UI redesigns via the modding community
To start, i am by no means a professional, but i was looking for professional opinions to this topic. This subreddit, i thought, might be the best way to get those.
My friend and i just had a discussion about mods in online RPGs that improve UIs. I understand the need for them, i am using them myself for certain games, because sometimes you just need to see more detail on the screen than the vanilla game can provide.
Now my question to those who understand UI design on a professional level: Is it even possible and plausible to expect, well, not perfection necessarily, but to expect a UI that does not need to be modded by the majority of players? I understand that there will always be that small number of players who want to see even more, or want to move around details on their screens, but i am not talking about those. I am talking about the broad mass that will still opt for a mod to have even basic needs met when it comes to a game UI.
My friend thinks that it is illogical to expect this, because everyone has different needs, especially in games where you have a complex skill system. Personally, i would think that if so many players use the same UI mods, apparently it could be possible to create something that works for everything and is customizable via settings.
Is it really impossible to create a UI for a complex game that 90% of the players do not feel the need to mod? If it is, what are the reasons behind that? Would it be too complex in terms of programming, making it much harder to find and eliminate bugs? What other reasons would there be?