Apping: Your UI is more important than you think

I posed a simple question to the folks over at MMO-Champion’s boards the other day.  ”What is the most important trait you are looking for in a new team member?”

Although I did get some variations in responses, a common theme kept percolating to the top. It wasn’t exactly a cut and dry answer to the question posed but was important enough that people felt it worth mentioning as almost the litmus test to having your other, more meaningful traits, considered.

A user, who hasn’t provided additional information (as of posting), known on the MMO-Boards as CptAwesome gave this example as what not to do: http://www.abload.de/img/raidui93sjd.jpg and followed up with:

“Poor bindings, text everywhere, poor raid display, tiny DBM and spell timers in silly places, tiny action buttons that are obviously being clicked, chat is hard to read, mage without a damage meter, 50MB of memory being used, standard tooltips, why are there 4 unit frames all showing Ragnaros?, awful debuff tracking, etc etc. Basically, everything is wrong.”

Hedleyazg another poster said “Generally people that spend time setting up a custom UI know more about the game/their class (Speaking from experience recruiting raiders).”

When pressed as to what made a UI pass or fail, Zulandia made this post.

“Not looking for addons so much as they have the information to get the job done effectively. That normally means effective keybinds that could actually be used (if I see a rogue with sinister strike bound to ‘p’ or something they’re clearly just trying to pretend they keybind or something because you’d never actually use that), a non-cluttered (or logically cluttered) layout that leaves plenty of room to see things happening on screen.

As Hedley pointed out I would rather see a default UI with good keybinds (and raidframes pulled out nicely if needed) then a UI with all the information you could possibly want from every addon under the sun but with no room to actually see.” Zulandia

So, what makes a good UI? One that will pass the proverbial sniff test of these discerning leaders? I asked posed this very question to MMO-Champions’s users and here’s how it breaks down.

Clean: Make sure the interface leaves room to see the actual game.

Raid Frames: Even if you’re DPS you really need a clean set of raid frames that show the important buffs/debuffs/hp/mana.

Unit Frames: Enemy cast bar, target of target, and a clear HP and energy/mana bar.

Keybinds: Have them, have them make sense, and use a button addon like dominos/bartender

Addons: Don’t have addons for the sake of addons. Have addons that allow you to do your role better. Nothing more and certainly nothing less.

Remember there are lots of great fully designed addon packs over at Curse.com that can be a great jumping off point to your shiny new raiding UI. Happy apping. Hope this helped! ~ Jay [Frontallobe]