I don't get 2 things about people. [Rant a on Addons.]
 

First why do they insist not using the very intuitive method of IceHud in seeing personal and target health, mana and cast, the most important information in the game for a DPS and Tank? Instead, most showing off their UIs, they use pitbull's unintuitive bars that show two flat lines. Pitbull and X-Perl are great for raid, focus and other info but for personal and target info strictly, a HUD is obviously superior. It's simply intuitive.

Second, I forgot. :banana:

So, you're asking why we like standard unitframes over HUDs?

If so, I like them because they take up less space, and look cleaner

Plus, in my eyes, a HUD is just a centered, vertical unitframe, nothing more fancy there ;)

HUDs make me feel claustrophobic and like I can't see what's going on around my character. And, as zynix pointed out, HUDs are just vertical, larger unit frames.

As a side note, I place my unit frames just below my character's feet on screen.

Pretty much what I do myself. I like the center of my screen clean and devoid of anything.

As a druid, the last thing I really care about is the target's health. It'll die eventually. I need to know everyone's health. I need to know what dots and debuffs are up and going down, so I can use them. I need to who is getting threat so I can intercept it or know when to run. And I need to know who does and doesn't have buffs I can cast... And I need to now when my longer timers are up so I can push the button again. (Why did thorns need to be another cycling button? Grr.)

Personally, I don't understand UIs that repeat information: If you have a target and player hud, why do you have a target and player frame telling you the same info?

Secondly, I want as few buttons on the screen at any time, so I can use the mouse to navigate in the world.

Lastly, I don't find curved bars to be more intuitive than straight bars.

-Crissa

I will never use IceHUD or anything of that nature, I'm not flying the F16.. anymore

Now my health and the health of my target, including my focus and ToT is just below my toon. I still have plenty of view and all I need to do is shift down a few inches.

One thing you will learn over time is fixating on one spot of a monitor does show long term effect on your eyes. Most UI's are built to make you move your eyes around so you don't risk the problem.

I can attest to this because I am pretty damn old and I still have 20/10 vision. I spend at least 16 hours a day starring at a computer monitor.

Ya, why bother having a small box with my health when I could have half of my screen covered with huge circular lines wrapping around everywhere!

How dare people not do as I do!

While I've never used a HUD, I wouldn't go so far as to say they are "intuitive". Yeah, I can see where the attraction to use one would be to not have to move your center of concentration away from your character (being able to use your peripheral vision to get the information), but, in my personal opinion, I just don't think they look very good. Like Seerah said: Instant "horizontal HUD", if you will. Maybe we should call that a "Horizontal User Display". Or would that be "Unit"? :D

I would have to agree with others here...

Four+ years ago, I used MetaHUD for a long time, but eventually, using a HUD just became intrusive to my view.

My own and my target unit frames now reside to the left and right of my character's feet and this is just as effective for me while still being out of the way.

Different things work differently for different people...so the concept of "ranting" because other people don't want to do things the way that seems so simple/obvious to you is inherently really kind of ridiculous. There simply wouldn't be so many addons if this weren't so....

The WoW UI is a HUD :/

When I started with my rogue I had no plan. Then I was the one to become a healer and all I needed were addons like grid. Then after two years when WoW became boring I started my career as a class tester and when my damage-classes died I realized that the "limited" view of a healer does not help to keep them alive.

At that point in time I tested IceHUD ... and it really improved the survivability of my mage and hunter but it disturbed my tanks and healers. And when I realized how buggy and resource hungry this addon is I simply deleted it and installed fluidframes to move my player and target to the lower center of my screen. Did the same thing to help my dd to survive.

So my reason to not use it: It sucks :)

Well, yes.

But here it's being used to represent items which follow your character around rather than your screen space. Just as we call frames that follow units around 'nameplates' when in reality they're not much different than the frames that follow the edge of our screen that pop up when we select things. Names only mean things in context.

Footnote: In Second Life they're referred to opposite: Things which attach to the client are called 'HUD' and the things which attach to the character are the normal items (attachments).

-Crissa

When I'm tanking, the target's health and mana are pretty far down my list of "important information". Health is only relevant for encounters where important things happen at specific health thresholds, and even then I don't really care about the target's actual health, because I have boss mods that tell me when those important things are happening. Mana is similiarly irrelevant in all but a very small number of specific encounters.

Sorry, but you're going to need more than a condescending rant to convince others that your opinion is any more of an objective fact than your opinion that carrots taste good (or bad), or that pink and orange go well together (or not).

You like HUD-style unit frames. Good for you. Not everyone does. There's no reason for you to be an ass and come on here ranting about how your personal preference is "obviously superior" to someone else's personal preference, especially when you have absolutely zero empirical evidence to support your claim.

If you can show us some peer-reviewed scientific studies that conclude that curved vertical bars in the middle of the viewing area are "better" in some way than straight horizontal bars for displaying information about units in a video game, please do it. Otherwise, your opinion is just as objectively meaningless as your opinion about carrots.

Good points, and I agree the definitions must be contextual. I was just thinking the HUD v. HUD-less argument has more to do with HUD-within-a-HUD viability, but is really about what makes a HUD more effective which, as most are in agreement with, is 97.412381% subjective, and 100% relative.

I think the requirements of a functional heads-up display are satisfied by the default UI, however I usually play at 720p, so my eyes naturally have very little traveling to do. I went through a PVP-centric period where I stuffed as many timers as I could into the center screen real estate, and ultimately found it did absolutely nil to increase my playing performance (and yes I also sucked at PVP :p).

I've had my unit frames at my character's feet for some time now.

Well said...this may find its way into a sig or two. :)

I suppose that's true. But I haven't played at that low a res since adapting my tube-type big screen HD television to play Molten Core raids with. I had to write an addon to take the world frame, grab all the items in it, and squash everything in about 20 pixels for 'tv safe mode' ^-^

-Crissa

Several of the posts against me are ridiculous rants. A HUD does not have to be huge, it can be minimized. It doesn't have to be circular, it doesn't have to be square. It can be thin, it can be semi-transparent. Both of your arguments of intrusiveness and size are completely wrong. A thin, small and semi-transparent HUD can show it easily.

Also, a tank must know casting of the target and very often he has to know health. Health is mostly important in ads, but good luck when you think all bosses are Patchwerk. :banana:

Nerd rage inc.^^

My main argument against the usage of this "HUD-style" is:
I want my UI to be fitting and looking "uniform". Having a HUD for target/player makes unitframes for player/target redundant/obsolete. But creating a HUD that is fitting "normal" unitframes (for party/raid/focus/mt) will at least be - difficult.
I can't see how a HUD would improve my tanking, since I have my player-/target-frame just in the scope (beneath my gnomish feet), so there's no benefit.
The benefit of my normal frames on the other hand is, that they match the rest of the UI.

I think it is a question of personal taste and nothing to argue about (Pixelfonts anyone? ;)).

Well I don't understand how people can watch team sports, since I consider them extremely boring; or role human males in WoW, since they're one of the worst character models in game o_O. Everyone has a preference.

UIs are about two things: making the game look the way you want so it's pleasing to your eye, and designing it in such a way that it fits your main role (tank/heal/dps) and method of play (pve/pvp).

Some people sacrifice aesthetics for function. I've seen some incredibly hideous raid UIs, but if the person performs well in the chaotic raid environment, then I'm not going to question their choices. As a healer, I'm only concerned that DPS and tanks don't stand in fire, interrupt/CC when needed, and pump out as much dps as their gear allows. If they can do those things with a hideous UI, I don't really care.

Others seem focused only on the appearance of the game, or use (what I consider to be silly/useless) addons for the sake of fun, rather than function.

You have to consider that everyone's brain works differently. Concerning this topic, not only is it a product of experience with other games (FPS that might be HUD based), but also how that person's brain works in terms of being more left/right brain and how they process the information that they see on their screen.

Finally, with the addition of ground-based healing spells in the game, I have had many comments from melee dps complaining that it can be difficult to see fire and other bad things through the giant mass of colored glowing light at the boss's feet in addition to the boss's own mass and other raid members. If you have a HUD, it adds even more information to the center of the screen that can obscure important effects that you need to see.

Some people do both /shock :eek:

Interesting. What is your opinion of the Orc female? /dance :p