MMO Gaming

I’m changing things up this week and talking about a subject that is far more abstract than previous topics. It’s been said in interviews I’ve read (and linked to) and by the players that MMO interfaces are lacking in quality as a whole, and even more so when compared to non MMO games.

The obvious problem is so much more information is available and needs to be displayed in an MMO than in any single-player game. In the average single-player game you can push your start/menu button and pause the game, allowing you ample time to cycle through what you are looking for and do whatever you want. In an MMO there are plenty of times where this isn’t the case. The game is going to continue to go on around you even if you are scouring your inventory for that potion you need to use so the mob attacking you doesn’t kill you. Another big problem is that people play on monitors of various sizes. Those with larger monitors will probably be able to put up more information without it looking cluttered, whereas those playing on smaller monitors may not be able to add helpful information to their interface without sacrificing space for other information.

In this Repairing Gears we will be looking at interfaces from multiple games and seeing what can be done to fix the way things are displayed and how to better set up the information that needs to be seen on screen at any given time. In the first part we will set up the principles which the following posts will use to design an effective game interface. We will also probably incorporate some interface modifications available that would work well as default elements to the interface.

Let’s get right down to it and find out what principles we will use.

First we need to figure out what our interface needs to accomplish, in the most general sense. In this case, and I think it is fair to say, the game interface should attempt to display as much (relevant) information as possible in as small an area as we can fit it so that the world around you is still the focus of the game. Some people like interfaces that are more “flashy” than others, but that doesn’t have to mean we are using up space to put in random junk.

Second we need to decide which information needs to be always available in the interface, which should “pop up” and which should be put into the “menu” (the menu, in this case, would be things like video/sound options, and not the character screen, which I would classify as a pop-up element.)

Those are going to be our two main points to design the interface, and from there we will set everything up. Next week I’ll continue along with some of the first interface elements we should look at (and I’ll even try to make some diagrams, because those are fun.)

information management, ui, user interface, interface, game interface, interface modifications