Why Do We UI Like We UI?

[Nyatalia]

1 minute ago, Mephane said:

collect all complete drones and redeploy

I would go back to using drones if this was a thing.

[raelianer]

When I get a Warframe or a weapon part, I want to see the symbol the blueprint, which is the symbol for the Warframe or the weapon Then I want to see symbols for each part that the set consists of:

And then add numbers to it like ( +1 ) so that I can see what I have now and what I did get in the mission. And I can see how many full sets I have and what I'm still missing.
When you get a new part the symbol for it could be glowing. Example is with prime parts, but should be especially like this for normal drop form bosses.

When I farm Ophelia, the first thing I want to see is how many Polymer Bundle I got, especially during the game when I press tab or p. I want to be able to see it at a glance, that means a smart order of the loot screen. Next thing on that mission would be the amount of Tellurium. In the Orokin Derelict Defense that important resource would be Mutagen Sample.

[Sohaya-]

A couple things:
Keep mission time in the mission progress screen, always, without the need for more button presses. This way the speedrun community doesn't blow up in your face.

Also, an issue that's been lying around for a good year or so now:

We can't see weapon stats without hovering over the "buy for plat" button in the market, and the fact is, few of us will buy weapons for plat. We tend to opt for the blueprint, but in that case we can't see the stats.

Solution? Add the stats above the tabs. Done.

That's pretty much the biggest UI issue ingame at the moment. Keep it up, Pablo (And revert the Wukong nerf too)

[Tijinga]

Not gonna lie, sometimes I ask myself this very question too 😅. Our logic was that 90% of our items have very recognizable icons

Icons that are recognizable TO THE PEOPLE WHO DEVELOP THE GAME.

Icons that are recognizable TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE THOUSANDS OF HOURS IN THE GAME.

For the rest of us this was an absolutely nonsensical decision, and it makes no sense that you'd have item labels turned off automatically when you're constantly trying to bring in new players. And nevermind new players. What about when you drop new content with a new slew of resources and icons? Even veterans won't "easily recognize" those. How the actual hell is anyone supposed to "easily recognize" icons they've never seen before?

the other 10% is not so great, clear cases are Relic icons and weapon component icons

Some of the most important things to players are collecting resources to build guns/frames and collecting parts of guns/frames to build guns/frames, but somehow someone thought that this 10% was negligible... Ok.

Is this a good solution?

No.

Does it help in any way to keep the screen somewhat cleaner without them?

Yes, while sacrificing barebones functionality. You said UI was a conversation? Well this is like if I asked you "hey, what'd you buy from Target?" and you answered by playing pictionary in the air instead of just telling me what you bought like a normal person.

The honest answer is we can’t know for sure.

No, the honest answer is that your view is skewed because you develop the game, have played the game for years, and do not really spend the time to approach your changes from different perspectives. Or, alternatively, the honest answer is simply "no."

Personally I play without labels on and I don’t miss them.

Someone who's literal job is to stare at the multitude of icons day in and day out doesn't have a problem not seeing the labels? Shocking. Maybe consider what it would feel like for someone who saw your railjack advert at the game awards and decided to give Warframe a go, only to never find the item labels toggle thus adding one more layer of frustrating confusion onto an already dauntingly complex game.

But when we do find a case where they are sorely missed, like recently in the Avionics scrapping screen, we force the labels on.

Yes, because no one knows what the Avionics are. They're new to literally all of the player base.

No one talks about how nonsensical this decision is because we all just shrugged our shoulders and flipped the switch as soon as you added an option to turn labels back on. We know better, but a lot of players who don't keep up with Warframe news and development don't. It is absolutely ridiculous to have item labels off by default. If someone wants to go in and turn them off later, they're welcome to have that choice. Having them off by default is. Absolutely. Absurd.

[Mephane]

3 hours ago, [DE]Pablo said:

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.

I hope this screen is only being used for the end-of-mission results, and not the screen you check up on during the mission by holding tab. It doesn't even show the XP and focus progress for all equipped gear without scrolling. Why are the syndicates even at the top of this list, at least they should be at the bottom to make more room for the important ones - XP and focus of your gear - at the top.

[(XBOX)A Wasted Muffin]

The big one for me. You design the UI with PC in mind, but it doesn't work out so well with controllers. It takes longer to use a controller to select menu options. A mouse on a pc its like a quick snap. My question to you Pablo is: Will the Warframe UI stay universal to a PC setup or will consoles have a tweaked version of the UI?

[Ssschah]

2 hours ago, [DE]Pablo said:

The new End of Mission screen looks really nice and I know that it's still a wip but I would like to give my feedback on it in form of points with questions and finish it up with my poor attempt at photoshop to show some of my and other people suggestions.
- Item labels - everyone else who commented before me have already made excellent points on this matter.
- Will this new EoM screen be used only at the end of the mission or for the one in mission too?
- Why is the Mission Time only visible in Stats screen?   if this EoM screen is gonna be used in mission the it would me more helpful to see it on the loot screen too.
- Will only the positive faction rep/affinity gain be shown?    if the negative gain will be shown too then they will immediately push out the equipment's affinity/focus gain, whose information I believe is more important to the players to see. This potential issue could be fixed by setting the shown order like this: Intrinsics > Equipment > Syndicates
-  Space usage - as it is shown in the wip screen, it is split in the following way: 50% visible Frame renders, 7% Names + contributions, 33% Affinity and loot info, 10% free space.
  I think  it would look more balanced if it was changed to this division: 40% frames, 5% names, 45% xp/loot info, 10% free. With additional space in xp/loot, it would be possible to add an extra row to both of them, resulting in 8 spots for Affinity and 15 for loot.



_{(sorry if my english got bad at the end but it was 2am at the moment of submitting this reply    and I really wanted to share my thoughts on this topic as quickly as possible)}

[Philip]

3 hours 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.

But surely you would have seen this - 

 

 

And realised that turning off labels was a completely ridiculous, absurd idea? ?

[kapn655321]

1 minute ago, Ssschah said:

my english

Your English is fine! Thanks for contributing.

[Pendragon1951]

@DE_Pablo I know this is about UI but I think this is relevant in a design sort of way. As it stands right now about at least 7 out of 10 times the pilot has to hit x run to the artillery entrance hit x again and if by this time the target has not moved out of view fires the BFG x's out of artillery and runs back to the pilot seat, or if he has the presence of mind hits L selects the artillery seat once again if target is still in view shoots then hits L again selects Pilot seat. Now almost all the missions I have been on including piloting my own ship only twice has someone other than myself used the BFG. Now instead of all that why not simply slave the BFG to the pilot and switch from the nose guns to the BFG by a simple keybind like you would between your primary weapon and melee. You also notice how less time it took me to suggest that:)?  It seems impractical to me to have to do all that to fire the BFG when I could do it from the pilot seat and still have movement control of my ship? If the original intention was to actually have someone sit in that seat then you have to give them more shots to make it worth just sitting there.

[0_The_F00l]

Thanks for sharing this, looks good but the labels and appearance of some items (specifically the tradeable ones), needs special attention. 

On a side note. 

I have a game suggestion that may be beyond the UI itself and impact game mechanics, but I think it's apt and might add game variety. 

When you say there will be special performance indicators for mission completion like most fires put out, healing done, CC time etc. I would propose to have it grant a bonus in the next mission. 

Eg: 

Did the most damage with range weapons : bonus accuracy / reduced recoil with guns for next mission.

Did most damage with melee : bonus combo counter chance for next mission.

Had most headshots : chance to replenish bullet on headshot for next mission.

CC'd the most enemies : increased Status duration in next mission. 

Healed the most : bonus health in next mission.

Took most damage : bonus armor in next mission. 

Did most bullet jumps : bonus parkour speed in next mission. 

Leeched the mission : reduced experience in the next mission. 

 

Just a thought. The numbers themselves will need to be good enough to feel nice but not high enough to replace equivalent mods (or maybe make em as strong as mods to give more reason to play differently) 

 

[CoreWolf]

Okay, so I read the title and expected to jump into this full of rage. Actually, not so much the case, I do kind of get the perspective on it. That said, a few things which I think are issues:

1) Item labels. Hiding "advanced details" behind tooltips, I get that as it allows you to fit more info into tooltips, and prevent overwhelming. However, labels are not overwhelming at all. And rollover is not the same as a tooltip - rollover has a negative impact on time required to retrieve simple information, removing "at a glance" efficiency. Labels should always be available, and on by default.

Additionally, the narrative that "we have unique icons" is *not* true at all. That doesn't work for relics, prime parts, etc, which are the most interacted with items. It also only works if players memorise your icons, and honestly I still can't tell you which Requiem mod is which - and there's only 8 of those.....

2) ...Item labels, again.
"we looked at some of our contemporaries at the time and none of them had labels for items".
You mean Destiny right?
I'm sure some people love that UI, and there even be some people bold enough to proclaim that in articles etc - I don't know, I haven't looked. But from my perspective - It's absolute horrible trash. It's completely unintuitive, and for a new player full of random icons - *with no labels* that mean absolutely nothing to me.
After playing for a while, it starts to make sense right?
But if the aim is to make the UI "less overwhelming" for new players then absolutely do not copy their take on it. Their UI is so obfuscated for a new player that I bounced off their game twice before I gave it a chance again.

I mention that more so because I get the objective to simplify the UI for new players, but this should be a key example of how simplifying too much has the opposite effect.

3) Efficiency. I feel this is something that's been missing from the considerations. Surely efficiency must be part of a good design? Allowing you to see the information you need, quickly, without being overwhelmed, make a decision, and then carry out some action - that seems like the goal.

I would say that theres a difference between hiding advanced information vs basic information required to make any kind of decision. e.g. a key example is the weapon purchasing from the market. Clicking on a weapon takes you to a page that's ~75% empty, with *no basic information at all* to guide your next action.
Sure, hovering over Purchase displays the weapon stats - implying you need these to make a decision.
But why require the extra action in the first place when the tooltip implies you already know it's required?

That decreases efficiency and therefore useability, and wastes players time which is never going to generate good will. Basic information should always be available "at a glance" where possible and not hidden multiple layers in.

An example is the new "end of mission mock up" already generating hate, because it's missing item labels - implying time wasting hovering for rollover - and doesn't display all info at once requiring scrolling, or clicking through to subpages. You've already mentioned labels would be in but just the mere possibility of them not being there generating so much hate should indicate how much of a negative effect removing "at a glance" info can have.

Another example is the Railjack wreckage tooltips hiding the stats - the info we actually want - behind a tab. So now it's not only a tooltip, but also a tab, adding *even more* inefficiency in getting the basic information we need to make a decision and take action. It literally doubles the amount of time spent on UI interactions before making a decision. Since the tooltip could be much larger, why not just display it all on one tab at least?

And for the new player experience - a friend didn't realise item labels was an option for months until I realised he didn't know. Immediately after turning them on he was both relieved and also incredibly irritated that he'd had to play for so long with them off. Not improving the new player experience.

 

Just my point of view, may be completely off the mark. I do like the increased consistency, some of the tooltips e.g. abilities in modding screen, and minimising popups with hold to confirm.

I also do see the need to prioritise making the UI friendly to new players, as this is a free to play game and you need new players to enjoy and stay to learn the rest of the game, and not just bounce off elsewhere. However some of the design decisions seem opposite to that goal.

 

 

 

Edited January 25, 2020 by CoreWolf

[Hera.Ci]

Okay I get that there's some inherent tension between wanting to make all information available without having its presentation be overwhelming... but surely we can agree that THE NAME OF THE THING YOU'RE LOOKING AT is the most critical thing for any user to know???? How is looking at a wall of identical icons with no labels NOT confusing to a new player?

[anarchy753]

I really don't want this to sound mean, but so much of what's in here seems to boil down to "we're catering to people who are pretty thick."

The new abilities screen is really good for players in their first few hours, after that it becomes a downright pain in the ass. So much of Warframe comes down to modding, and you've taken away the most useful basic utility for players; seeing how mods affect each ability without needing to move the mouse around, click different things, and hold more information in short term memory than is possible.

Before I could put on a strength mod, look at the abilities and go "ok, it affects abilities 1/4 in a meaningful way, but 2 is not affected at all, and 3 is increased in a way I don't require." I could put a duration mod on Baruuk and see "yep, that's something I never want to use" when only one stat shows a change.

The new end screen frankly looks terrible. It's nice that it's stylised but you've completely neglected what people actually care about on an end of mission screen; "what did I get out of it?" The XP section is basically the same, but WHAT THE HELL IS THE OBSESSION WITH REMOVING ITEM NAMES. Your own screenshot shows how blatantly terrible this design is; there's multiple prime parts there that all use the same generic images with no indication what you got.

Also far more troublesome, you can't even see amounts.

As a player, I want the information fast, and I want it in a way that I don't need to fumble through both scrolling and hovering, which your screenshot already shows I'm going to need to do both of. Not only that, you've removed the distinction between mods and loot so it's one messed up pile of disorganised junk.

 

Really, it's nice to make a post about why you do things, but it's sad to see the disconnect between your motivation and what players actually want.

[AriaSTG]

I would like to add my suggestion for the Prime parts if everyone do not mind.
How about using the Original Base/Prime helmet as indicator for said parts.

Like for examples, weapons, for BP itself it just a silhouette where the parts are the the parts for the said silhouette.
lets take Reaper Prime for example for this, for the BP its just the shadow, whereas the blade is just the blade for the shadow without the handle and vice versa.

Same goes for Warframes, we have a silhouette for the said frame, but each part fills only that part of the silhouette. As i was writing this i realise that Neuroptic parts are gonna be quite troublesome to draw...

Of course this might take a while since there is a lot of Primes and the base frames

Just a general idea that i thought for clarity for that parts we getting.

[Padddy]

Hey,

according to the end of mission screen. We need a number and a name (e.g. I don‘t know which hilt that is). Ok, show the name once I hover over it if you want to, but please show numbers 🙂 

[przemo877]

I'll add my own two cents. What's the point of having a Codex? Me personally, I use it to check statistics of items, to compare valuable data. Whenever there are some new items added or balance is tweaked. But I'm finding it very unintuitive, annoying and it's just easier to go on a wiki at this point. You are encouraging people to use the wiki instead of searching the information in your game. Was that [DE]'s goal all along? To just look nice and send people away to the wiki?

What's the point of having THIS anywhere, especially in the Codex? Can you see how much unused space there is? And how miniscule the AkJagara is in that screen in comparison? Sometimes I wish I had a magnifying glass at hand because you can't properly zoom in on anything in the game outside of combat and additionaly everything spins around out of your control.

<sarcasm>
Gee, I wish the screen wasn't obscured with SO much information so that I could finally see that AkJagara. Might still need binoculars tough.
</sarcasm>

I'm really sorry for being a jerk, but so many people were giving you feedback about "ABOUT" hover overs for so long and you still chose to leave it in, that I feel like legitimate constructive criticism is no longer valid here and all I'm left with is satire. You literally can't properly/freely see the items you are checking and on top of that the MOST IMPORTANT information needs to be hovered over, because it's hidden by default.

Why?

[TGDM]

I know I haven't really played in a while but... Several people linked me this thread and I am just ???

The first question you should ask yourself when designing the UI is if the information on the screen delivers necessary information to the user. If you were to look at a Relic selection screen and all you saw was a grid of Nx3 of the same exact icon +/- a few with varied levels of refinement, would you know which Relic was which? Would you be able to quickly select the one you want for your mission? What information can the user get out of the current screen? What information should they be able to get?

On PC, the search bar solves a lot of those problems. On consoles I hope it helps a bit too, though it's definitely more annoying to input text with a gamepad than a keyboard. Item labels off by default is ridiculous. Like, even as you claimed in the OP that you question it 90% of the time then try to play it off as if yeah no big deal I play with them off teehee... What the hell?

And now stuff like the end of mission screen having a big ol' wallpaper image for the sole purpose of eating up space so that information about your drops and rewards get obfuscated behind scroll menus (with item labels turned off, of course). Who is the interface made for? Who tested out these UI elements and liked it? Isn't a crucial part of a loot-based game the ability to determine your loot? Are you relying on the gameplay loop of rewards obtained during the mission to be more satisfying than the tally at the end? Seriously, I can't make out what the design goal is here. Aside from trying to do something visually different/novel for the sake of doing so.

Some items work for iconography and some don't. Some items have rather unique images which you learn to associate with over time. If you've been playing for a while, you know how to identify the Argon resource image and don't necessarily need a label for that. Makes sense. It stands out because it's different. But then you have items which share icons or are only vaguely distinguishable from one another. Items which are different in name and name alone. In an inventory-management type of game like Path of Exile it makes sense to hide the stats until you mouse over something, but resource accumulation is something you need to tangibly understand. Imagine if all of the T1 and T16 maps in PoE all used the same icons. No differentiation in color, symbols, texture, framing... Nothing. That's what the Warframe UI is like.

The design philosophy seems to be painfully rooted in some kind of form over function mismatch. But criticizing is easy, creating is hard I guess. There are so many good examples from recent years in how to do UI design which can be visually pleasing and still delightfully functional. They don't have to be mutually exclusive.

There's also no mention at all in here about the limitations of UI design in Warframe. How many interfaces are treated as objects rather than UI elements (multiple scaling and foreground issues), how some features can actually be affected by gameplay physics (velocity can throw the menu, knockdowns can shut down the menu as you try to open/pause), how different gameplay states (warframe/operator/archwing) have different UI interactions as well (ranging from activating objects to opening maps). Hell, how we're still missing a lot of core functionality with keyboard shortcuts like the good old ctrl+a, shift+end, or ctrl+backspace/arrow keys. How inputting text and then adding a movement input as soon as you hit enter will attach that movement input to the end of your submitted text line.w

The UI was not ever Warframe's strong suit. It was always just a "good enough" solution which let you get to the core gameplay loop of shooter fun. A lot of changes have been made in the past few years to put more emphasis on perpetual reward systems for longer term grinds. Obfuscating / hiding information to help players tangibly track their progress seems like it will have the adverse effect of making their runs feel less rewarding, that it's more of a chore to track your progress than it is to measure how far you've come.

I know that this post is just a vain effort of catharsis. I've only really seen DE respond directly to hyperbolic negativity in terms of actually making changes. Memes have a better chance of invoking a positive change than constructive criticism. It's just kind of depressing to see things go even further along the path that pushed my interest out of the game.

anyways tl;dr: I look forward to the eventual UI update which removes the names of mods from the mod card drops :^)

[Phthisis]

4 hours ago, Gabbynaru said:

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.

If you think that will stop toxic behavior, you're sorely mistaken, in fact it can actually create more toxic behavior. Everything will be a competition with some, nothing can change that. Toxic behavior will always exist, if you want to not see it then play solo and only solo.

However the funny thing is, if they are being toxic, if you out toxic them they will actually stop being toxic more often than not simply because most genuinely toxic people have submissive personality traits but they to be of a dominate one.

-A psychologist turned social engineer.

[Sw1pz]

I know this is too much to ask, but can we get like a settings where we can switch between compact or detailed UI? The compact one is like what we have now and the detailed one is like the old UI, where all the stats and data is throwed at the screen directly. The default can be the compact one for newer player. But once the player reach certain MR, you can maybe add a reminder that you can change the UI for more stats on your screen.

[Padddy]

vor 11 Minuten schrieb anarchy753:

I really don't want this to sound mean, but so much of what's in here seems to boil down to "we're catering to people who are pretty thick."

The new abilities screen is really good for players in their first few hours, after that it becomes a downright pain in the ass. So much of Warframe comes down to modding, and you've taken away the most useful basic utility for players; seeing how mods affect each ability without needing to move the mouse around, click different things, and hold more information in short term memory than is possible.

Before I could put on a strength mod, look at the abilities and go "ok, it affects abilities 1/4 in a meaningful way, but 2 is not affected at all, and 3 is increased in a way I don't require." I could put a duration mod on Baruuk and see "yep, that's something I never want to use" when only one stat shows a change.

The new end screen frankly looks terrible. It's nice that it's stylised but you've completely neglected what people actually care about on an end of mission screen; "what did I get out of it?" The XP section is basically the same, but WHAT THE HELL IS THE OBSESSION WITH REMOVING ITEM NAMES. Your own screenshot shows how blatantly terrible this design is; there's multiple prime parts there that all use the same generic images with no indication what you got.

Also far more troublesome, you can't even see amounts.

As a player, I want the information fast, and I want it in a way that I don't need to fumble through both scrolling and hovering, which your screenshot already shows I'm going to need to do both of. Not only that, you've removed the distinction between mods and loot so it's one messed up pile of disorganised junk.

 

Really, it's nice to make a post about why you do things, but it's sad to see the disconnect between your motivation and what players actually want.

I agree on that. Sometimes a simple list is better than some stylish screen that requires effort to get information. We don‘t need such huge icons on the right side for the mission rewards. If the size stays like that then we need numbers and names without clicking or hovering.

 

Suggestion on ability screen: Why not add a toggle that opens all the windows you can open by hovering. So basically it would take you to a screen with ALL INFORMATION for the experienced players. That would be some compromise I guess...

[RoachyToasty]

Why are Infected Clip and Seeking Fury R10? Are they getting % changes? If so, will Elemental, Reload Speed, and Punch Through Riven Stats have different scaling to compensate?

[Chroia]

On mobile atm, so this's perforce gonna be a preliminary, short post.

First off: thanks for talking about this.

That said, let's talk a bit about Warframe's UI.

I say this with no vitriol: if I logged in to WF tomorrow and discovered that the entire UI besides mod-fusion (and other at-the-time nonexistent screens) was reverted to U13, I'd be almost-literally ecstatic. (Star chart gets a pass. I think that OG star chart gave players sense of where they were/were going, but at least it's improved (by regressing - if with better graphics) since the U14 iteration.)

The tl;dr here is basically Warframe's eternal issue: prioritizing form over function.

There's 'streamlined' and then there's 'flensed'. I'm in the UI to do something. STOP adding extra clicks to every step. Please.

 

Also, re: icons- there are hundreds of different 'items' in the game. Are you familiar with the term "burden of knowledge"? It's much easier for a player, esp a not-seasoned player, to take in information from text than a slew of unfamiliar, complex, colorful - or, in a word, noisy - mess of icons.

Heck, flying in the face of my initial high hopes when the loadout quick-select was redone, I basically completely ignore the slot icons - it's too much noise - and navigate purely by slot-place-on-screen.

An excellent example of both 'overwhelming' and 'not enough info'.

 

Well, that ran long.

Might follow up with a detailed post tomorrow, we'll see.

Edited January 25, 2020 by Chroia

[kapn655321]

1 minute ago, RoachyToasty said:

Why are Infected Clip and Seeking Fury R10? Are they getting % changes? If so, will Elemental, Reload Speed, and Punch Through Riven Stats have different scaling to compensate?

Dev build is a silly place. Disregard the numbers there, as they may have no bearing whatsoever on the game later.

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

I don't think I've ever seen a complaint about too much information being on a screen in this game.  The complaints I do see constantly, especially from the new players that I encounter and teach on a regular basis is that there is not enough information displayed anywhere in the game and that there are far too many places where the game flat out doesn't give you ALL of the information for things, especially warframe abilities.  EDIT:  Case in point:  Show me where in the UI it tells you about Kogake Prime's movement speed increase, or tells you how much it is.  Show me where the UI tells you about the Gaze and Atomos' beam chaining property.  Show me in the UI where it tells you how much damage the extra beam chains on the Amprex, Atomos, and Gaze do.  That's the speck on the tip of the iceberg of things the UI straight up NEVER tells you, and yet the plan is to hide MORE info?

So what little information IS being doled out is being hidden behind hover text and extra screens in an attempt to keep the UI looking tidy, when all it does it make it a minefield of "where was that information again?"

If I didn't have the majority of this game already memorized I would be lost, CONSTANTLY with the current UI.  This is probably the same reason you don't need the labels on.  This is not new or even mid-level player friendly in any way.  This game is super information heavy, especially for how little of that information is actually listed in the game, and hiding that information is only making it worse.  The overwhelming majority of the changes that you guys have made to the UI over the last couple of years have INCREASED the amount of time it takes and the amount of steps/clicks it takes to perform several tasks, all while not addressing ANY of the core issues that the UI of 2 years ago had.  Several of those cases where steps to perform a task have increased have actually caused more misclicks/accidents for me than they've solved.  

The idea that you want to hide even more of my information from me so that I can't check for something like which school lens I have installed on which weapons at a glance should be a glaringly obvious terrible design choice.  UI should facilitate quick movement and rapid changes, not slow it down for stylistic purposes.  Changing your loadout should be streamlined, and information at a glance, rather than slowly going over each and every hover text box, should be prioritized rather than removed.

You talk about the abilities screen.  You do realize that functionally, aside from the video, the ONLY thing you changed was slowing down seeing the spreadsheet, right?  There's still no clear indication of what does what.  I have NEVER relied on using this screen because it's a pain to access, a pain to read and the wiki page actually gives me relevant information with an explanation of what is what.  I don't know if it's still like this because of how superior the wiki is, but you guys couldn't even keep your definition of "radius" straight for a while there.  Sometimes it meant the mathematical definition where a 3m radius meant 3m from the cast point to the outside edge for a diameter of 6m, sometimes a 3m radius meant that the full diameter of the skill was 3m.  The ability screen STILL doesn't tell you to what radius specifically refers to, you have to infer that based on use.  The wiki has all of that information covered.  The wiki had the DR on Nova's 1 listed before you guys did.  You have all this room on that new(ish) full ability screen to put a detailed description and instead you gave us the exact same information we already had on a different screen hidden behind individual boxes.  You made it slower and you did it for no reason other than style and limiting information displayed for the tiny handful of people that can't read more than 6 words in a sitting.

This idea of hiding information is what lead to the RJ UI.  I honestly don't know how to politely speak my opinions about the RJ UI directly.  Indirectly speaking, I have not scrapped any of the avionics that have dropped and I have stopped playing RJ completely and the UI is the entire reason for the first bit and a large part of it for the second.

I can't adequately describe how much I loathe virtually all the new UI changes.  There are very few places where I actually saw any improvement.  The hate that was on the forums and subreddit when they came out was immense and I wouldn't wager that hate has gone away, people have just stopped complaining because you guys weren't listening.  You'd drop a bit of new UI, it would get complained about, especially since the UI changes the community actually wanted weren't being addressed, you'd wait for the complaints to die down and drop a bit more, rinse and repeat.  I can look back at really old UI and see the improvements made over the years.  I cannot do that with any of the UI that dropped in the last 2.  All of it has been for the worse, and I honestly don't think anyone at DE are listening anymore because people complain and you just keep pushing forward.

There is a massive, MASSIVE laundry list of things that need fixing or debugged or polished or just flat out finishing as well as a huge log of community requests that have the support of 90% of the community and instead it's nerf after nerf and changes no one asked for that end up being for the worse, and UI changes that don't seem to be beneficial to anyone and don't seem to serve any purpose other than making something look a certain way that matches up with someone's "vision" for the game.

TL;DR:  Hiding more information behind UI elements and adding even more screens to get to screens is NOT what literally ANYONE meant when virtually everyone was begging for this to be the year of polishing and fixes.

Edited January 25, 2020 by (XB1)TehChubbyDugan