Readability - an ongoing problem

Community General Discussion
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Before I go on: What is readability?
Readability is a measure of how easy it is to understand the situation by looking at the game world or other obvious HUD elements. Readability measures how easy it is to see and follow the flow of the game. Note that readability does not mean making it easy to make the right decision, it simply makes it easy to see and understand what’s going on.

Shadowlands has major readability issues. Most effects, including very dangerous ones, simply have no visual distinction. Many abilities hit for wildly varying amounts. Some heals can do anywhere from 5000 healing to 105k healing and some damage abilities can do nothing in one case and then, with some CD’s and some procs, nearly one-shot people. Frostbolt, for instance, can deal 5000 damage or it can blast your face off for 30k and be casted so fast that a second or even third within 3 seconds is inevitable. Arcane has a combo where it AoE’s people for hundreds of thousands of damage per target, though setting this up is very elaborate.

This has to be solved. It’s not fun in PvP, and I would argue it’s not fun in PvE either, or at least it doesn’t actually make things any more fun.

The new Dragonflight talents just got released and I had a look over them. Looks like it’s basically just everything we already have but repackaged, and you can do some truly wild builds, at least on feral. It’s clear that this will shake things up quite a bit, which is why I think there’s a great opportunity to address reability.

Although some problems are going away, it looks like new ones are being introduced. For example feral has 3 different Berserks and an Incarn, and these are basically going to auto-construct a Swifty macro for you as you pick up multiple. I strongly assume they’re all going to look the same except the debuffs and buffs applied will be different, but that doesn’t aid readability much. There’s also still tons of spells that changes the damage of various abilities by outrageous amounts - it’s easily possible for a rake to do 4 times the amount of damage as it does at other times in the current trees.

I want to bring attention to this because I’m tired of playing the game in the world of weakauras, and others are using GladiatorlosSA, because they simply can’t friggin’ see what’s going on. I’m not having fun trying to figure out that I’ve got Sepsis on me when it’s got no visual effect that I can see and I have around 10-15 debuffs on me just because I’m fighting an asssassination rogue and things like that.

Especially now with a new UI, it appears readability is on the minds of Blizzard, so I really think there’s never been a better time to clean it up and stop making talents like… those. The system is fine, but the talents themselves are… well…

Clean it up…

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Going to move this to the top as i think its a good post.

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give example i challenge you.

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I use none fix your interface [Preformatted text](https://imgur.com/a/oM0BbYe)

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Well, incarnation or CA. You basically get buff AF but there’s no visual indicator at all that they’re running. You have to check their buffs or have an addon to warn you that they’ve been used.

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False you get buff and blue stuff under you if you sue glyph if you are moonkin you get extra armor and blue stuff under you and buff.
and as feral you have a lot of blood from your cat and buff.

Yo people should fix their interface.

I agree basic ui sucks and we have debuff/buff crap show we should have shown important buffs/debuffs only and something like tabard/stamina which last hour somewhere else so we can see buffs/debuffs better.

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No CA:

CA active:

What “blue stuff”?

I look exactly the same with CA active as I do when it’s not active.

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Move, will show tonight I am not on pc

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I just did.

There’s no difference or it’s so minuscule that you can’t easily notice it.

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I have ill make video just for you tonight, and before some dirty minds I am talking about how incarnation looks in wow.

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Readability in WoW has been a nighmare for a while. But it’s gotten better. Sapphiron and Magtheridon’s ridiculously wide cleave radius still gets me in Classic.

More readability would be nice. FFXIV does a good job at it.

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Rainbow diarrhoea

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Eh, not really. You can be miles outside of the projected ability and still get hit. I’ve used rescue on people well before an ability goes off and they still die from it.

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FFXIV has some latency issues in that regard. But the readability is great.

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It’s not a latency issue. It’s how they’ve built the game. It’s intended functionality.

I wouldn’t say they’re doing a good job at it when you think you’re out of it and still get hit by it and that’s an intended function.

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I’ve pretty much never had this issue out side of when my latency is bad.

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Where do I start?

Let’s start with my own class and spec: Frost Mage.

There is no visual indication that Brain Freeze has procced, and since Brain Freeze can turn Frostbolt into a crit and a crit Frostbolt with Deep Shatter is serious business, the Frostbolt can do anywhere from 5k to 18k and it’s not that easy to tell. Of course you can tell when the frostbolt+flurry strikes but by this point you’ve taken the damage.

Fingers of Frost, similarly, has no visual indicator. If it is active the damage of an Ice Lance more than quadruples.

Icy Veins technically has a visual effect in the form of some very faint frosty lines going towards the center of the character. This might have been OK in tBC where visual noise was much lower, but now it’s wholly inadequate - and that brings me to a separate issue of readability which I will discuss later.

There’s also the set bonus. It is not clear when the next Comet Storm will proc. Speaking of which, there are also no visual indications of either of my legendaries.

How about almost the entire Soulbind tree?

Warlocks just wrecked half the ladder with their set bonus as well. I have not been able to find any visual indicator for their set bonus, so suddenly Chaos Bolt effectively strikes twice, in simple terms, and people get blasted with no warning.

One of the most annoying ones I know of is the Holy Priest cloak that makes you survive angel form. I simply have no idea if it’s equipped or not until something has been healed and a buff with up to 100 stacks appear (based on the % of other people’s HP they’ve healed) - and by this time it may be too late.

Now, let’s discuss the secondary aspect I alluded to earlier: Visual noise.

World of Warcraft currently has a lot of visual noise or clutter. While some abilities have no visual indicator at all, others have such intense visual markings that they obscure other, more important effects. For example if I’ve got the Triune Ward spell it creates no less than 3 quite visually strong shields around my character. If I’m under attack by a monk popping cooldowns I will usually be hit by 5 players, 3 circles will appear (spinning crane kick) and a huge tiger is obscuring half of the scene, and meanwhile my combat log will be spammed with so many damage events that the death log will be unreadable, and even if it was readable several of the effects that makes this do a lot of damage are invisible, and if I do not turn off damage text on myself a literal red wall of text will appear on my screen. And I do mean literally - dozens of pieces of overlapping text. It’s completely mental.

Something has to be done about this, and looking at these new talents nothing is being done about this. If Blizzard wants to emphasize aggressive play and high damage then it is absolutely critical to address readability. Otherwise it just all turns into frustrating and often unpredictable 1-shots, and we’ve seen that in high-end play and even the tournament. A lot. So imagine how Joe 1500 feels.

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Isnt that thing which gives 2 debuff on target ?

Rpg game ? you do not know someone trinkets either.

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why would anyone play with dmg text lol i have it off .

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Yes, when it is cast, by which point you’ve already taken the damage or at least been set up for it. Too late.

What about RPG game makes it okay to completely ignore readability?

I understand a player wants to keep some tricks up his/her sleeve and reveal them to use them. I also understand the concept of Rogues. But this is far, far too much.

We all used to because it provided readability on how much damage you just took.

Now it just creates an opaque wall of overlapping text, or alternatively fills up the entire screen or cannot be read due to small text size, pick your poison. It’s emblematic of the problem I’m trying to convey to you…

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