Warframe Revised: UI Quality of Life Changes Megathread

[SilverBones]

UI Quality of Life 
This is a summary of the UI changes announced in a recent Dev Workshop, plus confirmation that it is shipping with our coming PC mainline update: https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1166994-why-do-we-ui-like-we-ui-part-ii/#comments 

• ‘Item Labels’ are now set to ‘On’ by default, but can still be turned off in your settings. 
• Avionics Screen no longer uses ‘Hold to Confirm’. 
• Intrinsics Screen no longer uses ‘Hold to Confirm’. 
• Hold to Confirm added to Revive to avoid accidental aborts, particularly on controller during Arbitration missions. 
• Death Screen (i.e you are dead but Squad goes on) now preserves the HUD so you can see mission and Squad status. 
• Added a ‘Forge All’ button on the Payload screen in Dojos. 
• More stats on DPD. 
• General scrollbar usability improvements with controllers. 

Why:
As outlined in the original Dev Workshop, we are looking to course correct some UI decisions based on feedback. 

Please remember to leave your feedback in a constructive and civil manner! Remember, this thread is for FEEDBACK ONLY. If you have a bug, please make sure you submit your bug on this thread and follow the new guidelines!

[Travisk]

UI QoL request: Make all items in the market easily rotatable and zoomable. Needing to wait for stuff to rotate slowly by itself is a bit annoying.

Edited March 5, 2020 by Travisk

[SephirothWS]

UI QoL Request: Vaulted status icon on relics. Why is this still not a thing?

[(XBOX)PichuFrenzy]

UI in game QoL resquest: hold waypoint key to remove any already placed waypoint. 

Right now, we are forced to place a marker exactly on the previous marker to remove it, thus forcing us to stand still for a moment. Let's say that it is quite annoying in a space ninja game. 

[Zarremgregarrok]

QoL Shop screen request:
Can we finally get "Hide Crafted" in shops and clan research? We have "Hide Owned" and the items do show "Crafted", so can we get this filtering done without scrolling through it like madmen?

Edited March 5, 2020 by Zarremgregarrok

[Zarremgregarrok]

36 minutes ago, SephirothWS said:

UI QoL Request: Vaulted status icon on relics. Why is this still not a thing?

UI QoL Request:
And while we are at the "vaulted" relic marker, can we also get markers for "owned/crafted/mastered" on the relic rewards? Especially when we are selecting a relic for the next endless mission rotation and have only a few seconds to pick it?

Edited March 5, 2020 by Zarremgregarrok

[Mephane]

Since you are addressing major quality of life issues in this update, here are two more that should be considered:

1. Universal vacuum (univac), in all modes and situations. Not only would that free up a slot on sentinal weapons and beast companions which is currently effectively reserved for this purpose, it would also help in situations where pets and companions do not apply (e.g. Operator form), and reduces the dependance on keeping your pets and companions alive (in endless missions, people currently want to outright die deliberately if their pet is fully dead because playing without vacuum for an extended period is utterly miserable).

2. Recastable buffs. There is a very stark contrast between buffs and effects that can be easily renewed (Blessing's damage reduction, all of Wisp's reservoir buffs) and those that cannot (e.g. Rhino's Roar and Iron Skin). I think all buffs should be recastable by default, overwriting the existing buff entirely.

[Temragon]

I don't see addition listed anywhere, but when a grineer drone is blocking your radar, it now heavily fades the minimap (INCLUDING the terrain!) and overlays a large block of text, obscuring the rest.

Formerly it would just make it slightly harder to see and remove enemy markers.

This may be thematically appropriate with interrupting the map, but it is very frustrating and visually distracting/obscuring to gameplay when the map is in large mode (Which I keep mine in all the time!)

I would rather something like ghostly enemy markers flickering over the image of the minimap (unfaded!) with some slight distortion if some additional effects have to be shown.

 

The revive screen changes are nice.

Edited March 5, 2020 by Temragon

[notNSANE]

UI Feedback: Merge or split "Owned" and "Crafted" item categories. It's useless for us to "Hide Owned" if the item is Crafted and it's still visible, like Helmets or Weapon Skins. Massive waste of time checking them out individually.

[Nasair]

Please, when I start typing in a window with a search box and don't have the chat window open have my text go to the search box. I can obviously see that the chat shortcut (usually T) wouldn't do this.

[(PSN)BloodyHell]

On the subject of hold to confirm, can we get that for life support capsules/towers in Survival similar to having to hold to revive fallen teammates? There're situations where it's easy to inadvertently activate them like when pressing X/Square to reload, and times when you'd want to cancel out of it if you notice someone else having activated one as well.

 

[(PSN)BloodyHell]

4 hours ago, Mephane said:

Since you are addressing major quality of life issues in this update, here are two more that should be considered:

1. Universal vacuum (univac), in all modes and situations. Not only would that free up a slot on sentinal weapons and beast companions which is currently effectively reserved for this purpose, it would also help in situations where pets and companions do not apply (e.g. Operator form), and reduces the dependance on keeping your pets and companions alive (in endless missions, people currently want to outright die deliberately if their pet is fully dead because playing without vacuum for an extended period is utterly miserable).

Had a thought about this. What if instead of a mod for a Sentinel, Vacuum became a mod for the Parazon? That would solve the issue of mod space for companions, and losing it when they die in a mission. Plus it already words by sucking up items to your Warframe directly, so functionally it makes sense for the Parazon. Of course that then brings up the issue of taking up 1/3 of Parazon slots, so that would need some rebalancing. Maybe increasing Parazon Mod space to 5 slots, that'd allow for people to have 3/5 slots to mess around with (knowing that the majority of players would go with Intruder/Vacuum), or sacrifice those two for the full 5/5 slots to make creative use of the rest of the current Parazon mods.

Not sure this counts as a UI suggestion, but just something that crossed my mind.

[PunishedWelfare]

Too much theme uniformity is bad. White text which is clear to read shouldn't turn to blue or pink with my theme. I noticed this particularly when I was waiting for a revive. I couldn't really see what was written on my screen.

[Xinopia]

The new loading circles on the loading screen are very low quality and pixelated, and why not make the a sideways squares like the others.

[(PSN)BloodyHell]

I have a few more UI QoL suggestions I'd like to make. Apologies in advance for the wall of text.

• A re-adjustment of what common/uncommon/rare resources or components show up on the left and at the bottom of the HUD might be due. This was primarly going to be in regards to Empyrean but it's worth looking at all across the starchart just to tidy things up, like what was done with Kuva drops recently (Very nice change btw, shoutouts to whoever tweaked that). I've always seen the left display as a spot for special or singular drops, and the bottom list useful for keeping track of what you've picked up but not immediately necessary to see. At the moment it's kind of overkill how everything in railjack will appear to the left, and it can take a while for it to cycle though each one. Here's a suggestion list for how it could be reorganised.

To the bottom:

• All common and uncommon Empyrean resources in the Proximas
• Carbides and Cubic Diodes on the starchart

To the left:

• Kavat Genetic Code
• Somatic Fiber
• Animo Nav Beacon

Bonus suggestion: it'd be neat to see the bottom list be redesigned to fit in style with the left. A change in font, decrease the size very slightly and adding a faded vitruvian wavey graphic behind the text would be fab.

• On the topic of the HUD, a lot of the HUD elements per warframe could do with some aligning. For example, Khora's Venari display is angled accurately with the Abilities and Weapons Stats display, whereas for Wukong when activating Celestial Twin or Defy it's completely horizontal and misaligned. Might be worth reviewing all warframes and seeing which ability displays can be corrected so that they're parallel with the rest of the HUD.
   
• When holding R1 to access your Railjack abilities, could the name of each one be displayed above them as well? Just so it's easier to determine which one is which before activating, the battle avionics icons can be hard to distinguish. 
   
• What if the Warframe logo in the new loading screen matched with the logo change for updates (so at the moment it would be the current Empyrean one, and then change over to whatever next update has)? Just a thought, nothing major. It is cool though that it currently changes color depending on what interface is chosen in the Options, in which case it depends on what people would prefer, I wouldn't mind either way. 

As always kudos for the hard work.

Edited March 6, 2020 by (PS4)BloodyHell

[rodzzila]

With all the status change and arcanes it would be great to have a faster way to change our builds (A,B and C) especially in the navigation window. A lot of elements are faction expecific or arcanes attach to a weapon type. But is a pain to go an change them every mission. So a faster way to do this especially in the navigation windows where we choose the mission type would be great.

[ZenDash]

The "new" default loadout icons on the majority of frames look like something that came out of a beta version of warframe and was not supposed to be implemented. I hope you'll revert them to the ones we have in the warframe selection screen, because man are they an eye-sore to look at.

Also UI QoL request: the ability to choose a warframe's skin icon that you own instead of the default one would be nice too

 

 

[victorcas]

I left here two post I've made recently about some problems I've encountered. 

 

 

[CxLL]

Loading screen tips that concern elemental damage are now outdated.

[Arsonistic]

New loading-screen UI (at the bottom of the screen) is pixelated and looks awful. The square in the top-left doesn't have this issue.

The DPD (Detailed Purchase Dialog) has a fair bit of empty space below the purchase and blueprint buttons. Would be nice if the scroll-area could be extended a bit more since there's space over anyway, so we don't have to scroll around as much.

[Kmykzy]

UI QoL Request: Railjack tactical avionics keybindings.

Screen is already cluttered enough and with pickup popups so you cant even use some tactical avionics most of the time as a pilot. With things like [Flow Burn] having 5-13 sec duration its pretty absurd that you have to spend some of that time entering menu screens, waiting for stuff to disappear off your screen for you then to be able to click it an icon on the side of your screen, waste some more time exiting the menus, reorient yourself cause the ship started spinning during all that because you moved the mouse 2mm to the right before opening said menu and then finally start using it.

[Inkjet42]

The new revive text is hard to read. I picked "Legacy" Theme because I find the white text easiest to read across most of the game. Half of the revive text is now yellow and harder to read, as well as a bit jarring when I just want clean white text.

[C0bra5]

posted the post incompletely, by mistake...

Edited March 8, 2020 by C0bra5
posted the post incompletely, by mistake...

[C0bra5]

Let's review some of the issues that bothers me the most. Designing and reviewing user interfaces and experiences is something I do quite often and the new UX/UI is giving me more headaches than should be necessary at times. I've rounded up some of my thoughts and ideas in this post for all to see.

Literally any clan research UI:
As a user this interface tells me nothing of relevance, here's why:

The "research state" icons:

On the surface there are two issues:

• The "clock/research ongoing" and "researched" icons blend in the background because there are too many of them, once you have completed a large number of items. This makes finding new items that haven't been researched yet much harder
• The icon that indicates the "completed" state is too similar to the "owned" (circle with a checkmark in it) icon used everywhere else.

These issues are amplified by the following underlying problems:

• The usage of icons as state indicators goes against most (if not all) UX guidelines I can think of.
• The interface is inconsistent with the game's other UIs.

Let's start with the UX issue. Icons on items should indicate an issue with the item or supplement the user with data that is relevant to said user. The research icons indicate neither; it's used to indicate state. An item's state is usually expressed by applying visual effects to an item. For example, an unobtainable or disabled item tends to be grayed out. It's not recommended to use icons to indicate an item's state as it leads to problems like the 1st surface issue I've previously identified.

To tie in the inconsistency issue, let's take a look at the syndicate offerings UI as it follows the UX guidelines I've previously explained.

The Lack of "owned", "crafted" and "mastered" icons:
This issue regards consistency errors and the lack of useful information for the player.

As the previous image showed, merchants UI (like the syndicate offering or Baro Ki'Teer) tell you if you own an item by using the "owned" icon. As a user who seeks to obtain new items, knowing, at a glance, whether I own an item is greatly beneficial to me. Once an item's research is completed; the only possible interaction with the research item leads us to a transaction in which a user exchanges credits for an item. As this is the exact purpose of a merchant, I think it is fair to say that the "owned", "crafted" and "mastered" icons should be added to the item.

• The "owned" icon tells us if we own a copy of the blueprint.
• The "crafted" icon tells us whether we own the crafted output of a blueprint.
• The "mastered" icon tells us whether we have mastered this icon, This information is especially relevant to users that lack the capacity for more weapons and therefore have had to discard weapons in order to make place for newer weapons. Users who seek to master all weapons would likely greatly appreciate this.

As previously mentioned, this would keep it consistent with other similarly purposed UIs, more specifically the merchant UIs.

The right-hand side section:
Once an item's research is completed, It becomes devoid of information that is valuable to a user.

As a user, I ask two questions before buying an item:

1. Is this the item I want?
2. Can I afford this item?

To answer the first question I can check the tooltip. You might think that that's pretty simple, but from experience, this has caused more issues than is necessary. Most interfaces show item statistics in the tooltip or somewhere else (usually an area that expands on what the user selected). For a layman, the fact that a tooltip may be intractable is a foreign concept. I've asked some of my industry colleagues and most of them agree that this is an irregularity and not the norm. As far as I'm aware the game has no in-built tutorials that educate users on this concept specifically. The lack of user education isn't the only issue though. My main gripe is that it's counterproductive. The fact that users have to first wait for the tooltip of an item to appear and then press TAB to see it's statistics, adds an extra layer of complexity when it comes to comparing items against each other. This issue can be resolved by having the right-hand section display the currently selected item's statistics. Right now all it displays is the state of the research. Using the feedback I've given in the previous section, this information is redundant. The only thing that's actually useful to a new user is the explanation that the item may be replicated by all clan members. Now that it is complete. This kind of information is better relegated to a tutorial, not a static interface component. Replacing this information with the item's statistics would make it easier to compare items for a user.

The second question can easily be answered by looking at the right-hand side. Yet again more pitfall appears. A familiar user is likely to know that the background of an item is supposed to indicate whether it's a blueprint or an item. Because the interface background color and the color of the blueprint lines are very similar it's easy to miss them if a user has a bad vision or is lacking attention (like someone with an attention deficit disorder).

That last issue is a surface issue, now let's take a look at the underlying issue; As you might have noticed, I used a screenshot of my inventory, I did this on purpose. Here blueprints can easily be distinguished as blueprints as it quite literally spells it out to users. A solution would be to enforce consistency with the rest of the game and change the word research in the item research UI with blueprint. Since we want to reinforce this, changing the "replicate" text in the button to "replicate blueprint" would also greatly help. This would solve the second and third issues that occur when answering the second question:

• Since there is are no direct indications that tell us that we about to purchase a blueprint, users may be lead to think that they are about to obtain the item itself and not a blueprint. I've seen many new players. I've seen many new players commit these exact errors when I was inviting new players to join my clan after the release of Warframe on the Nintendo Switch.
• Since the tooltip only mentions "research" and never mentions "blueprint", a user might be lead to think that the cost displayed in the tooltip is the clan research cost and therefore disregard it. I've seen many confuse the crafting cost and the research cost because of this exact reason. I've even have been in arguments over the meaning of the cost displayed in the tooltip. (Please end my suffering).

Conclusion:
Here is a TL;DR of all the changes that I believe need to be done:

• Remove the "researched" and "clock/research ongoing" icons.
  • Replace it the descriptive text and darkening effect used in the syndicate offering UI.
• Add the "owned", "crafted" and "mastered" icons to the items in the research UI.
  • When an item's research is completed, users who seek new items actually care about that not whether it's completed or not.
• Show - the stats of the selected item on the right-hand side of the research UI.
  • This helps with comparing items.
• Remove the word "research" from most labels/item labels and actually indicate what they are.
  • The railjack research UI does a fantastic job of doing this exact thing.
• Change the text on the replicate button to "REPLICATE BLUEPRINT"
  • since DE seems to be addicted to re-usability (not that it's a bad thing, but just like alcohol, use in moderation), i feel forced to mention that it should say probably say "REPLICATE" or "FABRICATE" like in the railjack research UI when replicating items.

in order for the devs at DE and the community to see what my feedback would look like if it was implemented; I've modified the research UI using image editing tools to include my feedback:

 

Research/Railjack UI:
Here we have a much smaller problem but a problem none the less: engines, shield arrays and reactors do not provide any solution when it comes to observing their statistics

Edited March 10, 2020 by C0bra5
sentence flow fixes

[DoomFruit]

After having found myself with a login XP booster on the double XP weekend, I took it upon myself to try and get more intrinsics for Railjack and once again was reminded of how obnoxious the UI there is. It's death by a thousand cuts of tiny little things which constantly get in your way, take up valuable time in the middle of combat and add nothing of value. The two main things are:

-Hold to confirm when crafting in the forges. I already know which item I want to make. I had to explicitly move the mouse pointer to it in order to select it. I'm under attack right now, more missiles are pouring in and ramsleds are on their way. I'm fed up of standing there having to hold the mouse button down saying "yes, craft revolite, yes craft revolite, yes, I really do want to craft the revolite, craft the damn stuff, get on with it, FINALLY". This hold to confirm stuff is INCREDIBLY annoying. It was annoying in No Man's Sky. It was annoying here. It's no less annoying now. It doesn't need any kind of hold to activate, it doesn't need a confirm dialogue box, it just needs to click and go. Contrast with selecting items from the gear wheel or their bound hotkeys. There's no holding, it's just click-bang-use. That's how things are supposed to happen.

-Pointless animations for roping down the forges and roping them back up again. This might fall more within animation or map design rather than the flat HUD element part of user interface, but it's still something that users need to interface with and so I'm putting it here. Why is this necessary? All it does is take up more of my time and get in the way of doing something useful. This is especially bad when we're in the middle of combat. Useless twirly crap is the last thing I want there.