Question: Why does everyon INSIST on using labels!?!
 

Why does everyone INSIST on using labels!?! It's nice, cool, but now I'm starting to think that everyone is using it just because it's there. I'm going to PROTEST and make a UI with no percentages at all... except maybe xp, because even I want to know how far I got to go to hear that sweet DING! :)

I'm gonna make an interface that A) Looks good ( I know I know, purely subjective but ya), and B) isn't too astoundingly large. I still have to work on that bigfonts interface for that one guy who can't see very well.

-TJ

I think it's cause some people are just use to the lables?

Personally, I'm not that big on putting '%' everyplace where the number is a percentage. Some are just obvious, you see these changes in my small UI mods.

Other places might need them for telling what's what, and some are just there for looks.

I guess seeing a number is a little more acurate than looking at a colored bar. Sometimes that acuracy it not always needed. I mean the gauges are all percentages so no real need for a % label but displaying the current HP with the HP gauge helps becuase it is more informative. Yeah the extra text like the "%" and "/" is more there for when giving to other people. When you create something yourself you tend to know exactly what it is, yet a complete stranger may not know what you were trying to display with out some sort of label to go with it.

I know, utility... I just wish people would be more creative. I've only seen alot of "player window with x gauges" types of mods, or putting things where they're more useful... sure that's great, and I like those, but personally I just want to see one that *looks* spectacular or at least really cool... something that makes playing the game feel cooler just because the interface isn't so blocky... hopefully I can pull that off with my mod. I might end up just redoing all the graphics. o_0

-TJ

Well i'd have to say i agree with you . What i want to see now , is a full skin ........not a mod with the current skin

Make a whole new guage . spell book , thacking window..................... some ideas make the spell book a scroll , or an anichent tome (pardon spelling it is late :)

Say for Druids make the guages a wodden staf that an ivy vie wraps around as it fills or unwraps from as it lowers .

You have alot of room to play with in the image dept . use it :) and if labels happen to be needed or will enhance it then fine use em :)

Well as for the labels, I thoroughly enjoy the added precision I have. I still want to be able to use the "two bubbles" terminology I am used to, but otherwise knowing down to the percent is just nifty IMO.

And as for the real skins, Tenaka, there aren't many people with both the technical skill and artistic ability to create something like that. I'm betting these things will come along, but take longer as it's gonna most likely be two people collaborating instead of one geek hacking through the night :)

I'm looking forward to seeing someone come out with something really exciting and innovative. We're probably going to have to give folks a few weeks to roll out something really radical. I've already seen a few glimpses of brilliance (the Quartz UI, of course. And Oguler's spell book skin). I think as the weeks go by, we're going to see some amazing stuff.

As far as the percentages go, I definitely agree that they are being way overused, at least for my taste. Although I must admit, the first mod that I loaded into my UI was a player info window with a numerical mana percent. That number in particular is one that I work with so much when I'm in group, that I really found it useful. Beyond that though, the bars are just fine for me. When I'm down to one bubble of health, I don't need a numerical percentage to confirm for me that I'm in trouble ;)


Thil

I personally am trying to get all the labels out of my UI as possible, but love the %s on everything. I am also trying to make all windows as small as I can without being too small for my taste, to save space on the screen.

Well the way I look at it is: What is the purpose for the skins? In my world the skin must improve the utility of EQ. Numbers have much more utility than gagues etc.

The artistic skins will be nice for a while but in the end anything that steals space from my game window without providing me with some useful information will quickly be left behind.

That's why I'm working on two different mods.

The first one is a normal looking interface, with improved visibility over the default skin, and everything compacted down as much as I can get it without reducing the sizes of fonts, icons, etc. I'm making custom buttons, window graphics (extremely tedious), and moving things around to maximize space. Basically, it's a lot like the one Vertebrae did, cept I like big gauges without hash marks, and I like to fit the text inside the gauge to save space.

The other is a necro themed mod, with completely necro themed graphics. The window graphics are even harder for this one, and I'm having a hard time deciding exactly what I want things to look like, but I'm determined to make it as sleek and compact as possible. Expect to see a lot of black shiny buttons and borders made of bone!

just my 2 cp :

Jauges by themselves give more information than a percentage : if you use jauge with small line as zoom in current buble , 1 % is 1 quarter of a bubble on the thin line... No need to say 1 quarter of bubble is more than 1 pixel wide and so u have a better precision with jauge. Even a simple jauge is more accurate , since they are more than 100 pixels wide ( ok , i admit, for this one , it is much easier to look at a percentage than to count the number of pixels ).

What i feel is each one have its interests :

ultra fast check with simple jauge ( u only have to take a really fast look to know how good / bad it is ), when time really counts.

fast and accurate measure with percentage when u consider u can lose some time , but not too much, for a good accuracy.( u have to read 1 number for that )

Ultra precise measurement with zoom-integrated jauge when time nearby does not count , where u can have better than 1/1000th measure ( takes longer due to the need to assimilate 2 distincts informations and calculate the one you want from that)

So yes, there is no need to put percent values everywhere, but there is some places where they are useful.

Of course , what i said here is about non resized jauges but even if you do really big jauges , it would be hard to put more than 3 or 4 screen-wide jauges where some people want 6 of them , not counting grp and grp pets.


Psychogears : for xp for example , i feel that is one of the less interesting percentage , because the jauge is much more accurate and time really doesn't matter when u read XP.

and still for Psychogears : I just love the jauges u made and shown on forum, and yes , with such nice loooking jauges , percentage is just useless :)

Form vs Function
 

In regards to Jaasper's post, I think that utility IS important. However, if it looks stupid, I am going to get very bored with it very fast and try to change it to suit my personal tastes. That's why people make skins. It also helps people get more into character and that makes the game more enjoyable for about 90% of the EQ players. There are of course those who play the game just to kill things and duel, (aka fantasy quake) but I would like to think they are the minority in EQ.

Maybe this is only happening to me, but when I have a gauge and a percent label showing the same thing, they always update at the exact same time, meaning that the gauge is no more or less accurate than a percent label, even with the extra line in the middle.

I'm thinking that for values like mana, a percentage is calculated by the client, then that percentage is used to update the gauges and labels. If the actual value were divided up by the number of pixels that could be drawn, I'd see the point to using gauges over percent labels.

I just think it's a little easier to read a % label and less chance of a mistake being made in a tight situation like on a raid when the difference between 10% and 20% of a mobs hps can make a difference as to success or failure. It's also easier to read when you tell someone to nuke at 60% health, they don't have to guess and maybe cast too early or late and botch the whole thing. Or when you say heal me at 25% and they are busy and in the commotion misread the guage and wait too long to heal you and splat, down goes MA and possibly the whole raid. Just my 2cp.

I have to agree with Kizzestra, if you are raiding an endmob with like 1.000.000 HP, 1% is still 10.000 HP, and you can't read between like 23% and 22% when you look on a simple gauge. It just makes things a bit easier, and as a cleric I can heal more accurate when I see the mob hits my MT for like 20% each hit, I can estimate when I cast my CH and it's easier for me than a gauge ... I even wish that I could see it with two decimals for the xp bar in level 59 :)