a good idea to look at UI from other games to pick-up good ideas, some UI issues will be PlanetSide specific because no other game ever offered the same scale of gameplay. Now if devs want to look at specific UIs, I did like Enemy Territory's UI. It was simple to understand yet very adaptive.

[ArmedZealot]

I think you're just hung up on this whole hacking/botting issue. The issue is neither here or there how easy it is to hack/bot. It's that it exists at all. That onus is on SOE to do their best job preventing/banning hackers/botters.

It's foolish to throw away customization to prevent hacking or botting that's going to persist anyways.

Lets put it this way, it is fairly easy to get up and writing a macro that reads color values at a point, or an image at an area and does something. If you allow the user to customize their interface with their own skins, this just gets even easier. You see this type of thing in a ton of MMORPG's.

However if you disallow players from doing so, and have the UI be dynamic in terms of color and transparency. You end up forcing hackers to be more creative.

I'd rather have a decent looking interface from the get go that looks professional than be given the freedom to do too much to it.

[SuperMorto]

Posed by Higby,

What FPS game has the best user interface? Worst?

I reply'd with "One that gives us the option to move it around to our own accord"

What do you guys think?

This is something I was going to bring up a few days ago. It looks to me like you can move anything on the new PS2 UI.

but that was a good thing in PS1. You could change it as you needed.

I would like to see it in PS2.

[Xyntech]

Should be pretty possible to allow for UI customization without allowing addtional loopholes though, as long as the actual customization options are very cosmetic.

Things like positioning and scale, or removing unwanted clutter should be possible, and would be very welcome.

They could have official hud variants as well as customization options.

[ArmedZealot]

Has there ever been another FPS that had command structures and needed large-groups management information ?

PS1 did okay on that part even though there is a lot of potential for improvement.

Playing in a team is a lot about information and communicating it so if PS2 offers great systems to offer that, all is well.

For instance, sound is very important. I would love to have a dedicated voice-chat channel to open up with driver/gunners when I enter a vehicle. Having to manually bind channels to specific users on an external voice-chat tool is just a hindrance.

UI should be about providing and sharing information in smart ways. Objective locations showing up on the HUD along with status info above the minimap is a good example. Being able to turn it off when you don't want to see it would also be a good thing.

Another example who some people might say it's not UI:
in Enemy Territory, when you were shot, the screen view would turn towards the closest medic and you could see if you had a realistic chance of being revived.
in PS1, you could only see adv. medics if they had they medical applicator equipped (showed up as a + on the minimap). They could also only locate people waiting for a revive by equipping their med-app (showed up as a yellow triangle on the minimap). This meant 3 things:
- you couldn't really tell if the medic was equipping its medapp on/off to locate and revive you or just to heal himself.
- for a 3D game with a 2D minimap, it was a challenge to actually locate and reach someone before they tapped out.
- keeping the medapp out to locate people (and thereby signaling that you were committed to revive them) meant you would get shot if someone got the drop on you

That would be a good example of something that could be improved on in PS2. If medics could be seen all the time on the minimap and if you could see how far they are when you die, you would know whether you should wait for res or tap out. At least, you can take a better decision than the PS1 "when in doubt, tap out!".

Along with the release pop-up message showing up when you die with the mouse-select mode activated: my mouse-fire key was the mouse left-click so I clicked the release button by mistake countless times when it popped up during a fight. Quite irritating... For the medic too.


Similar to medics but for MAXes and engineers: in PS1, MAXes showed up with a different shape on the minimap so engineers could locate them and provide repairs. When a MAX asks for repairs, it should pop-up on the minimap and offer contextual information on the HUD for engineers. Even better, what about giving MAXes a different color on the minimap when you play engineer ? It would make staying close together a bit easier. I also don't want to hear "I need repairs" messages when I play medic (even though it provides contextual information and a greater feeling of immersion).

What about being able to customize that behavior ?

What about being able to highlight specific teammates so that it's easier to keep track of them on the minimap ?

What about offering location of ammo depos when you use the "locate ammo" key ? (I do hope ammo resupply wont be the infinite drop boxes from BF or Enemy Territory)

What about being able to see who needs transports on the minimap when you have a vehicle ? What about higlighting vehicles that are full when I look for transport ?

What about improving the vehicle control UI from PS1 ? It did not have a "kick all passengers" toggle and doing it one by one was annoying.

What about offering a finer control on who can access which spots on the vehicles ? I may have dedicated gunners that are non-squad, non-outfit without wanting anybody from my empire jumping in the seats.


While I'm sure it is a good idea to look at UI from other games to pick-up good ideas, some UI issues will be PlanetSide specific because no other game ever offered the same scale of gameplay. Now if devs want to look at specific UIs, I did like Enemy Territory's UI. It was simple to understand yet very adaptive.

I like a lot of the ideas here, especially having an automatic channel to gunners and passengers.

I wonder if there is any room to innovate the squad display to where it doesn't just list the members and health? That's a ton of screen real estate for something that is fairly static information.

ET is good inspiration here to for being dead with a chance of revival. I hated how you just had a progress bar in PS2 and the camera just hovered over the corpse.

A lot of the other indicators, like MAX's asking for repairs should show up on the 3D spotting indicators. But you should be able to toggle it to empire/squad only to prevent spamming.

[Graywolves]

Just let me move my UI around however I want.

I'll set it up for my optimal play style.

[RawketLawnchair]

Perfect example?

GuildWars.

The UI in GuildWars eventually had the possibility to re-size and move every part of the UI.
And if you wanted, there was a skin mod to change the appearance of it all.

Sure, the mod wasn't official, but it wasn't gamebreaking.

[BorisBlade]

EDIT: And to those of you saying EVE and WoW have good interfaces, are you blind?
This has no business in the FPS genre including PS2.

You are completely wrong, first WoW has to display a 100x more in the UI than PS2 does, so thinkin it would fill up the screen like that is just stupid. Second, WoW was fully customizable is the point people make, which you totally did not get apparently. You can have it look like that cluttered shot, or Mine which had very little at all on screen, to other custom UI's such as one that looked like somethin from Halo, or other games. They have so many ways to display the info its insane.

If you were really into customizing your UI in wow you would know this and understand why people like the WoW ui, it was very amazing because there really wasnt any limit as to how you would display things.

[Daimond]

I liked how far you could customize the WoW hud. Were able to change combined windows stats and such the way you wanted even back drops. I made a number of them myself. Even in EQ2 and they seemed to be taken well by people. But the big thing to these was the ability to also change the bars to numbered stats or both. Be able to make group windows horizontal or vertical ones.
But I did like the fact in Rift you could hide/unhide, re-size and move and what not to any windows in the game, but only in game.

The biggest thing I could see making an impact to HUD design though if it went the way of WoW is the ability to pull in stats from the SOE PS2 website on yourself and lay in on the HUD at all times if you liked. That is if there is different info in game then out.


One thing I forgot to mention that MUST BE fixed, is the ability to ajust the FONT size in the game, although being able to change the type would be great idea as well. in PS1 thats the one thing that pissed me off is when I went to a 1080p 26" and then a 32" you could not read the damn Chat hardly at all with out leaning in :(