Presentation
What do you need to know? That’s an important question. How much matters to you every second? Less than what you are displayed every second you have the game on probably. Do you need to know when your party is all at full health? Do you need to know when you are at full health? Do you need to know when you are at 95% health? Do you need to see your entire array of skills while out of combat? Do you need a bar for crafting available all the time, even when you can’t do any crafting?
We are presented with a lot of information all the time. In fact, I’ve talked about this before. I scrapped that though. Still too cluttered. I don’t need all that information. I don’t need boxes, telling me all this information about how much mana I have or when my party members don’t need healed. I only need the information when I need to use it.
Currently we just throw everything out there at once and tell people to find what they are looking for. No wonder newcomers don’t know where to start. There’s other options. Think about how you can use your game world to take over elements of the interface. I think it’s about time we started trimming the fat.
ui, user interface, interface design, mmog, mmo gaming, presentation, game design
April 4th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
[…] I mentioned this briefly before. Talked about only for a moment and in the more strict relation to newcomers to (MMO) gaming. Still, with recent talk of raid interfaces I am forced to re-look at where I stand on the issue. […]