Hi Dev Team;
Are there plans for additional quality of life improvements for different parts of the UI that are still difficult to use without addons designed to navigate them?
I’ve got a few examples I’ve been thinking about, but I’m sure there is plenty of others.
Toy Box sorting:
The toy box in the collections tab gets difficult to search through with such limited sorting capabilities. Would it be possible to allow players to make multiple lists of favorites so they could effectively create improved usage? Even something as simple as making the favorite “star” instead offer a list of all the raid markers so players can tag for example all portal toys with X, all costumes with star, all hearthstones with diamond etc etc.
Alternatively (or additionally) allow individual toys to be flagged to show for only specific races, classes, or factions so as to not clutter the list up with wasteful space.
At that point just give players a list of priority order within the list so they can lay it out themselves. Make it like the character list so they can click and drag each marker to the order they like.
Talent Loadouts:
Having a talent loadout update to any changes you make to it on a once off can be very annoying when it ends up overwriting your standard templates.
Talent Loadouts would work better if they saved the same way Outfit sets save; in that activating an outfit and then making adjustments to it wont save those adjustments to the outfit automatically when you apply it to your armor.
For Talent Loadouts that would look like getting into an M+, switching to your M+ loadout, then making your individual adjustments for that specific dungeon and the affixes of that week. The next time you switch to your M+ loadout you dont want it to be that modified M+ loadout, you want it to be your standard M+ template so you can make new adjustments for the dungeon you are using it for.
This is why Talent Loadouts should save as Talent Templates like the Outfit Templates do, not as the current Talent Loadouts save any adjustment you make for any situational once off. Even if its just an added confirmation box when applying a talent build if you want to overwrite your saved Loadout or save it as a new Loadout would make it so much better.
Mailbox name autocomplete:
Autocomplete is great if you only have a few characters or they all have distinct names, however once you have a big guild or dozens of alts with similar names it becomes quite difficult to find the name of specific characters.
Addons like Postal that give you a dropdown list of all your alts, all your guild members, all your friends etc in separate list all sorted alphabetically with class colors and realms/guildranks next to each to make it easy to find the desired target.
Granted the Warband system should resolve a lot of this by making mailing yourself things unnecessary, however the issue/idea remains.
Copying UI elements from one character to another:
Having a method when starting a new character, or a new spec to load up all your preferences you’ve selected on your main would save a lot of time for setting up and getting into actually playing the game. Again there are addons that can copy hotbar, keybinding and macro preferences, however being able to do this with the standard UI would allow doing so to also include options settings, chat & chat channel settings, etc.
Mount, Pet, Appearance sorting:
Similar to how cluttered the Toy Box can be, the other Collections aren’t much better. Being able to use the Set Favorite option per item but expand it to have options for all 8 of the raid markers, Race, Class, and Faction would allow sorting to be much more player designed. After being able to put markers on each item having a Character Select Screen style character list that the player can click & drag the favorite categories to the order they prefer. Being able to log into a new Orc Shaman character and having my mount list automatically sort my marked favorite Orc, Shaman, Horde mounts at the top of the list for me would be useful.
Transmog Cropping and Clipping:
Finding out your new hat crops your hair and beard away can be incredibly frustrating. It would be far too big a task for Blizz employees to take every single piece of armor and test each and every character customization option for if it will clip that specific customization option so that they can flag it for not being cropped when being used, for every single race/bodytype combo available to players. Unique NPCs have been seen to have these individual adjustments made to undo cropping where it isn’t needed, so why not just allow the players to do it instead?
Each armor would need to be coded to either show or hide character customizations on the back end where you guys get to see the code. So why not just move that to a checkbox on the player side and let the players crop each of their customizations as they see fit? This way Blizz would not need to go through the entire history of armor appearances and adjust them individually, you could simply make it a toggle in the Barbershop or Transmogrification NPC (or both)
If players could do this on a per item basis and then save it to their Outfit Templates it would resolve the issue entirely. Treat it the same way Tmogging shoulderpads separately works. Just put a list of checkboxes in the Transmog UI whenever a piece of armor is highlighted.
Crop Hair X, Crop Horns X, Crop Eyebrows X, Crop Beard X, etc etc. If players choose to look like a disaster then at least they had the option to do so.
Do this with things like Tabards to choose to Crop the Top, Front Flap and Back Flap separately, since the 3D belts clip at the front and the new skirt leggings clip at the back. By being able to crop the top it allows tabard, chest and shirts to be used to make multiple body options within just the chest slot.
Having those choices entirely in the player’s hands resolves issues with design as well because the artists don’t have to work around the flaws of the cropping/clipping issues character models run into so much.
Cutaway Walls & Camera clipping:
I think we have all had issues with the camera clipping on a doorway or a chandelier or tree branches. This issue is especially bad for tanks as they are almost always forced to stand between a wall and a boss’s feet. I don’t know if its possible or not but could we use similar tech that is used in The Sims franchise to hide items that are technically behind the player’s viewpoint so that the camera doesn’t get caught and zoom in erratically?
I hope you manage to read all of this and consider these ideas. Thank you for the work you all do.