Not liking the hidden buff bar

aganway

I'm not really liking the new format (new for me) where you have to click the arrows to open a window to find out how long your potions and so-on are lasting for and if they are even still active or not. I've given it a week or so of playing constantly but it has not grown on me, quite the opposite, it's becoming more and more annoying. I used to just glance up at the top left corner and if the usual potions and stuff I always have going were showing I looked away and kept fighting, if an icon was gone I would know it needed a new one. Now I have to wait until I am able to stop, click and open a screen, look around to see.... it's clunky, cumbersome, not an improvement on how it used to be, it just makes life harder to know how your extras are going and if they need attention. It would be nice to have the option to toggle the bar back on again so it stays there for those who wanted it there and can see how things are going at a glance, or to have it hidden as it is now, for those who like it that way, but either way a choice/tickbox in settings/UI/the window itself/no-idea, to keep it showing or hide it, that would be nice. It's really not a good change as it is now imo.

sandukutupu

I have to agree with you on this @aganway I think I can figure out an alias and keybind command to access it. But when this went live (I think it was mod 16) I said it was poorly designed because I was hammering on a buff and they seemed to be going nowhere. It takes too much time in battle to ALT click just to get killed checking on the status. I have now made it a habit to look at my buffs before engaging the enemy. The old bars went way across my screen but hidden is probably the worst idea. There is a lot I wish we could customize about the GUI displays. I do try my best. I will let you know, if there are any options on our end to make it better.

aganway

sandukutupu said:

I have now made it a habit to look at my buffs before engaging the enemy.

Yup, I now have to stop before I enter any combat or period of fighting (like when I go into a ME before I do my runes or in a PUG queue I have to take a minute once landed in the map before I join everyone and open it up and look over it to see if everything will last the whole time) and check it manually, it has become a separate almost ritual on it's own when before it was so fast, just glance up and if they're all showing glance down (literally a millisecond), if one is gone deal with it, quickly open inventory (even when in the middle of a fight because if you hold down at-will and open inventory it keeps hitting automatically and I can hit ranged while being out of the way so I could double click whatever was gone and it only took 2 seconds) click whatever has expired and then close inventory and keep fighting, it was pretty seamless. It's the not knowing without having to go through this big cumbersome procedure which is the problem. I've tried refreshing all potions/chain of scales etc at the moment a queue pops so that I don't have to worry about it when I'm in there and it's good-to-go beforehand and I don't keep anyone waiting when I arrive, but I've found that doesn't work very well because due to declines, I often have refreshed them all when I accept the queue so I have a full hour, only to have the queue fail and go back to waiting again, sit there for another half hour and waste them for nothing. I just cannot now find the time in the middle of a dungeon run to stop and open that window to see what is going on. It's cumbersome for seemingly no reason. I personally never found it a problem when that thin line of tiny icons went across in a long line, but maybe they could be put into a square shape like a tile, separate from the active powers line which is still there now. If we're talking buffs you have to manually choose and refresh like potions and such, there aren't all that many you can have concurrently anyway. You could move that independent tile/window around in the UI customize window like all the other little notification windows and put it where you wanted it or disable/hide it and use the existing clickable arrows if you wanted it hidden as it is currently. Cheers, and thx for the reply.

sandukutupu

I don't know if they have the buff bar unavailable or name is just something so obscure I cannot find it. I thought it would be;

/GenSendMessage or /GenButtonClick but nothing is showing up in here. The "trick" is you need to type at least 3 more letters to get the help list to appear. For example; " sta" brings up /gensendmessage Statusself_Buffbox as one of the possible choices, so I tried;
/gensendmessage Statusself_Buffbox activate
/gensendmessage Statusself_Buffbox show
/gensendmessage Statusself_Buffbox unhide
None worked, so I used;
/genbuttonclick Statusself_Buffbox
Still nothing there. To see a working example, you can type into chat;
/gensendmessage Menubar_Auctionbutton activate

This has the same effect as if you used the mouse to activate the Auction Menu. Once I can do this, the next step will be to link an alias and keybind to the alias. Then we can use a single key to open the menu for a quick look and deactivate it with another.

Since they grant us access to level 0 commands, it would seem sensible to post a listing of the new access points for us to use for keybinds. Instead we have to hunt and poke around in the game until we stumble upon what they already know. You can search commands using;
/cmds "search string"
However there is no searching for subcommands and many are listed without comments.

aganway

Even being able to tap a key to open the menu, u still have to often scroll the window down to see the whole list (I've tried making it larger but it doesn't save that size and reverts to the original size again next time), plus there is a whole lot of data in there you don't need to read, you already know what the icon for each potion/elixir is at a glance without having to read what it does and it's annoying and slightly time-consuming looking down the list to work out for instance what buff the chain of scales is giving and if you want to leave it for half an hour or hit it to try for a better one when you see the icon in your belt is ready to be hit, or how long u have left until your power potion runs out and will it last until the end of the next boss fight. Put it all together and it's quite a task to review it and totally inconvenient to do it while doing a dungeon run or any type of active battle, you can only really do it before and after because it takes too long and too much concentration overall. This is why it's preferable to have the tiny icons shown persistently somewhere on screen so all you have to do is glance up and if one is missing you know what to do either then and there or when you next get a pause in action. After my last comment in here I opened the change HUD menu and saw the pane for this buff window and it's all one cell you can move around, but what I think needs to happen is that the contents of it needs to be split into two cells independent of each other, one which has consumable/manual buffs which are active (the ones I am talking about which run out at various times and which you need to manually refresh) and the other all the other buffs at any given time as the window is currently.

sandukutupu

I am a huge of fan of User HUDs, but they don't grant us this option. I am guessing it is to keep the 2D graphics artist making money. There are many games that use a simple "mods" folder to toss your personal cosmetic tweaks to the UI. Some games (yes even online MMOs) allow, but do not support*, DirectX modding. The typical DirectX modding is done to display alternate graphic texture on your client only through the legal modification of DirectX texture calls. The online games, I have used this on, makes the games only appear different to me and not everyone else. Isn't that what matters in a HUD? I really wish I could use it on Neverwinter, I would get rid of my stupid reticle for starters.

*For example; Guild Wars allows it, but doesn't support it, they officially stated; To all modders: It's important to note that the parameters concerning the use of third-party programs do still apply. We cannot condone the use of such programs, and we cannot support the accounts of those who may be negatively impacted in using such programs. That's called the "If it eats your hard drive and blows up your refrigerator, don't call us" policy.