Why Do We UI Like We UI?

[(PSN)Maunstre]

46 minutes ago, [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.

I'm going to hard disagree with you here, Pablo. Having unique icons isn't a good reason to have labels off by default. We don't have as many unique icons as you think, and they don't provide the information we actually need as players. We have unique icons for stuff like Warframes, Weapons, Campanions, resources, Arcanes, etc. That's great, but it doesn't mean those unique icons actually give us the information we're looking for when blasting through our inventory looking for something. Yeah, I'm looking for a Warframe or Weapon, but I also want to know at a glance without having to hover or click, what the Rank is, how many I have, the name, etc.

Example 1: I have three Limbo Primes in my inventory, because I have a bunch of builds and fashion I like to keep. When I search for these frames in my inventory, they all look the same despite that fact that they all have unique skins. In the old UI, the unique skins I gave them changed their UI icon. With the new UI it doesn't do this... 99% of the time. Sometimes it does, but not often enough to make a difference. Even with labels on I can't tell which Limbo Prime's which unless I load it into the Arsenal. To work around this I just wound up saving them to load outs to spare myself the headache of trying to tell which is which.

Example 2: Carrier and Carrier Prime will look exactly the same in the inventory with the Para skin equipped. With labels off I have to hover or play a guessing game for which is which.

Example 3: Arcanes, Relics, Prime parts, and basic parts. All of these look the same if not exactly the same. They need labels. Arcanes are indecipherable without labels. Arcane Energize's icon is a bunch of dots - that doesn't describe the Arcane or what it does at all - it's label does. I still have to click on it to get the full picture, but from the name alone I can get an idea. Relics are differentiated by refinement and colour - that minor differentiation would be great if I didn't have over 2,000 of them in my inventory. Same for Prime parts and basic components - ALL of these share the same basic set of icons.

And, what about resources? They have unique icons too, but when push comes to shove, I'm not here to admire the tightly-packed icons, I'm here to see at an immediate glance What I have and How Much.

Labels should be on by default. Having it off by default is incredibly non-user friendly and is a barrier to understanding for new players who don't even realise this information can be turned on in the menu - an option buried in a dense and tabbed menu. As an experienced player I still have issues finding what I need in the Options menu. DE has spoken many times about how they want to bring in and retain more new players - having what is an impenetrable UI choked with vague information with no labels by default is poison to the New Player Experience. To turn them off should be the choice for those who specifically want it, not the default.

To further build on this, you've even shown why having labels off is a terrible idea in this very post:

1 hour ago, [DE]Pablo said:

And finally we are adding more flavour to it by showcasing your whole squad.

 

This is nice and all, but the right side of this screen? No information at all. What did I actually get? I have no clue! I have credits, endo, some resources and some prime parts. Which ones and how much? I can't tell. I am honestly and seriously baffled at how and why anyone on the team believes that this is an appropriate change - to strip needed information from an information-dense game. UI is art, but form and function need to be balanced and married in a way that benefits the end-user experience - us, the player, not the art critic. Dispensing critical information is in and of itself an art form, and currently the changes to the UI are a class in what not to do in a circumstance where a lot of information is needed quickly. This screen by itself is a massive counter argument for labels-off-by-default all on its own. Stop making us jump through hoops to get our information. Hover is not a catch-all solution. There are so many screens in this game where there is massive chunks of dead space that would be perfect for information and graphs, but are entirely empty save for an "I - About" icon pasted right in the middle. What do I get when I hover over this ugly button? A tiny graph that would easy fit in that dead space with no detriment to the design of the page. The market and Warframe Codex are the biggest culprits of this bizarre and non-functional design choice.

Can the current screens be updated? Yes, but taking out all of the information in favour for a dense grid of nice-looking tiles isn't the answer. A marriage between these two extremes could be reached instead of this.

It's likely been mentioned in this thread before, but all of this "info by hover" is great for PC but is incredibly crappy for console players / controller users, in part because in many cases, especially in Railjack, the active area we need to hover over is small, and a controller pointer is not accurate. Added to this, functionality of the d-pad as a form of hover-point navigation is broken at best still.

[FrostedMike]

12 hours ago, [DE]Pablo said:

And finally we are adding more flavour to it by showcasing your whole squad.

• I personaly think the syndicates and the affinity should be seperated. I barely care about the syndicates as I maxed out 4 of them, but I almost always care about affinity. At the very least, have the affinity BEFORE the syndicates.
• I don't like the new resource section. It looks cramped and a mess. At the very least sort the rewards. Maybe hiding all of the information under categories: "Mods", "Resources", "Relics" and "Other". Hovering over one will reveal the rewarded items under this category.
  • We farm spesific items in the game and we sometimes don't care what we got other then one item we were looking for. For example: I don't care what mods I get from the missions while I farm for Argon Crystals. What I look for in every mission I do, is usualy for one specific item or resource, the rest is noise.
  • What we need is to find that one item quickly in the sea of rewards we got. By orginizing the rewards under categories, hiding the rewards, and hovering with the mouse over a category to show the related rewards, you will remove noise from our eyes and make it easier for us to find it.
  • Credits doesn't need to be big and take a lot of space because we always get it. It can always be shown to the players in that case.

I took a little time and designed a new UI:

I streamlined a bit the ability to find specific items in this screen while removing noise.
Most of the time, by my experiance, players are looking for two things:

• Affinity
  • Always visible.
  • Syndicates standing is not something we constantly look for compared to affinity and resources, so I seperated it from the affinity and made the section smaller.
• Resources.
  • The issue we have with the current UI and the new suggested UI, is the sheer quantity of different items we get. It gets more messy as we get closer to the end game and makes it harder for us to find specific items in this mess.
  • Instead of having it constently visible like the affinity section, I did the exact opposite and hid the resources under categories to remove the noise.
  • Players will hover with their mouse over the blocks to show only the related items in this category (optionally clicking to keep the window open?). If we farmed for argon crystals for example, we don't need to see the mods we got. We need to find what we farmed for quickly.
  • "Mods" block shows only the mods we got.
    
  • "Resources" block shows only the resources we got.
    
  • "Other" block shows whatever does not answer the other two categories: prime parts, blueprints, endo, relics, etc. It have the same structure of the Resources window.

Edited January 25, 2020 by FrostedMike
Added my own design for UI.

[drawmeadream]

1 hour ago, Sannidor said:

Super narrow vertical sliders are horrible.

Grabbing them with cursor is a pain, it's always better to just scroll mouse but it's slower than using slider so.... maybe make the interactive part of the slider larger or diamond shaped?

Overall, Warframe UI is a compromise between PC and what must work on consoles, obviously making PC experience worse. We need to make optional everything which can be improved on PC for maximum functionality and visibility. I hope Switch players enjoy the game but I refuse to suffer only because someone ad DE decides all versions must look the same.

I have to battle those damn sliders every single time, I can honestly barely stand them, my scroll has been broken for months so can't use that (getting a new mouse finally tho) the amount of time it takes for the minimized bar to unminimize... Just feels so unnecessary. the times where it doesn't seem like it's noticing the mouse is there. And then there's the accessibility part where not everyone is able to comfortably do microscopic hand movements, I don't have that problem but I want all of us to not have to battle the UI, we're suppose to be battling the grineer 😂 

[Magnus]

Hire a professional UX/UI developer.

You're now making excuses to not have item labels defaulted to on just for the sake of Breath of the Wild UI when this game needs more information displayed, not more information nested. Speaking of nesting, I notice there's no big paragraph about the current oppressive number of 'About' things we have to hover over, including in Railjack, and the now more aggressive happening of it with Kuva Liches to try and figure out good missions.

Just stop hiding so much information already. Display stuff clearly already.

And now I'm going to be extra clear. Extra concise, just to make sure it's understood.

Stop nesting information. Stop it.  It's bad, it's stupid, it's awful, it's downright cancerous, it's a horrible way to do UI. I don't care how much you want a minimalistic UI, I don't care how much you want it to look like Breath of the Wild, I do not care about any preconceived notions you might have. Warframe has a great many things you need to know. Any, ANY nesting literally is only time wasting, frustrating, and genuinely just obnoxious, peppering in extra steps onto users for not even a more visually appealing result. It looks worse because all I can think of is all that negative space that doesn't have what I want-- what plenty of people want to see in it. It is a direct correlation to new player confusion and veteran player frustration.

Mouse over these items to figure out what they are because no item label. A new player isn't going to recognize icons. They're not even going to know item labels can be turned on. Do you know what one of the first recommendations is to new players right now in Region? Turn on item labels. Literally people take the time to grab someone aside who just joined, brand spanking new, and direct them how to turn labels on. It doesn't matter what you think about item labels at this point, in other words, region will always, ALWAYS have to try and help new players undo it because you wouldn't just default it to on. You're literally making it harder for newer players no matter what with this choice and that's an indisputable fact.

Mouse over missions to figure out what they are. Want to do something specific but haven't memorized names yet? Good luck. Throw the idea of memorizing which is which out entirely when you get to Kuva Liches.

Open up a window to a weapon linked or in the market. Stats? No. Mouse over this GIANT About button to figure out what it is instead. Why not, just, SHOW the stats?

Railjack Avionics? Well, on top of throwing out any SENSIBLE sorting style, such as by EHP, Offensive, Defensive, Support, let's also make sure they all have names and no clear indication of what they are by a glance. Sure, eventually you recognize Vitality by how it looks, by its drain, its color. But Avionics? They're just really bland diamond shapes with smaller less discernable shapes in them, all the exact same color. So, mouse over that, too. Mouse over everything. Also, seriously, no one thinks sorting by house was good or smart for avionics. It adds nothing, absolutely no aid in finding the things you want.

You know what I'm worried about? You're right now intending to add the same nesting to the foundry, too. To hide what's required to craft behind mousing over it.

Railjack guns? Not only do you need to mouse over them, you also need to push Tab to see what their stats are. You've delivered a double whammy there.

Fissure farming. Ducat value? Mouse over. It's just exhausting to constantly demand inputs for every little thing, rather than just select which reward you want at a glance if the reward is ducats.

What resources are from what planets? Well, it USED to be mouse over a stand out icon on the bottom right of a planet after zooming in on it, rather than being CLEARLY DISPLAYED NEXT TO IT, but then that very button got hidden underneath nightwave and kuva liches. And now it's being put in the world state window, which is honestly even MORE buried than that. New players aren't going to ever, EVER see that without someone grabbing them, then walking them step by step through each tab to WHICH it is. Or, they're just gonna spam region chat asking where something is everytime they want to know for kickbot responses. And my god, the amount of reliance on kickbot.

Seriously, kickbot nesting is horrible. The fact it autoreplies in public instead of deleting basic messages. The fact there's no Help channel. Baro messages are basically just spam because there's no clear indication of Baro's time in Navigation. That's not gonna go away until you make his time clear. You have to consider what your excessive nesting is even doing to chats, that's how rampant it is.

Warframe abilities: someone else actually already covered this and you hopefully get the idea by now.

And nesting? That's just one horrible aspect of Warframe's UI. I could sit here all night and write up every single thing wrong with it, just throw my night away doing that. But it's not my job to do that. It's not anyone's job in here to do that. Feedback is good but it's far more important to straight up have a professional, expert breakdown on what works and why. This is the UX/UI developer's job. For a large scale game, it's vital to have someone in this role, to have that be their sole job title.

 

Also, the mission results screen is a joke. Massive amounts of negative space for the sake of fashion that honestly only looks shoehorned in more than anything, and not even your own but other players' that you might not even care about even one tiny iota.

 

Twice, my post has been edited without the moderator in question properly labeling that they themselves have edited it.

Edited January 25, 2020 by Magnus
Clarity

[AlphaPHENIX]

I feel like the only pearson who actually liked this^ screen, partially because the scrollbar was of a decent and usable size. Speaking of...

If I may request one thing, as a pearson with a non-functioning mouse wheel scroll, may we please have some slightly larger scroll bars?

1 hour ago, Sannidor said:

Super narrow vertical sliders are horrible.

Grabbing them with cursor is a pain...

Relatable.

[N7Arthur]

I was so excited seeing the old abilities screen again because for a moment I thought you were bringing it back. The issue with the newer UI elements isn't that the info isn't there, sure you can hover over it, and get info like you mentioned, but the issue is that this is not more info than we had before. One of the main good things about the old UI was you could see instantly at a glance how your mod setup affected everything, you don't have to go and look at one thing, then another, and another, and another to see what you just did to your build.

We should have the option to have all the info available on the page all open at the same time, because otherwise there is no point in making the UI "cleaner" if in the end it proves less info. This applies to everything really. The new end of mission screen just gives you no info, you have no clue on what you got, or how much of said thing you got. And if possible, I would prefer if we could disable the little quips about what your teammates did or shorten the list of things to things that relate to actual performance, like the crewship kills, and not that they broke some containers.

I would prefer a straight worse looking UI if it meant we got more info at once, aesthetics are nice, but function over form please. Also, hold to confirm is pointless. Sure, it's fine for some really critical things, maybe, but not for everything, don't waste people's time. I have done a lot of Railjack, maxed out ship, and I would prefer to just click and craft things, and the hold to refine just made it feel even worse. As some others have said already, please have a "simple" and "advanced" UI. If you want hold, or click, make that an option in the settings too.

[FrostedMike]

5 minutes ago, CeePee said:

-snip-

Miss clicks are a thing. You have no idea how many times I miss clicked on what I wanted to forge in railjack missions and the "hold to confirm" saved me. I bet I'm not the only one. Hold to confirm a forma does sounds noce.

[shut]

1 hour ago, [DE]Pablo said:

 

Abilities Screen
As an example, let's talk about the abilities screen. I chose this one, because I remember at the time of this change, there were a lot of upset Tenno, and I imagine some of you remain so. So it seems like a good one to explain why we did what we did.

A common approach in UX is to treat it as a conversation, in this case the player clicked on abilities, so they are asking “What are Chromas abilities?” And our answer was to show you a small picture of each one, giving you all the stats, full description, how they are affected by mods, etc. In a conversation, our answer should have been closer to “These are the abilities, do you want to know more about any of them?” then the player can say which one they want to know about.

Just from reading through your post, I found myself MUCH more drawn towards the previous version of the Abilities UI. It shows plenty of the information we need without being cluttered or overwhelming.

I'm speaking as a person who has no experience in designing a UI-- but I'd imagine that the whole point of a UI is to make the interaction convenient and intuitive for the end user. That is, the "conversation" approach should NOT be taking more steps than necessary. We already saw from the previous UI that the conversation could be as simple as:

Player: I wanna see the boost that Vex Armor gives to my weapons. Maybe see how much this hurts the energy cost of Effigy too, idk.
Game: Okay, here's a page showing the stat changes to all of your abilities.

Boom. Done.
Whereas the new UI is more like:

Player: I wanna see the boost that Vex Armor gives to my weapons. Maybe see how much this hurts the energy cost of Effigy too, idk.
Game: Okay, here's the Codex diorama of a pretty fire-breathing dragon.
Player: Vex armor, please. Although I still kinda want to look at Effigy.
Game: Okay, here's detailed information for Vex armor.
Player: Aight, cool. Time for Effigy.
Game: Here, take a look at the pretty dragon again. Appreciate it.
Player: ... Effigy, please.
Game: Okay, here's detailed information for Effigy.

It's cumbersome. And this is just the Abilities UI; like holy hell don't even get me started about trying to look at weapon stats in the marketplace.

 

From your screenshots, we can see that the new UI does get a lot of things right (e.g. hover-over videos, more details available when explicitly requested by the player, showing old/new stats at the same time, etc), and the old UI does get a few things wrong (e.g. screenshots that provide more visual noise than useful information, only ~6 lines for stat details, not enough room for tips).

However, the overall concept of the old UI-- that is, "here's a nonzero amount of the information you just requested, right when you requested it"-- felt infinitely better to use.

I'm fine with hover-overs and clicks being required for seeing the space-consuming, nitty-gritty details of what the player wants to look at (e.g. ability videos, long flavor text, ability tips). However, the basic information that every player cares about (i.e. stats, the item name, and maaaaaybe short descriptive text) should be in plain view from the get-go, just as it was before.

Edited January 24, 2020 by SortaRandom

[Neick1]

How about a toggle where you can choose where you want the new UI applied and where the old one?

[squako]

Hi,

For Options I'd like to suggest a change to the display, because essentially half of the screen is wasted.

Below is our current UI for options (glyphs and currency hidden)

 

and therefore I would like to suggest that we use the right side (where your customized Warframe is) to have text explaining some options

 

editing in: i'd also like to suggest every option have a small subtext explaining what it does.  I had to google up what  Reverb is

Also, I'd like to suggest for the mission UI to have the mods you obtained go behind the current weapon ammo/energy UI, as seen below

Edited January 25, 2020 by Transference

[(XBOX)Umbra Howl]

Thank you 

[Drachnyn]

vor 56 Minuten schrieb [DE]Pablo:

The two most common types of feedback we get are

     1. Need more information
     2. This is overwhelming

Are you sure those are always opposites and that some screens are not overwhelming because of useful information but with useless information or with pretty looks? The new ability screen for example is mostly just a busy diorama of the frame. Luckily this problem is mostly solved by having ability stat displays in the modding screen itself.

vor einer Stunde schrieb [DE]Pablo:

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.

Yea please dont hide lenses, you only notice them when you are looking for them at which point they definitely shouldnt be hidden.

vor einer Stunde schrieb [DE]Pablo:

Our logic was that 90% of our items have very recognizable icons

I'm just going to assume this is a joke. The obvious mishap with prime parts and relics aside, the people not having item labels on are likely newer people (seeing as it is off by default for no good reason) will not recognize most items without labels. Hell I still wouldnt be able to recognize many of the non basic resources just by icon. Item labels dont take away anything from the fancy icon  I'm going to list a few examples:

Spoiler

None of these are easily recognizable. And for new players nothing is recognizable, so they suffer the most from inactive item labels.

vor einer Stunde schrieb [DE]Pablo:

We are not looking to reinvent the wheel, mostly will get themes, fix some issues like how mods show up as stretched images or how rolling over Invasions or Sorties can make the scroll bar go nuts. We are adding a bit of functionality by moving the resource drones into a tab here, so you will now be able to see where they are, along with their status, at a glance.

Star chart needs a search bar for resources and mission types, for resources it should take us to the overview of the star chart and then highlight the planets that have the searched resource, for missions it should highlight the mission nodes of the searched type. Moving resources to its own tab is a nice step in the right direction.

 

vor 1 Stunde schrieb [DE]Pablo:

We are changing the end of mission screen quite a bit, first, by consolidating the mod and item sections into a single grid and increasing how many items you see at first glance from 6 to 10. Syndicates and Item Affinity are also being put together into a progress section that will show Focus, Intrinsics, etc.

Half of the screen is taken up by useless pictures of the frames. Right now we can see almost all of our weapon/frame etc progress without scrolling, This is especially useful for checking our stuff in mission with the tab screen. Right now i can instantly see in mission if my kavat is finished leveling. How will I do that with that new UI?

Why are the item drops not ordered? Why are there (again) no labels? Why is the mission timer only displayed in the second screen and not in the first? This doesnt even show how much credits we get. You say UI is a conversation, the conversation right here is 

"how many credits did i get?"
"yes"

Adding flavor is nice and cool but it should never ever make the functionality worse. Because if that happens i'm not looking at the UI thinking how pretty it is but hating how much less functionality it has, at which point it's definitely a bad flavor.

There are 2 UI screens I want to focus on that havent been talked in here:

Railjack Avionics: selecting a slot means i can no longer see the stats of the avionic currently installed so if I compare avionics of the same type i better start remembering values. This is completely unnecessary. There is also no drag and drop which makes the regular modding screen so incredibely easy to use. Instead we have a picture of the ship take up a third of the screen, added flavor I guess. Unfortunately a bad flavor.

Lich history: the searchbar there does actually nothing, cant search by name, weapon, element, anything. Please let us search by weapon and ephemera there.

[FrostyNovaPrime]

Very interesting read, but I do have concerns about the end of mission screen and new mastery borders.

People won't admit it but the mission summary is very important and all the information shown is relevant in some way. I would not recommend shoving everything to the bottom (like the abilities screen) in order to have a bright pink Rhino and rainbow vomit Valkyr take up half the screen. Might just be me being nostalgic about the current one, but I feel like that layout could be cleaned up to fit the UI themes and then possibly replace the flying ships with a victorious (or despondent if a mission fail!) diorama of the squad?

As for the mastery borders, they seem to be even harder to tell apart the ranks in that style. The current lotus icons evolve every 3 ranks, which is a great and unique way to show our progression through the ranks. I feel as if with the glyph border MR 2 will be hard to differentiate from MR 20. They also remind me of League of Legends and Overwatch's level borders, which imo shouldn't be used as inspiration. I get that the Lotus is no longer with us after... certain events, but the Lotus symbol is such an integral part of the game that it needs to stay with mastery rank.

[felix]

That new end of mission screen looks positively dreadful. No thanks. More information, less "flavour".

[sarasuxatwarframe]

All I've ever wanted, is an option to hide certain blueprints from my Foundry.
(Bonus if I can sell them for credits from the Foundry too. Maybe with a long click.)

I might be saving some things to trade, and it clogs up my view when I'm trying to find that new bp I just picked up and I don't know if I have enough resources to build it.

Bless the new extractor menu tho. omg. YAAASSS!

[fredebade1]

1 hour ago, [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. 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.

IMO, the label should be on by default because of those 10%. The biggest problem without item label on, is that I don't know who's prime part is who's and what weapon components I'm missing at a glance notice. With the item label on by default I (and many more people) would not mind waiting on a redesign because, now we know by a glance, what items we have and don't have.

[yarl5000]

1 hour ago, [DE]Pablo said:

World State Panel

We are not looking to reinvent the wheel, mostly will get themes, fix some issues like how mods show up as stretched images or how rolling over Invasions or Sorties can make the scroll bar go nuts. We are adding a bit of functionality by moving the resource drones into a tab here, so you will now be able to see where they are, along with their status, at a glance.

 

That extractor pannel is better than what we got currently but still worse than the phone app.  It should be just as easy if not easier to collect and deploy drones in game as it is in the app.  This also is true for basically all the things in the world stat menu.  Why can the app tell me the info I want faster and easier than the in game UI can? (please don't change the app ui because of this to make it as usable as the in game one cause I said something).  Also are we going to actually get railjack star chart and the normal star chart to be together so it is easier to move between those to so they don't feel like separate games from each other.

 

Quote

End of mission

We are changing the end of mission screen quite a bit, first, by consolidating the mod and item sections into a single grid and increasing how many items you see at first glance from 6 to 10. Syndicates and Item Affinity are also being put together into a progress section that will show Focus, Intrinsics, etc.

Stats are being moved into their own section with a few added ones like healing done, crowd control time and damage prevented.
And we are introducing special recognition for things done during the mission, for example you might’ve found a lot of the Syndicate Medallions, revived your allies or put out a lot of fires in Railjack. We want to recognize that you aided your team there and who did the most damage isn’t the only thing that matters.

And finally we are adding more flavour to it by showcasing your whole squad.

No this tells me less than what we have. 

My question/thoughts at the end of the missions are:

What affinity did I get for my weapons/focus?

What resources did I get? and how much? (dislike how it doesn't group things better like all the vitus together)

Did I get any new or interesting mods?

Please make me have to do as little scrolling as possible.

 

Things I am not asking myself at the end of the mission:

What frames were they playing again?

What was their fashion again?

Literally any of the stats frankly apart from when I play with friends and we are picking on each other for % damage done.

 

 

So other questions I have from this.  Why is the time hidden in the corner of the screen on the stat page, why doesn't it say what the mission is. Why is there so much empty space above the other team mates that makes all the things I want to look at buried at the bottom of the page. What is there a scroll to look at what things got affinity. Why are the item labels still off? I have no clue what parts those are so that is part of the very important 10% of the time when I want to know that info. Why are drops, mods, and resources all mixed together they should at least be grouped if they are getting dumped into one big unlabeled pile.

[HunterDigi]

Labels?

For a game with so many items and items that share the same icon, I really don't know why labels shouldn't be default, players will surely not feel overwhelmed by things being named.

Sure you don't use it because you're familiar with pretty much everything in the game (I hope 😛) but surely new players won't complain about their items being named, and if they do they can turn it off, but I don't see that happening as often as people needing the labels and wonder why they don't exist.

Also, in the mission end screen is a prime example how generic icons are being used and you have no idea what you get, forcing you to hover. Same with credits amount, it just occupies the first slot but it doesn't even tell you how much you got. Only things with labels are mods for some reason.

 

(Quick) mission progress screens

I hope that the end mission screen is not going to be the same as the manual mission progress/quick progress screen, that entire top half would be entirely wasted.

The (quick) mission progress screens need to be redesigned so that you can see all the affinity stuff as well as recently picked up items.

Or preferably always sort items by importance and rarity in the current mission context.

For example: if I'm doing plague star, I'm most likely opening mission screen to check if I picked up all the hemocyte cystolith and didn't miss any since those for some reason aren't vacuumed, and I have to scroll all the way down to look for it, same goes with pretty much everything...

And credits don't need to be always at the top because they're such an extremely common reward, unless it's a big amount tied to the mission (index, alert, etc).

 

End-mission screen
I don't like the new grid-list for end screen items now that mods are mixed in, it looks very cluttered and hard to navigate and I can only imagine with the amount of mods regular missions can drop what that will look like.

Mods as a separate list was fine, new mods appeared at the top and would be obvious (when that worked).

 

Extractors

The extractor UI is welcome, however does that mean the resources there are only the ones that drop from extractors or are the ones that can drop on the planet? Ceres for example, enemies can drop orokin cells, orkin cells are in the resources list that is used for extractor info too but the extractors never find orokin cells.

 

Conversation UX

Sure UX as a conversation makes sense but the answers also have to try to be more helpful than simply answering the question in the little amount of effort possible, that just leads to more questions and more UI layers and gets too obscured.

Right now if I ask WF "What loot did I get?" the screenshot above basically tells me: "99x spring loaded chamber, 99x infected clip, 99x seeking fury, 3 prime parts, credit, argon, endo, gallium"... which pretty much gives up on details half way, why do I have to ask about every single item (hover) to see how many when it could've simply included the count next to the name and also the name of those prime parts.

Also how does one converse images? Because all those items (except mods) were not labelled, so maybe the answer was more like "3 blue rectangular plates, yellow electrified ball, block of ice, rock with purple insides, spider suit, lightsaber grip and metalic T-shirt"

Then there's railjack weapon wrecks, why do I have to switch tabs in the tooltip to see the only thing that's different, the RNG stat? It should be included in the first page with the other fixed stats, and maybe made clearer that only that stat can be random.

On abilities screen, while you are asking what their abilities are you're also not asking for the abilities rank and how the warframe looks like, yet those are there. So why not more useful stuff like the stats of the abilities since the only place I've used that screen recently was during missions so I could see how aura/other players' buffs affected my abilities... speaking of, why aren't auras affecting abilities in upgrade screen? Like Power Donation.

Syndicates and other dialog-like interactions need better paths to what we need, why do I have to go to standing in order to see what they can give me? Also if I recall correctly there's one vendor that basically says the same thing 3 times, "Browse wares", "Trade goods" and probably "Buy things" is the last one 😃

 

Use of bottom-right buttons

The use of the bottom-right buttons is still basically concealing them, I don't understand why you guys keep putting stuff there. That practice button was basically invisible to me until I read the caption about it being there. Same with "Scrap" in avionics menu and probably many other things that should be in the actual menus and not down there.

 

Overwhelming UI?

I'm curious what UI exactly is considered overwhelming, because all I remember is that the UI had not enough info and I felt the need to go to the wiki everytime I found anything, and then some more on google to find how to do X or Y because there's no explanation about that anywhere in the UI...

Edited January 24, 2020 by HunterDigi

[LordPantaloonsthe3rd]

I cant imagine there are many players playing in surround resolutions like 5760x1080 but can you go and tweak the various screens to work better with said resolution? pictures inbound, this is on three 24in monitors for reference. I would very much prefer for all of the menus to be centrally located rather than covering the entirety of my display setup

 

Spoiler

http://puu.sh/F3ndS/4264a4a233.jpg   this one isnt exactly menu related but the hud margins cant be set narrow enough to have the hud on my center screen, i miss timers and air amounts and defense target health sometimes, not really ideal

Spoiler

http://puu.sh/F3nej/95d584458d.jpg here is as far inwards as I can set the hud in the adjusting screen, it shows it a bit better than the other picture but i wanted to include both anyways.

Spoiler

http://puu.sh/F3neu/884a8a0cc4.jpg heres the new loadout menu, quite annoying for me compared to the old one that simply listed all of the loadouts in the center monitor

Spoiler

http://puu.sh/F3neS/7a521a47cc.jpg  extended fashioning results in neck ache quite often, i have neck problems so if i feel like ill being spending alot of time messing around i actually switch back to 1920x1080 so i dont end up in pain from contantly looking back and forth between the settings and my frame.

Spoiler

http://puu.sh/F3nf0/373513f998.jpg  also annoying, but less so as I dont need to go to the market much

Spoiler

http://puu.sh/F3nfv/c84aab2e13.jpg this. is. so. damn. annoying, lots of back and forth for refining relics and selecting era's

Spoiler

http://puu.sh/F3nfS/d740d828db.jpg the most recent change for the game options moved the entire menu to my left monitor, really not idea.

 

[[DE]Pablo]

2 hours ago, [DE]Pablo said:

Update

I have been reading all the responses, and I will keep on revieweing during the weekend, but just to touch on some of the common things I'm seeing:

Item Labels: A few of you made a very good point, that even if most items have unique icons, the ones that don't (relics and Prime parts) are very important items, specially for trading. Also lots of good points about how much harder icons are to learn when you can't put a name to the face.

End of mission: There will be item counts just like in any other grid, the mock is essentially just saying, space for 10 things. Also a title and whatnot, the mock is still WIP and generally they also change as we implement. In both sections we would have sorting, so if you got Intrinsics that would be sorted to the top of progression, if you were doing a Simaris daily his rep would sort up, but if you jsut scanned a few enemies it would be lower down. So hopefully with this, 6 slots is enough to show you the important stuff you got that mission.

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.

Some bugs: Caught a few references to bugs in your replies, we'll gt qa to look and log those.

 

[CyborgKombat]

End of mission screen looks super pretty 

[Nyatalia]

I honestly love that end of mission and if it showed our actual warframe customization would be even better (even if i play solo 95+% of the time), i want more hold to confirm too; I've had the same problem that you mention with formas from time to time, i understand why some people here have gripes with the new ui and why they would much prefer a wall of text with no flavor whatsoever, but as a wise man once said "THE FUTURE IS NOW OLD MAN!" the game is only growing and even tho there's some sacrifices for what some of you call "convenience" i just see it as laziness from your part, convenience is not what some of you think it is, is convenient to have a hospital, or a convenience store close to your home, having to move your mouse a bit more within the comfort of your room has nothing to do with convenience.

PS: On the topic of labels those should be turned on by default (even if i prefer them off personally) and if we could get the option to chose which comes first information or stats it would be great (that to help those users who have meltdowns when they have to press the "tab" key).

Edited January 24, 2020 by Nathalieh
Added a PS

[(PSN)True_Reclaimer]

@[DE]Pablo Since you're passionate about reworking UI, can you add our names to our ships on load screens?

Pretty simple suggestion

Id like to know who has which ship, and who is wiggling up and down

Maybe just rework the load screens altogether, they kinda suck and we see them more than any other UI screen?

[(PSN)blackbeltdude7]

I'm glad there's a dev workshop on this; thank you for explaining it, @[DE]Pablo.

I've done professional UI and UX design for years myself, and the biggest problem I think you guys are running into here is at the beginning; you're trying to design the game's UI for two completely (conflicting) different demographics.

I understand why you're trying not to overwhelm players with the UI. It's often cited as one of the main reasons why there's a loss of player retention (as far as I recall). In my opinion though, that isn't a problem related to the UI as much as it is people realizing that the game isn't what they're looking for. There's people who might like the theme, design and gameplay, but they just don't want to use the depth of the system. In reality, if those players decide to stick around (despite their distaste for information screens), they'll just be ignoring the additional information they can interact with no matter what. I'm sure that these players exist in the player base (likely casual players), but they are not the core player base as far as I can tell.

The core player base are the players that are saying "we want to see more information." We won't get overwhelmed by information/data/statistics because we're looking for it in the first place (that's why there's a lot of hate the tool tips and hidden stats).

Warframe is a game with a lot of depth to it in it's systems, and by simplifying that depth in the UI in an effort for better player retention, it's frustrating the core playerbase because it makes the UI less useful to us. The current UI design isn't being made with the core player base in mind. If we give this thread a week, I'm sure the consensus in feedback will be pretty consistent-- that players essentially want more information visible at all times. This is because the casual players that you're designing the UI and UX for aren't invested in the game enough to have an presence in its online communities.

TL;DR: Please reconsider the demographic that you're designing the UI and UX for. You're trying to appeal to casual players who won't engage in all of this in-depth information either way if they stick around to continue to play the game. In trying to appeal to them, you're frustrating your actual core demographic of players because you're making the UI more cumbersome for us.

[(PSN)Stealth_Cobra]

It's good that you're having a discussion with the community about this.

Personally, one of my biggest gripe with the interface changes in the history of Warframe dates from a while ago, when you guys made the decision to squeeze mods in inventory and make them all look the same visually as black and white gold , bronze and silver squares that barely have a visual idenity. We went from this rich, colored screen with full sized images :

To this.... Which is basically alot of text with no colors and no identifiable images.

In the process, we lost the ability to tell at a glance what a mod was by looking at it's image. Before, it was easy navigating your inventory because you saw the big color picture of the mod and clicked on it, now you pretty much have to read and memorize the name of every single mod to be able to find them in inventory. Granted there's a search bar , but you have to remember the name of the mod you're searching for... Which is annoying. Visual memory is instinctive, you quickly begin to associate that image / color pattern with the mod you're looking for. So if you could please , eventually, maybe stop displaying mods as small rarity-colored blocks of texts and instead as their full mod card, with a clear visual and memorable pattern, it would greatly help menu readability. Doesn't even have to be the equipped mods, just let us see the full color image of the stuff in our inventory / modding station. Heck, people love trading card games like magic the gathering and are also way more into mods if they look like cool trading cards instead of compressed black and white blocks.

Also, why are avionics all the same color ? Wouldn't it be more readable to use some form of color-coding , maybe to show lavan, vidar and zekti mods ? Guessing the awnser is "cause it looks more uniform and pretty... "But imho it's always better to be able to tell stuff apart than look pretty. Same with hiding too much info behind other screens and subsections. It's annoying. Maybe consider an "advanced" mode with all the stats and tooltips are displayed in the same page, and a more newbie-friendly version which hides other screens behind sub-pages.

And item labels should be on by default... It boggles the mind that it's off. It shoudn't even be an option to turn off, as so many items don't have unique portraits (all helmets, chassis, systems, relics, etc.). At the very least label these items all of the time since they have the same portrait and you can't ask your users to hover over all of them individually to see their name.

Edited January 25, 2020 by (PS4)Stealth_Cobra