Hey Frosty(or any dev that works on the UI) any word on new art assets????

Yeah I guess Skinning/Modding etc is not something people are looking for enough. I remember a poll from few years back where they asked if you use a custom skin, stock skin or didn't even know you can use custom skins with Lotro. The results were that the major part of the playerbase didn't even know the option existed. Sad that Turbine didn't ever advertise this part of the client much, if at all. Like that there's featured player every now and then on the front page there could have been featured mod too, but no. Basically only time they mentioned about it was when F2P client was about to go live and they advertised with big letters that Lua is coming to Lotro.

Turbine still doesn't realize how important funtion UI modding is, it shows from the lack of investments to it.

Not much point updating skins anymore if they are not willing to support the community. And while time passes by modders move on other projects day by day so eventually it truly is going to be a dead part of the community. Sad but .. well maybe SWTOR will have an UI that can be modded..

Thanks for the support people.

I still don't understand why Turbine seems to have done little to nothing in this area. It was one of their features and selling points early on, and now they've apparently abandoned it. It's frustrating.

C'mon, someone over at Turbine step up and get something done on this. There is absolutely no reason or excuse for ignoring this part of your game. None.

I doubt we'll see any further support for this, since people were starting to find ways to remove store buttons.

I'm sure that this will go the way of housing, with no changes or support, and I imagine that Lua won't see anything beyond what's been put out there so far too.

I just wanted to give my support.

I'm fine with a permanent store icon on my screen, I just want a more minimalist UI. An uncluttered screen provides me a more immersive gaming experience.

Anyone notice how this and the housing forum are basically ignored. We can sign petitions all day, beg, plead, etc. It won't do any good.

I may end up eating my words if they actually do something in this area when the expansion comes....but I seriously doubt it :(

As i said some months ago, just give up.

You will not get anything for the UI actually, they dont have time, or dont want to take it but any way the result is the same.

More with the expansion Isengard coming, they are probably revamping more and more UI arts assets and panels, so they will not give you anything now, and not anymore after for the same reason as now : the game will be in perpetual change so they will not bother.

This is not a critic this is a real fact.

They started with LUA at some time and now see they give up too. How many coding are broken in LUA that are not repaired even after a lot of you find the solution ? none. Even their own building exemples are wrong and not working and they never worked on it. They provided us with a big feature bag still not working, the quickslots are not working, nothing changed.

So just abandon. Give up. Sapience will one day tell you Eh guys i did not forget you i passed the word, as did before, about 3 or 4 months ago, not to lie but because he think really that they will do it, but unfortunatly the teams are too busy for an UI.

So ...

I do not agree with people who say that they have no resources to deal with these things. If they are revamping art assets, they already have them, they just have to publish them.

I am not asking for them to release it, I demand it!

Here's my vote for more art assets. Instead of putting time into making the skirmish tokens look dirtier and making the LI legacy icons harder to read, that is.

I'm not going to (try to) update my UI skin any longer, until there's a new art asset pack released.

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Originally Posted by WickedMouse

I'm not going to (try to) update my UI skin any longer, until there's a new art asset pack released.

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If you give up skinning your UI, then that gives the devs even less of a reason to release an art asset pack. Stick with it, keep letting them know things are broken and that there is a playerbase who DOES skin their UI, and DOES want to continue to do so.

I didn't give up skinning, but for many of the new elements I need to know the details :) And to try to push users to ask for new art assets too, I wait with updating :)

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Originally Posted by Chaotic_Illusions

If you give up skinning your UI, then that gives the devs even less of a reason to release an art asset pack.

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Turbine has changed many panels. You can not skin the changed UI panels. Or you can partially skin the panel. The result is a the UI panel does not work. Or it looks really bad.

From a "user" point of view, I do not use skins, because there are none available that offer more compact fellowship vitals. After 2 days research I have the impression the assets are not exposed for skinning and plugins are not possible either.

I does appear that user customization is not longer going to be supported, but nothing is ever going to said to confirm that. Its been far too long since last asset list or LUA update.

I guess User UI Mods are no longer seen as selling feature.

I think they would be more inclined to release it if they could make money off of it. >.>

Speaking only from personal experience, but I do believe that players who constantly have to deal with annoying and even exhausting to use UI elements do get bored faster. The result is zero money spend on the game.

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Originally Posted by KitsuneGirl

I think they would be more inclined to release it if they could make money off of it. >.>

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lol
ya they are probably trying to figure out a way to charge for it in the store.

Personally if i had to abandon what is actually my UI i am not sur i could appreciate the visual game in the Turbine modele.

Screen would be invaded so much by all big windows that i would not enjoy to play as usual, and i would certainly less appreciate to die because of the plain background hiding the sight of what is coming to you

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Originally Posted by KitsuneGirl

I think they would be more inclined to release it if they could make money off of it. >.>

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Maybe that is their plan. To phase out the ability of the community to make them, then make their own to sell as official extras. Run some batch processes in Photoshop and cha ching! Khazad Gold and Lobelia Pink.

Would be a terrible thing if Turbine would no loner support UI-customization, especially since the standard-interface isn't well crafted. My favourite MMO has one of the worst interfaces I've ever seen. Not only that it looks too much like elven-style, it also has some serious flaws. First of al it isn't consistent. The entire interface looks like patchwork - obviously because it is a patchwork of different design concepts. Furthermore no one at Turbine was thinking about foreign languages and that German and French consume more space than English. Wherever English terms barely fit into the interface, you have poor acronyms in German and French. Makes me wonder about the quality of the education of the devs. I've learned that during the first steps of my first education (equivalent to your college).

Anyway, I was working on a complete overhaul of the interface. New dimensions that would fit not only English but also German and French (without acronyms for every second term), a new and consistent concept for every element of the interface and some new features like the ability to use patterns for the frames. I'd have created an entire "framework" for other developers, with complex PSD-files that would created every art asset automatically. In the first draft I was using the launcher as a design-reference; with the final interface there would have been no visual difference between the launcher and the ingame-interface.

But apparently I can dump everything since we won't get the sources for the latest additions, and without these sources any further effort would make no sense :(

P.S.: My guess why we don't get the current sources: The shop-buttons! With the source files we could remove most of the shop-buttons.

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Originally Posted by Halvitur

P.S.: My guess why we don't get the current sources: The shop-buttons! With the source files we could remove most of the shop-buttons.

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if that is then Turbine could set a rule saying that we can modify the Shop button aspect but NEVER remove them or the UI would be against their rules or something like that.

And the problem is solved. But well if we start like that this would be the end of the creativity

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Originally Posted by Marguerita

if that is then Turbine could set a rule saying that we can modify the Shop button aspect but NEVER remove them or the UI would be against their rules or something like that.

And the problem is solved. But well if we start like that this would be the end of the creativity

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i would be ok with not being able to remove the buttons as long as we can re-size (to a point), move and get rid of the tacky store related gold coins/filigree.

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Originally Posted by Marguerita

if that is then Turbine could set a rule saying that we can modify the Shop button aspect but NEVER remove them or the UI would be against their rules or something like that.

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I was a little stupid when I said that. They could simply exclude the buttons or it's code from the sources.

No, I think Turbine just don't have the manpower to maintain the support for the UIs and LUA-scripting. That's the difference between comapanies like Turbine and Blizzard and one of the reasons why products like LOTRO never beat WoW*; not everything about Blizzard is great, but at least Blizzards goes that extra mile and makes sure, that they get even second-rank features like the web-presence, UI-skinning and LUA-modding right. Because they know that such features and the quality of these features make the difference in the long run.




* WoW was just the right product at the right time. There's no way to repeat the success that Blizzard had with WoW unless you create an entire new market with your product.

C'mon Turbine devs, release us some updtaed libraries pls.

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Originally Posted by Halvitur

No, I think Turbine just don't have the manpower to maintain the support for the UIs and LUA-scripting.

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It is even more basic. Turbine does not have the dollars. This is advantage that Blizzard has. I believe Blizzard gets more money from WoW in one month than Turbine gets from all sources in a year. Blizzard can afford to hire 10 times as many developers as Turbine. Put those developers to work creating niche features that are desired by a small percentage of the customer base.

Turbine is never going to be able to compete with Blizzard on feature set. Or richness of a feature. The only way Turbine can be better is because Blizzard decides to not provide that functionality. One such example is player housing. It is not a feature of WoW. Blizzard could do an awesome housing feature. Blizzard chooses not to bother.