From WoW to FFXI, how can I make this UI suck less?

[Armando]

Re: From WoW to FFXI, how can I make this UI suck less?

Besides fail macros in general, the whole thing with being unable to change equipment if you have ANY window open (even the equipment screen - how ironic), as well as being unable to access macros if any window is open, are big gamebreakers for me.

I wouldn't mind not having a recast timer display on my screen if I could keep my freaking JA window open without it interfering with my gameplay.

[Kailea]

Re: From WoW to FFXI, how can I make this UI suck less?

My only problem with the FFXI UI is the delay in macro use. That's it, that's the only thing wrong with it imo. While other things may be nice additions, to me they're far from needed and should be able to be dealt with by the player normally. The less junk I have cluttering up my screen the better. But again, that's just me.

if your using controller (the game was designed for it btw) there is no delay, at least not with me.

[Armando]

Re: From WoW to FFXI, how can I make this UI suck less?

There's no delay in the macros showing up on screen, but it's still as unresponsive to repeated keypresses as the keyboard is (and every bit as prone to slowdowns for that matter.)

EDIT: To be clearer, macros can receive input from keyboard about as soon as they can from a joypad, the difference is purely graphical; for some stupid reason there's like a 1-second delay between the time you hold Alt/Shift and the time that the macro palette pops up. But if you have all your macros memorized, you don't have to wait.

[Kailea]

Re: From WoW to FFXI, how can I make this UI suck less?

There's no delay in the macros showing up on screen, but it's still as unresponsive to repeated keypresses as the keyboard is (and every bit as prone to slowdowns for that matter.)

EDIT: To be clearer, macros can receive input from keyboard about as soon as they can from a joypad, the difference is purely graphical; for some stupid reason there's like a 1-second delay between the time you hold Alt/Shift and the time that the macro palette pops up. But if you have all your macros memorized, you don't have to wait.

alt a ctrl have other uses besides just bringing up the macros, thats why the dely is there, so the game can tell what your wanting to do

[Grizzlebeard]

Re: From WoW to FFXI, how can I make this UI suck less?

I can understand how it could be hard going from:



To this:



And I used to run my old WoW UI as minimalistic as I could get away with.

[Armando]

Re: From WoW to FFXI, how can I make this UI suck less?

alt a ctrl have other uses besides just bringing up the macros, thats why the dely is there, so the game can tell what your wanting to do

I'm 90% sure you can still do other Ctrl/Alt shortcuts (e.g. Ctrl+W for WS menu) while the macro palette is up, so I don't see how it's necessary in any way. Computers process stuff a lot faster than on a second-by-second basis.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: From WoW to FFXI, how can I make this UI suck less?

For the OP, FFXI's UI is not WoW's UI. Most major MMO released after WoW seemed to have UI modeled after WoW, so if that kind of UI is important to you, FFXI (which came before WoW) will not be your cup of tea.

* * *

FFXI's UI is designed to work in relatively low resolution environment with a controller--PS2, basically. For what it's designed to do, it's actually not all that bad. In fact, if it was terrible, FFXI would have failed; it was released PS2 market in Japan before anywhere else, and its wildly successful beginning enabled SE to justify releasing PC version, and eventually develope a xBox360 version.

The biggest problem with the UI is how it is tied to the frame rate, which makes for a very unresponsive UI in environments such as Dynamis and large campaign battle. Most of the other thing people complain about can be easily lived with. Just ask anyone playing on PS2.

[Kailea]

Re: From WoW to FFXI, how can I make this UI suck less?

I'm 90% sure you can still do other Ctrl/Alt shortcuts (e.g. Ctrl+W for WS menu) while the macro palette is up, so I don't see how it's necessary in any way. Computers process stuff a lot faster than on a second-by-second basis.

oh I know, but my excuse is the most likely one SE would use ;p

[Ceracyst]

Re: From WoW to FFXI, how can I make this UI suck less?

I can understand how it could be hard going from:


And I used to run my old WoW UI as minimalistic as I could get away with.

How do you get your menu options to look like that? >_>' That's awesome.

[Ketaru]

Re: From WoW to FFXI, how can I make this UI suck less?

How do you get your menu options to look like that? >_>' That's awesome.

Ceracyst, are you the same Ceracyst who sporadically logs on Siren? Like Djsstorm and Emeraldzt's son?

[Ceracyst]

Re: From WoW to FFXI, how can I make this UI suck less?

Ceracyst, are you the same Ceracyst who sporadically logs on Siren? Like Djsstorm and Emeraldzt's son?

Yes. Hi Ketaru. ^_^

Nice to see you around still.

[fairyoracle75]

Re: From WoW to FFXI, how can I make this UI suck less?

Honestly I found that if I use a controller with my Computer that the delay time for Macros isn't really an issue.

Since I started playing on PS2 I was surprised with the delay with the keyboard so I got the controller. I think they set it up thinking of consoles primarily hence the controller makes many things easier.

[Lunaryn]

Re: From WoW to FFXI, how can I make this UI suck less?

The input polling in FFXI is a bit bizarre. Any time you try to do things really quickly while you're having framerate lag / background process contention will highlight this. Setting official windowed mode and then swapping away from FFXI and trying to scroll/type/etc. in a word processor will REALLY highlight it (seems FFXI controls and routes input in this scenario for some unfathomable reason). Even trying to type fast in a laggy situation will highlight it, for instance when you find that your text gets shunted to a buffer, processed laggily, and interrupted when you press return, sending most of your line at that instant and registering the remainder as if you'd typed it later.

The key advantage IMO in using a controller is simply that nothing you do with it will be processed in a radically different way than anything else you do with it. It's still possible to mess things up particularly as things get laggy, but even the unresponsiveness feels a little more natural on the controller than on the keyboard. Aside from that there's not much else to say beyond "try really hard not to overburden your system" (e.g. use more conservative settings to make framerate drops rarer, disable stuff that may try to run in the background, especially some of the more bloated antivirus suites, don't multitask, use fullscreen mode if you can (unless it'd force you into using too high a resolution, for instance on a DFP)).