UI Suggestions

I'd like for this forum to be a great resource for the devs as they do skim forums. If we find problems with the game that need improvement or are broke, let's not only post the problems but suggestions.

We've all heard the complaints about the new UI. What do you suggest to make it a little more user friendly.

I'd personally like to see a main window that I pull up with one key stroke that contains everything like it used to. I don't like the seperate windows. Maybe give me tabs across the top, but I don't like the seperate windows.

I think there needs to be some sort of show all option for the bag inventory. I like seperate bags for storage and seperating items, I'd like a show all view for when I want to see everything at once. I'd also like all the bags to hold the same amount. I don't care about realism when it comes to this. Would I really be carrying 6 suits of looted armor anyway without a weight penalty?

I have to agree about the tabs at the top. They are beyond great. I like the paper-doll. It should stay. The bags are o.k., but so many people have complained about them, I don't think they're here to stay. I really like your "view all" suggestion. It would be an excellent middle ground on the issue. I think a transparancy setting is the next big step they should take. If something must be on screen, i.e. the party window, skill bar; you should be able to see through it, IMO.

When you click on an NPC, the pop-up interface is sometimes overlapping with each other. I like the older interface where when you click an NPC, his dialogue/trade/skill pop-up will be on the right side of the screen while the inventory/player skill window will be on the left. The idea of floating windows is cool, but interfaces that overlap each other become annoying to move around after a while.

I never really had any problem with the original UI. I thought it was laid out in a nice way and made sense. I also thought it was user friendly. The only thing I didn't like was the inventory, it was too hard to find things. There needs to be a way to arrange your inventory, maybe by allowing you to set filters or something, but the multiple bags are just too hard to maintain.

I'd prefer to have some option where I can have a filter maybe check boxes to show certain things, weapons, armor, dyes, runes, crafting materials, etc... I could check or uncheck what I want to have displayed and arrange to my heart's content. Then if I want to see everything, just click the view all button. It would server a similar purpose to bags but be much more user friendly.

A simple "sort items" button that sorted items by type and value would be nice, too.

The original UI was fast. You clicked the tab at the side of your screen, and out popped the last tab in that you were looking at - your character screen, your inventory, whatever.

As of the last BWE, if you wanted to access your inventory, you had to click on the menu tab, then the character tab, then each of the individual bags. Then if you wanted to switch to a different tab, you had to close all of those tabs, and repeat the process. It's a real mess.

Now clearly they just implemented some new UI software that lets them open up individual boxes and move them around. That's good, and allows for them to potentially make the UI a lot cleaner and more convenient. Key word is potential. What they had before was extremely fast and convenient, and they should look to reproduce most of that functionality, not bury everything in menus.

But I'm sure that's on the queue. Clearly the new UI was implemented right before the last BWE, and they hadn't had time to really fine tune it and integrate it into the rest of the game. Basically reproduce the old functionality in the new package, add in the new features, and run with it. It's pretty straightforward as I'm sure they're aware, it just has to get done.

Peace,
-CxE

To be accurate Ensign, that is how you accessed your inventory using only the UI and your mouse.....F5-F8 opened your bags individually without having to do any menu surfing.

However, it had it's problems that I am hoping have already been addressed. My primary complaint was that weapons and other handheld items could be placed in a specific bag but once worn and then swapped with another set they would be put away in the same manner as loot that was just picked up....not where you placed them.

The other issue was the windows for each bag could be moved around on the screen while they were open, but once closed would open again in the same default, in-your-way position.

It would be a good idea if one of the bags was only used for weapons that you use. If you decide that you want to fill up these spots with other thing that would still be possible, but when you switch weapons all of them end up in the same bag every time (the last one F8 would be perfect). If it overflows then perhaps placed in another bag (i.e. if you have 2 equipped and go down to one but your bag only has space for the one you switched to, the excess item would switch to another bag)

I'd like the ability to keep any weapon sets I've chosen to equip out of my bags entirely. Just make a seperate place for them. It was very annoying when I'd try to switch weapon sets during combat and suddenly find that I couldn't, because my inventory was full.

You mean like the sort button on the old UI?


Which is still no excuse for bad UI design. What they had before was mouse accessable, and the new version, well, isn't. Sure, you can pop things up with hotkeys, but not everyone wants to map each screen they might want to access to one of a dozen different hotkeys. Some of us want to use F1-F8 for something useful, like targeting our allies.

The new interface has the potential to be better than the old one. They just have to actually *make* it better than the old one, by implementing the functionality they envisioned. I'm sure it'll get done, but right now it's still kludged together.

Peace,
-CxE

One thing I really liked in the Jan BWE UI that wasn't in the Feb BWE UI was the different armor sets that you could set up and access using F1-F4. I may not be switching armor very often or very quickly but I liked that organization.

I have to agree with Ensign on the Old UI. I don't remember the E34E very well... it was a long and eventful year ago. However, the WPE is still decently fresh in my mind, and yeah I preferred the Tab on the left of the screen. It was all there... I'd personally just like a Hotkey to OPEN the Menu on the bottom that they have now, if anything. Maybe there is one and I didn't find it?

Hotkeys only get me so far... I don't mind clicking. The New Bag System is questionable to me. I don't HATE it, but I do miss the huge one that we used to have, lol. When I first saw a bag for sale, it was priced at 500 Gold at like Fort Rurik or something, lol, I laughed so hard. I heard they lowered the prices during the event though.

Overall, there's nothing WRONG with it, but I don't know why they changed it to begin with.