Just the insight of a nUI user with SERIOUS CDO when it comes to interfaces

[loogielv]

First and foremost, I really do have OCD, and it really DOES bother me that its not called CDO, and no, I am NOT joking.

Having said that, this will probably be a long winded, drawn out post about my finding of nUI, since that's the way I write. I dont intend for it to be that way, but it always shapes up that way, so to save anyone who cares to bypass the inevitable wall of text, I advise you to scroll down to the section I'll label as "suggestions" so you can just get to the point, since I apparently have a trouble doing that on my own. Look at that, I just typed a whole friggin paragraph explaining how my writing is drawn out...sigh. sorry.

I have spent an embarrassing amount of hours configuring other interfaces, none of which I even remember. When I first joined WoW, I downloaded a collection pack of addons that changed EVERYTHING. I didn't even know what addons did what, and I had a user interface that was no where close to the default UI. This caused me major problems later, because I never learned how to play with the default UI. I dont know what it lacks, or what its strong points are. I'm incapable of playing on someone else's machine, because I really just dont know how to. To say I have an unnatural dependency on good interfaces is an understatement. I simply, cannot play WoW without a good interface, because i LITERALLY cannot play WoW without a good interface.

To further complicate my lack of default UI knowledge, I left WoW for a year, only to come back and find nUI that very same day. So I started WoW back up with the mighty nUI on my side, and I don't know if certain behaviors are from Blizzard, or nUI. For instance:
In certain boss fights, WITHOUT DBM installed, (ie: ToC10 or PoS) when the boss is looking at you, or going to charge, or throw a rock at you or whatever, I get a pop up on my screen saying "BLAH BLAH IS THROWING A ROCK AT YOU" or "SHIELD YOUR EYES" or "GLARING MENACINGLY AT YOUR MOM" or whatever it says. I just assumed this was nUI, since I don't remember Default UI doing anything like this. So in raids, people would ask if i had DBM installed and I would just say "i have something similar" thinking nUI was telling me when something bad was about to happen. Maybe I'm wrong, I couldn't find anything about that in the manual, so maybe that's the default UI. I dont even know.

Now, having said that, and after trying all sorts of other interfaces, nUI is King Sh*t on Turd Island in my opinion. Nothing comes close, nor has anything ever done what nUI has done.

My early dependency on addons forced me to learn more about them and what they offer, and my obsessive compulsive mannerisms have forced me to try several thousand addons and run over 180 addons at any given time. No, I am not joking.

Needless to say, nUI severely reduces that number, but I find myself still needing addons to accomplish other, probably pointless, things with my interface. I even run an addon that removes the tooltip that says "Fishing Bobber" because I dont like it. I have problems. I need help.

I'll have to list addons I use to explain the stuff I'd like to see included, because addons are all I know.


STEAL FROM OTHER ADDON SUGGESTIONS

Deadly Boss Mod integration. Now, I know DBM is really the end all, be all for boss fights, and it seems to integrate well, but alot of stuff (text and bars and such) lays over aspects of nUI and in the heat of battle you can't take a few minutes to configure everything pretty like. And when you're not in a boss fight, its sort of out of sight, out of mind and its not like it renders nUI useless during the boss fights anyway. They work together, albeit not perfectly. I know DBM or something similar is not interface work, but since the goal of nUI is to provide 1 badass addon to rule them all, perhaps something a bit simpler than DBM could be implemented? Something that actually tells me what to do when the boss is about to do something bad "GET BEHIND THE ROCK IDIOT. HE'S ABOUT TO RAPE YOU" or something, ya know?

CowTip I started using CowTip, which is an awesome tooltip replacement because it would tell if you needed a moused over mob for any of your quests. ie: the quest was "kill 4 of blank", and when you moused over a mob, if it was what you needed to kill, CowTip would put the quest in the tooltip. Someone told me that the default UI does that now, but I'm not sure. I kept CowTip because I could color code 'ELITE' OR 'RARE' when mousing over a mob and it let me anchor the tooltip to the mouse. Does nUI do this too? I couldn't find anything about it, but i wasn't looking very hard, becuase no matter what, I was going to keep CowTip for the quest info and the "elite" and "rare" classifications. If the default UI does the quest info in tooltip, and nUI gives me the chat announcement for rare mobs, the only thing I'd be missing is anchoring the tooltip. That sort of customization is what nUI is all about, so I wouldn't be surprised if I'm overlooking it, or it's in the upcoming nUI6 release.

EquipCompare and RatingBuster These should be on everyone's must use list...unless of course they're already built into WoW. I swear I should disable everything and log into default WoW and just see what I'm missing, but I wouldn't even be able to kill one mob, because everything is tweaked with hotkeys and all my little nuances. Annnnyway, I know Rating Buster isn't built into WoW and nUI should absolutely include this. Just show me what a new piece of gear will upgrade for me. Right now, I look at the RatingBuster lines of the tooltip BEFORE I even look at the regular stats. It's that important to me. EquipCompare is huge for me too, because I'm so scatter brained and obsessed on other things, I dont even know what gear I'm wearing, or whether something is an upgrade. Having both EquipCompare and RatingBuster on is an absolute MUST for me, and nUI should include both of these.

GearScore Given how widely used GS is now, I can't see how every interface shouldn't have it built in. The only issue I see is that the author of GS might use some special algorithm to determine what a characters score is, therefore you wouldn't be able to use his algorithm which would render your version of GS different than his, but my point is, adding another addon just to add 1 line to the tooltip is over the top and I'd rather you write it anyway, because then I know it would be small, lightweight and included in nUI.

Carbonite I can think of few addons that do what Carbonite does. In fact, my top 2 most useful addons are nUI, and Carbonite. But Carbonite is just so....MUCH. The mapping, the waypoints and quest following and such are amazing, but the other stuff is just too much. I think certain aspects of Carbonite, should be fine tuned and integrated into nUI. If nothing else, then certainly the mapping and quest tracking. The way Carbonite puts the quest item right in the quest tracker is awesome. I think all of these things are a MUST HAVE for a true interface replacement, but I can see why it was left out, and left in the hands of a more specialized addon like Carbonite.


GENERAL nUI ENHANCEMENT SUGGESTIONS:
the gui:
nUI really needs a gui. I downloaded the nUI Gui addon and it filled my bug sack up in seconds before even attempting to open the gui, and when i did attempt, WoW simply crashed. it wasn't imperative, so I didn't bother to report it or anything, I just removed the gui addon. I'd like to say too, if adding a GUI would increase the overall memory usage of nUI it's of course not worth it. Maybe a small gui to handle the infopanel then, which brings me to my next point:

the infopanel:
I'd like to be able to easily re organize the order that it goes in, which I know i can do via the files, but i still couldn't figure it out.

I'd like to be able to easily remove or hide panels. I did delete the files so that I could remove the zone map panel and the combat log panel

Is there a way to delete certain infopanels for certain characters? For instance, I use Zygor guides, but only on a few toons. For my lvl 80s, I disable Zygor, but still have the infopanel, which is of course, unused, and right int he middle of my other panels. Any thoughts? If not, can something like this be included?

More Chat panels: I'd like a panel that will show me my whispers and guild chats. I downloaded the infopanel addons that give me a whisper and gchat infopanel, but really they shouldn't be in the info panel, they should be on the chat panel. They're not something I use constantly, just after a BG or instance, I want to easily go back and see if anyone said anything to me so I can reply afterward. There's no easy way to set this up, and using the info panel addons added 2 panels in the middle of all of my most used panels, and I couldn't figure out how to re order them etc. Not a huge deal, but I was surprised to see the lack of configuring and lack of whisper support.