Why Do We UI Like We UI?

[Sdarts]

Hi, Pablo.

Thanks a lot for this Dev Workshop and explaining the reasoning behind the changes to the UI and User experience. Though as many people have said, convenience, information and saving time are essentially more important than anything else when it comes to UI and UX. I play a lot of games and in most cases, the games with the best UI and UX tend to be the greatest ones. This isn't 100%, but in most cases, it does fit.

I remember asking many times before in Devstream threads and other threads here in the forums for changes to show the total amount of an item you have in your inventory in the End of Mission screen. Something like:

Acquired: 45 Void Traces (Total: 368 Void Traces)

In your update response, you said that you will be adding this to the End of Mission screen, which will truly be great and the best thing you can do for it imho. However, I hope you also consider reducing the spaces between the grids and even the spaces between the items, as well as reducing the size of the items/boxes - both for items and Affinity XP. This is because the more items are displayed at a glance without the need to scroll down, the better.

In this sense, that first image of the new WIP reworked End of Mission you posted on the Dev Workshop with 10 items instead of 6, as you pointed out, is clearly not enough. If you look closely to your own image, you will see a very long scroll bar with a very small scroller button (I don't know the specific term in English) to the right side of the items grid, meaning that to see all the items you acquired through that mission you would have to scroll down from 8 to 9 times - rough estimate, since I don't have Photoshop to get the image and put a ruler to see how much centimeters that scroller button has.

That's a lot of essential and very valuable information hidden because the items/boxes are too big and there's too much spaces and many of those spaces are also very big - take for example the space below the grids, it's taking 1/10th of the whole screen and the only 2 things inside of it are the "View Stats" and "Exit" buttons, which are also too big, and have 1/20th of the space below them completely empty.

Reducing these items/boxes and spaces should be able to at least show 30 items, which given the 10-15 seconds that the game takes to go back to the orbiter after a mission, is enough time to glance all, or at least most of the items acquired. Fot resources where many people have millions of them, you could take the example I gave for total items and collapse it, if needed, like the example below:

Acquired: 712 Nano Spores

(Total: 999,999 Nano Spores) <- Ideally, this should show the actual number of the item instead of 999,999. In the Foundry and through item linking in chat, it does show the correct ammount, but in the Components section of the Foundry, it shows as 999,999. I took screenshots of this issue, but trying to insert them using the "Insert image from URL" didn't work, so I'm posting their links below:

https://imgur.com/LMH6D1M

https://imgur.com/50TsFQK

Another issue is the fact that in the Modding screen, it doesn't show the number of Kuva you have, this has been requested for years and nothing has been done about it. While showing the total number of Kuva in the End of Mission screen would be great, if someone hasn't done a Kuva mission or forgot the amount, this problem still persists. As the two screenshots below of the Modding screen will show, there's a lot, a whole lot of space to show how much Kuva someone has by default, without the need to have to select a riven mod first.

https://imgur.com/gXYuuop

https://imgur.com/PStEzLG

Also, if you were wondering how much space the text for items amounts would take in the End of Mission screen, please note that the actual text size for the Kuva and Endo ammounts are small enough that you can add hundreds of thousands or millions to them, without occupying much space. Perfectly readeable at a glance and would fit perfectly in the End of Mission screen, as most missions yield 15-30 different items.

Lastly, while I love Fashion Frame to death, there's no need to show the warframes in the End of Mission screen, at all. I understand that from a business perspective, if players are forced to see other people's warframes and cosmetics, that will undoubtly lead to the sell of more cosmetic items. However, from a player's experience and perspective, aside from having a very small sense of pride in showing their fashion frame skills, there's nothing to gain from occupying half of the screen with showing other players' warframes. In fact, a compromise to both would be to allow players to choose whether they want to see other player's warframes in the End of Mission screen or not.

For years now, if I see a warframe of which I like the looks, I just simply right-click on the player's name in the squad chat window or in the Friends > Recent list and choose to Show Player Profile, then I take screenshots. It's extremely easy and fast, I've been doing it for years and have hundreds of screenshots. But it's all optional, I only do it if I want. That's why there needs to be an option to toggle whether or not you want to see other people's warframes.

For those that do, you could even implement an option that if they click the warframe or the player's name in the End of Mission screen while on the orbiter, it would show the cosmetics of that warframe. Additionally, you could also allow for players to see the colors of individual items of the selected warframe, if they so choose. All of this would be great for people interested in Fashion Frame, but it needs to be optional. If you only wanna see what you acquired from a mission, you shouldn't be forced to see things you're not interested in.

Sorry this got too long, but I wanted to explain the issues I have with some of the UI screens, as well as giving possible solutions and detailing how that could work, like the size of text, among other tweaks. Thanks for reading this, and hopefully it helps you and the UI and UX team(s) make an even better UI and user experience for everyone.

[vFlitz]

3 hours ago, Samhel said:

Why dont you want to see your fashionframe on the end of mission screen? o,o

Honestly that (along with what gear people are using) would be much more desirable if it was put in the loading screen before the mission, not after the results when it's already done. No one cares at that point, people want to carry on with whatever it is that they're doing.

Meanwhile while the level is loading you have to wait anyway, so might as well have a look. But instead we have the 100% pointless landing crafts that no one cares about.

[Sdarts]

Just now, vFlitz said:

Honestly that (along with what gear people are using) would be much more desirable if it was put in the loading screen before the mission, not after the results when it's already done. No one cares at that point, people want to carry on with whatever it is that they're doing.

Meanwhile while the level is loading you have to wait anyway, so might as well have a look. But instead we have the 100% pointless landing crafts that no one cares about.

Hi, vFlitz

Just to add to your post, as long as showing the warframes in the End of Mission screen is optional, there's no problem. However, I and a lot of people, it seems, agree that once the mission is done, we just want to see what we acquired and play another mission. If someone wants to see other people's fashion frame, then that should be separated.

Your idea of showing them in dioramas during the load screen is perfect. I believe I speak for the vast majority of players that have hundreds or thousands of hours of playtime, that we have seen the liset to last for a lifetime. This would make te loading screens much better, whether they take long or load fast.

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

Can we talk about hold to confirm for a second?  There's a place this mechanic really belongs and is needed far more than in the arsenal:

When I go to reload my weapon, I don't want to tell the eidolon lure to wait, or the syndicate operative to wait, or use the life support tower, or give my gun that was trying to reload to the rescue or defense target that isn't even going to use the mods I put on it anyway.  The ONLY option that console players have is to change a setting about context actions that literally turns off your ability to reload manually.  Several other games use really short "hold to interact" mechanics so that if you tap the button next to an interactable it reloads and if you hold, it interacts.

Things like this, and putting past parazon mod attempts on the screen where we actually mod the parazon, in that big open space next to the parazon mods, you know like we've been asking for since literally day one of Liches, are the UI polishes that the community wants and has asked for.  Not more hiding text that we might need to read.

[LordTuum]

Dear developers!  I have long had some questions about changes in your interface and despite the fact that I am only one of thousands of players, I would be happy to receive answers to them.  1. Quite often (with my friends and people in random places, I didn’t collect statistics but met those with whom they agree) a situation occurs when I forgot to take a guard / animal simply because it was taken out into a separate window.  Of course, not everyone suffers from such forgetfulness, but I met people who were in solidarity with me.  Will there be any changes for the better in this regard?  Just throwing 1-2 elements into a separate tab is somehow not too convenient, as it seems to me.  2. I have 2 different separate Necros Prime with a different number of polarities (6 polarities in the tank and 3 in the build per radius).  You want to remove the display of the number of forms, the question begs - how can I quickly distinguish between them?  This difference is critical since the builds of each other can not replace.  I am sure that not only do I have several copies of warframes, therefore this nuance is also of interest.

[xcrimsonlegendx]

I think it looks good, some tweaks are needed but overall its aesthetically pleasing.

[DyIroh]

15 hours ago, LeaserResael said:

Instead of writing a lot, I decided to take the time to create a mockup of my own. I think at this point is clear that most players don't like the current mentality of hiding everything.
I think that you should separate rewards/exp gained, mission stats and squad showcase.

 

Perfect, shows everything you wanna see. looks nice!

Edited January 27, 2020 by PBnJames

[Vindicta_Necis]

I am in the camp of clicking less and seeing more info. If I am looking at a menu or reading a mission result screen I am doing so to get info or to achieve a goal.  I don't want to have to drill down or open up pop ups unless I have to.  I want to spend my time playing Warframe not Menuframe.  😕 

Edited January 27, 2020 by Vindicta_Necis

[SordidDreams]

4 hours ago, LeaserResael said:

I modified the equipment and syndicates sections to make the items in there bigger vertically. I think it looks a bit cleaner.

*snip*

That's almost perfect, the only change I'd make is to fit more mods. There's no reason why the mod boxes should be square when the mods themselves aren't, especially when the mod itself is a flat rectangle that pops out when moused over. Makes no sense to have space-saving pop-out mods like that and then space them out so much. Reduce the height of those boxes to half, fit twice as many mods.

Edited January 27, 2020 by SordidDreams

[Yxivi]

8 hours ago, LeaserResael said:

Instead of writing a lot, I decided to take the time to create a mockup of my own. I think at this point is clear that most players don't like the current mentality of hiding everything.
I think that you should separate rewards/exp gained, mission stats and squad showcase.

 

THIS! And can we please sort the item rewards and pick up by rarity. I'm sure everyone cares mostly about the rarer items they get in missions than the common ones such us endo. And the mods should sort by newest and then rarity, to save people the time from scrolling around.

Because UI is not just about being visually pleasing, it should also provide information fast and easy, and using the whole screen isn't bad especially if what's being displayed is important information. This one does exactly that. It's a lot of information but they are all relevant and they are organized in a very user-friendly way. Your eyes wouldn't wander around too much because you will immediately focus on what you need anyway. If you're leveling a frame/weapon then your eyes will focus on the Equipment. If you're farming prime parts, then your eyes will focus on the Mission Rewards, and you get the information right away, no more additional steps needed such as hovering to see if that chassis is Loki Prime Chassis or some other frame's chassis.

Edited January 27, 2020 by Yxivi

[Kefirno]

Oh, and since it's now UI complaints thread...

Can animations of transition between menus be like... 10 times faster?

And why do 90% of avionics icons look like samey mess of lines that tells players NOTHING?

[Znuff]

I hope this wasn't already suggested in the other 15 pages, but:

In regard to the "Hold to Confirm" thing, I'm a relatively new player (less than 1 month), and it took me a bit longer than it should have to figure out that you have to hold to confirm build in the Forge on the Railjack. It wasn't clear right away, mostly because the rest of the game doesn't follow that same concept.

But if you can make it the same across the board, then maybe other newbies like me will not fall to the same trap.

A simple suggestion tough - add the ability to press a MODIFIER, at least on PC. Say, instead of "Hold to Confirm", allow us to Alt+Click (or Ctrl, or Shift,  whatever) to bypass the confirmation dialogue (or the HOLD interaction).
 

8 hours ago, tyrael7 said:

For a high end sci-fi game with such incredibly futuristic elements like what we’re seeing in railjack and what you've previewed, I can’t help but point out how this low fidelity menu stands out like a sore thumb - and it’s easily the one we see most. And more importantly the Ux of that menu often requires multiple clicks as you enter sub menus to find what you need. I would highly suggest aiming to achieve “1 click to content” wherever possible.

This is a very good point. It took me about 2 weeks to find out where some customization options are. For example, I barely discovered the "Intrinsics" menu last week, by accident. I didn't even know there is a skill-point system for the Railjack!!

Edited January 27, 2020 by Znuff

[ParadoxWill]

On 2020-01-24 at 9:33 PM, [DE]Pablo said:

Why is item labels a setting? And why is it off by default?

Not gonna lie, sometimes I ask myself this very question too 😅. Our logic was that 90% of our items have very recognizable icons, we looked at some of our contemporaries at the time and none of them had labels for items, and most of them had smaller, less unique icons than we did, so we felt comfortable removing labels. Of course I said 90%, the other 10% is not so great, clear cases are Relic icons and weapon component icons, for the latter we do have a desired solution that adds the resulting item icon to a corner, but this task keeps getting pushed further and further down the queue, it is in the wishlist tho. And for the Relics we force the labels on always. 

Is this a good solution? Does it help in any way to keep the screen somewhat cleaner without them? The honest answer is we can’t know for sure. Personally I play without labels on and I don’t miss them. But when we do find a case where they are sorely missed, like recently in the Avionics scrapping screen, we force the labels on. 

(Imma try to be nice but at this point I'm being brutally honest)
Pause. This piece honestly annoys me off the most. 90% off items...you do realize that 90% is actually the weapon parts and relics right?

Like what made you think that is the case?

Also, you do realize that majority if not all of the player base that plays this game (for what is left btw) would rather have easier access to information then to look at an empty space with a fashion frame. What sane person would want to play with labels turned off? In a game about numbers, you need so see all the information in game, it also saves the hassle to either dig or go to the wiki to find info (this is also another argument for another day).

No one (especially new players) is going to spend their time to memorize every single item (for what's recognizable) just to see fashion or the background. If I want to see fashion I would either go to the appearance screen or captura, I don't necessarily need to see less information at all times.

At this point you might as well disable the HUD by default too, cause that is also taking up space. But at that point, I would be watching a movie instead of playing a game because it is not needed to see info; apparently seeing the cool backgrounds and warframes are more important.

UI by definition stands for "User Interface". This won't be a "User Interface" if I can't "Interact" with it and see what info I need upfront.

[Shadedraxe]

On 2020-01-24 at 3:43 PM, Gabbynaru said:

Also, please hide the end of game stats for other players. They only lead to toxicity. Do display the players own end of game stats (Damage dealt, damage taken, total kills, blah blah), but hide what the other players did. We don't need to know that, and neither does anyone else. All it does is create a stupid sense of competition that shouldn't even exist in a cooperative environment, and that sense of competition brings with it toxic behavior. So just hide it. It's unnecessary and doesn't help in any positive way.

I’m 100% down with that. Brozime brought this up as well. None of these stats really matter, and have little to nothing to do with objectives in the game. Oh but players sure do get overly aggressive over who dealt the most damage.

[Videatur]

11 hours ago, LeaserResael said:

Instead of writing a lot, I decided to take the time to create a mockup of my own. I think at this point is clear that most players don't like the current mentality of hiding everything.
I think that you should separate rewards/exp gained, mission stats and squad showcase.

 

You made a great work, can be perfect if will be like that.

[GhostLacuna]

On 2020-01-26 at 7:25 PM, tyrael7 said:

-snip-

The second Warframe is getting Anthem menus is the same second i drop the game to never come back.

Its a travesty and one of the hardest ui to navigate in a modern game by far.

What happened after the 90s that makes you designers want the user to constantly battle with your ui to get even a remotely useful ux?

 

[okelf]

I'm having a lot of trouble learning the railjack avionics icons, especially when playing in someone else's ship. At the start I just button smash the available skills, wasting the flux energy just to find out which ones the host installed.. or just don't use them as that seems to piss off the hosts.

In regular gameplay you can scrollwheel across your 4 skills and it shows what is selected in the bottom. This should be carried over to railjack UI.

[FancyRaptor]

Feels like I’m screaming into a void here but DE I beg you, stop shooting yourself in the foot by disguising information new players regularly miss and veteran players want at a glance.

Vets do not like having to hover over things. New players often don’t even know they should hover over things. I’ve had to explain how the new ability menu works several times and each time I was asked why the old ability menu didn’t stay instead.

Designing UI as a conversation does not work if a significant number of people simply don’t have the language to understand the conversation. It doesn’t help Warframe’s problem with onboarding new players when the menus themselves obfuscate information.

Edited January 27, 2020 by FancyRaptor
Clarity

[EnjaN]

The forums seriously need some sort of disagree icon.

First off this current stance on UI changes are abysmal. A UI redesign should bring in more useful information in a way easy to understand at first glance. Your designs are less information with pointless pretty fluff. Then any of that possible information is poorly nested in poorly design menus.

Lets start from the top with the examples in this post.

Abilities old screen

The major faults of this screen are the short blurbs on the abilities that often never fully explained how they worked. On top of leaving out VERY key details.

The frame image taking up 40% of the screen with a tiny blurb for the passive below. This is tons of wasted space that could have been displaying videos of the abilities or having the abilities panel expanded to properly show information. You really need to stop having players need the wiki out of game to just understand how something works.

Abilities new screen

Why is everything relegated to hovering?! If we are stuck with this style of menu at least do it better than this. When you hover over any of the abilities the ENTIRE background should change to display that ability. Split it 50/50 with a video playing on one side and on the other a full stat and ACTUAL how a skill works breakdown. At this point the tips should display relevant parts to that ability. The new tool tips for each individual ability are a nice step forward with already just show more information that players don't have to visit the wiki to find out.

For the current tips hover bit. WHY isn't it one massive hover window and instead hit tab 10+ times to cycle through a tiny window in the corner of the screen. This pop up should be front and center of the screen. No one is going to be watching those pretty frame idle sets ups as they read. So have the tip window take the center focal point.

While not an 'ability' I think there should be a section here that shows the frame stats. You could even roll in the passive in this section.

In the end putting 90% of the focus on this frame animations is a joke.

Turn on item labels by default.

I don't understand how anyone actually looked at the labels off and thought 'oh this is good!'. Did anyone actually think that ANY player be it new or veteran would find this useful? Are you seriously wanting the players to spend pointless minutes hovering over every little damn icon? It's fine being F2P and wanting to keep players playing longer. But when it comes to tedium and pointless stuff(nice filter) like this you guys take the cake sometimes. On by default.

World State Panel

This is expansion and changes that narrow down clutter in a good way. The question is though how well will the new resource drone page work. The planets and locations will need to focus on the left side of the screen rather than more centered. We need to be able to zoom in and out to click through the system while the resource drone tab is open. Sort of how it current works with the panels staying open till another is selected or you completely back out. Less tedious clicking the better. 

As for possible buttons for the new resource drone tab. A collect all resources will be nice. Then a redeploy button. Though this one might need a warning pop up or hover notice that warns about drone health. Perhaps only if redeploying a drone would completely deplete the health. Or something along the lines of resupply/redeploy that could actively swap in healthier drones of the same style.

Mastery Test

Honestly I've always loved the look of these screens. Back in my early days it felt like a BIG milestone to rank up. It was something exciting and fun.

The practice button needs far better placement though.

The new rank 28 icon... Yea that needs to completely go back to the drawing board. 

End of Mission...

Yikes.

Item labels set to DEFAULT ON.

Less frame fluff up top taking up half the screen.

Honestly the new design feels nice but the way information is displayed, not so much.

If we are dead stuck on this...At least when looking at the stats have it full screen. Have the 4 rank icons and name portion slide upwards. Warframe has LOTS of stats so lets use the full screen and take advantage of the screen space.

Mission time needs to be on both pages 100% of the time.

In the end check out reddit with all of the mock-ups that fix up many of these issues for the end of mission screen.

Edited January 27, 2020 by EnjaN

[HomicidalGrouse]

I'm really digging that new end of mission screen.

Obviously, there's the item labels issue and such, but I trust item labels will work with that screen as they do others.

I also approve of hiding the largely useless mission stats behind a button. At the end of the day, how many kills you got, how much damage you did, how many dudes you sliced with your zaw... those don't really matter.

[SilentMobius]

On 2020-01-24 at 9:33 PM, [DE]Pablo said:

Our logic was that 90% of our items have very recognizable icons, we looked at some of our contemporaries at the time and none of them had labels for items, and most of them had smaller, less unique icons than we did, so we felt comfortable removing labels

I really go to bat for DE on may of the UI changes (just check my post history) I believe truly understand what DE is trying to do here and the difficulty of it.

But.

Pabo, Warframe does not have "recognisable icons" for the majority of cases the players actually need them. I'm not disrespecting the work of the art team but DE is making a far future Sci-Fi game, the vast majority of the "loot" you invent is has no meaningful real-world analogue to provide recognition. In addition many of the equipment designs (while visually beautiful) are horrendously noisy, resulting in icons what are very, very visually noisy, with no meaningful colour identifiers and no meaningful silouettes.

Also, how many of the games you compared to are fantasy games? Where all the items have obvious and immediate real-world analogues?

I've been playing this game for almost seven years now. I still have to go back and forward and back and forward in the UI because resource management is so frustrating, mostly due to lack of visible information. "Complexity" has never ever been a problem

Please also remember that people who espouse "progressive disclosure" also measure and balance against "time-to-task-fulfillment", "number of actions needed" and "Task cognative load" And while I really praise the style and effort you're putting into the UI especially given the difficulty of modularisation when working in scaleform. I certainly feel that Warframe is going backwards in usability.

And when you trade usability for minimum initial complexity, the resultant messaging is that you value attracting new players over the needs of current players.

And that creates bad feeling, as I'm sure you've seen from the UI threads.

 

Edited January 27, 2020 by SilentMobius

[AdunSaveMe]

On 2020-01-25 at 8:33 AM, [DE]Pablo said:

90% of our items have very recognizable icons

90% is an extreme stretch. On top of that, there are just too many icons in the game for all of them to be recognisable. Look at the parts for weapons and Warframes, prime and non-prime. I can't tell which of my fifty identical barrel icons is for a specific weapon without item labels or hovering. I can't tell which of a mass of identical chassis icons belongs to a specific frame without item labels or hovering. And why? Because other games do it? Not a great reason.

The end of mission screen that you've shown, after all the feedback on the new UI and our own experiences with it, just feels like that feedback is less important than your vision, and that our experience doesn't matter. Half a screen taken up by posing Warframes, and instead of using all that space, info is condensed with tiny scroll bars and label-less icons. Wasted space, form over function. Like most of the new UI screens, in my experience.

That's not even touching on the issues with colourblindness and general visual clarity that have never been addressed. Transparent icon backgrounds on an animated backdrop, for example. Or the use of limited colour palettes, making things harder to distinguish. Or the colour-coding of item rarities with no clear shapes or icons with the exception of very small symbols that are also the same colour. On the end-of-mission UI mockup I can already see issues with the text; gold on darker gold surrounded by shades of gold. Even when people bring it up to you directly, Pablo, in response to your tweets, which you also respond to, it's not taken seriously. That's why I have to squint every time I choose a relic reward even though many people stated reasons why the new rarity 'bars' aren't enough. 

With every new UI screen that comes out, I feel like our feedback on all the others is less and less important.

Edited January 27, 2020 by AdunSaveMe

[AdunSaveMe]

Also, I see we're continuing the incredibly annoying strain-inducing trend of making icons washed out when you're not hovering over them, which is incredibly annoying; not just for style, but for visibility, since it makes things MUCH harder to pick out. It started in the inventory, then it went everywhere else. It makes things so much more difficult to pick out at a glance, so I end up having to hover over them anyway.

Please stop doing this. It is so frustrating. Consider it an accessibility issue, because it is one.

Edited January 27, 2020 by AdunSaveMe

[Aadi880]

12 hours ago, LeaserResael said:

I modified the equipment and syndicates sections to make the items in there bigger vertically. I think it looks a bit cleaner.

Suggestion. Put "Show Squad" and "Mission stats" up top (next to mission time). Makes it easier for players (vets and new comers) to notice them. Putting them on the bottom may go unnoticed. Humans have a tendency to look from top to bottom.

[vegetosayajin]

End screen needs to have labels and quantity, like many above said.