The interface design team failed this game. The maps are buggy. The chat is buggy. The Auction House interface is crappy. Half the basic things mmo users expect just don't exist, chat bubbles being one of them. Let's face it. They failed.
Now, just about everything else in this game is either glorious or good enough for launch.
Auction House interface isn't that bad, just takes some getting used to. I haven't seen any argument against the Auction House besides "I have to click on things." By all reasons, if they simply add in the functionality of searching without choosing categories it'd be really decent.
OT, chat bubbles are chat bubbles. Not everyone cares about them or for them. Myself, I just never notice them enough to care one way or another, its not like I actually read the bubbles, I still just read the chat log, especially with more than one person talking and the bubbles start covering each other up.
The Auction House interface does not let you search by item slot, for instance. Whut?
Hell, it routinely just fails to return complete search results based on its own menu options. For instance, you can put that you want to search for items usable by your companion, but it won't find anything.
I do hear they are redoing it. That will be nice.
However, I can't imagine how or why these relatively simple UI things weren't functional at launch. I imagine that level design, combat system and the game engine were much more demanding tasks. But the UI people typically have their own department.
Funny I never knew how much people liked chat bubbles. In WoW I always turned em off. Not having them never even crossed my mind until I saw so many complicating about it. Makes you wonder why they left em out.
"Peace is a lie"
Honestly I can't see why Chat Bubbles are needed. I have never used them, they completely break game immersion.
@Ghostcrawler:Some advice: [My pet issue] is why there were sub losses is one of the weaker arguments players use. Players don't have that data.
Chat bubbles should have been Implemented at launch. If Bioware has a reason why It's not In yet, It better be a damn good explanation.
This. With absolutely every interesting feature, there will be people who will be against it for whatever retarded reason. THIS is why MMOs aren't fun anymore - because devs try to please everyone.
---------- Post added 2012-01-07 at 11:04 PM ----------
Oh, because when characters stand and talk to each other without uttering a single sound and moving a single muscle is SOOOO immersive!
The night is dark and full of terrors...
I'm genuinely surprised there are tons of people QQing about speech bubbles and everyone's overlooked something even more important... COMBAT WINDOW! I want to see who hit me when so I can prepare for it. I really miss that.
"It's not what we don't know that gets us into trouble; it's what we know for sure that just ain't so." ~ Mark Twain
"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time" ~ Jesus of Nazareth
"把它放在我的屁股,爸爸" ~ Dalai Lama
I hope they introduce a choice selection of the UI features that WOW has, and then unlock the API (carefully) to allow the greater community look after our modding needs.
One thing speech bubbles does is visually see who's talking in /say easily... I find it 10x more immersive if I visually see random folk talking without looking at the tiny chatbox
I think the game right now has other priorities nevertheless its something they should add.
Any half-decent freelance programmer could have chat bubbles in the game in under an hour. I'm not joking.
I REALLY do miss my chat bubbles. It gave me instant clarification as to where a conversation takes place - and I'm not even a role-player!
That's not the only thing. There are so many aspects to this game UI that seriously irritate me - even if it is a really trivial thing such as: when you go to add a friend, the cursor doesn't automatically prepare for typing the friend name so you end up TRYING to type it and instead opening all your ruddy interfaces up by accident. Same thing happens on the launcher. Is this fixed yet?
ps: area loot and companion sell junk are AWESOME features. gg.