Minimalistic UI

Never liked that COH2 UI, and spent way too much time pleading and proposing possibilities for the Obsmode UI. I'm still waiting for them to show chat in obsmode, which I pushed for repeatedly, over a year ago. Watching ESL games with no "gl hf" at the beginning, or no simple "gg"s at the end, was pretty lame.

Although the players were muted by Relic, most viewers would just assume they don't say anything, and that the COH2 players are cardboard jerks with no personalities that don't talk to each other. What possible reason could Relic have to not show all chat? Every single E-sport title shows all-chat to viewers (LoL, dota2, CS:GO, etc).

Trying to get Relic to do stuff for their own good can make you wanna pull your hair out.

You and your demands. I still wait for an update to see who actually won in the end.

LOL... small unimportant details

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LOL... small unimportant details

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more like

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for a live game lol

Why didn't you ever say "gg" in ESL, Luvnest? You're so bad mannered.

I wrote before that the big box in the middle of bottom section of UI should show something than outdated description, possibly unit stats. But then I came to conclusion that static stats are not important during the match, rather between matches so it would be better to include them in in-game encyclopedia.

But what about that annoying box? I suggest it should contain dynamic stats. What I mean under that term is:
1. Damage delt and taken by the unit through whole match.
2. Hp as a number, instead of health bar.
3. Modifiers that are active at the moment, multiplied together and shown in green for positive and red for negative. For example if you have a unit that gets +20% acc at vet 2, +5% acc bulletin for that unit and aura that adds additional 10% of acc then the number visible in UI should be green acc 138.6%.
This should be done for every stat that is being modified at the moment, so the number should change once you are out of aura.
4. Muni counter, showing how many muni all abilities and upgrades of this unit costed through a match.
5. Possibly time counter, how long the unit was on the field.

And specifically for infantry:
1. Mp counter incremented by reinforcement cost every time model is reinforced.
2. A panel showing hp, as a number, of every member of the squad, and weapon the soldier is equipped with (the fact we have to zoom in in order to check if this is double bar or bar+zook squad is ridiculous).

[...]

I must agree with Hitman5 here that this would probablly be too distracting. CoH 2 has such nice 3d graphics, less "UI distraction" is a good thing. So keep it simple


Of course I very much like the new functions, most notably the unit panel (=quick selection) in the top right of the screen.


I agree with what many said about the middle part. It's practically useless. Basically, they could just remove it or make it collapsable maybe, while moving the 5 commander ability buttons to the bottom, next to the unit portrait.

The only actual function of the middle part is when you select multiple squads (which is fairly seldom in CoH compared to other RTS games) and want to "sub-select" some to use abilities etc.

I must agree with Hitman5 here that this would probablly be too distracting. CoH 2 has such nice 3d graphics, less "UI distraction" is a good thing. So keep it simple


Of course I very much like the new functions, most notably the unit panel (=quick selection) in the top right of the screen.


I agree with what many said about the middle part. It's practically useless. Basically, they could just remove it or make it collapsable maybe, while moving the 5 commander ability buttons to the bottom, next to the unit portrait.

The only actual function of the middle part is when you select multiple squads (which is fairly seldom in CoH compared to other RTS games) and want to "sub-select" some to use abilities etc.

I dont feel it would be as distractive, I mean, you still keep this data in your head if you cant see it, thats more of a distraction to remember everything for me. Also I like the idea of panel being toggleable, if someone would feel distracted he would be able to just slide it down.

As for selecting squads it is somewhat usefull for that but still most players just use the tab key instead...

I also think the tactical map could be improved. In my opinion it was much clearer and easier to get an idea of at a glance in vCoH than CoH2's tacmap which can be easily jumbled with too many units overlapping.

I personally dislike that the out-of-bounds map area is included in the tactical / minimap. I doubt that it was included so players can see the map entry points, because that is the only real benefit to it and sounds too reasonable to be true. Why include something useless that shrinks the minimap?

My suggestion would be that HUDs should be treated like faceplates or like custom huds in dota2. When I saw the faceplate design for the first time, I immediately got excited for custom HUDs, but got disappointed quickly. When you give them the faceplate treatment, you can sell them, streamers can show them off on their streams and the tryhards can make their own competitive and minimal HUDs in the workshop = everyone wins.

I also dislike how the resources are shown. Not so much their position, but the fact that they are horizontally aligned, this takes away from the usefulness of showing current status as a number and income as "+123". When hovering over the unit icons in tech structures, their costs show right above and you can tell easily if you can afford them, sure that's nice and all, but you shouldn't need this to tell. Besides, there is another way in the hud to tell you if you can afford a unit..

The last thing I want to mention is that HUD elements keep blinking and animating and it is irritating sometimes. Units in combat? Animated blinking crosshair. Unit surpressed? Animated and blinking exclamation mark. Anything happening ever on the minimap? Better have some circles flash and hypnotitize the players. Seriously, take a step back and look at a busy minimap, where units enter combat and resource points get capped a lot. Most of these things are being displayed in the event cue additionally. Sure, those things are important and all that, but when everything is important and starts to catch the players' attention so badly at once, nothing really is important and the only result is that the players lose focus.

Of course, you can get used to many things, but then why bother changing anything ever?
just my 2 cents

I think it would be nice if you could repair with the unit cards on the top right. Many times it annoys me that you can't and I feel like you should be able to repair without having to click on the unit itself.

There's one more thing I want to mention (and don't want to make a new topic for it).

Tanks don't need floating squad icons (shields) above them.
And they don't need that little squad number "1" in them.

In CoH 1, vehicles and tanks had no shields above them.

This was much cleaner looking and less distraction from the game's nice 3d graphics.

Remove shield symbols above tanks!

Just remove the unit description box. Don't put anything there at all.
The ability box in lower right should "fade" out unless you mouse over it.
Also allow player to zoom further out.
vertical stack of resource count instead of horizontal.

But changing the UI has been talked to death when the game first came out.