[MUD-Dev] UI Design in MMOs

[rjw]

Derek Licciardi wrote:

> As I stated above, 99% of the people that play will never know
> that the UI can be so much more.  I was in EB Games this afternoon
> and I picked up a copy of WoW for the hell of it.  I noticed on
> this box the following statement:

>   "A user interface that is so intuitive that you may not even
>   need the user manual."

> Sure you won't need the user manual.  You'll need a Lua scripting
> reference and an XML specification document to get the UI to do
> something that you would like it to do.  Again, my point is that
> the UI should come ALREADY capable of doing half the stuff the
> players are supposed to program it to do.

I definitely disagree with this last statement. The default UI
should strike a balance between ease-of-use and richness. Generally,
it should do what 80% of the people playing the game want it to do,
not half of what it's capable of.

The simplistic nature of the UI is very appealing to me. Well,
was. I quickly outgrew it, but I don't lump myself in with the
common game player or computer user. And when I outgrew it I went
looking for ways to tailor the UI to my play style.

And I whole-heartedly agree with their statement about not needing a
manual. One of the comments I've gotten from people being introduced
MMOs is the pain of learning how to control everything. WoW does an
excellent job of distilling the interface down to something
manageable while allowing for incredibly complex interfaces for
power-gamers.

> For the vast majority of the people, including myself, the UI will
> never be touched or re-scripted to do something other than what is
> stock and allowed through the in-game dialogs.

I do agree with you that most people won't go out and script some
LUA to modify their game experience in any way, but there are people
out there producing UI mods and distributing them. From what I've
seen, these are in pretty heavy use.

> It's not my job as a customer to develop their UI anyway.  This
> whole thing intrigues me because the game has been touted as
> extremely newbie friendly and the UI is anything but.

Here we disagree. I think the UI is very friendly to
newbies. Simple, clean (except for the action bar artwork... a total
Diablo bring over). If anything, I think the interface is *too*
tailored to people with no experience with such games, but then I am
biased with years of game experience.

> I wonder if the positive views on this thread are skewed from many
> years of game playing and designing experience because the
> responses were surprising to me.

Perhaps so. :)

>> Come at it from the Warcraft angle and it makes more sense, I
>> think. Not only is WoW trying to be a great MMO, it's trying to
>> remain consistent with the Warcraft series, both in terms of
>> story and interface. Gameplay almost feels like you're in a
>> cinematic Warcraft III, and I love that.

> I'll give you this but an MMO and Warcraft III are entirely
> different software beasts.  The former is orders of magnitude more
> complex and this design decision is akin to putting MS Paint's
> interface on Photoshop 7.

Yes and no. The underpinnings of an MMO may be more complex, but I
think that's where the argument breaks down. In many ways an MMO is
simpler: you're controlling one avatar on his wandering about a
vast, virtual world. In WC3, you're controlling armies and heroes as
they wander a much smaller, plot-driven world. But WC3 had quests,
it was a 3D world, there were spells and items and inventory
management.

> Is it the most intuitive UI to date or the most intuitive
> gameplay?  Could the gameplay be making up for what otherwise is a
> sub-par UI?  I'm assuming you're an MMO veteran.  Are any of your
> playing buddies MMO newbies?  Remember, this is supposed to be the
> single most newbie friendly MMO on the market, or at least that's
> how it is advertised.

I am a long-time MMO veteran... and there are definitely quibbles
and little things I think could be done to make the UI more
intuitive. That said, I do think that WoW is, without a doubt, the
single most newbie friendly MMO on sale today. I do have a bunch of
friends for whom this is their first MMO (Or FFXI was, but that
hardly counts since it was a console UI grafted on to a PC -- let's
talk difficult to use), and they've picked it right up and are
running with it.

>> Why spend dev cycles developing interfaces and/or UI components
>> that you don't know are going to get used? Build a community that
>> can fill in the wholes after release.

> They lost a couple customers that I know before we ever had a
> chance to know the game could be made better with work on our
> part; work I'd likely not feel I was required to do since I paid
> for the game.>

It's hard for me to fathom that after 10 hours of play you've given
up entirely on the game because you don't like the interface, which
you can customize w/o scripting by hitting the forums, or wowwiki
and downloading a mod or mods that would improve your perception of
the game.  WoW has quirks but they're not unreasonable. I've played
games with far, far worse issues. :) The things you mentioned, such
as scroll bar location, etc, just aren't deal-breakers for me.

Obviously, YMMV, (and does!)

rjw
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