Hiroshi Minagawa on: UI Elements

31 Mar 2011
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With patch 1.16 we saw the inclusion of icons that appear next to aggressive monsters. That’s just the beginning of things according to UI lead Hiroshi Minagawa. Even more information will be displayed in the future including the level of the monster as well as a sign to tell players if the monster will link with the others around it. There is also the mention of a toggle for the new icon as well as the future information displays.

Check out the full forum post after the jump!

(Suggestion) Removing the aggroe icon for monsters

Hey everyone! Thanks for the huge amount of feedback!

I would like to explain two things.

The first is about the design choice regarding having an aggressive icon at all and the second is in regards to our plans to integrate an ON/OFF toggle for displayed UI elements.

First, as to the reason why we added the aggressive monster icon, for the upcoming battle fixes, we decided to display addition information necessary for battle strategy.

There are many aspects related to the upcoming battle fixes, but one example of how we are making adjustments that lead to more enjoyable gameplay is by showing information such as the strength of field monsters (their level), whether or not they are aggressive, and whether or not they will link. With this new information, players can make a decision whether they wish to fight these types of enemies and it also allows them to plan crowd control out ahead of time.

Due to the fact that a quick fix for this is quite difficult, we have been making adjustments in stages. We have discussions with Yoshida and the battle team about what kind of info should be shown and what should be masked and once we make a decision we have been implementing them.

The current aggressive icon and the upcoming enemy level display are only one part of the current stage of edits.

Next on the agenda is the ON/OFF display toggle.

The aggressive icon that was recently implemented was a bit of information we wanted players to be able to check easily that fits hand-in-hand with the future battle plans, and thus we released it as a full-time display feature. Originally we thought that the icon wasn’t something that needed to be easily turned on/off, but after seeing the current reactions and hearing all of your feedback, after long consideration we have decided to make it possible to toggle the display. We will also continue to make adjustments to display toggling and display methods for the information displays we have planned for the future.

I apologize for not going into more detail earlier, but hopefully now you can better see our reasoning for the implementation.