Matt Firor owns up!

[cHodAX]

VE3D: Lastly, what do you feel is the biggest overall issue in Dark Age of Camelot today? This can be something you feel needs to be improved, fixed or changed altogether.

Matt: The interface. Ours was pretty good when it launched, but now it's old and creaky.

You can catch the rest of the interview here....

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/703/703676p1.html

It gives something of an indication of what Mythic have planned for the rest of the year.

 

[Ryuno]

VE3D: Since there's no collision detection for players, combat is sometimes colorful as players circle strafe, run through people to avoid line of sight and other fun stuff. Is that considered cheating or just playing well?

Walt: It's a group game. A single player (who doesn't take advantage of the things you mention) is at a disadvantage in the face of these tactics versus a group.

Sanya: Player collision is the greater of the two evils. In an RVR game, the potential to grief with player collision is higher than the existing, actual grief without it. Those tactics are cheesy, but not illegal. If there was a law against lame, the internet would collapse.

Yvonne: I don't like them personally, as a player, because my own response time isn't very quick!

Matt: Playing well. The downsides of collision detection far outweigh any benefits.

uhu

 

[Aeris]

sounds as though the next expansion will cater for rvr......

 

[Aiteal]

VE3D: Lastly, what do you feel is the biggest overall issue in Dark Age of Camelot today? This can be something you feel needs to be improved, fixed or changed altogether.

Matt: The interface. Ours was pretty good when it launched, but now it's old and creaky.

The interface?
The man needs glasses

 

[Shafu]

Too bad, I was hoping for that "newer frontiers" expansion, but there is a lot of promising stuff mentioned nonetheless. Im really looking forward to see the changes to RvR and/or the frontiers.

 

[Marc]

oh great, more new classes

 

[ztyx]

I want another TOA expansion with new bonuses 3x10% more damage for all and some nice challenges

 

[Bugz]

I want another TOA expansion with new bonuses 3x10% more damage for all and some nice challenges

I hope to God that is sarcasm

 

[Escape]

Matt: The interface. Ours was pretty good when it launched, but now it's old and creaky.

Sanya: Players have taken up some of the slack and done some great custom UIs, which is one of the reasons we've retrofitted a lot of customization options. Oh, wait, I'm supposed to answer the question now. There's a list on my whiteboard. Seriously, I don't use my own opinions - my "vote" always goes with what the players are most vocal about in any given patch cycle. Right now, people are asking for RVR to be slowed down, the crafting system to be revamped, and the UI to be redone.

DAoC has one of the better UIs, it's clear and compact unlike WoW's bulky interface which covers half the screen!

 

[Raven]

nothing at all wrong with the UI, not sure what he is on about.

 

[Jeros]

Walt: Our polls on this topic indicated people wanted a whole new reason to go to war, with new quests/classes/races, and an increase in character power/high end content. (That language is taken from the polls, by the way.) So, that's what we're going for. At the same time, we can't increase character power too much a la some of the past expansions, and we've learned our lessons.

Good!

 

[GReaper]

DAoC has one of the better UIs, it's clear and compact unlike WoW's bulky interface which covers half the screen!

But for a new player, the DAoC interface is quite illogical in some places and unfriendly in others. I've [post=2695409]posted about this before[/post], although Mythic hasd made many improvements (such as ingame maps), the interface for guilds is still quite poor.

The fact that the UI only shows 21 buffs at the top of the screen is one of the annoying things with DAoC, this was fine near the release of the game - but adding loads of other buffs/debuffs has caused this to be a limit which needs increasing badly.

 

[old.Whoodoo]

I do hope hes not thinking of going the bling route some MMOs like WoW went, all looks a bugger all functionality. IMO the UI in this game is simple and effective, and with the great custom skins about (MXN, Derida etc) can be made exactly what a player wants or indeed needs.

I will say certain things need changing, the buff blocks dont need to be quite so big, taking a large portion of your screen, or the ability to hide them might be nice. The /map window doesnt need the huge frame it comes in, and an even smaller less obtrusive version would be nice.

All in all, theres little wrong with it, perhaps they are just referring to the stock one that comes with the game.

As for player collision, thats a toughy, liek they say, its hard to make comprimise, personally, I say give massive penalties to anyone straffing during combat or for 2 seconds after straffing too.

 

[Mey]

nice read.

 

[Ctuchik]

DAoC has one of the better UIs, it's clear and compact unlike WoW's bulky interface which covers half the screen!

u running WoW in 640x480 or something? the default UI isnt much bigger then DAoC's is

its when u start adding those "useful" addons u cant see anything.

 

[Ctuchik]

The fact that the UI only shows 21 buffs at the top of the screen is one of the annoying things with DAoC, this was fine near the release of the game - but adding loads of other buffs/debuffs has caused this to be a limit which needs increasing badly.

not if the buff icons will be as big as they are now. having 3 rows with buffs + debuffs is annoying enough as it is.

 

[Escape]

u running WoW in 640x480 or something? the default UI isnt much bigger then DAoC's is

its when u start adding those "useful" addons u cant see anything.

In DAoC, the group-health box is a nice little square for 8 players.
WoW's health bars for 4 players take up 6 times as much space and that's topped by the player's status above it.

You need to fiddle around with addons and what not to make the interface usable.


Advanced option management in DAoC has alot of loose ends. They could do with a revamp and a nice graphical UI. The actual design of the UI is fine.


But as Sanya said in that article, they obey the whine!
A few teenagers played WoW and were like "cool! look at my fat player status and portraits on all health bars! Mythic gifv plz or I cancel subs kktnx".

 

[Void959]

The UI is fine for anyone whos used to it, and actually more thorough than most games imo, however for newer players it must be a bit daunting. Just think of all the slash commands that you have keybound or type without thinking about it, these would not be the slightest but obvious for new players and is one of many issues that make DAOC a hard game to start from scratch. Ideally they will make it so the default interface is simpler and more intuitive but keep all the existing slash commands and give the option to use everything as it currently is, for all experienced players.

 

[Golena]

I wonder if he didn't mean the actual interface (i.e. what your healthbar looks like) since most people use custom UI's that they are happy with anyway. But stuff more like the wow mail system so you can leave messages for people who arn't logged on at the moment etc. That side of the interface is behind the curve compared to the modern ones. It's more what's not there than what's there already being crap.

People mentioned the number of slash commends needed. That's partly because lots of new features have been added over the years without the UI updates to support them.

 

[Takhasis]

i dont think he means what the UI looks like, i think he means how the User interface PLAYS.

he's talking about collision detection etc, not bling gfx...