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Why Do We UI Like We UI?


[DE]Pablo
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I really, really like the design of the new End of mission screen and the new World State/Extractors Panel, the problem is of course the lack of info about the Rewards.

 

Both Item labels the number of items we get are a MUST. No matter if you are an experienced player or a new one.

 

Another problem is that, in order to see Stats, I have to navigate to the botton of the screen and click on them. I don't know for PC players, but for Console players is a pain in the a*s.

 

Why not go the Eidolon/Vallis End Mission results route? In those you can see the Syndicates, which are in a different tab, just with a simple click.

 

Other games do a similar thing with their menus, they have different Tabs which can be navigated with a simple click.

 

Same could be done with the End Mission screen here in order to save time, make them more intuitive and keep the current design.

 

And like someone already said, please let us navigate the screen while loading back to the Orbiter. Because right now, we can only move our Landing Craft in the background.

Edited by (PS4)FastestKnight
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14 hours ago, Ham_Grenabe said:

There's a subtlety here: whether someone likes the UI one way or the other boils down to preference. Whether it's actually the best UI for the task does not.

There are right and wrong ways to do this. There are best practices and bad practices, which emerge from the tasks being performed and the information required for those tasks. DE can't just split the difference between the players asking for less info and those asking for more. 

Except they can and have done it, i don't like looking at walls of text on my screen and right now the information is easily accessible by just moving your mouse to what you want more info on, before we had the problem where if you wanted more info you had to use the wiki now we can have it easily accessible ingame i don't see how that makes it worse.

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16 hours ago, (PS4)blackbeltdude7 said:

Sure, there's definitely things about the new UI they're doing effectively, but I'm saying that the driving force behind the philosophy they're moving forward with is counterproductive for the main demographic of Warframe. I agree that the new UI is nice to look at, and sometimes hiding things behind a single tooltip is fine. But the main point I'm making is for them to focus on their main demographic. 

They aren't going to trick people into being a regular player of Warframe by hiding complex elements of the game. Those players are either going to realize that there's too much depth in the game for their tastes and leave, or they'll just ignore the depth and play agnostic to it. I think they need to draw a line to the extent of what new players they want. The demographic isn't just people who like sci-fi themes; it's people who enjoy games with RPG elements and depth.

The info isn't hidden at all, before it was now DE can add a lot more info than if they just put walls of texts everywhere while keeping the screens nice and tidy.

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18 hours ago, --Q--Angitia said:

Have you thought of maybe not wasting 50% of the screen with empty space? That would be a nice rework, if we could actually see the things we wanted instead of having to open a screen to hover over an icon to see one thing at a time.

This, so much this. At least make the end mission screen display more than 10 items. Make it an option on big displays, or something. I had a UI bug once, where the display scaling on the end mission screen messed up and showed me tall columns for item rewards. It was instantly so much better. I don't want to scroll huge end mission reward lists. More space for items, please.

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I don't want to spend extra time into the menus to find what i am looking for. Mouse overs like "About" in the market and pretty stuff that takes half of the screen and sometimes more is something that i hate with a passion, stop hiding essential informations in UIs when there is more than enough space to show them. I don't want to boot the game to play even more at MenuFrame.

The UI in the menus that looks pretty is the last thing i care about. The UIs should always be focused more on practicality over appearance in my opinion.

Don't make something based too much on your own preferences. Not everyone like the way you design the UIs or how the informations should be displayed on the screen, you are making a UI essentially for your global player base so it's important to make a UI as reliable as possible.

It doesn't matter if you hide the infos to satisfy the players who don't like to be overwhelmed by them, in any case these players will have to search for the information they need the most to learn more about the game so ultimately the more they play the more they learn, therefore in the end the faster they find what they want the better they will be satisfied.

Il y a 19 heures, [DE]Pablo a dit :

And we are introducing special recognition for things done during the mission

Don't add that to the final version of the UI. This will mostly lead to toxicity.

Il y a 19 heures, [DE]Pablo a dit :

hold to confirm

Works very well for very specific actions like resupplying munitions in the Railjack, don't spread them all over the game.

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20 hours ago, [DE]Pablo said:

Setting for two UIs: This isn't really something viable, as I mentioned we have around 200 screens, the amount of work it would take to maintain an old and new ui is jsut not possible for or team.

We don't need Warframe Abilities window at all. Being able to see all the relevant info in the Arsenal modding screen is ideal. Only things are missing from it are passive description and the toggle, to be moved there or to the settings:

https://imgur.com/a/FkgGG1C "Show base stats"
Or just leave it on and remove the toggle completely.

When looking for ability descriptions, people will rather search online, usually before owning the warframe in question. So while I understand the sentiment of x2 UI being too much work, there isn't need for even x1 and that time and energy can be used for QOL improvements that will be used daily by all the players, rather than new players at the beginning of their experience.

Edited by tennomantra
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1 hour ago, Nathalieh said:

Except they can and have done it, i don't like looking at walls of text on my screen and right now the information is easily accessible by just moving your mouse to what you want more info on, before we had the problem where if you wanted more info you had to use the wiki now we can have it easily accessible ingame i don't see how that makes it worse.

As I said, the question is not about what you or I like.

It’s about whether their design of each screen is the best one for the task being performed on that screen in conjunction with the overall process that screen is part of. 

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13 minutes ago, przemo877 said:

Community was doing that since the introduction of the very first UI rework and we had extremely mixed results.

They also have limitations to how much development they can throw at it. At this moment in time, they're able to resume work on it, so whatever you didn't get before, you can request.. and if possible, they'll do it.

We as players are Constantly dreaming up new ideas and innovations. It's not possible to meet every demand, especially on budget, and within a reasonable time limit. What they can do, is service what we find to be the obvious faults, if they are in any way actionable. How does our UI better meet expectations by saying, "Thing aren't perfect, so let's default to being overtly miserable... because at least that way we're right."

Would you be able to meet the individual (and often contrary) demands of 20,000+ Users in a quick and affordable way? With no error or stylistic difference whatsoever? Does that mean they shouldn't try, or that we can't still give feedback? Even if they can't meet your demands, they can consider it for later, or integrate some facet into it's intent. No one's job becomes easier to accomplish when we tell them, "I'm just going to be unhappy, and you will fail at your goals." They openly welcome your suggestions on how do it right, knowing that it can never be perfect. That deserves some level of consideration and maybe even respect.. but if nothing else, some ideas are certainly better than, "woe and defeat, for imperfection is surely tantamount to total failure."

Edited by kapn655321
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2 minutes ago, kapn655321 said:

They also have limitations to how much development they can throw at it. At this moment in time, they're able to resume work on it, so whatever you didn't get before, you can request.. and if possible, they'll do it.

We as players are Constantly dreaming up new ideas and innovations. It's not possible to meet every demand, especially on budget, and within a reasonable time limit. What they can do, is service what we find to be the obvious faults, if they are in any way actionable. How does our UI better meed expectations by saying, "Thing aren't perfect, so let's default to being overtly miserable... because at least that way we're right."

Would you be able to meet the individual (and often contrary) demands of 20,000+ Users in a quick and affordable way? With no error or stylistic difference whatsoever? Does that mean they shouldn't try, or that we can't still give feedback? Even if they can't meet your demands, they can consider it for later, or integrate some facet into it's intent. No one's job becomes easier to accomplish when we tell them, "I'm just going to be unhappy, and you will fail at your goals." They openly welcome your suggestions on how do it right, knowing that it can never be perfect. That deserves some level of consideration and maybe even respect.. but if nothing else, some ideas are certainly better than, "woe, misery, and defeat."

I'm very charitable with prise in this day and age towards [DE] considering other game studios - something I very often find myself being criticised for by my friends that I like to be too apologetic, but something as simple as "Item label" or weapon statistics in the codex that needs to be hovered over is a no brainer for anybody, yet [DE] for some unknown reasons defends those ideas?

Could you try imagine working in a factory at some difficult to understand piece of equipment after being given the instruction manual that is 1 page long, consists of 3 big, beautiful pictures and has no text in it to help you understand the complexity of your work?

Because Warframe is extremely complex game that demands from players, new or old to CONSTANTLY check everything on the wiki just because it's easier and more convenient even tough the exact same information, shortened could be placed in the game and no one would be mad about it?

And yet, we will be given more of the same in the mission summary, you'll need to hover over resources or item parts in order to remember or find out what you got, just why? What's the point? Would your avarege or new player prefer to see 4 frames JoJo posing in the summary instead of learning what they got from the mission? I don't think so, yet here we are.

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7 minutes ago, przemo877 said:

we will be given more of the same in the mission summary

I respect and understand the frustration, as has been pointed out by many users. I do not disagree that they're not right on course with an ideal experience, which is why I commend them for asking before they get any further. There seems to be an olive branch and a willingness to hear feedback on how to improve it. ...Many of the ideas expressed are, "You guys are doing it all wrong, and you're dumb. You can't do anything right, and I have proof.." and these things won't bring us any closer to our goals either.

I put in my own suggestions on how we might be able to meet everyone's expectations with an algorithm that learns and can be taught, which information we all individually prize as players in order to have the most ideal UI. ...This idea may be impossible for all I know, but I'm still grateful they let me get my two cents in. In the same vein, how would you go about making the perfect UI for us? We have so many great minds on this game, Someone has an idea that they can work with to at the very least, improve upon existing methods with something tangible and reasonable to develop. That person could very well be you.

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21 hours ago, [DE]Pablo said:

The two most common types of feedback we get are

     1. Need more information
     2. This is overwhelming

These two are generally the forces that pull us in opposite directions. On rare occasions, you can find some solutions that make a screen less overwhelming, without having to lower the amount of information displayed at once, but for the most part, these are two conflicting objectives.

The compromise we arrived at to try and circle this square, was to use a variant of progressive disclosure, which in practice means we add more information, but put it behind rollovers or clicks.

It's a complicated game and can be overwhelming to new players, yes.

What does trying to hide the fact that it's a complicated game accomplish?

You haven't actually made it any simpler, the underlying mechanics are still complicated. You've made it more complicated by making it harder to tell what's going on.

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I edited the layout how I think it will waste the least space and be more efficient, the progress screen and the end of mission will become this, plus ability to expand the stats and or they expand when hovering over that corner, there should be thicker scroll bars, which I forgot to include, I dont care how thick but he shrinking ones are bad for touchpad or touchscreen.

simplification of total xp earned and also shows the levels gained, the green is just to show a new addition of this concept, numbers in squad are the actual squad order (1 is host)

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toggle for optional showmen screenshots, the squad fashion button would just show the frames and stats as in the original concept.

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also the rarity needs to have indicatorD0STZdN.jpg

switch quests and universe or have a toggle for this

bon0QOx.jpg

that dead space in the left corner? we can move the quests or even liches and railjack management there. possibly a customizable personal console with multiple pages of the ui, 3 of them preview in the AR screen

vmJjq8y.png

and this toggle would be nice to show all the stats in a build at once

Hx0w3dq.png

 

album https://imgur.com/a/ee5oRUD

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26 minutes ago, kapn655321 said:

"You guys are doing it all wrong, and you're dumb. You can't do anything right, and I have proof.."

More and more people are like that because after like 1,5 year of constructive criticism, the UI was barely changed in the better direction and we have further changes on the way that didn't took all this criticism into consideration. We are making 1 step forward only to make 1 step backward after a year. It kinda feels disappointing.

I've mentioned here in earlier post that after this long, some veterans that are desperate for the game to improve, especially towards the new players, you know to not let the game die, they feel (me included) that since our criticism isn't listened to, all that's really left for us is satire and mockery to push the message through. That's why people are making all the UI memes on all sorts of different forums. We are just desperate for the game to improve and stay relevant, seeing that the playerbase numbers are constantly dwindling and we have long content drought ahead of us.

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While clean UI is great to look at, too clean often have too few things to look.

I notice the change on market UI throughout the years until the most recent results in too much things being hidden. Like i'm looking on a weapon. Obviously i also want to see the stat. Older active player may realize that they gotta hover cursor on to some objects to see pop-ups. But to newer player or returning player that doesn't get the chance to adapt with UI changes may be dumbfounded by how low informations offered by the market / item preview popup.

Current item display on market feels weird as well. So i pulled some ideas on how it can still be informative but does not necessarily being overwhelming:

Spoiler

Name and Description Section:
Remains the same as current UI.

Information Section:
Show an information window on either side of the screen that consists of such tabs:
For weaponries: weapon's primary stats tab, and various weapon's alternate stats (alt fires or mode changes) tabs,
For warframes/archwings: basic stats tab, abilities tab (with each ability having the popup feature for further details),
For sentinels: basic stats tab, and precept tabs listing precept mods unique to that specific companion.
and on the end of the tabs it's Blueprint tab that shows crafting requirement and where to obtain them in case it is not available in market.

Purchasing Section:
consists of buttons for:
Buy item (with platinum),
Gift item,
Buy blueprint (if available),
Add item to wishlist (because currently the wishlist feature is just one tiny star icon in top left of the screen, it's barely spottable),


That aside, with the upcoming separated Riven Dispo per weapon (while the mod usability still stays per weapon family). It would be nice if we can toggle the riven mod to see the disposition change when applied on each weapon variant we've leveled/mastered. This would be a good follow up once riven dispo applies per weapon and riven owner can't really check the dispo change if they dont have the equipment variant themselves.

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Someone on the subreddit had a pretty decent idea, which was that if you just really have to have a huge chunk of the screen showing your squad standing around, put it up before the mission while it's loading so you have a better idea of what your pub is about to do.  Don't hide relevant information at the end of the mission so you can put the squad on display.

That being said, I've gone through this thread, and I've seen which posts are gaining traction and being supported.  I've been through the subreddit and seen what's in hot right now.  Not even my job to do that.  But I have a feeling that you guys have either been ignoring Rebb for the last year or she's been full on sheltering you from the deluge of criticism that's been building about nearly every decision made.

Nearly every single thing gaining any traction here and the subreddit is all negative or a meme trashing on the ideas presented in this post.  The memes aren't just a joke, it's still an expression of contempt for the design choices.  I thought about copying the idea behind one of the memes on there and hiding this entire post behind a link so you'd have to click to see more, but then I KNOW you wouldn't read it.  I'm actually starting to wonder where you guys are finding positive feedback or supporting voices for any of your choices in any real numbers.  There's a few in this thread, but they are vastly outnumbered.  Even for nerfs, most of the voices NOT complaining aren't saying, "I'm glad this is happening."  they're saying "Well, we knew they were going to do it to us."

Are you guys even paying attention any more?  People want their information back.

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1 minute ago, (XB1)TehChubbyDugan said:

Are you guys even paying attention any more?  People want their information back.

THIS.

The last UI changes on codex and market only makes it worse as they were meant to be sufficiently informative, clearly for the sake of advertising as well, AND YET THEY DECIDED TO HIDE THE STATS FOR THE SAKE OF CLEAN UI. It has been an occasional yet common occurence that newbies are all threatened back by purchase buttons on equipment links in chat thinking that everything is p2w, even though there are popups that can only be seen if they hover their cursor into those totally innocent looking buttons.

They dared to make ui customization a selling point (in case u never checked the ui customization, most color and themes costs plat), yet barely listens to what people actually needs in the UI, its User Interface damn it, not a canvas.

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6 minutes ago, przemo877 said:

our criticism isn't listened to

Our criticism is listened to, but since it can't all happen people take it personal. There's a lot of very black and white opinions on what, "improvement," means.. and if it's not perfect to them, then it was a failure. The satire and mockery gets us actual nowhere.. and I get that's out of desperation; that desperation is also heavy handed, reactionary, and shallow.. because we are video gamers, and that's kind of our callsign.. but it shoots us and everyone in the foot. They listened with revision to Lich, told us who posted the ideas, thanked us for it, changed some of those aspects, and still, "They don't listen!," because it wasn't Everything. Exact same with Railjack.. If they don't capitulate to each fleeting whim from the thronging masses, they've let us down. Strictly speaking, that's neither fair, reasonable, or helpful.. but that's the bar we set, and our impossible measure of success. Many of us are entitled teenagers with grossly under developed impulse control.. and that's hardly the kind of litmus test for actual success that anyone can turn into development cycles and workable business models.

There is entirely more criticism than ideas. There are more half baked and impossible ideas than there are good ones. There are far more good ideas than great, and only some of those are actionable. Expecting to wholesale consider our criticism as valid and necessary is a mistake. I'll give you an example here in this thread: "Why simplify information for new players? You're going to lose players who want more information." That approach is recklessly narrow minded and self centered, but it's most of the replies. The original post itself touches on why that cannot be the goal... but nah. "My way or the highway -New people aren't welcome if they don't like spreadsheets -Why are we losing players?" Folks getting all up themselves about not being the only demographic catered to misses the point, the mission, the scope of the game, or the business model... but they're still going to say it's DE's fault they didn't get it their way.

There are people who don't want stats. There are people who Do want stats. There are people who want more information, others less, others pictures, or words, or droptabs, or walls of text... every single one of them is here to say, "You're Wrong!" So.. Cool. Now what?

Most players can't see past their needs, whatsoever. The only way I can see to make everyone happy is to have the game magically cater to ALL specific potential outcomes, and just sorta figure it out for us so we feel special. Otherwise it's a doomsday failure of epic proportions, and, "we're just plain right to call it that." But realistically speaking, they're gonna have to land somewhere in the middle of the bell curve in order to meet quota.. and no matter what, people on either extreme will feel excluded. Making games is expensive, and no one has any patience for anything short of their imaginary goals.

The least we can do, is try to help politely suggest things we'd like, accept that nothing is perfect, and try to be civil about how deeply we look our gift horse in the mouth.

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You know, you're designing a UI, not an artistry piece. it should lean towards to the various needs of User as the letter U in UI stands for, and not just shiny design heavy.
Back when Chat Tabs were straightforward texts people can easily figure out what the channel they entered was supposed to be.
Squad, Council, Alliance, Clan, Region, Recruiting, Trading. Pretty obvious right?
but once everything turned into only icons people easily post the wrong kind of chat into the wrong channel, and results in getting chat deleted by the bot or a kick, or if you're unlucky enough, a channel or whole in-game chat suspension for saying things that were meant for in private channels.

The thing i do like since the last UI changes are the tabs on popups, it does balance out screen space usage to fit informations from basic to niche ones like the frame ability tips. But it's getting overused as informations that were normally sought for when clicking on thing getting unnecessarily hidden as well. Like for god sake i click on weapons in codex or market yet i still need to hover on some button to see stats? Don't you want people to spend their plats on these? But why hide the stats that can persuade them? The older market UI only has confusing tabs as, similar issue with the chats, they were just icons until u click on the tabs, but for the most part the older market UI has sufficient information without overwhelming the whole screen.

If your new design results in user doing more action to get the same info prior to the UI changes, Wouldn't it be a step back?

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I have literally never felt overwhelmed by information overload in this game.  My first instinct when so many things weren't explained to me when I first started playing was to google things and use the wiki because I wasn't being given ENOUGH information.  Weapon Blueprints were fairly hidden in the market when I started, so I honestly didn't realize that you could get new weapons easily.  I thought I was going to be stuck with my MK1-Bo for a long time and I was fairly upset about it after learning that Excal had a passive that gave him extra damage and attack speed with swords.  None of the information about acquiring new weapons or about my frame's passive or abilities was available to me in any kind of an easy way, in fact I learned those things from the wiki.  I did feel overwhelmed but it was because I was facing so many new systems and not being given any relevant info and specifics on any of them.  

I feel like that's a VERY important distinction that needs to be made about the "too much vs not enough" debate that's happening in Pablo's thread right now.  I felt overwhelmed because of information as a new player, but it was due to a lack of information while being overwhelmed by too many new systems all at once, which I can honestly see being hard for a lot of people to differentiate between "There's too much info being thrown at me."  and "There's too many new systems being thrown at me without having the information and resources to handle them and make them not overwhelming." 

Then you combine this with a lack of any kind of tutorial outside the measly training missions hidden in the codex and what you get is new players that don't know you can bullet jump straight up, mod order matters for elements on weapons, element type matters based on enemy health type (which is hidden behind codex entries where you have to scan enemies a billion times just to figure out the best damage type against them.  Or use the wiki and ignore the codex.  Whichever.) several bosses have completely hidden mechanics, new frames come from bosses BUT their BP's are in the market BUT only sometimes, AND the resources you need to make the first frame you can get are several planets away for some reason, new weapons can be found in the market not only for cheap resources but also sometimes for straight credits.  None of that is conveyed to new players.  None of it.  They're left to ask another player or google it and hopefully find the wiki.  Not knowing so much leads to feeling overwhelmed because everything is harder to deal with in the dark.  That's the overwhelming, confusing new player experience, exacerbated heavily by the UI and how much it doesn't tell you. 

Then you get used to it, you learn to keep a third party website open next to the game to answer all the questions the game doesn't answer, and you fully understand that the game will never tell you everything you need to know.  You turn on Item Labels so you can actually tell which relics are which and which frame and weapon parts are the ones you're looking for, and what Zaw or Kitgun is the one you want to use/sell and you just pray they stop screwing with the UI so that you don't have to double click 15 different things just to switch loadouts and you can actually tell if you maxed out the level on your weapon in mission and how many argon you actually picked up.

EDIT:  I love it when they merge threads, because it's so much easier to ignore us if it's all contained in a 40 page thread that literally none of the devs will read all the way through.

Edited by (XB1)TehChubbyDugan
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