[MUD-Dev] UI Design in MMOs

[David Kennerly]

Derek Licciardi [derek at elysianonline.com] wrote:

> Having spent a majority of my career in business application
> design and not games, the quality of the user interface has always
> been something that was very high up on the list of requirements
> for any software application that I was building.  How come this
> is not the case with MMOs?

In general, I agree with you that the UI in MMPs are years behind
SPs.  However within MMPs, I think WOW and COH, out of all that have
launched this year, have lead the way in closing the gap.  That's
not to say WOW and COH are headed in identical directions.  It feels
like either is trying to appeal to a different level of system
experience: City of Heroes interface feels a little more optimized
for novice players, while World of Warcraft interface might appeal
more to expert players.

> The biggest issue in WoW reminds me of the first EQ interface,
> lack of consistency.  Let's see, right click is the primary
> activity on an object.  Uh NO.

I agree about many of the mouse input conventions.  I get tripped up
on them, too.  It's not terrible, but it does seem unnecessarily
unconventional.  It could be more learnable.  It's always a tragedy
when a game makes you learn how to walk.  :)

> Everyone from Mac to Linux to Windows has been trained that left
> click or left double click is the primary action and right click
> brings up a context sensitive menu.

Well, I think half of this is a difference of opinion among game
interface designers.  Many PC games, with excellent interfaces, are
not consistent with the interfaces of PC business applications.
While all things being equal, consistency between applications on a
system is better than not, I'm not as hard on a novel interface.  If
it works, it works.

For example, Puzzle Pirates uses a radial menu, which has not caught
on in business applications (or the pie menu), but it fits into the
rest of the design, perhaps even better than a radial menu does in
Neverwinter Nights.  That's because Puzzle Pirates limits the depth
and manages the appearance of each button more elegantly than NWN.

World of Warcraft (PC) has quirks in its interface, which don't
match WarCraft or Diablo.  For example, the default configuration to
walk is to depress both mouse buttons.  A friend of mine complained
of carpal tunnel syndrome after an extended binge of WOW.  I can
feel why.

Yet the WOW interface, overall, is nice.  I won't go so far as to
say it's a Superior Design, but I personally like the fixed windows.
That's not my professional opinion, but when I play, I like it.  I
haven't, in my severely limited experience, thought: Hey, I want to
resize this window.  But maybe your insightful remark applies to
window resizing as well:

> In an MMO where my play style is different from yours, you should
> be able to get comfortable. (group vs. solo, pet vs. no pet,
> crafting.)

My beefs with WOW interface are minor.

Except for the font.  The font is going to make me go blind.  No
matter whether I set the resolution high or low, the default font
looks like 6 to 8 point print.  The interface options permit scaling
chat and scaling the UI, but even at its maximum scale and highest
gamma, I have to squint to read a quest.  There seems to be a few
sites devoted to customizing the WOW interface, but still, can't a
novice player with less than hawk vision be allowed read without
damage to his or her eyes?

As for some bugs, I'm sure they just haven't fixed them yet, like
the server table, whose headers have sorting arrows but don't
actually sort their respective columns.  In addition, a few things
could be touched up, like the who list would be a little more
friendly if it refreshed the first time it became visible (or would
that just be "freshed" for the first time?).

> Scrollbars for windows are placed on the left hand side of the
> window.  Wrong again.  Every scrollbar you see in the big three
> OSes are right side scroll bars.  Again why abandon this
> familiarity.

At least in the PC version, the quest scrollbars are on the
right-side.  Are you talking about another window, or about the chat
panel?  In the chat panel, it's more usable to have the scroll
buttons on the left side, because that's the least likely place to
accidently click while furiously clicking in the play area.  In
addition, the scroll buttons lines up with the chat menu button,
which again, is better left-justified on the screen than being
placed near the middle of the screen.  Sure, it could have been done
differently, but I didn't think the chat scroll buttons were a
Design Flaw.

> There's more.  The skill information dialog has icon based tabs on
> the top right hand corner of the window while the character
> information dialog has worded tabs along the bottom edge of the
> window.

Yeah, that's wierd.  While using it, it never bothered me, but
you're right: Even within the application, it is inconsistent.

To balance out your message (and mine), I'll mention a few things I
like in the World of Warcraft interface:

The minimap is nice.  It's not perfect, but enough to avoid getting
lost in the terrain.  Well, most of the time.  In some areas, like
Stormwind, there's too many colors for the user to color-code the
minimap with terrain.  And the you are here (YAH) marker becomes
illegible.  The minimap just needs a little more legibility, such as
a thicker border.

The chat customization is robust, which I would imagine satisfies
your above sentiment.  Maybe a little too robust for a novice
player.  But an expert player (or enough different players) may
collectively need a check box for every category of message.

The merchant dual tooltips are a blessing.  Mouse over the item and
two tooltips appear.  The attributes of the item and the attributes
of the item you already have equipped.  Blizzard analyzed the task
of comparison shopping well.  This definitely saves user-hours and
effectively directs the user's attention.

Some of the Diablo/Warcraft features are worth keeping.  The NPC
quest and training markers are, my favorite.  These color-coded "!"
and "?" above the NPC heads are elegant and effective.  These
markers alone saves countless user-hours (or user-years?) of
clicking on NPCs who have nothing important for you at this time.
Along the same lines, the lootable corpse particle systems are a
nice touch.

> Do you typically pay attention to the user interface for your game
> or is game-play (of which I'd argue UI is part of but alas) and
> graphics all that matters?

That's worth underlining:

> ... game-play (of which I'd argue UI is part ...

Indeed!

Play begins and ends at the interface.

David

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