[Feedback] New Hunter Stable User Interface

In Development Dark Heart (10.2.7) PTR Discussion
1

I will start this off by saying that I am generally positive about the overhaul to the UI, from the increased preview window size to having more information at a glance so we don’t have to withdraw to refresh our memory.

I do have two complaints and a question, though.

  • The scroll list on the side, particularly if you have many pets.  If there’s one thing I did like about the previous UI, it was the minimalism of the pet list.  (Maybe a little too minimalist, I do like seeing the pet spec info, but still…)
     
  • I intentionally have my pets arranged chronologically on live, but on the PTR they have been re-arranged by group as default.  (There are a couple filter options such as for Exotic and alphabetically, but… it’s not what I desire.)  Tying into this as well was the ability to have empty stable slots in-between ones in use on live, which I had so I knew where to place a pet back once I no longer wanted them in a Call Pet slot.  That is gone too.
     
  • You can no longer put a pet in the stable if it is your active summon.  Why the change?
5 Likes
2

Hi Alayea,

A few questions for clarification:

Is the complaint here the scroll speed, or that there’s not enough information on the scroll list, or that there’s too much info? Something else? Not sure what the concern is here.

By arranged chronologically, do you mean the order in which they were tamed? What further sort and filter options would you want to be here?

Unsure about this, it may just be a bug. Will forward the concern on.

Thanks for looking at the new stable UI, we appreciate the questions!

5 Likes
3

As a hunter, I can, without a doubt, say that I do NOT want any default sorting of my pets. I put my pets in a very specific order, & I’d appreciate that not being messed with without my consent. I will also say, that I leave spaces in between certain groups of pets intentionally to make visually sorting them easier for me, so if that gets changed, I’m not going to be happy about it. Whenever any changes like this are implemented, as long as players have the CHOICE to go with the new option/s or NOT, people will be happier overall. Just my two cents.

9 Likes
4

There’s an addon called Improved Stable Frame that gives a big grid with all your pets in it.

I really like the active pets and companion frames, but I have so many pets that scrolling through 100+ to find the one I want is a bit frustrating(and I’ll be honest I dont remember all their names + some are just for aesthetics for animal companion slots). If I could turn that scroll window into a grid, even if It had a couple pages, would be a massive improvement on both the base ui and the addon.

https://imgur.com/a/Bod5ERM

Something like this, maybe with not as large of a grid and a smaller center window.

4 Likes
5

Thank you for responding.  I’ll try to clarify best I can.

The scroll speed seemed… fine?  My complaint was mainly about the amount of padding, if that makes any sense.

Yes, I have them by the order in which they were tamed. If possible I’d like to be able to have pet arrangement behavior exist like it does on live, but my gut feeling is that it won’t be.

For filter options, hrm… Possibly include options to display only certain type of specs?  Could help with the earlier mention about the scrolling.

Thank you for forwarding it on.  :slight_smile:

1 Like
6

I do the same thing. While I am all for a UI overhaul, I’d like it to give me options that allow me to have the control over how my stables are laid out. As someone with multiple hunter alts, I feel like organizing their stables is a very important little piece of customization for them.

6 Likes
7

same here. i too have my hunters pets stables organized a certain way, one hunter alt has their pets organized by size and species, another has hers organized by appearances/colors etc, and the others are sorted by either spec or like utility abilities, ie fenstriders for water walk grouped after heroism pets.

if they take these abilities away even with assistance addons like aspect of the hunter…im done… DONE.

like the other person said, part of being a hunter is also being a stable master/stable mistress, we organize our pets in certain ways for that aspect of class fantasy + the fact some pets in azeroth require challenges creating memories ie remember that time i went after… pet for whatever when communicating with friends or other hunters who might not have whatever pet at that time you meet them.

taking away our abilities to organize things in a certain way isnt a good move game devs.

now i have not currently at time of this post seen what this so called new UI looks like.

6 Likes
8

+1 to a filter option for “tamed in chronological order”. A “Chromie Time” filter, if you will.

9

This.

This is what my stable looks like on live courtesy of the addon Improved Stable Frame:

I like that I can organize my pets how I want. No forced sorting whatsoever. And I have them sorted in specific ways.

The top are sentimental pets. I do not want them mingling with my other pets, because then I make mistakes when I’m tired and release my sentimental pets because I momentarily forget why its important to me.

Then I have a break, and next comes no longer obtainable pets. Same thing as above - if they’re mingled in with everything else, I will forget that I can’t get them back when I release them.

Then a break, and then I have a mixture of my “very specific requirements to tame” (like Shadow of Dhambala) pets and my mechanical pets. Which, again, I will forget about the specific requirements and release them and have to go through hell to get them back.

Then another break. Then the biggest group, is all of the rare spawns I have tamed that retained their OG name.

And finally, one last break before my Exotic Pets, and then all of my spirit beasts.

What I like about this is I can see all of my pets at a single glance. I don’t have to scroll or filter anything. I can see them all right there.

The new UI is great, but giving us an option to use it or the old UI (so we can keep using this addon, or even a new UI that mimicks this addon) would be better than forcing the new UI on everyone and ruining a lot of our stable layouts.

For me, it’s the fact there’s only 6 spots on that scroll list. 6 out of 210 is only 2.8% of your pets being viewable at a glance.

Improved Stable Frame has 141,000 downloads, so there’s a significant amount of hunters who want their entire stable viewable at a glance, and not only does the new UI not offer that, it will break the addon (as I assume forced sorting will happen even if you somehow over-rode the default stable UI).

6 Likes
10

I have one hunter, he gets leveled and played (as an alt) every expansion… However, I’ve only collected 20 pets since WotLK. New UI works perfectly for me, but I could see where the massive pet collectors might have issues.

1 Like
11

I don’t think it’s so much to ask for a chronological filter, so you have my support. I do hope they add a comprehensive search and filter feature for it, maybe add a filter for untamed pets like the collections menu? That way you can hunt them down for new hunter tames and give you something to work towards.

Edit: I haven’t seen the version of it on the ptr so idk if it has that yet, just giving my thoughts

12

This is only somewhat related, but since this thread seems to have traction.
I currently have my pets configured so that regardless of which I summon, I always have the same 2 pets out with Animal Companion. If I summon my ferocity pet, my tenacity pet comes, and if I summon my tenacity, my ferocity comes. This enables me to have only my 2 favorite pets at all times. I’m worried that the dedicated Animal Companion slot will remove that possibility.

13

That’s… not how animal companion works though?

Animal Companion pulls the pet from the first slot in your stable.

Maybe if you don’t have any pets in your stable? I’m not 100% sure about that.

If that’s the case with you and you have no stable pets, then I assume functionality would remain the same.

1 Like
14

I agree with the comments here. The overall changes are good. More info, custom portraits for each animal is nice, filters. I do miss having a grid so I could quickly scroll through. I also group my pets up in certain ways like Maizou shows and having it auto sorted is weird.
Maybe an option to show them as a grid or list would be a decent compromise? Like a computer folder does.

Edit: I also agree that having most if not all 200 pet slots visible at once is preferable. Maybe if we keep the list style let it have multiple columns so we don’t have such a long scrolling list.

2 Likes
15

Hello,

Here is my feedback.

The new stable interface is a downgrade, not an upgrade, of the old one:

  • you can’t have “custom” order of the pets
  • you can’t see your pets at a glance like before: the minimalist UI was more valuable
  • if you put a pet in the “Animal companion slot” and you re-spec, you no longer see which pet you put there until you re-spec back to BM! So you can unknowingly release the Animal companion pet. With the old UI it was super easy - you always see which pet is first in the stables and plan around this

Can you put an option to switch back to the old UI? I want to have my own way of ordering the pets, not by famaly or whatever is offered

Thanks

5 Likes
16

Adding another voice to this; please do not change the existing order or otherwise remove our ability to order pets within the stable ourselves and do not remove the ability to have empty slots between.

4 Likes
17

The new UI seems designed by someone who does not play, but was just given the parameters to design a new interface:

  • exotic (checkbox)
  • sort by (dropdown with options: name A-Z, Z-A, family, specialization)
  • actions (release, rename)

What was lost is the mini-game for the player - the ability to order your pets the way you want to, to “build the grid” your own way - drag and drop the pets in the little boxes to your satisfaction, the customization element.

What we got instead is an online shop UI. I’m not looking to buy new trousers, thanks. I want to manage my pet kingdom as a Hunter player.

Going forward with the new UI undermines the spirit of the MMO game.

6 Likes
18

As someone who’s been involved in the development of a pet stable addon for a while, this is an interesting read. Some good points of feedback here as well.

I can certainly understand why the stable interface was reworked to a scrollframe style, rather than a grid. It’s been a fairly common request over the years in various areas. Especially in the later expansions, with the addition of more and more stable slots. The stock UI, with small grid pages of 10 slots per page, many players disliked the idea of managing pets that way. I agree, though, with the point of how there should be an option to view the stables without any forced filtering or sorting being applied.

Some additional thoughts after a quick check on the PTR…

Stable Scrollframe

  • The scrollframe has a bit too much padding inbetween pets, like a previous poster said, you can only see 6-7 pets at a time.
    • Maybe the size of the the individual frame elements could be reduced somewhat as well, to allow for more pets to be shown at the same time.
  • I would like an option to be able to assign pets as favorites directly within the scrollframe, and not just through the model viewer. A right-click option similar to how parts of the collections UI do it.
  • It would be nice to have an indicator of exotic pets in the scrollframe. Either as a symbol, or in textform.
  • Perhaps there could be a filter option for the scrollframe as well, where you could have a dedicated visible slot where the Animal Companion is shown at the top, similar to how it currently handles any pets you have assigned as Favorites.
    • In the way that, if you have that filtered to show, it will always display that stable slot, even if it’s empty, or you’re in another spec.
  • The stable scrollframe is currently missing a “Collapse All/Expand All”-button.
    • This becomes more obvious if you choose the “Family” sorting option.
  • If you select either sorting option for A-Z, or Z-A, the separator in the scrollframe says “Uncategorized”. It should ideally say which sorting option you’ve selected.

Active Pet Slots

  • The slot for your Animal Companion isn’t very informative atm. Currently, the only indicator of what that slot is for, is a “–” between that, and the other Active pet slots.

Model Viewer - Pet Preview Frame

  • The display of special abilities for the selected pet, in the model viewer, I would love for that to have an indicator of which ability is family-specific, and which is based on the current pet specialization. Aside from having to check tooltips.
    • It seems as if the abilities in that list are displayed with a logic that isn’t clear, which could potentially confuse players who aren’t as experienced with where individual abilities are coming from, what source. For some pets, it shows the Basic Ability at the top, then a spec ability/passive, then family abilities, then another spec ability. Meanwhile, for other pets, it’s not displayed in the same order.
  • The dynamic button in the model viewer which you can use to manage pets, move them between the stables and the active slots. If you have 5 pets already in the active slots, and you want to move a pet from the stables to an active slot, clicking on that button will always swap the first active pet. This makes sense, I guess, but for newer players, it could result in them swapping the wrong pets, and result in a negative experience where they have to find the pet they wanted in active slot 1 again.
    • Perhaps there’s a better way to handle the functions tied to this feature. Where, if you have 5 active pets already, it asks you which one you want to swap for. Or something else…

Other

  • Not sure what other people say, but I would love for some tooltips to be displayed when mousing over individual pets in the stables. Both stabled pets, and active pets. Would be nice to have some info shown there, so that you don’t always have to click on every pet, in case you want to check for a specific ability etc.
5 Likes
19

Quoted for emphasis and adding my 2 cents here. I can understand a list system might be easier to code for, especially with the growing list of hunter pets that is now at Pokemon levels of numbers. But please realise that it will play havoc with how hunters use the stable now.

Adding filtering options is fine, but in my 19 years as a hunter I have never had my stable in alphabetical (name or family) or chronological order.

I have had it ordered by: colour, specialization AND family, used in solo - group - raid content, my idea of usefulness of secondary skill, my idea of whether it fits to use the pet in current content, pets that do or do not fit with the new race (just before race-changing), ground or flying, pets that the tanks tend to be bothered by or were downright veto’d in my raid group, groups of pets that I want to test in combat, pets that I want to compare with each other. And several combinations of all of that.

Currently the stable is ordered as follows (with Improved Stable Frame):
Pets often used in current content - empty bar - Ferocity - empty bar - Tenacity - empty bar - Cunning - several empty bars - Pets with special taming requirements that I do not want to lose - empty bar - Spirit Beasts ordered by “family”.
Ferocity/Tenacity/Cunning groups are ordered in two groups each: old tames and new tames, and old tames are regularly ordered in likelyhood I’d grab it for current content (with new tames that I kept shuffled into that order).
New ordering also happens when I have a new outfit - I like it if my pet and me have a similar colour/look (think fur/feather/leather/scale and colour).

More examples of how I have used the stable: during Wrath pets with heavy fur were pulled to the front, during Cata I had groups with good/bad swimming animations and how well a pet would deal with desert conditions, Warlords had a group of armored pets, and all Shadowlands pets had a block of their own for a while.

It’s also telling how many stable addons over the years tend to change things to make more pets visible than in the normal GUI and give more information in the screen.
_

TLDR: Hunters have so many ways they currently use the stable (even without addons), that a single list with just a few visible at a time and a few filters will be a nerf to the stable to the point of uselessness.

3 Likes
20

I’m loving the new stable frame but I have to concur with what has been said in regards to the scrolling list on the left. I hate… I can’t stress this enough… HATE to have to scroll to see what pets are in my stable due to the fact that I have 162 a present. My current favorite stable addon is Improved Stable Frame due to the fact I can see ALL my pets in ONE frame with my own way to sort them.

Please find an image I’ve mocked up via photoshop:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/8ZEYQmvpQbpBT4fn7
4 Likes