Why Do We UI Like We UI?

[-Bv-Psykiik]

14 hours ago, [DE]Pablo said:

Does this mean we will start spreading hold to confirm all over the place? I don’t rightly know to be honest. In big part it will depend on your responses down below 😀 And that's mostly why I wanted to write this wall of text, I want you to understand why we do what we do, but at the end of the day we make it for you, so hopefully knowing our reasoning you can help guide us down the right road.

 

well it depends ... for railjack hold-to-craft is working fine because its cost a resources that we have thousands of it .. i mean i will not lose much .. but for forma, potato, etc better keep that way .. better be safe than sorry you know .. because when you hold left click to hold-to-craft and if your hand slipped the circle will keep loading and finish the task .. only way around i can see to make it safe is by increasing the time.. like you need to hold for 10-15 seconds to finish put forma or potato .. that way you have enough time to cancel if you changed your mind and still its faster than pressing action>add polarity > choose forma or umbral forma> choose the slot > then hit ok 

[tennomantra]

  This has me really worried, people. I am seeing some changes that I never wanted and lack of useful improvements that I feel are needed.
  I must mention, that I do appreciate many of the improvements already implemented, but I have issues with some of them as well.

  First issue I have is the example of old and new warframe abilities window. I much rather prefer the convenience of having all information present on one screen, as it were with the old version, than having to mouse over each ability, to see the stats of that ability only.
  Now, I understand the sentiment of this looking overwhelming to some people, but I'd argue that all of these people, currently overwhelmed with too much information for their experience, will inevitably become players who want all information presented a sheet-like format for their convenience.
  Wherever there is a discussion between 2 options with differing pros and cons, the best option is certainly the power to choose. Toggles and the like, so every user can tailor the UI to their preference.

  This is especially relevant to the windows like Foundry, which I don't see mentioned specifically. An option to configure the layout, not unlike in the Windows Folder View- cards or list, resizing, sorting by all different options...
  Most importantly, simple toggles- "Hide Owned"; "Hide Mastered", including or excluding items like Gems and Consumables...

tl;dr
  To summarize, changing UI will cause in some universal improvements, but also changes, that will please some, but not others. Because of that reason, my opinion is that aiming to create one-universal-best interface is a wrong approach and what should be considered, is implementing more options, for users to choose.

  For example: "Info inside the element" in the foundry is nice, but not always. When crafting material price inevitably becomes irrelevant for cheaper items, the information that was useful becomes clutter and at that point having just 2 by 3 for a total of 6 cards per window becomes detrimental. 

Formas

I appreciate the mention of this, it can certainly be made more convenient. A suggestion to consider: forma key right in the mod screen, that would create a pop up of polarities, which then could be either dragged to a slot, or selected and applied to a slot by holding, just like in Railjack menu. 

End of mission
  The main issue I had with this screen, was it being too short. 6 items displayed in window is not as bad as 3 relatively large mod icons displayed in a window next to it, but even that doesn't seem as bad as items mixed with mods and displayed in a wider, rather than taller window, of only 2 lines. 
  Separating stats into a separate window would only be beneficial if that could utilize the whole screen height, to display more lines of information, rather that increasing the font size or gaps between the player stats.

  I cannot stress this enough.

End mission screen with the merits of each player is a nice touch, but something that can get boring after 10 or 100 hours in the game, at which point more screen estate utilized to display additional info would be invaluable. Give us a toggle, please.

Mention on item labels

It's something that I'm always going to be using.
I may have several amps with same icon, but different parts. I may have weapons that are not level 30 (level is displayed with item name). 

Akrabu Syandana may be my favorite one, but I still don't remember its name and spelling, which applies to many items and no thousands of hours in the game can prevent me from forgetting the names or spelling of some items.

 

I'm going to reply to any comments on my perspective, let's discuss.

[Weisszahn]

The new mission end screen looks good. end game is fashion frame, so that's a nice way to show off 😉
I really like that you included standing in the overview, but I would prefer if that info was at the bottom, because most of the time you are more interested in the xp your frame/weapons gained. would it be possible to display the standing in red if it's close to max?

I would very much prefer the old ability screen!


if we could bind a key to be the "info" key (hold or toggle option maybe) to show what the buffs do that would help a lot.
I don't know what half of the buffs do, even though I already have many frames and recognize some of the symbols. I often don't even notice that buffs are active. the worst thing is the kavat buff, you can only guess which one your cat gave you if you didn't look at it the moment it was applied.

I wouln't mind being able to individually scale and move different parts of the UI (move skillbar/energy to the top, resize buff symbols, move minimap to the bottom etc.)


What annoys the most when opening relics is that I can not remember ALL of the weapons and frames I have already leveled. if you get a main BP you can see if it's been mastered or built. if you get parts of a weapon you never know if you already have the main weapon built or mastered and already sold.
a marker for things that are vaulted or currently unvaulted would be nice too (closed chest for vaulted, open box for unvaulted, none for has not been vaulted yet - or simply "V" / "UV" / nothing ).

if the "deploy drone" button was on the right side of the mats, you would make good use of that empty space and make more than one planet visible in the list! I always prefered to send the drones from the app because it has such a good overview compared to ingame. please don't clutter that list!

Edited January 25, 2020 by Weisszahn

[Midas]

Please add healing done to the statistics

[DreisterDino]

Hey @[DE]Pablo, im glad you are adressing this issue with this post. I am gonna write a few things and they might sound harsh at some point, but it simply is how i feel about the UI changes the Dev-Team has made over the past year or so. I talked about the UI in a few topics recently, and i might just quote some things.

 

Unlike many other replies, i will focus on Railjack with my reply to explain some points.

 

vor 15 Stunden schrieb [DE]Pablo:

   1. Need more information
   2. This is overwhelming

There should be a third point aswell you have to think about when designing the UI:

3. What is the information players need the most and most frequently?

 

Example: The weapon-selection on your Railjack:

I get that you dont want to put too much information on the screen because it might be overwhelming. Hence why we have to hover + TAB to get certain information.

But what is the information we want the most and most frequently about the weapons?

The stats

Still, i have to press TAB each time to get there, which is simply annoying.

I need the text-description of the weapon only a few times (depending on how good my memory works 😄),

but i always want to see the stats when i am selecting weapons. So you should simply switch these two tabs to make it more streamlined.

 

Then there is the Ingame UI in Railjack, which is lacking the most important information for coordinated Teamplay:

Lets take the pilot as an example and we can ask the same question as above: What is the information the pilot wants most frequently?

• is someone in the Slingshot? (needed to know when to aim at a Crewship) - the Voice-over is not enough and sometimes doesnt play at all
• is someone in the big-cannon? (same as above)
• for coordinated Squadplay where friends also communicate via TS/Discord, it would be also helpful to know who is using these things

 

If we take the Gunner, there is another important thing to make it able to communicate with your Squad in a viable way.

Again you can ask: what information does the Gunner need the most to give commands/request to the pilot?

• most players will have the 360° degree view unlocked, but you cannot make commands or requests because you cannot really tell where you are looking at.
• we need a compass on the screen so you can tell the pilot: "turn x° left so i can hit y" - the pilot needs the same compass aswell as the Slingshot

 

Lastly, there is other information which might be less important for actual play, but still interesting for the players, especially in Public Groups.

In general i would say your fear of adding lables is unreasonable and doesnt really help the experience (sure nobody wants walls of texts, but there is nothing wrong with 1 line)

• Example: Your are a gunner on a ship you do not own.
• the weapon you are using performs really well and is fun to use
• but what weapon is it? all we have is a symbol in the bottom left, and actually i dont even know if it tells anything about the weapon.
• the only chance of learning which weapon you are using is asking the owner in the Chat - i tried it and never got a reply
• just add 1 line with the name and the house of the weapon and the gunner gets crucial information he might want instantly

 

Regarding Ingame UI, you adressed many points players asked for in the Feedback-Megathread already (like marking Drops), but this is crucial information missing imo.

 

 

 

 

 

The following point is more of a general problem.

I think you could avoid the need for certain information if the game was more streamlined.

Let me use Railjack as an example again:

 

• when modding your railjack, many of the systems are basically the same as in the rest of the game (modding Warframes or Weapons)
• Avionics=Mods ; Dirac=Endo ; Battle/Tactical Avionics=Warframe Powers/Weapon Augments and so on
• still, for some reason ( i guess its flavour) everything needs to have a completly new name and look
• each player has to learn everything from the scratch again although in theory, he already could know everything before he even played it once
• why does it have to be like this?

 

In recent discussions on the forum i refered to an interesting Video of a Head Designer from WOTC (Magic the Gathering) in which he talked about lessons they learned over the past 20 years. A very important lesson he talked about was this: "Use pre-existing knowledge to frontload information"

 

This means that longtime players learned a lot about how a game works, and if you introduce something new, you can use this fact by simply using names or images or whatever which the players connected with a certain mechanic in the game so they already know what something will do before even using it or having to read about it.

 

Learning Railjack could be so much more easy for the players if there would be references to already existing mechanics. But it seems like your approach is more like:

We wont "use pre-existing knowledge to frontload information" but instead "erase everything players have learned over the past years and replace it with new stuff they have to learn again". And to repeat myself, i have the feeling you are only doing this to add flavour to the game, but in reality you add unnecessary confusion.

 

 

 

 

This post has been long enough, but i wanna give 3 more example i have read about in the forum which falls into the UI/art category.

The first is about Liches and this is the post of the player in the feedback section:

Zitat

Rant incoming. 

So. I finally managed to gather everything I needed to kill my first ever Kuva Lich. I farmed for all the murmur, I did countless missions to get the damn mods and figured out the order, and I was finally going to kill her. So imagine my surprise when I down her, and I have a choice sprung on me with a very short time limit. No explanation what so ever to what the different outcomes will be. So I, being the paragon player I am, panic and press convert instead of vanquish at the last second. 

Now i'm sitting here, after googling what happens next, with a very empty feeling. I feel so disappointed after doing all that, and nothing to show for it. I really wanted the weapon, so I immediately regretted converting her once I found out what it meant (after googling when the mission ended). 

Now to the important part. I shouldn't have to know beforehand what to do, in order to "make the right choice". You can't just spring a choice on people, with a time limit, without telling them what their choice will mean. I'm incredibly disappointed. You might think I'm overreacting but honestly, this sucks. 

TLDR; PLEASE DON'T SPRING A TIMED CHOICE ON PEOPLE WITHOUT TELLING THEM WHAT THE CHOICE ENTAILS. IT'S HEINOUS.

my reply to someone who said its the players fault for not looking up the information before getting to this point:

Zitat

Some things simply have to be explained Ingame.

Sometimes it feels like DE makes the game confusing on purpose, imo the whole UI team is mislead and doesnt understand what matters.

All they focus on is making the game look good and "orokin'ish", while trying to use the least amount of text possible.

Basic information is missing everywhere in this game.

 

Regarding this issue: Whats the big problem with simply adding ONE MORE LINE below the vanquish/convert that explains it(get weapon/get an ally)?

 

I admit my reply is a bit harsh in regards to the UI team, but this example should show really well how your approach of using as little text as possible can create player frustation.

To get back to the start of my post, this again is an example of "what information does the player really need?"

 

The following example is about how a bad UI can destroy the gameplay:

In the Ropalolyst fight, the Lotus Transmission still takes up about 50% of the screen!

No matter how important the the Lore is, how is one supposed to play when half of the screen is covered with a transmission you probably want to hear only once?

 

And with my last example i come back to Railjack:

While obviously you want the game to look stunning, some effects are simply too much and destroy the gameplay aswell.

Abilities like the Particle Ram do look stunning, but i dont use them because they are so annoying to play with.

In the Slingshot you cant see anything when Particle Ram is active, even as the pilot its annoying.

 

Although i work in a completly different industry, i got confronted with the following guideline:

"form follows function"

As a player i wish you would ask yourself a lot more often if what you are creating follows this rule and if its good for the general gameplay,

or if you are only creating something because it looks better and more stunning. Is it really good when you are playing the game or just when you are looking at the game?

[SnowyGreyish]

16 hours ago, [DE]Pablo said:

Summary

Over the past year and a half, we have been steadily working on revamping the UI in the game to use the themes and backgrounds, while also using this opportunity to improve the functionality of them.

This is a very very long process, Warframe has almost 200 screens, and we are often adding more to support new content, so it will take a long time to complete this journey. When we started 131 screens needed reskinning, now we have 70 more to go. Seemed like a good time to touch base to talk about why we are doing this process, and how we come to some of the decisions we make while working on these.

In codex, we have a section for lichs (though it also apply for lich trading tab). That UI need fundamental rework, as in 'shouldn't have been shipped' -state. Nevertheless no one at DE seems to want to notice it or react to players bringing it up.

It's focused around colors (I believe they were meant to signify element in question, but there are multiple shades for the same element, which even overlap with other elements) and secondarily names, which have little to no meaning to those who have hunted more than 3 lichs. Players address lichs primarily for weapons and their bonus stat, and secondarily ephemeras, but they aren't in focus in this tab.

There is a search field in the corner of this tab, but nothing is searchable in this tab, weapon, element, ephemera, bonus stat, none of them. type any letter and immediately see that nothing can be shown. also a sorting button would seem quite fitting here.

As a player who am on his 59-60th lich, that UI isn't useful in any way. actually rather gets in my way. especially when you try to trade a lich, but you can't find the requested lich in that UI listing. (not to mention that you can't look up your lichs when you're in the dojo, and someone asks if you have a lich for trade with certain properties)

[Shifted]

16 hours ago, [DE]Pablo said:

 

Give me a checkbox that overlays the stats on top of the warframe images.

I don't care about the frame images, I want the stats. Always.

PS.
What is that gold orb? Is it endo? I don't know, it's not written anywhere.
How much of it did I get? I don't know either. It doesn't say.
In other words: ITEM LABELS.

Edited January 25, 2020 by Shifted

[DreisterDino]

vor 16 Stunden schrieb [DE]Pablo:

How this applies to future stuff

Extrapolating from this past decision to future ones, you can imagine how this approach will affect things like the arsenal. Right now when picking weapons you can see their icon, name, rank, Lens and Forma count or mastery. We haven’t designed this yet, so I don’t know for sure that this would be the change, but I imagine we would no longer show the Lens or the Forma on the grid, and instead have those on the tooltip. And then the tooltip would have additional information that isn't there today, like if it has Catalyst, an Exillus adapter, Mastery requirement, weapon description and stats, the last two you currently see on click. So again, hiding some information behind player actions, but adding more information is our general approach.

But even this simple example raises other questions. For example, hiding Forma behind hover is likely not a big deal since it’s used more for completionist purposes, so not very time sensitive. But hiding the Lens is a bigger deal, since you sometimes want to choose a weapon to get some Naramon Focus, and hovering over them to find one can be annoying, can use search bar, but still. Lens also has the advantage of only showing when there is one installed, so it doesn’t contribute to clutter, so there’s arguments to be made to keep it, even if it goes counter to all the other stuff I said haha. Which is my not very subtle way of saying there’s no one solution to every problem we encounter and we got to try and keep analyzing them case by case, and when we miss the mark we know we got you to remind us.

I forgot to adress this 😄

In my post above i talked about "form follows function" and "what information does the player really need?"

Regarding this:

• What is even the reason to remove the forma count there? it feels like you are turning the rule form follows function on its head again.
• i have never heard anyone complain about having this information there, and in fact i wanted to ask you to even add another symbol which tells you instantly if you have an Aura Forma installed on the frame.
• for a streamlined experience this is indeed helpful information you want to get upfront without having to hover/click/TAB somewhere else
• Why? Some time ago i was putting some Aura-Formas on Frames, but after i have done that there is no way of telling which frame has an Aura Forma unless i

1. scroll through the list
2. select the frame
3. go to loadout
4. switch to an empty loadout to see if it has an Aura Forma installed

• this is 4 steps to get information instead of just 1!

 

You say you want to add more information available, but why do you need to erase other information which is instantly available to do that?

I am just repeating myself, but it feels like again you want to make the game look better and forget completly what might be important for the players.

Edited January 25, 2020 by DreisterDino

[Marvelous_A]

Don't. Hide. Useful. Information. Behind. "TAB".

No more Railjack armament BS which requires you to press TAB everytime you want to check on the stat. Please.

It's bad design.

[Ferbsol]

The new mastery logos feel like a downgrade

[Irhyo]

17 hours ago, [DE]Pablo said:

 

So what you're telling me is that Syndicates will cover up my items' affinity/focus gains right? Why? You can't scroll through that menu in loading screens, so you only have the 10s before extraction and after the mission is done. In this image you only have 2 syndicates, so it's not that bad, but pretty much everyone will have 3 that get standing and 1 that loses standing(And some who have 4 syndicates active at once will have 5 spots taken by them in that screen). I like how they are shown now, in their own tab I can safely ignore because I don't care about it, but this? Oh boy. Is this the screen that shows up if you press Tab during a mission too by the way? That'd be the cherry on top.

Edited January 25, 2020 by Irhyo

[Zoh_Veldae]

Yes, that's all well and good, but what about the in-mission HUD? What about having the squad HUD show more pertinent info on the spot and time we actually need it most? What about being able to just glace to the right towards the squad stats and knowing who has what Warframe and in what state instead of having to press Esc to actually know those things? What about swapping the Glyphs on said squad stats, which are really pointless in-mission, with the Warframe icons used on the minimap so we can tell at a glance if the guy at 2 HP is a fragile Excal or a durable Rhino and then decide if we should go to their rescue immediately or trust them to handle themselves with their specific abilities? What about switching that barely visible white-colored Energy bar on the afore mentioned squad stats for something a bit more visible and up-to-date to know if the Trinity has enough energy to keep our sorry asses alive or to panic and be every frame for him or herself?

I could go on with even more in-mission HUD specifics that either flood us with pointless data or just don't provide us with crucial data at all.

But I won't.

[Flet_Zesnan]

I know you're trying to improve the game, and I really love Warframe, but this mission end screen together with a lot of other recent issues are starting to kill any sort of joy I have for this game. 2020 has to be the year DE starts fixing things, or this ship is going down.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Warframe/comments/etryev/as_much_as_i_love_this_game_the_unfixed_bugs_that/

 

[(XBOX)renis jebus]

I play on Xbox, so I don't know if the experience is the same for PC folks.

On the end of mission screen, while traveling / loading back to your orbiter, the UI locks up and does not allow you to scroll to see the full list of rewards and stats until you have completed loading. Would it be possible to keep the scrolling functionality during this transition?

[gnostechnician]

A lot of good stuff here but I really don't like the new mastery rank icons. They feel very bland compared to the nice evolving badges we get currently.

[TheBusDriv3r]

Thinking of UI as a conversation sounds like a great idea, unfortunately your vision for this seems to be the equivalent of one of those r/tinder screenshots where one person carries the entire conversation. You're making me work extra for every single tiny piece of information and it's a horrible experience.

Abilities Screen - your only objective here was to hide information. It's worse in every way. As an example, If I'm futzing around with my Vauban I have a very bad time trying to remember all the Minelayer stats while I look at Bastille. Repeat this experience every time I change a mod. The screen is easily large enough to display all tooltips and the passive at once.

Railjack - this is both a huge departure from every other UI in the game and it's also horrible in and of itself. What's the deal with the avionics screen? Why aren't they mods? Why is there a giant railjack blueprint taking up 1/3rd of the screen? Why are houses only distinguishable by some faint color effect and tiny dots around the edges? Am I really expected to memorize all these little symbols?

End of mission - here we go again. There's a case to be made for showing off warframes here, but they certainly don't need to take up half the screen. Move the divider upwards so there's space for a 3rd row of rewards. The reason mods are separated from other rewards on the current screen, in my humble opinion, is that they're bigger since the text on mods needs to be readable. I see no use for a massive Endo, Argon, Gallium or Credits symbol. While you may be able to add numbers to the aforementioned resources I see no space to display "Equinox Prime Systems" (or similar text) inside that tiny box. If I just ran a survival fissure for 20 minutes I want - NEED - to be able to see what drops I received without having to hover over any symbols.

PS: you could easily fit two mods into one of those squares. STOP. WASTING. SPACE.

[przemo877]

Most of the UI issues can be summed up by this

What we desperately want and need (more or less):
 

Spoiler

 

What [DE] desperately wants to give us:
 

Spoiler

 

Can you see the difference in functionality?

The funniest part is that I had to use Duck search engine because Google images still had some useful labels on them.

[Slashz]

So many good feedback, yes the main question to ask when deploying a new UI is to ask "what do users look for and need to be displayed for them without having to open up more UI elements" i know a lot of the screens you posted are just place holders.

So for example players would like to see rare loot/prime parts they got at the end of the mission so the loot should be sorted by rarity, prime parts/ rare mods...etc not just a mix of items or icons.

Also it would be nice to have the railjack map switch next to the nightwave button for easy switching while having the world state panel opened and maybe add a hide button for both or individual.

You can utilize the star chart for icon navigation so you can have special effect/icon for each event like plague star or ghouls / invasion project boss that indicate that this plant got an event going on, something like the kuva red cloud for liches but a bit more clear (the red clouds are cool but need to be more defined around nodes) and also the mission type for the kuva lich tend to be wrong on some of the nodes that require some fixing 🙂

The end screen can be implemented better (overwatch style) show off the fashion frame then after 4 sec it show up the loot/rewards and stats window in full screen.

The Resource extractors system kinda need a rework to be honest (you can add something creative to it that you can go into a resource extractor mission to hasten the process and get extra resources type from the planet that is deployed to) but for now it would be nice to have a collect all and repeat button (and a check if the person doesn't have the same type of the extractor when clicking repeat it would give a warning message).

The Mastery rank icons the current one looks good but if you want to remodel all of them again to a cooler one would be nice if we be able to see samples and vote, but the ones in the preview you posted doesn't look better than the current one also that should be reflected in the new end mission with the squad you previewed so it would be cool to have the player glyph bordered with their mastery rank icon.





 

Edited January 25, 2020 by Slashz

[zurefox]

Well i hope you like this. smaller top pic and more info 

and plz, listein the guy who post this.

[fx25v]

As others have also said and explained why, labels and amounts are what I want to continue to see... always. Please stop with the mouse overs and TAB to see basic info.

Also, I would like to see the mission name and type on the results screen.

[Amazerath]

I don't have much to say when it comes to icons, tags and overall visual presentation because that is very personal and it's also not incredibly important. People will learn how to read and navigate through menus regardless of how complex or overwhelming they might look. If someone decides they're not going to play a game because the UI is overwhelming then that person was probably not that interested in the game to begin with.

That being said, there is one aspect in which I think Warframe UI fails and that's specifically present in the warframe powers section. You have an entire screen dedicated to describing warframe powers yet there are tons of hidden statistics and mechanics that the game doesn't tell you about. And that's information that can help people create builds and improve existing ones, which in turn makes gameplay more enjoyable. Every single time I end up having to open the browser and check the Warframe Wiki for a detailed explanation on how powers work.

 

So the point I'm trying to make is: a UI that looks pretty and clean but lacks the information the player needs is not useful to anyone. Because even the person who thought the UI was complicated at first will eventually learn and will eventually want more information that the UI doesn't have. So instead of trying to make the UI less intimidating, I think the focus should be adding simple tutorials or at least images that help people learn how to interact with the UI. This is one of the most basic features that even free indie games have. Yet Warframe barely has any UI tutorials and the few it has are really bad.

 

Edited January 25, 2020 by Amazerath

[ThePalrex]

hace 18 horas, iPeer dijo:

items labels are disabled by default

We are in 2020 and this is still true, please DE...

[MaxCrazyDude]

How about a change to the Forge UI?

It is really annoying to look for items all the time when items require different built parts like the modular stuff.

How about a multi layered type of listing the items you need for building? 
If anyone plays Guild Wars 2 should know what I mean in the crafting.
You open the main thing you want to build but if it requires something else built you are able to click in the recipe to the page of the thing it needs and it opens another tab for it.
And then another tab if that items needs stuff built and so on.

https://youtu.be/lRsQuniqdXs?t=395

Also the ability to chain multiple of the same item would be nice too.

[ThePalrex]

hace 14 minutos, zurefox dijo:

Well i hope you like this. smaller top pic and more info 

Now it's great

And i still think that bottom part with the buttons is unnecessarily big

Edited January 25, 2020 by ThePalrex
I have to add that stuff about the bottom part

[mkah_mvet]

9 minutes ago, Slashz said:

The Resource extractors system kinda need a rework to be honest (you can add something creative to it that you can go into a resource extractor mission to hasten the process and get extra resources type from the plant that is deployed to) but for now it would be nice to have a collect all and repeat button (and a check if the person doesn't have the same type of the extractor when clicking repeat it would give a warning message).

The Mastery rank icons the current one looks good but if you want to remodel all of them again to a cooler one would be nice if we be able to see samples and vote, but the ones in the preview you posted doesn't look better than the current one also that should be reflected in the new end mission with the squad you previewed so it would be cool to have the player glyph bordered with their mastery rank icon.
 

It would be sweet if we could deploy a resource extractor, then do resource missions (maybe something like excavation) to charge up the extractor.  Or maybe have the resource extractor act like a resource booster (maybe a 10% rather than 100%?).  It could definitely use a rework, hopefully the UI stuff doesn't paint them into a corner.

The mastery icons shown in this thread have been so very very bland.  That rank 28 one... that's someone who's very nearly a master-of-all and he ends up with something that looks like it could have been done with a crayon?  More important is the prominence.  The only time I even come close to caring what someone else's mastery rank is, it's accompanied by the thought "what freaking mastery rank is this clown anyway?!"  Better to have it tucked away as a small number in a corner of their glyph rather than a huge prominent space-eating thing.  if things are appropriately low key, then the designs can be as elaborate and interesting as possible without having to fit it around a contrived circle for their (also pointless) glyph.