It’s not possible to disable it.
ANet have said that they don’t want to let us hide parts of the interface, because then a non-technically inclined player might not understand how to get it back if he disabled it (Really?!?! Gee, all he has to do is ask in chat!)
So because of this imaginary player, we must all have a lot of clutter on our screen :P
I wish I could atleast move all that junk to the bottom of the screen.
If you divide your screen into:
- top left – top center – top right
- middle left – middle center – middle right
- bottom left – bottom center – bottom right
… all I can see of the battlefield when I fight is the top left and top center. Everything else is blocked with UI junk, or my character (smallest charr/norn females). And I play with Small size interface already.
(Edit… wait… the top center has the huge enemy health bar and picture with the status effects, so actually I can only see the battlefield on the top left…! :P )
Thankfully I don’t need my CapsLock key so I disabled it and turned it into a Delete button. Then in keybinds I set Delete to Hide Interface. So when I fight, I tap the CapsLock and then tap it again when I’m done fighting, but I shouldn’t have to do that. It’s not a perfect solution because I can’t see enemy health, my skill recharge, and status effects, not to mention my own health.
If I could move the events to the lower right, and keep the mini map on the lower right… then I could disable the chat box and party members to reduce clutter. That would mean I could atleast see everything on the top and middle.
Actually, because of the way my eyes are (one eye is much weaker than the other), I would prefer the mini map on the lower left, the events on the lower right, and chat box in the upper right. This would make the interface much easier to use for me, and reduce eye strain. But ANet doesn’t want to let us change things.
It seems like all the anet employees and testers play on a computer with 2560×1600 resolution. Don’t they realize most players have basic hardware? I would bet the vast majority of us don’t play on a resolution anywhere that high.
What ANEt could do is set transparency of all interface elements to 0% or 10% when fighting (except skill bar and status effects, maybe party members too). They could give us a slider to choose UI transparency when in combat, and an option to pick which UI elements should be given transparency.
This way you would have a clear view of the battlefield.
They could also have you use the Hero/Story window to list living world and personal story stuff, instead of having it clutter the screen. To know where to go, you would click the [Show me] button, like when you receive a mail from an NPC to tell you about a dungeon.
