Why Do We UI Like We UI?

[(PSN)Beeble2695]

All in all the new UI looks a ton better.

However!

There is a huge difference between playing on console vs playing on a PC. The console cursor is a lot slower, you can make it faster at the cost of accuracy. The delay between stopping mouse movement and releasing an analog stick is quite significant.These factors together make it quite a bit more of a chore to get things done. There are some ways to mitigate this though.

- More hotkeys on console.

- remove the click for showing an info window in for example the inventory. Makes it a lot more snappy and speeds it up by quite a bit.

 

Regarding the multi layered approach for showing information. In my daytime job as Engineer I really appreciate having all necessary information at a glance in programs, saves a lot of time. For beginning players this leads to an overload information. Could this be fixed for both parties by having an "advanced interface" setting that shows more upfront information? I think it would.

Also another point, I imagine having pop-up confirmation windows for a lot of the actions makes people want to press as fast as possible( remember the good old windows, "are you really sure?" Pop-ups?. This could lead to causing the exact thing to happen that the pop-up was supposed to prevent.

 

[Pixydis]

Press TAB to display important information is BAD Design. Not just bad, it's lazy. Feels like we're slipping back into the beginning of mobile games with 5 screens you had to flip through just to get anywhere.

[PookieNumnums]

Hold should be toggle option for ui

Controllers, i get it. On pc, im not lilely to misclick a refinement with kb/m.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

2 hours ago, [DE]Pablo said:

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.

I love all of this, and I understand not swamping users with information, but can we stop hiding everything behind mouseovers? Extra, non essential information behind tooltips/mouseovers, sure, but key information needs to be inline. How much damage a weapon does? I need to see that. What is in the relic? I need to see that. Etc.

Please, don't hide the stuff that matters in mouseovers, it's just bad UX.

 

[Nyatalia]

7 minutes ago, (PS4)blackbeltdude7 said:

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).

I don't buy this, as someone with over 4k hours on ingame missions i enjoy the new more slick UI and having the information where is needed and some flavor in all of them; it all boils down to preference when it comes to UI and it makes sense that they are choosing to stop the overwhelming new players, after all if they want to keep developing the game and having it last as long as possible they need a player base as big as possible.

[Dusteon]

Old UI: Warframe Abilities

Spoiler

Here's all the abilities, their stats, flavor text, and how your mods affect the stats. We lied about some of the stats and didn't explain some of them at all, but at least here's most of the info

New UI: Warframe Abilities

Spoiler

Here's a diorama! Isn't it pretty?

About Ripline

Spoiler

Here's a video! Isn't it pretty? Oh, and here's the stats and flavor text for just Ripline. And we hid some of the information in the Tips section, if we bothered to record that information to begin with!

Tips

 

Spoiler

Tip 1: your passive exists! Have fun pressing Tab to find the Tip you want!

Tab

Spoiler

Whoops, still not it!

...Tab

Spoiler

Keep going.

...Tab

Spoiler

It's here! Wait, no it isn't. This is just a description of Warcry telling us that it slows enemies, which the ability already says.

Tab

Spoiler

Still not it. You are probably Tabbing pretty quickly now because why is important info nestled behind a pile of Tabs? Who did this? Who hurt them?

Tab Tab

Spoiler

Whoops hahaha you got impatient and Tabbed twice! You know what that means! You skipped the info on Combo you were looking for (and had to go past 4 other Tips to find it)! Now go Tab your way through this entire mess again to find the single piece of information you actually wanted that we hid behind this many extra steps for no good reason!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope you get my point. Current UI seems obsessed with being 'clean' with no regards to how much of a pain in the ass it is to use. If I click a Warframe's ability page, I don't really want a full diorama showcasing that they exist: I want info on their abilities. If I must have such a diorama, at least let clicking on an ability give me all relevant information instead of squirreling important info behind several layers of Tabs in the Tips screen to get a grossly simplified Tip that might not even explain everything. If I click a weapon's page I want to see what MR it is, how I get it + the plat option for paying, and the stats. I don't want to see a diorama of Valkyr holding a Kraken, with a little About page I have to trawl through to learn basic things like how much damage it does, or that I can buy the blueprint from the market.

[Mos-Eisley]

Consistency: Definitely agree that consistency is very important for any UI

Can we please have the search text box, and the sort drop-down in the same locations on every screen in which they appear?

We've got search on the left-middle, and sort-by on the right-middle. Search in the upper-left, and sort by just to the right of search. Search in the upper middle, with sort by left of search. Sort by in the upper middle, with search right of sort-by

 

[Kefirno]

I'd put credits, endo, kuva, vitus, void traces to separate section (see picture on the right, I'd also add mission timer there). Showing total value acquired over the mission with hover-over menu showing details (caches, mission reward, pickup). Unlike 99.9% of other resources you always need those so seeing its gains with a quick glance at consistent spot without splitting it into different drops for each rotation unless you specifically look for it would be great and more helpful than the entirety of this UI rework prototype. All the regular resources can go to the bottom on main rewards list because after certain amount of playtime you just don't care. Mods in the middle, sorted by rarity. The rest: ayatan sculptures, prime parts, ephemeras, arcanes, formas, any blueprints, whatever, goes to the top of the list. Plus extra priority to boosters and riven mods. Stuff from caches, relics and rotations gets background highlighted with special color. Highlight endo or kuva counter if it's your sortie reward. Couldn't bother to put it all in the mockup, sorry for wall of text.

 

Edited January 25, 2020 by Kefirno

[kapn655321]

On 2020-01-24 at 6:45 PM, (PS4)blackbeltdude7 said:

you're trying to design the game's UI for two completely (conflicting) different demographics.

They're going to have to. A new player who stays for a year can get to the deeper information when they feel like it. A wall of information early on, however useful to those who appreciate it prevents that chance. That seriously hurts their potential as a business... which makes it harder to afford any UI changes in the future, or in the first place.

Warframe appeals to both of those demographics in it's gameplay. I for one took my sweet time getting to know things, and still do. To circumnavigate that information being constantly in the way if a player isn't ready for it, is cumbersome. Being able to reasonably accommodate both ends of that a new player's reaction, is crucial to not waste vast amounts of design that are simple to use, but would not be simple to try.

A user must be able to reach a point to learn if they like the product enough to know if reading the whole instruction manual is even worth their time. Being off-put from the start is the difference between a player saying, "that game is a confusing mess and it's not worth your time," to saying, "It gets pretty deep, but I didn't really have time to get into it," ...and indeed, both outcomes are possible to avoid, creating a new player.

 

Edited January 26, 2020 by kapn655321

[Zaeronine]

I agree that progressive disclosure is a good thing, but I think you should reconsider your approach to implementing it. Phrasing the problem as having either "too much info/not enough info" is sort of missing the point, when you are not examining which task which the player is trying to perform.

Looking at the ability screen example, what does the player want to do? Is she looking for examples of which roles or content this warframe excels at? Is she comparing two or more warframes? Is she planning a build and want to see how abilities are affected by specific mods? Is she looking up augments? Is she looking up which skins are available? Is she interested in its lore? I don't think the interactions this screen provides is a good example of a conversation about any of these tasks.

The implementation of progressive enhancement is particularly harmful when it comes to inventory management. First of all, you have very few (if any) visual patterns (e.g. borders, corners, backgrounds, symbols) on your icons to categorise items as a material, a consumable, an equipable, a module, a cosmetic, a quest macguffin, etc. There is also a lack of patterns to identify how significant or valuable an item is (e.g. rarity in drop chance or rarity in drop source, in high demand (like a forma), if its tradeable, or if its something new).
Secondly, players will inevitably reach a point where the vast majority of items which appear on their screen is just noise, regardless of how rewarding it feels to collect them, so there is demand for a system to filter out this noise in some way.

That said, I'm very happy that you are finally starting to take your UI more seriously and how transparent you are about it. The new world state panel looks like an improvement, and I really really love the end of mission squad showcase!

Edited January 25, 2020 by Zaeronine

[(PSN)blackbeltdude7]

3 minutes ago, Nathalieh said:

I don't buy this, as someone with over 4k hours on ingame missions i enjoy the new more slick UI and having the information where is needed and some flavor in all of them; it all boils down to preference when it comes to UI and it makes sense that they are choosing to stop the overwhelming new players, after all if they want to keep developing the game and having it last as long as possible they need a player base as big as possible.

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.

[Triburos]

1 hour ago, xRufus7x said:

He isn't wrong. Most resources have unique icons now, Warframes, weapons and mods do as well. Things that don't are pretty limited to weapon/warframe parts and relics. The issue is those are really important to know ):.

Problem is: those are *most* of what players are going after and getting. Because weapon and frame *parts* still use generic icons.

It doesn't matter if only 10% of the game's loot icons don't have unique looks, if that 10% is what is most commonly sought after.

Going after Relic drops is the #1 thing that most people do in WF by far, So I often see way more weapon and prime parts, than something like a plant I scanned on Pluto one time.

Percentages like that can be misleading as all hell. And I don't even think that's accurate in the first place. Almost every single weapon and frame in the game share the exact same icon for a part. Now take the number of weapons and frames we have in-game.

This is just a rough calculation, seeing as how not every thing has the same amount of parts needed to make, but here's a GENERAL idea of just how bad it actually is:

There's currently 57 total Prime weapons in-game if the wiki is up-to-date. Most primes have three distinct parts in order to make them. There's some exceptions, like the Fragor Prime for instance only using two. But let's use three parts as a general rule of thumb.

If you multiply that number by the number of Prime weapons that are in the game, that's roughly 171 individual items that do not have unique icons.

But we can go deeper. Take the number of Prime Frames that exist for instance. There's 27 or so. And each prime takes four parts to craft. All of those parts share the same icon.

Multiply 4 by 27 and that's an extra 108 individual items without unique icons.


But I can make it even worse. That's only factoring in the *prime* frames. Remember: even the normal frames all share the exact same chassi, neuroptics, and systems icons. If I WERE to count all 43 frames and do another calculation, that'd add up to another 172 items that do not have individual icons.

But I won't count those, since most regular frames have their parts drops in very specific locations. So if the mission drops the part you'll likely know what part it is. But that doesn't change the fact that those also do not have individual icons.


If we ONLY take the Prime weapon and frames, that's a rough total of 279 unique items without their own icons.

To give some context, there's currently only 19 'common' resources. So things like Polymer, Rubedo, Alloy Plates, ect.

It depends on what exactly you define what a resource is, but according to the Wiki's table of resources - not counting REALLY specific ones like [Chroma Mark] from the Chroma quest, there;s around 140~180 total different resource types in-game.

So that 90% figure is without a shadow of a doubt, incredibly off. And even if it was accurate: again, a big chunk of playtime in WF is with Relics. Thus, you'll be seeing a ton of weapon and frame parts over the course of your playtime.

Edited January 25, 2020 by Triburos

[kapn655321]

17 minutes ago, Dusteon said:

Old UI: Warframe Abilities

  Reveal hidden contents

Here's all the abilities, their stats, flavor text, and how your mods affect the stats. We lied about some of the stats and didn't explain some of them at all, but at least here's most of the info

New UI: Warframe Abilities

  Reveal hidden contents

Here's a diorama! Isn't it pretty?

About Ripline

  Hide contents

Here's a video! Isn't it pretty? Oh, and here's the stats and flavor text for just Ripline. And we hid some of the information in the Tips section, if we bothered to record that information to begin with!

Tips

 

  Hide contents

Tip 1: your passive exists! Have fun pressing Tab to find the Tip you want!

Tab

  Hide contents

Whoops, still not it!

...Tab

  Hide contents

Keep going.

...Tab

  Hide contents

It's here! Wait, no it isn't. This is just a description of Warcry telling us that it slows enemies, which the ability already says.

Tab

  Hide contents

Still not it. You are probably Tabbing pretty quickly now because why is important info nestled behind a pile of Tabs? Who did this? Who hurt them?

Tab Tab

  Hide contents

Whoops hahaha you got impatient and Tabbed twice! You know what that means! You skipped the info on Combo you were looking for (and had to go past 4 other Tips to find it)! Now go Tab your way through this entire mess again to find the single piece of information you actually wanted that we hid behind this many extra steps for no good reason!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope you get my point. Current UI seems obsessed with being 'clean' with no regards to how much of a pain in the ass it is to use. If I click a Warframe's ability page, I don't really want a full diorama showcasing that they exist: I want info on their abilities. If I must have such a diorama, at least let clicking on an ability give me all relevant information instead of squirreling important info behind several layers of Tabs in the Tips screen to get a grossly simplified Tip that might not even explain everything. If I click a weapon's page I want to see what MR it is, how I get it + the plat option for paying, and the stats. I don't want to see a diorama of Valkyr holding a Kraken, with a little About page I have to trawl through to learn basic things like how much damage it does, or that I can buy the blueprint from the market.

What if you could lock those tips in place under one tab once you've read them, so you never need to do that again? If the UI evolves to suit the user, then you can train it to be more of less convoluted. ..This could also give them user data to refine future UI builds.

[(PSN)demishock]

Mouseover text is all well and good if you're playing with a mouse, but I have to say, this approach has been pretty painful on consoles. Every time you guys release a UI update that doesn't come with the ability to tab through side-by-side icons with the shoulder buttons, I die a little inside. Right now off the top of my head, we're missing the option on the Railjack customization menu, the "stay/go" screen between rounds for Defense and Interception missions (and please stick with the shoulder buttons for this; not triangle/square - keep it consistent!), and the reward picker for fissure missions. Yes, you usually add the option in later, but you've ported so many things to console that stuff like this shouldn't be an afterthought by now. The more things you add for us to click on, the more difficult it is to aim at them with the PS4 joystick, or the more times we have to fuss with the D-pad to try to get it to bring us to the right one. I understand that PC players make up the majority of your userbase, but if you're going to have the game on consoles, you need to design with us in mind as well.

[Boomfly]

A year too late is still earlier than tomorrow. Let's talk.

In your quest to minimize overload you simply went too far. In many menus instead of removing some information all of it got hidden behind hovers, clicks, and sometimes a combination of both. I think the item pages in the store are the worst example of that. Spacing the information in a less cluttered format to have visually less of it would've worked just fine, we didn't need to have to hover around and spam tab all over the menus.

Your motivations are proper, but honestly, a good tutorial would do more to make presented information manageable to a new player than an empty UI does, at least given the extreme you went to.

I can't tell you how diablo gets away with the lack of names, but I can tell you that it's much more comfortable when warframe has them visible. Maybe it's because there's fewer types of stuff, in most hack and slash games you just drop weapons and armors, not parts, resources, relics, and so on.

[Voltage]

42 minutes ago, Nathalieh said:

I don't buy this, as someone with over 4k hours on ingame missions i enjoy the new more slick UI and having the information where is needed and some flavor in all of them; it all boils down to preference when it comes to UI and it makes sense that they are choosing to stop the overwhelming new players, after all if they want to keep developing the game and having it last as long as possible they need a player base as big as possible.

I'm over 6200 hours, and I would like to know what exactly I am looking at. It is overwhelming when you are being shown wrong or unnecessary information, or even worse, a lack of information. This UI has all it's resources poured into how it looks and not how it's used. DE employees might not mind using a submenu multiple times once a week, but if you do this for tens of thousands of missions, it becomes a chore. The "About" tab issue is the most serious offender and this Dev Workshop clearly shows that DE does not understand how terrible the design is to require players to add extra inputs for basic information.

Also, please explain how this is "slick":

Which one is a Nova Prime Chassis? Do I even own a Nova Prime Chassis?

Edited January 25, 2020 by Voltage

[Tomppak]

2 hours ago, [DE]Pablo said:

but I imagine we would no longer show the Lens or the Forma on the grid, and instead have those on the tooltip.

Please no. Don't hide lenses.

There are three reasons to pick an equipment for your mission: You need it for the job, you want it cause it's cool, or you need the focus from it's lens. The lens symbol is important in this.

[Nyatalia]

3 minutes ago, Voltage said:

I would like to know what exactly I am looking at

Press Esc>Options>Interface and on the very top you can toggle your labels on and off, or you could also hover your mouse over every item you'll also get more info this way like the ducat value! you are very welcome, just fyi i said in a previous post that i do think labels should be on by default, as for slickness it's way more slick than the old horizontal scrolling mess we had before on top of having way more information on the items we hover on

 

[Tombsite]

22 minutes ago, Triburos said:

Problem is: those are *most* of what players are going after and getting. Because weapon and frame *parts* still use generic icons.

It doesn't matter if only 10% of the game's loot icons don't have unique looks, if that 10% is what is most commonly sought after.

Going after Relic drops is the #1 thing that most people do in WF by far, So I often see way more weapon and prime parts, than something like a plant I scanned on Pluto one time.

Percentages like that can be misleading as all hell. And I don't even think that's accurate in the first place. Almost every single weapon and frame in the game share the exact same icon for a part. Now take the number of weapons and frames we have in-game.

This is just a rough calculation, seeing as how not every thing has the same amount of parts needed to make, but here's a GENERAL idea of just how bad it actually is:

There's currently 57 total Prime weapons in-game if the wiki is up-to-date. Most primes have three distinct parts in order to make them. There's some exceptions, like the Fragor Prime for instance only using two. But let's use three parts as a general rule of thumb.

If you multiply that number by the number of Prime weapons that are in the game, that's roughly 171 individual items that do not have unique icons.

But we can go deeper. Take the number of Prime Frames that exist for instance. There's 27 or so. And each prime takes four parts to craft. All of those parts share the same icon.

Multiply 4 by 27 and that's an extra 108 individual items without unique icons.


But I can make it even worse. That's only factoring in the *prime* frames. Remember: even the normal frames all share the exact same chassi, neuroptics, and systems icons. If I WERE to count all 43 frames and do another calculation, that'd add up to another 172 items that do not have individual icons.

But I won't count those, since most regular frames have their parts drops in very specific locations. So if the mission drops the part you'll likely know what part it is. But that doesn't change the fact that those also do not have individual icons.


If we ONLY take the Prime weapon and frames, that's a rough total of 279 unique items without their own icons.

To give some context, there's currently only 19 'common' resources. So things like Polymer, Rubedo, Alloy Plates, ect.

It depends on what exactly you define what a resource is, but according to the Wiki's table of resources - not counting REALLY specific ones like [Chroma Mark] from the Chroma quest, there;s around 140~180 total different resource types in-game.

So that 90% figure is without a shadow of a doubt, incredibly off. And even if it was accurate: again, a big chunk of playtime in WF is with Relics. Thus, you'll be seeing a ton of weapon and frame parts over the course of your playtime.

If only Pablo had in some way addressed this in his original post. Like they had some fix in the works. 



(and yes I did also read the part where he said the fix was being pushed down the list) 

[operative-verona]

Hi, Pablo!
I'm glad you posted this because I know that many players (including me) think the changes you introduced thus far didn't make it much better. They will have great advice and suggestions! 
It's obvious that more than most of the work power in these reworks went into making it prettier instead of transforming its functionality in a meaningful way. In my opinion, this is a mistake. Warframe UI needs a lot of things, but making things "prettier" and customizable is one of the least important. I would even argue the "themes" you introduced FURTHER clutter it and make it harder to use and understand. Customization and themes exist to make your gameplay seem personal, but should this be the goal of your UI?
No. Your system should always adhere to the single most important rule of functional design: FUNCTION > FORM.
You are currently choosing form over function. 

How would you detangle the mess that it is now?

You (rightfully) assume that the reason people are so turned off by these screens is that there's too much information tackling you whenever you access a new screen. You tackled back this problem in most of the newer works and your solutions were on point most of the time. What you have overlooked, however (it seems), are other ways you clutter your screens with null-meaning visual noise.

• The visuals are assaulting and that trivializes the context of your screens - see the new Chroma ability screen. The screen is overtaken by an enormous vista of dragonfire enveloping Chroma Prime. Everything else on the screen is taking a backseat so you could admire the warframe. Cool, but what did I come here to do? Ah right, I'm here to find out what abilities this chroma frame has? How do I do that??? I'm at the right place right? The small font title (why is the title so small? why is the font not a titular font?) at the top of the screen says so. Let's look around. What about those weird looking icons near the bottom (I almost didn't see them because they are the same color as the big flaming chroma up there)? Oh there's the explanation! Finally! CONCLUSION: The point of this screen isn't to show you a nice moving pic of the warframe, you can get that in the arsenal. The point of this screen is to teach you how to use the frame with minimal confusion and needless interference.
• Not using simple shapes - Simple shapes are one of the earliest methods of learning and people associate them with different meanings starting in infancy. They are so simple a toddler can understand them, so why not use them? This time, let's reference something you did right in the railjack modding screen. You chose a medium sized standing rhomboid shape for your avionic slots. They resemble precious gems and players will tend to subconsciously relate them to something valuable, especially when you add faint effects to the icon to signify its enormous power (as opposed to importance). These are just simple icons, and they communicate no information (unless hovered over), but the meaning is properly conveyed to the player. "This is a place where you slot your valuable upgrades and if they shine a little it means they're powerful". It is, from a functionality standpoint, a twin sister to the warframe modding screen, but the new players hate the modding screens on the base game. Why? Because, unlike the railjack modding screen, it assaults you with needles visual noise of the colorful mod cards. Mods should NOT be detailed cards. They should convey their power and importance with simple shapes. Same goes for the power icons, context boxes and every other screen where a sense of rarity or meaning was conveyed with an assault on your eyes.
• 0-100 real quick! - another big issue of your information overload problem isn't only with how much you show, but also how suddenly you show it. Take the modding system as an example. In the early game, when the player is about to unlock their second or third planet (provided they somehow figure out how to do that) they will slowly start running into enemies that require them to use the modding system to kill. Problem is, the game never really says that the mods are your biggest power spike in the entire game. The system is understated and unexplained. You may say "well, if we try to explain this enormous system that early on, the player will leave because that's a classic info dump." This would be right! Luckily, the new players usually have two very distinct complaints when they leave this game.
   

1. I DON'T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING
    
    
2. I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO NOW THAT I FINISHED THE INTRO. 

These two problems are uniquely connected and their solutions, if you tackle them properly, will literally cancel each other out.

 

• 0-100 real quick! (part 2) - I don't understand anything! What does that mean? Steve said it more than once: the game doesn't hold your hand. This is a nice way of saying that you fail at explaining what your game is. Mods, frames, planets, weapons, plat, credits, market, dojo, movement, story, damage, status, blah, blah... a billion things you can only hear the explanation of from another player. It's natural to let your children go into the world and make their own decisions, but first you gotta teach them how to live or they're gonna fail. Warframe does only the first part. This brings me to the second problem! "What do now that Vor is dead????" The new players constantly hit the warframe reddit when they finish the intro and they always say "I love the game and it seems really fun but the hell do I do now? I finished the intro and there is nothing to direct me further?! WHAT DO?!" So, let's take the first problem and apply it to the second! For the new players that need direction, make good explanations of your systems to serve as direction to get them all the way to where the story begins. But the problem still remains the same, you say, "the systems are too complicated to explain without causing depression in a new tender tenno brain". Well, it's not more complicated than real world, and in real world we teach our kids by giving explanations for our complicated systems PIECE BY PIECE instead of ALL AT ONCE but also with a fair balance of LEISURE and STUDY. Make it all play and no work and it's no good; make it all work and no play, also not good. It has to be balanced. So, make a progressive system of story missions that slowly trickle information to you while also giving new story teasing and exposition. All the way from Earth to Uranus.
• 0-100 real quick! (part 3) - Piece by piece and fun/work balance? For that you would have to break down the modding system (for example) into distinct pieces which you can then feed to the player one by one under the guise of having fun getting to know an interesting new planet. The learning isn't conscious. So the new modding screen would also have to change to accommodate this. For the sake of familiarity, imagine the railjack modding screen. It has 4 distinct sections:
  1) Statistics
  2) Integrated
  3) Tactical
  4) Battle  
  
  Now, imagine the new weapon modding screen in a similar fashion with 4 sections.
  1) Statistics
  2) Damage
  3) Status
  4) Critical
  
  Each section has 4 blank circular shape pieces that resemble gems and communicate the same "this is where you put your upgrades" implied meaning. Most gamers on this planet are familiar with the concept of the status chance and the critical damage because those two systems are widely spread in gaming, so introducing and labeling them as such will immediately become an anchor point for their familiarity with a system they saw for the first time ever. The screen will be a series of simple shapes with only faint effect pieces to minimize the negative effects of looking into a Pollock painting of video games that Warframe right now is.
  Now that your system is evenly fragmented, you can feed it to the player in pieces. Through playing the new opening quest on Earth, the player will earn nothing more than the basic damage mods for the 3 weapon types and will be instructed by Ordis to equip them and move on to the next planet. You will be directed to open the Venus Solar Rail where you will receive basic lore on what the rails are and how they work. When you unlock Venus, a new quest will unlock that leads you through your introduction to the Corpus faction. The Lotus and a couple other NPC's (Little Duk?) may give you some exposure, and you can get introduced to the cultures like the Solaris even before you meet them simply by dialogue exposure. By the end of the quest, another piece of your modding system gets unlocked and you receive your first status mods. Ordis instructs you briefly on how to use them. Then Mercury with another quest can introduce you to the Critical damage system. You get what I'm saying. Trickle of information mixed in with lore and story exposition.
  
  
  
  This was a brief document of opinions, thank you for reading! I have more ideas but it's hard to express them here.
  As always, thanks to the DE team for making an incredible universe! ❤️

 

 

Edited January 25, 2020 by Amebot
typos lol

[Voltage]

2 hours ago, Nathalieh said:

Press Esc>Options>Interface and on the very top you can toggle your labels on and off, or you could also hover your mouse over every item you'll also get more info this way like the ducat value! you are very welcome, just fyi i said in a previous post that i do think labels should be on by default, as for slickness it's way more slick than the old horizontal scrolling mess we had before on top of having way more information on the items we hover on

 

I purposefully disabled item names to show you what the default is and how atrocious that is. I have item labels on for myself, but shouldn't it be on by default? Shouldn't items listed explain what you are actually viewing? What use is looking at the Secura Penta in chat when it only tells you "Ruthless and efficient, just like the free market"? Wouldn't you like to know it's a grenade launcher? The Critical Chance, Critical Damage, Base Damage, Status Chance, and Reload Speed? Wouldn't you like to know where it comes from? Wouldn't you want to know that it has unique augments?

This is not slick:

Edited January 25, 2020 by Voltage

[Wevi]

 

[Iryn]

Loved the end mission screen but since theres a toon of resources would not be better be 3 grids 

1 for equipment
1 for resources (Resources)
1 for drops (blueprints, prime parts, weapons.)

[UnderRevision]

It's great to have some clarity but, as a user, I disagree on a few points.

Even if it's a 90/10 split on recognizable icons, the items that use that 10% take up more space in my inventory than every single item in the 90% combined.  I have so many relics and, with the partial exception of requiems, they look virtually identical.  To use your conversation metaphor, when I go to the relics screen I'm asking "I'd like to know what relics I have".  The answer I'm looking for is "You've got 10 Lith C4's, 8 Lith H1s,...".  The answer I'm getting without item labels is "Here's your haystack."  The next twenty minutes would then be me asking "What's that one?  What's inside it?  What's that one?  What's inside it?  What's that one?  What's inside it?", over and over again.  I can do a search to ask "What relics do I have with Chroma Prime parts in them?", and the answer is "Here's your slightly smaller haystack."

And I'll echo the point you mentioned others saying in your update, that it's hard to learn what symbols mean without a name to put to a face.  I'll go one further and say that there's a reason why the written word supplanted the hieroglyph.  A proper noun is efficient, concise, and unambiguous.  Thirteen different warframe systems icons that all look quite literally identical is not.  More recent additions like avionics are so monochrome and abstract in design that they blur together as visual noise and become indistinct.  I can understand hiding detailed stats so you don't scare off the new players, but Warframe is hard enough to come to grips with as a new player without making them sift through the overwhelming amount of items they're found, one by one, asking "What's that?  What's that?  What's that?".  It is for all these reasons that I believe items labels should be on by default on all screens.  Oh, also, maybe add a toggle to the bottom of the market screen to "Show all stats" that will expand the stats windows by default for those who prefer it?

I like the new extractor UI.  A suggestion though, could we have a "redeploy" button?  Say I'm on Earth and I've got a completed extractor on Eris.  I want to collect the rewards and send it back for more.  Currently, I'd have to retrieve it, zoom out of Earth, go to Eris, reopen the menu, and deploy the drone.  Ideally, I'd have a button there after retrieval that would remember where that drone came from and send it right on back.  Or, alternatively, put it in the retrieval step as a "Retrieve and redeploy" option next to "Retrieve extractor".  Oh, and I hope that the Invasions menu gets a little less twitchy.  Sometimes it refuses to expand an invasion if it's between two others and you scroll from one to the next.  The cursor just skips over it when the one you were on contracts and slides a third one under your cursor before you can react.

For the "End of Mission" mock up you've shown, I have mixed feelings.  The aesthetic is great, very stylish, but I'm concerned by the idea of mixing syndicate information in with affinity rewards.  Currently I can press one button and get all my syndicate information instantly displayed without having to dig for it.  I'd hate to lose that functionality.  And a minor point, perhaps the scroll bars could be a little thicker?  It took me a few looks over the design before they registered as being scroll bars in my brain.  Also, please don't neglect to add item amounts to the final version.  If I'm farming Argon Crystals, I'd like to know how many I picked up at a glance.  Hiding that information doesn't help me, it only slows me down.

On the subject of Forma, it seems to me that the goal could be achieved simply by not hiding the screen where we select the polarity when the confirmation dialog comes up.  Just leave it visible until we confirm our choice.  If you're redesigning the whole arsenal screen at the same time, you could go the avionics route and have it show just the "grid", but I don't think hold to confirm is a good idea there.  The difference between adding a forma and infusing dirac is that forma can ONLY be done one slot at a time.  An avionics grid slot can be upgraded multiple times, or be followed by upgrading several other slots in one go for as long as you have dirac to burn.  With mod slots, you can only place one forma, no matter how many you have.  To me, that demands confirmation dialogs just to remove any possible ambiguity that this is a commitment being made.  In my mind, forma would work like this:  Select "apply forma", UI switches to mod grid view, select slot, select polarity, select confirm, get confirmation popup that leaves the grid clearly visible behind it for last minute check by player, confirm, polarity applied.

I hope any of that was useful feedback.  Thank you for explaining your rationale behind the design process and for inviting feedback.  Here's hoping we can all find a balance that works for the game.

[Mephane]

3 hours ago, [DE]Pablo said:

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.

There is only one thing I want from the resource drone UI - a button that says "collect all completed drones and redeploy full health drones on the same planets". Because that is what I do. Always. Manually. 2-3 times a day. And I am sure many other players also tend to have their drones on the same planets for extended periods of time and just want to collect resources and put a freshly healed one on it.

Edited January 25, 2020 by Mephane