Interface Suggestion List

[[divZ]six7]

Alright I thought I'd write some stuff down that seemed odd for me / that I would like to see in the game. Most of the stuff concerns the interface/chat of the game, I left all the gameplay stuff out. Some of the stuff may seem useless, and as such its priority shouldn't be that high. Feel free to add suggestions.

MAIN MENU
- When I log in and I can reconnect to a game and click RECONNECT, I won't be able to access the CC. I usually ignore that popup just because I can't access the CC. I rather join games via friendjoin right now because of that.
- The message on the exit dialog (Are you sure you want to leave?) is in the upper left corner in its own bar. This should be centered right above the buttons. That is how dialogs are usually done. (Bogo)

--> Move that button the other way around. It should be Quit <-> Cancel (Thanks mejobloggs)

OPTIONS
- When we rebind a key, give us a popup indicatign what key we just made unbound. Sometimes I don't know that I just bound that function to a key that was already in use, thus leaving the other function that is now unbound very sad.
- DONE: Give us a 'Always Show Healthbars' entry in the options. Having to toggle Healthbars on and off everytime we restart HoN is tiresome business.
- Give us a 'Show FPS' Option (see below)
- I know I won't get it but never the less: DIFFERENT options for different scroll speeds. If i move the cam with the cursor keys there should be the possibility to have it zoom slower/faster than when I move to the edge of the screen OR click the middle mouse button. Reason why I don't think I'll get it is because this was BADLY needed for Savage 2 but still I had to QQ because I didn't get it.
- Allow us to disable the swear filter.
DONE: - Save settings before patching. It's cruel to make us rebind each time we update.
- Allow us to disable the narrator voices, I can imagine some people find those annoying.
- Add an option to hear yourself during voicetest (Thanks JoNa)

LOBBY
- There should be a "Reconnect" button in the Lobby itself. I don't wanna have to relog just to reconnect. I know you can just right click a friend and joingame, but it would be better if there was a button. (Possibly indicating how long time is left to reconnect)
- DONE: Right now the playerlist in the lobby does not differ between players that are in the lobby, in a game lobby or playing a game right now. Could we have some sort of indicator telling us if that player is playing right now? If you right click you can only invite those that are not in a game. Visual indicator would be great.
- DONE 1.30: When you mouse over "No Leavers" the text gets blue. Why do all the other options NOT get blue? All the options in View Advanced get blue too, just not those in the All Heroes/etc. box.
- Could we have a button in the game lobby that leads us to Options? Right now we have to logout to access the Optionsmenu.
- When right clicking a player in the chat/playerlist it would make sense if I could unclick the rightclickmenu by clicking anywhere with a mouseclick. Right now it only goes away if I click in the playerlist (both right and leftclick) - make it so that it goes away if I click ANYWHERE.
- Add a button to bring the CC panel to the front. Right now we can only click F6, a button in the lobby would make sense. (Bogo)

CHAT
- Perform-Option for Chat: Auto-join certain channels when logging in.
- Ability to turn off the chat filter.
- DONE: Add a right click ignore.
- When I click ENTER and the mouse focus is not on chat, I want it to jump to the chat. It takes some time to point the mouse to the chat window. Same for /
- DONE: When typing /r it would be good if that /r is automatically converted to /w PERSON - PERSON being the one that last wrote me. Sometimes my /r will go to the wrong person because someone else whispered me just because I entered. That way I have a visual indicator who I'm writing to. It is like that in ... WC3? Not sure though.
- Add [Tab] functionality after /r to tab though the nicknames of the last lets say 3 or 5 people that whispered. (Thanks urai)
- Indicators like AFK to indicate if a person is AFK for longer than 10 minutes / Ready to Play / Busy (Thanks Avi1231)
- Join New Channel: Let us sort the channels by name and usercount. It's already irritating right now with that huge amount of channels.
- Indicator for activity in chat channels: Let us see if there's new stuff happening in the chat channels! Make channels that have new stuff to read for example have a red background

- DONE: Timestamps! -> There's still no timestamp on SENT whispers though.
- The ability to view IM's as whispers in game rather than having to hit F6 to view them. (Thanks Garadin)
- When selecting text via shift, display the selection (picture coming)
- Allow us to select text via mouse (click at one point, hold mousebutton, release at end)
- Add a timestamp to sent whispers
- Add a 'Manage Channel' button to manage the chat channel - a visual options window for the chat, in which you can access stuff like topic, bans, authorizations and so on - so that we don't have to do all that stuff in chat itself.
- Ability to invite users to certain channels (just like inviting players to a game)
- Allow us to disable having to join the Match #### channels (Thanks Ebenger_)
- Give us an option to make double clicking a user in a chat invite that user, not chat to him (useful when u wanna mass-invite people) - however make that an option, not a must. (Thanks MakkuZ)


GAME LIST
- DONE 1.30: Add Hover-Info for the icons (I know it's described in the window to the left, but it would make sense to show some hover-info when you move your mouse over the icons themselves)



- The text indicating "Click View Advanced below..." only has the word "View" in yellow. The button itself says "View Advanced"
- It would be good if we could get more info on a match (for example via right clicking it): 1) Some kind of 'Scoreboard' which displays the distribution of players on the teams 2) Which advanced options are in, right now we have to join to find out (no reset timer yay!) (Thanks gadabyte)
DONE: - Can we have an option to filter out full games? (Thanks gadabyte)
- DONE 1.30: The ability to filter *out* certain games based on type. I can filter on *only* EM games, but I can't show only games that are not EM. (Thanks Garadin)
- Could we have a filteroption for K/D/A stats? Or generally stats, not just noob/all/pro.
- Allow us to filter on countries - possible FLAGS for certain country-online games. Language <3 (Thanks Wihl)
- When hovering over the Advanced Options in the game list, show us which options are enabled (Thanks Elaeli)
- Allow us to filter out games based on pings. <XXms (Thanks croco)




CREATE GAME
- Add a better way to select maps. Right now it's working, but I can only imagine what will happen if we got 20+ maps. It would be great if we could add a indicator for how many players that map is made for (1v1/2v2/3v3/4v4 maps will be coming), a preview of the minimap could do well.
- When creating a game, the "Automatic" option for choosing servers almost never chooses the server that I have the lowest ping to. (Thanks gadabyte)
- Let us save settings or automatically take the last picked settings. Save those. Maybe let us have presets? (Bogo)
- When enabling the Advanced Options, we cannot hide them again. (add a button "Hide Advanced" just like in the serverlist)

CC PANEL
- Add a Banlist Tab that gives you access to your banlist (similar to the friends feature)
- It would be great if we could move the "Recently Played With" and "Find In Current Game" freely around.
KINDA DONE: Game time will be shown when you check a user's status - Add a right click option to the friendsmenu so that we can see the stats of our friends games. Stuff like duration, kda, towerslost.
- Use different colors for friends in game lobbies vs. friends in games that are in progress so you know whether or not to attempt to join a game your friend is in. (Thanks Garadin)
- Possibly allow a mouseover of a friend that is in a game show the name of the game he is in (to find out if multiple friends are in the same game etc.) (Thanks Garadin)
- On the 'Recently Played With' there is a button saying 'Add' - change it to 'Add Buddy' to make it more clear what that button is doing.
- The Recently Played With and Find In Current Game windows are badly implemented. When you have the Stats Tab open you don't realize that it's already opened and you think you bugged the game.

IM
- Online/Offline indicator for the IM window (see if the person you're writing to is ON/OFF)


- DONE: Could we get a timestamp option?
- When closing the last IM window (the little X next to their name) close the whole Send a Message window. Right now all chat windows will be gone but the parent-window will stay (empty).
- Let us rightclick the names.

GAME LOBBY
- KINDA DONE 1.30 (PSR): Add an average K/D/A to each team to make balancing the teams easier.
- KINDA DONE 1.30 (PSR): Add some stats that are being calculated on average of each player. Again, makes it easier to balance teams.
- When selecting between ALL/TEAMCHAT the option of "Team" is partly offscreen.
- Make players rightclickable (you can right click them at the playerlist next to chat, why not on the teamslots?) -> same goes for spectators/referees
DONE: - Ability for Gamehost to kick players that are still loading and/or haven't picked a team yet.
- Make the default chat ALLCHAT instead of TEAMCHAT when joining a game.
- When joining a game have the focus set to the textbox (chat), this gives us a better / faster method to chat.
- Currently checking stats is a difficult task. You can either right click the person and click view stats, or type /stats name. Could we have a possibility to make this easier? Like, toggle between the players via the up and down keys? Or have HOVER info over the player when we move over his slot in the game lobby? (Thanks 'human insane' with insane lower/upper case name combination)
- DONE: The kick button is somewhat bugged, hovering over it will trigger sound every millisecond rather than once. It doesn't seem to work either. (Thanks gadabyte)
- DONE: The host can currently kick himself when he joined a team. (Thanks gadabyte)
- DONE: A game start countdown similar to WC3 would be pleasant. Implementation: When the host press START, the countdown begins. If a player should leave during that countdown, the countdown is canceled and the host can wait until the game is full once again. Players should be unable to leave DURING the countdown, but this would prevent evil leavers that hit the dc button in the exact same moment the host pressed start. Another possibility would be to allow the host to cancel that countdown himself. (Thanks Jayblah)
- In private games people are only able to join the game by getting invited. This is not obvious for hosts that are new to the game. Add a window that states that he has to invite people, with a textbox to invite them. (Bogo)
- Add a button "view stats" - instead of having to right click, we'd click that button, and that players stats would be shown in a window thats always visible, instead of having to get rid of the CC again we could check stats way faster (Thanks LatexNinja)


HERO SELECTION SCREEN
- DONE: Add a visual indicator for whos turn it is to pick (Randomdraft)
- DONE: Add a visual indicator for whos speaking via VOIP (currently there is one in the gamelobby and ingame, but not in the heroselection screen)
- Add the option to unready. Right now it's possible to type unready in console, but not without the console.
- When I'm a spectator, it would be interesting to see some of the stats during this phase rather than hero placeholders. Stuff like amount of STR/AGI/INT heroes, KDA/WL ratios. Basically some intel so that I know what to expect.
- Let us right click the portraits of allies/enemies so we can check their stats, IM and so on. (Thanks Chief)
- Right now a host is still seeing the KICK icon in the hero selection screen, why?
- Currently there is no possibility to disconnect from this stage of the game rather than typing disconnect in console. Would it be possible to have that? It has to be restricted though. Only when it's 4v5 or some other unfair lineup the button should be visible IMO, to prevent leaving prior the game has started (Thanks FluffyM)
- Make the "Ready" button during Hero selection blink or flash when a Hero has been picked but the player has not readied for 20-30 seconds to remind them that they need to click this. (Thanks Porterhead)
DONE: - When in SD, make it visible to me what 3 choices my allies have (by hovering over their portrait for example. (Thanks kis)
- In the Singledraft mode hero selection screen, the order of the hero types is AGI, INT, STR. This is confusing because everywhere else in the game the order is STR, AGI, INT. (Thanks Casai)


GENERAL
- DONE: Scrollbars in the general Lobby/Heroselectionscreen have this button in the middle (see left side of picture), while the game lobby screen doesn't show that button (see picture to the right)


- Pressing F7 and some other F-Keys will show some devtools. I always hated those because back in Savage2 I didn't know I could just get rid of them via ESC. Remove those binds and make them bindable. Unbound by default.
- It would be good if we could bind a key to show the FPS. There is host_drawFPS 1 - make it visible in the options.
- Dual Monitor support: It would be nice if we could get dual monitor support, where the 2nd monitor is being used to display the CC panel (that way a 2nd monitor doesn't give you any advantage ingame, but rather makes things easier. That way we can keep up with IM's and chats while playing without having to flip open the screen covering the game. (Thanks faille)
- Tray notifications: When HoN is minimized, give us little popups that display us whispers and gameinvites. (Thanks Jayblah)
- Pressing ESC should close the active window, for example IM windows, game list, and so on.
- The Endofgamescoreboard should be shown outside of the game. Often we get kicked out during a nice score-read (Thanks Wihl)
- More detailed stats (Graphs and such stuff?) (Thanks Wihl)
- Add a Join Game button to the popup that appears when a friend joins a game (Thanks Knotfil)
- DIfferent Colors for people on your Friendlist if they are in a Lobby or if the game has begun. So you can easily see if a friend is playing or if he's waiting to get his game filled up. (Thanks seriousdelta)



INGAME
- DONE: Add an option (easy to reach) to toggle cg_unitPlayerColors (allies green, enemies red)
- Make cg_unitPlayerColors effect the minimap.
- Make playercolors glow a bit more. Or at least make it an option.
- Make allies glow blue, not green. That green ain't so pretty.
- It would be great if we could set the teamcolours on our own (the green and red with cg_unitplayercolors) - if you want your team to be pink and the other team blue, go for it.
- Make it more obvious who's talking via VOIP. I sometimes muted the wrong person because I didn't know who was THAT annoying. Make edges of the portrait glow or similar instead of just a tiny bubble. (Thanks Wihl)
- When a person is muted and is speaking (you can't hear him) the game will still lower the gamevolume, even though you can't hear him.
- Add tooltips to the allyportrait-buttons (Share/Mute) -> I didn't know that button was giving control - a little indicator when hovering over it should help.
- When clicking longer on the ally portrait, I want the camera to follow that hero. Right now I have to click him once, then either press V or move the mouse down to his portrait.
- KINDA DONE 1.30: Buff/Debuff time indicator. Make it easily visible how long that buff is gonna last.

Still, numbers would be better.

- DONE 1.30: Skill cooldown indicator. Allies can see how long my skill takes to be ready again, why can't I?


- Let us rate games at the end. Right now I can just submit a comment but not rate the match.

- Add a visual indicator of which person is currently disconnected/terminated. I'd suggest adding that to the scoreboard, CLEARLY greying out names that have left. Right now we could play against a 5v1 without knowing if we didn't see the d/c messages. Currently there is this skull above his portrait once he's terminated. 1) Hard to see 2) can't see it if he's just disconnected. Suggestion: Make his Name Grey and show (LEAVER) or (DISC) or something

- The portraits of ally have these green/yellow/grey dots. IMO we can't really differ between green and yellow, but actually it's vital for gameplay. Suggestion: See picture: IMO hard to see the difference between yellow and green. This feature is there for a reason: EASILY recognize if a skill is ready. If I have to get closer to see if it's yellow or green then it doesn't make much sense.


- Back in Savage 2 we were able to draw stuff on the minimap (just like in Guild Wars) - can we have that for HoN too? It was a useful feature IMO. (Thanks Froh)


- Currently it is hard to recognize which enemies you're up against. You can look it up on the scoreboard, but it's hard to see. Back in dota there was the -ma command that gave you a list of the enemies you're facing. Could we have something along the lines of that? (Thanks HuMAn_INsANe)

- Minimap toggle options: Allow us to cycle between modes that change the colour of icons on the minimap (and possibly on the field): 1) Normal colours, colourful mix 2) Allies blue, enemies red 3) Myself blue, allies green, enemies red - see WC3:TFT as a reference (Thanks P4u1)

- Make spell targeting work on unit portraits (Thanks Jayschwa - http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=2181)

- Make it somewhat more obvious that you've got a point to spend after a levelup.

- It would be great if we could see the time remaining on our own summoned units HP bars. Some sort of third bar that's running down, any indicator so we can quickly see how much time is left. (Thanks Jayblah)

- Targeting Icon: Consider allowing the team captains (i.e. blue and pink) have the ability to mark a target with an overhead floating "skull and crossbones" style icon to denote a primary target in a skirmish. If you are familiar with World of Warcraft, this would be like assigning a raid icon to a mob. Allow the assigning of this icon to be done via a keybind. The icon should always be visible and anchored to the top of the enemy hero-unit when placed. It should vanish when you lose vision of the enemy hero-unit, be it by fog of war, line of sight, or invisibility/stealth/wind-walk. (Thanks Jayblah)

- It would be good if the floating HP bars of enemy heroes were red instead of green. This should allow easier recognition of enemies on the field. (originally suggested by soultaker)

- At the end of the game when the score screen pops up, there is no obvious leave game button. I was expecting to see one maybe at the bottom of the score window, or behind it. Going to menu->disconnect warns me that if I leave I'll get a leaver percentage. After awhile it seemed to time out on its own and leave. (Bogo)

- The place where CC notifications appear is badly placed. It's exactly where enemy heroes items are, not a good place. (Thanks SyKot)

DONE: - The bottom right item of another selected hero is partly obstructed by some sort of pageflip graphic. On items with a certain amount of charges, it makes us unable to see how many charges are left.


- When selecting another player (see image above) it would be good if the primary attribute was highlighted in green, just like on our own stats (in the above example, STR)

- Ability to view your incoming damage as little floating numbers. These already happen on certain things like blocks and mana burn. Possibly add spell icons to them to help you make sense of what is going on in group battles. (Thanks Garadin)

- Let us mute pings from certain players (just like muting voice). Pingspam is annoying and there should be a method so that it's gone.

DONE: - Please add a keystroke (spacebar, shift+spacebar for prev/next) to cycle map view on events (minimap alert clicks, tower being attacked, etc). (Thanks okichi - and others)

- When going to the options menu ingame, give us an option to make that menu semitransparent - being ganked during an optionchange is tiresome business (Thanks Rawrior)

- An option to transfer ingame notifications to a text-based style instead of pop-up notifications (some sort of LOG in a fixed window - that can be moved around, that would make sure that popups werent in the way of items or other stuff (Thanks Lesson)

- Ally hero icons on the top left should have their corresponding colour next to them, just so you know (Thanks Dub)

- Voice Macros like in Savage 2, just.. without voice but text based? MIA, RE and stuff like that is nice (if youre not playing with a mic that is)

- APM monitoring? Could be sweet. Just like FPS, but, with APM. (Thanks odin607)

- Add a visual indicator that you can't use a skill (make it blink or something instead of not doing anything) - mana: blink blue, silence: blink grey (Thanks NimbleRabit)

- In 1v1 matches, the Enter key should default to "chat to all" without having to hold shift. (Thanks ThatGuyJon)

- When we have the scoreboard half-out and click on Score, then click on score again, make the half-out scoreboard stay half-out and not go away completely. This allows us to check scores for a short while and then return back to the little view of the scores.

- Add the little bubbles that indicate if the skill of an ally is ready or not to the ALTBARS. This makes it easier to see if the ally has the skill ready or not - within miliseconds. (Thanks kis)

- More things to look up in a "Detailed Stats" section, stuff like that: http://throneit.com/?p=stats&u=Darfu...ast.battle.net (Thanks Darfurious)

- There's no easy way to see your latency while in-game. You should be able to see your ping and everyone else's on the F10 screen. (Thanks Casai)


SHOP

- DONE: Use the description area of the shop for actual descriptions, right now we have to look bottomright to see the good stuff. (Thanks Buttink)
DONE: - Currently an item gets green when you have 1 of the 2 needed ingredients. (Thanks Buttink)
- Add a visual indicator that you can't afford an item (red stroke or something) (Bogo)
- Full recipe purchase button. (This is already in the works per S2Seacow) (Thanks Garadin)
- Memory option to open a shop already drilled down to where it was when you last purchased an item and closed it. It would make building things like an orchid much less annoying. (Thanks Garadin)
- The ability to purchase an item available at a shop even if you access that item from another shops list. (Example, if you are standing next to the outpost shop trying to buy a LifeTube, but are clicking on Lifetube from the Secret shops menu, you will be unable to buy it). I didn't think you could buy scrolls of TP from outposts for a while because I always tried to access them via supplies. (Thanks Garadin)
- Add an option to instantly unload your stash (Thanks totZi)


BANLIST

- Make it easier to ban someone. With WC3 Banlist you could do something like /banlast 'comment' which would automatically fill in all kinds of information if you had it set up to do so. This could probably be incorporated into some of the menus as well. (Thanks Garadin)
- Allow banlists to be shared among friends / clans.

SPECTATING
- Allow camerazooming for spectators - being fixed to this zoomlevel may make sense for regular players, but as a spectator I wanna have the overlook of whats happening.
- Add stuff that's interesting for spectators
- Remove stuff that's not interesting for spectators
- There has been a pretty good thread on the forums. Will add URL later.
- Could we get a method to broadcast matches? Like.. 100 spectators with options such as delay, assigning a shoutcaster, and so on


Last edit by Ride: 08-22-2009
Page 18

[Elaeli]

Yes please. Good list.

[Robbo]

You should edit your post to use orange instead of yellow and now such a big font, maybe one or two sizes above the normal font. It will make your post much more appealing...

Reading your post now btw since I have found a lot of things in the interface I think need polishing but haven't posted yet. Was planning on posting all of them just before open beta or something since I'm sure they are already doing everything I have noticed.

[[divZ]six7]

You should edit your post to use orange instead of yellow and now such a big font, maybe one or two sizes above the normal font. It will make your post much more appealing...

Reading your post now btw since I have found a lot of things in the interface I think need polishing but haven't posted yet. Was planning on posting all of them just before open beta or something since I'm sure they are already doing everything I have noticed.

Done, I'll add some images to demonstrate how I thought things should look like.

Yeah I think the interface could still need some polishing. It's good and all, but there is room for improvements. Feel free to add to the list.

[Robbo]

Most of your suggestions are exactly what I was thinking. The most important ones are the tooltips in server info.

[SausageEx]

Great List, especially the cooldown and buff timers, they will add more precision to the game overall, definetely wanting this.

[Elaeli]

Disagree with flashing icons btw, they are counter-productive.

Other than that, the sliders in the scrollbars are so TINY, it's a pain to grab them. Can we have some longer bars instead of the dots?

[baDa]

Perfect ideas! I Agree with everythig, i make some sugestions here:http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=987 but seems the staffs of S2 not pronounced about that.

And reading your stuffs i think this can be good to:

INGAME
- When you Level UP, when the skill selection bar must show the NEXT level of your skill, not the actual LVL.
- When one skill is in the MAX level, not show that anymore.
- When you don't have any level of target skill, the icon on the hud must to be nothing, by now, show the icon of the skill in grayscale, very equal to when you have one skill and no mana.

[[divZ]six7]

Hm, concerning that levelup stuff: I find it good that the icon shows even when I havent skilled it. I can look the skill up without pressing L.

[Kris3]

Also please add more modes to improve frames per second, as that is a very important part.

If possible also allow spell animations to come down further as i can barely deal with low graphics for 2 hr before getting a headache.

Game also gets choppy sometimes plz look into that.

[Kris3]

Also if possible allow us to drag and drop our UI's so that we can make things as large as we would like and where it is convincing to us.

[Avi1231]

The only thing I'd like to add is to your chat section. I'd really love it if there were some more status options like "Busy", "AFK", and "Up for a game". I think these are pretty self-explanatory so I won't go into explaining them unless someone asks.

[[divZ]six7]

The only thing I'd like to add is to your chat section. I'd really love it if there were some more status options like "Busy", "AFK", and "Up for a game". I think these are pretty self-explanatory so I won't go into explaining them unless someone asks.

Added. Was thinking of that too.

[[vVv]Chief4]

When players have selected their team it would be nice to be able to right click their names under the team chocies to check stats etc instead of having to find the names in the chat box and click that way. Seems to be a bit unintuitive having to do this the current way.

Would also be nice if it was easier to tell in game whether your character is Str/Agi/Ini for new players.

[Shulgoth]

MOVEABLE MINIMAP!

Like in WoW interface!

[Jayschwa]

OP deserves a trophy.

[m00b`Alone]

Most of all, I think it would be nice to enlarge the command's screen ingame a little bit, so you can make bigger Icons and put more info on the bar. And, please, make the selected unit to be the one focused in the menu. It's HORRIBLE to look at the bottom of your screen just to see enemy itens and so. It doesn't bother too much re-selecting your hero, shouldn't be a problem to anyone.

But, anyway, it's GOOD as it is, just could be better.

[[FoH]faille]

I'd like dual monitor support, if only to put the whole clan and community panel on it. that way I can could keep up with IM's and chats while playing without having to flip open the screen covering the game.

[Impeeched]

All of these are good ideas, though I'm sure S2 had a few things like these planned already.

[Robbo]

I'm pretty sure they had all of these things planned or had atleast noticed them already otherwise I would have posted about them long ago.