New Features and User Interface Improvements (11/17/2010)

[Gwynplaine]

Nice, several years of development and the game's only catching up to being FFXI. At least the game has things like model textures and bitmaps in from day 1. That was nice of them so were not just looking directly at 3D wire meshes.

[qpoiuwer]

I'm troubled by the fact they mentioned the gamepad.
I really hope it will work keyboard only because, again, FF11 was just like that and it also had character/camera controls

Are you sure you understand what the feature does? Keyboards are how you control your character. If you're using a gamepad you only use the keyboard to type, so you can kill all the keyboard functionality in the game and just let you use it for typing. If you use a keyboard to control your character obviously don't use this feature...

[Spira]

nice changes..
interesting how most of them are stuff that already exist in XI. it shows they'd not been leveraging much on the competencies that they gained from the previous game in the early development of XIV.. but given that its been less than 3 months and they're still pushing on free-trial period, it comes in good time.

[Katlan]

Nice, several years of development and the game's only catching up to being FFXI.

This, and why the notes look good on paper, so did a lot of XIV's stuff... and then you realize how bad it is when you actually play it. I have lost faith and have a feeling some of these new UI features will just make things more tedious then they already are. And it looks like no mention of decreasing UI lag (w/ frankly can't happen since they even admitted every command has to register w/the server)..

given that its been less than 3 months and they're still pushing on free-trial period, it comes in good time.

free trials are only good when people play the game. and statistics have shown that less and less have even cared for the free trials since they stopped playing before their 30 days was even up

[Spider-Dan]

So am I to infer from this article that /equip rings still won't work?
Or that text variables like <p1> will still be non-functional for anything but the chat log?

[Jamison]

Are you sure you understand what the feature does? Keyboards are how you control your character. If you're using a gamepad you only use the keyboard to type, so you can kill all the keyboard functionality in the game and just let you use it for typing. If you use a keyboard to control your character obviously don't use this feature...

I think what some are hoping for is the combination of the two that FFXI allowed for: character and camera control from the keyboard, while typing still opened the chat box automatically, and menus available from various control+ combinations. Unfortunately from how they worded it, it sounds like using this setting will disable most/all keyboard functionality *except* for chatting. As someone earlier pointed out, we're led to believe a lot of this is just a first step with more improvements coming, so we can hope that it will be further refined in the Dec. update.

Even if you use the keyboard, there are still "oh shit" moments where you are typing and need to react to something quickly, where doing it on the keyboard will be quicker than picking up the gamepad. This would force someone to use the gamepad exclusively (or yeah, not use the feature) but I imagine like myself there are players who use both the keyboard or a gamepad depending on the situation or whatever. My gut feeling is they have a problem achieving this with the way the game is coded since camera controls are always available even while a menu is up (so no double duty is possible with the arrow keys). Maybe they can come up with a way around it, maybe they don't think it's important, or maybe it's just not feasible with the design of the game.

[bruiser]

This, and why the notes look good on paper, so did a lot of XIV's stuff... and then you realize how bad it is when you actually play it. I have lost faith and have a feeling some of these new UI features will just make things more tedious then they already are. And it looks like no mention of decreasing UI lag (w/ frankly can't happen since they even admitted every command has to register w/the server)..

Sure it can, they can increase scalability of the server.

Not saying I agree with the decision, but having the game client just be a dumb terminal is not as uncommon as you might think.

Also, they've talked about decreasing UI lag in just about every other update / interview that they've posted. Why, now that they didn't mention it in this one specific one, does it mean they're not doing it all of a sudden?

[Hyan]

I have lost faith and have a feeling some of these new UI features will just make things more tedious then they already are.

Yet you still hang around? Is it too hard to let go?

You mean to say that expecting these sort of things from the start is not a valid criticism?

No, I am saying what is done is done and bitching about it is not going to change a thing. If you can't get over it, just fucking leave already. They can not make it right for these people no matter what they do from this point onwards.

How do people imagine the control scheme could work with the way the game is set up? At the very least, you need to have access to 1-10 keys at all times, and if numpad is reserved for moving around you can't use that either.

[Spider-Dan]

I think what some are hoping for is the combination of the two that FFXI allowed for: character and camera control from the keyboard, while typing still opened the chat box automatically, and menus available from various control+ combinations.

Yeah, I don't think it's a mystery that what people are asking for is a control scheme that SE has already delivered in this game's predecessor.

This is a rather common theme in XIV; people want the game to simply work as well as FFXI did. It's one of the most disappointing aspects of XIV because it seems like such an easily avoided problem.

[Katlan]

Also, they've talked about decreasing UI lag in just about every other update / interview that they've posted. Why, now that they didn't mention it in this one specific one, does it mean they're not doing it all of a sudden?

In most stuff they mentioned it when discussing the updates in general over the 3 planned content patches. Looks more like the December update or the 1st update of 2011. I'm sure they will try to do some stuff now, but since it wasn't specifically mentioned I could only assume it's planned for a later update

[bruiser]

In most stuff they mentioned it when discussing the updates in general over the 3 planned content patches. Looks more like the December update or the 1st update of 2011. I'm sure they will try to do some stuff now, but since it wasn't specifically mentioned I could only assume it's planned for a later update

It helps to read what's written, not what you want to see.

Another issue we noticed was the speed is a bit slow. When players make commands they notice some lag. We're going to improve that with the November and December patches.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...ture-interview

Looks to me more like some changes are going into both the November and December updates.

[TriColors]

My gut feeling is they have a problem achieving this with the way the game is coded since camera controls are always available even while a menu is up (so no double duty is possible with the arrow keys). Maybe they can come up with a way around it, maybe they don't think it's important, or maybe it's just not feasible with the design of the game.

Yeah, the left Shift button made camera controllable with open windows in XI, it shouldn't be all that hard to put it in XIV as well

[Kuya]

Yet you still hang around? Is it too hard to let go?



No, I am saying what is done is done and bitching about it is not going to change a thing. If you can't get over it, just fucking leave already. They can not make it right for these people no matter what they do from this point onwards.

How do people imagine the control scheme could work with the way the game is set up? At the very least, you need to have access to 1-10 keys at all times, and if numpad is reserved for moving around you can't use that either.

I don't think that the people in question will stop bitching and they won't leave, so you're just gonna have to deal with it.

[Vuitton]

Some of the responses in here are a little amusing and bewildering. The november update is not limited to only what is listed in this article explaining some of the upcoming november UI changes. Why are people acting like it is? They've already mentioned in other articles and interviews they are working on a new server distribution to relieve various types of in-game lag. I also highly doubt this is the last of the updates to the UI.

And as for all the people who say, "this should have been in from the start." Yeah, no shit. I think everyone including SE figured this out a long time ago. Thanks for clueing us in on your discovery? Why do you think SE is scrambling to fix the situation? If you have no intention of playing the game no matter how much things improve compared to when the game was released, then why are you even following the game? To see what new updates come? Why bother? They won't be good enough for you.

[Hyan]

I don't think that the people in question will stop bitching and they won't leave, so you're just gonna have to deal with it.

Obviously. Fortunately I can always bitch about them.

[Kuya]

Bitching is what forums are functionally about.

[Dooom]

And as for all the people who say, "this should have been in from the start." Yeah, no shit. I think everyone including SE figured this out a long time ago. Thanks for clueing us in on your discovery? Why do you think SE is scrambling to fix the situation? .

They're in such a tizz to get such things fixed precisely because of the amount of QQ and comments such as "this should have been in from the start". Do you really think we'd have got all these free trial extensions if people hadn't been so vocal about their discontent?

[Lysithea]

This, and why the notes look good on paper, so did a lot of XIV's stuff... and then you realize how bad it is when you actually play it. I have lost faith and have a feeling some of these new UI features will just make things more tedious then they already are. And it looks like no mention of decreasing UI lag (w/ frankly can't happen since they even admitted every command has to register w/the server)..




free trials are only good when people play the game. and statistics have shown that less and less have even cared for the free trials since they stopped playing before their 30 days was even up

It's like SE went... /facepalm SHIT we forgot to put that in!

[Arximiro]

All nice stuff, but alas, should have been there from the start.

Maybe I'm being too nice, but it makes it seem cooler for this stuff to be added in updates. It's bad that they released it early from a business standpoint, but from the perspective or someone who has been playing with a pos UI, this is quite exciting.

It's pretty cool to see the game evolve from a barebones state, since it's free for awhile I have no complaints.

Edit:
It will be possible to create new chat log tabs with unique filter settings from the Chat Filters screen. Tab display will be locked regardless of whether the log is active or inactive.

For this part, I hope they will let us stay on a tab if we move to it. Sometimes I like to just have it on one tab during exp and it will always default back to the first tab once I start fighting again.

[Hyan]

Do you really think we'd have got all these free trial extensions if people hadn't been so vocal about their discontent?

I may even go as far as to say: no.

Or that depends how do you describe "vocal" of course. Bitching on the forums does nothing, but go and cancel your subscription...