What’s wrong with DDO.

I have been playing in the Dungeons & Dragons Online head start for the last couple of days, and I’ve got enough time in under my belt to be able to comment on it. For the attention deficit in the crowd, the capsule summary is: It’s a fun game, but it’s a generation behind in UI design.

I can’t stress enough how important the UI design issue is though. After WoW, players expect a certain set of capabilities. They just expect that the engine won’t get in the way. Are you listening, Turbine? These things have to get fixed or you haven’t got a prayer:

• Make a sound when you take damage from falling. I actually couldn’t figure out why my hit points kept randomly going down, until I realized that jumping off a stack of boxes can hurt you. And honestly, if you’re going to make it that easy to kill yourself by jumping off of something, why not make it a little harder for me to accidentally do the action that causes it, eh?
• On a related note: Make all feedback more obvious. In a game where you actually require some skill/coordination to drive the UI, you have to make it more obvious when you are doing the right thing.
• Of course, that would have made combat training easier, but even given that, you need a better combat training tutorial. I went through the battles with the three golumns about five times before I even started to understand the mechanics — I don’t actually think I’ve got it yet.
• Don’t allow me to select my character by clicking on him. I have died several times because I wanted to select a particular enemy target that happened to just be standing directly in front of me. If you do think that selecting yourself on screen is important, at least make it option. I’ve played games that have it, and games that don’t. The ones that don’t work better. Trust me.
• Don’t invent new keybindings when the entire MMO community knows the existing vernacular. You want to know what my first grouping experience was like in DDO? Someone sent me a tell that said “Do you want to join up?”, so (of course) I hit the “R” key to reply “yes”, but instead I (auto-)ran off the doc I was standing on and killed myself. “nm”, said the person who asked to group.
• The inventory screen! Bah! It’s horrible. No auto-sorting, things disappear out of slots and get filled in with other stuff so you can never find the item you just picked up (because the icons are the size of pinheads even when playing at (only) 1280×1024). You can’t even figure out whether an item is worth using unless you select it, then expand the focus gem (normally hidden because it takes up too much screen real-estate), then click on the magnifying glass. Did it not occur to you to put this on a hover? If you want to see what you should have done, take a look at the auction interface in WoW.
• You know all those NPCs that take random loot drops and give you something in return (like the mushroom collectors)? Did you really think making me click through every option and have them say “You’re making me angry” was a useful UI? It’s slow and it breaks immersion badly. How about just only giving me the options that I actually have the items for? Wouldn’t that have made more sense?
• For God’s sake, give me a macro capability. I’m not asking for much, I just want to be able to /sit by hitting the X key. (Actually, I’m still hoping that this capability is in the game, and I just missed it — If this game doesn’t come with a decent manual, I’m going to be really pissed.)
• And, please please please, allow me to make all the on screen windows semi-transparent (and allow me to drag them partially of screen). I spend half my time with about 1/3 of the entire screen covered with windows. I feel like I’m looking through a key hole.

Anyway, that’s enough of a rant for now. I’m sure I’ll think of other things as time goes on. Stay tuned.

Update: Can someone explain to me where in “real” Dungeons & Dragons they have that unbelievably outdated game mechanic: Smashing Barrels. As a lawful good paladin, why would I smash every barrel in some poor guys house? Can you tell? Why?

Update 2: Any of you have this experience yet: get attacked by two creatures; randomly tumble around attempting to not get hit; get wedged on the geometry; try to get unstuck by jumping; not notice for a couple of seconds you are no longer attacking because jumping blew away your target; die. Turbine: On the list of absolutely must do items, please add “option to auto-target something that is attacking me”.

Note: Despite everything I said above, I’m actually enjoying this game so far, at least in part because it isn’t anything like WoW. If you want to chat with me, look for Gimlit on the Mabar server. Good hunting!