Not Enough "Categories" or Searchable or Sort options

[Grav_Starstrider]

There are now a number of screens that have incredibly incomplete offerings for narrowing down to view specific options.

Helminth:

Spoiler

The Helminth screen only provides options to view everything, or not-yet-obtained ability options, and the ability to sort by "Recent", which less usefully defaults to showing the oldest-obtained options first, so you have to scroll down to the bottom of your collected infusions (which won't be the bottom of the screen unless you have gotten every single one). You can't search or sort by energy drain, or by Warframe name rather than by Ability names. There's no category for only abilities you have, either. There's no options to search by specific resources you know you have a surplus or shortage of, so that you can know what you can freely infuse without reservation, and which ones you have to farm more for, or be more sparing with.

Companions:

Spoiler

On the companion selection screen, there are no options to quickly narrow down or sort by companion types, other than by typing in the exact name of the class of the companion, such as Predasite, Sentinel, Kavat, Moa, or any portion of the Helminth Charger's title or description. Having selection options to narrow down by one of the (by my count) 7 companion types, would really help reduce the clutter of completionists having a minimum of 9 Sentinels, 5 (+1 Infested) Kubrows, 3 Kavats, and a ridiculously variable array of modular Deimos companions (minimum 3), or Moas (minimum 4).

Weaponry:

Spoiler

 

It would also be nice to be able to narrow down Weaponry by their classifications, such as by whether they are Bows, Sniper Rifles, Pistols, Thrown Weapons, Kitguns, Swords, Hammers, Zaws, etc. Currently, Zaws do not get returned in results such as "Staves" or "Sword", etc. And there's no obvious location indicating the weapon class, leaving users to rely on their knowledge/memory of what the weapon is by sight, when attempting to decide whether or not to equip an item (aside from determining the type via the mods or stance equippable to the weapon).

 

Parazon:

Spoiler

The Parazon modding screen lowkey infuriates me. I would very much like to be able to see all of my non-Requiem Parazon mods at once on the same page. Why you'd have a "Requiem" category and not a general "Parazon Mods" category is beyond me. Also, why isn't there a link to viewing your Lich in the Parazon  modding menu? Would just make sense to have it accessible from there as well, imo.

Foundry:

Spoiler

Clarifying a path to "Mastery" in the Foundry would be helpful as well, having any weaponry or Warframes (or their component parts) necessary appearing in one singular "Mastery" category, so that players don't need to double-check their Profile for what they haven't mastered, so that they can pick out the unmastered weapons out from among all of their automatically or accidentally obtained weaponry, such as duplicate primes or droppable blueprints such as Dread, Detron, Gorgon, etc. Having any Weapons or Warframe Blueprints or parts that are component parts of another Weapon or Blueprint would ideally also have a message associated with them upon attempting to sell them, if the user hasn't crafted/mastered the Warframe or weapon that the item is a component of. Ideally this is a continuous association, so that Chroma, who requires other Warframe's bits, or the various weapons that are part of a 4-weapon conga line of foundry-crafting, will have the game give you a warning when you try and sell items that will eventually be usable to craft the items (that are are used to craft the items, etc) that will grant you more Mastery.

Arsenal:

Spoiler

It would also be fun and neat to have an option to favorite or "dislike" items within our Arsenal, so that they show up first within any grouping, unless you check an "ignore subsorting" checkbox next to the Sort dropdown. That way you can always see and pick from your favorites when you're looking for a comfortable and familiar option, without sorting through every single Warframe/Weapon/Companion you own, and then see all of your middling options next, before seeing the items you actively dislike the feel/usage of.

I'm also going to reiterate another general UI complaint I made another post for. Why is it that the Profile, Helminth, and presumably a number of other menus, severely  limit the number of items you can view at once? Modding screens let you see mods from one end, to the other end, of the screen, providing a really good amount of visibility of options. I really wish that the Helminth, Profile, and some of the other menus, let their elements continue farther down the screen, so that you weren't restricted to 3 rows (or 2.5 for the Profile!!!) for a number of our menus. Some of these menus contain over 40 options, it's annoying to have to scroll between 5, or drastically more, pages of options.

I know obviously all of these would collectively be some pretty big asks, but I personally feel like the menus would be better with their implementation. Or at least being options that could be toggled on or tweaked from one of Warframe's settings menus. Anyone's free to think specific parts are a bit redundant or picky, but I imagine a bunch of the completionists who retain their entire arsenal, including inferior versions of the better Warframes and weapons owned, will appreciate being able to permanently demote non-prime versions of items you have Primes for. And will also appreciate all/most of the aforementioned sorting/searching/viewing options mentioned earlier in this post.

Spoiler-hiding the wall of text 😅 I'm a slut for details.

[chaotea]

All good points. Alot of these screens could also benifit from some sort of favoriting / bookmarking system for prefered items, like loadouts have.

[(NSW)BalticBarbarian]

2 hours ago, chaotea said:

All good points. Alot of these screens could also benifit from some sort of favoriting / bookmarking system for prefered items, like loadouts have.

Favouriting more so than anything else. Making sure that it persists even when you don't have that item currently available (think potato/forma blueprints: if you use up all the ones you currently have and then get more, then their "favourite" status should not reset).

[TheMostFrench]

Parazon
- If you access the Parazon screen from the Lich screen, you will go back to the Lich screen if you exit the arsenal screen. I do agree that being able to access the Lich screen from the parazon as well screen makes sense, but right now it seems like it takes you out of the Lich screen, opens the arsenal, then opens the Parazon screen, so it's not like a direct link anyway, but a quick series of steps. It might not be as simple as it sounds.

- I'd like the ability to reorganise equipped Requiems directly from the Lich screen, this would save time once you know all of them and just need the correct order, since you can access the Lich screen from Navigation.

Weapons
- I believe the issue with weapons is that they don't always fit a particular 'class' despite their appearance. Regarding ranged weapons: they can be searched by their ammo type, but this has lead me to debates in the past like "why can't I search bows by typing 'sniper', since I use them for sniping", which got me frustrating response like 'the game calls it bow ammo' (even though it uses the sniper ammo pickup), while other weapons (like penta and ogris) which aren't sniper rifles use sniper ammo - proving that it's possible to adjust or redefine how ammo pickups work e.g crossbows use rifle ammo.

I know there is one zaw that can use a 'hammer' strike but uses a machete stance if you use a one handed grip. Since there is no such thing as one handed hammers in the game you can't really search for it using the term 'hammer' unless you put hammer in the name. Zaws are unique in this regard because the part the actually gives mastery is the strike, while the part that might define how you would classify the weapon type is the grip. Just searching 'zaw' will return zaw weapons only. I have about 10 different zaws and personally if I'm planning to use one I've already decided which one I want to use before hand.

Search/UI
- Another issue with text search for things like weapons and companions is that it uses any word from the description and name as well as other aspects mentioned above. Searching for something like a classification of weapon or companion might actually take longer, or would require completely new search implementation. For example, typing 'heavy' when searching for melee weapons will return weapons that use heavy stances as well as weapons that have the word 'heavy' in their description - it isn't perfect but it works most of the time. More categories to organise means more programming work and more potential for things to be mislabelled or miscategorised.

- Regarding foundry, it seems like DE have kind of half done a mastery thing by letting you see if you have mastered something or already crafted it, but it only applies to main blueprints and not parts, e.g if I have a Chroma Blueprint it will tell me if I have mastered Chroma and already built that frame, but it doesn't give me that info if I only have Chroma Systems, Neuro or Chassis. Adding a 'Mastery/Mastered' category in the foundry would be useful if we could sell items directly from the foundry as well.

 

 

[Grav_Starstrider]

Also worth noting: Nightwave store "Defaults" to showing you items by Name.... Instead of the "Default" aka by-type view. And we still need a "Hide Crafted" button. I will never want to craft a second cosmetic I already own, DE. Pointless clutter. I'll engage with your system more when I can see only the things I'll possibly want. TBH though "hide crafted/owned" isn't great as-is either, as they'd remove options you still may want to farm, such as Kuva or Catalysts (there's always more Rivens to roll, and always more weapons being released that need more capacity than 30).

[PhiThagRaid]

On 2021-01-11 at 9:06 AM, Grav_Starstrider said:

I'm also going to reiterate another general UI complaint I made another post for. Why is it that the Profile, Helminth, and presumably a number of other menus, severely  limit the number of items you can view at once? Modding screens let you see mods from one end, to the other end, of the screen, providing a really good amount of visibility of options. I really wish that the Helminth, Profile, and some of the other menus, let their elements continue farther down the screen, so that you weren't restricted to 3 rows (or 2.5 for the Profile!!!) for a number of our menus. Some of these menus contain over 40 options, it's annoying to have to scroll between 5, or drastically more, pages of options.

Nice, someone else has noticed this. There is no consistency, relics and syndicate offerings seem to reach to the bottom of the screen, but not the profile. The lower your UI scaling the worse the effect.  Relic screen can also break if you open a linked item, adding bars at the top and bottom to retroactively try and make it like profile screen.

Other than the pet situation,  I agree with everything you mentioned. The pet one is only because I have given each a name that have grown on me and became something I can quickly pick out. And for moas, I am willing to argue there is really only need for 1, since they all share mods, unless you want to be a completionist about the parts they have as well. (Build them all, but only keep one. This is just a bit of a nitpick)

In general I'd like: 

● Hide mastered, hide owned, hide built options in all menus.

● Sorts according to every metric of the items displayed

● Things like Augments, Polarity, Aura, Exilus and Type to all have a toggle instead of selecting. I think an "OR" function would be more useful than an "AND" function,  but making it an option is even better. I was recently building Lavos and it would've been nice to select mining and warframe.

○ Perhaps for foundry only, when searching something that requires some other craftable, it shows both the parts you are looking for and its subparts.

[Grav_Starstrider]

5 minutes ago, PhiThagRaid said:

Nice, someone else has noticed this. There is no consistency, relics and syndicate offerings seem to reach to the bottom of the screen, but not the profile. The lower your UI scaling the worse the effect.  Relic screen can also break if you open a linked item, adding bars at the top and bottom to retroactively try and make it like profile screen.

Other than the pet situation,  I agree with everything you mentioned. The pet one is only because I have given each a name that have grown on me and became something I can quickly pick out. And for moas, I am willing to argue there is really only need for 1, since they all share mods, unless you want to be a completionist about the parts they have as well. (Build them all, but only keep one. This is just a bit of a nitpick)

Note: Ideally there would be an "all companions" tab which would be the default selection every time you entered. Shortcutting to only seeing sentinels or kavat-type or kubrow-type or moa-types, or "modulars", would just be additional ways to narrow down to specific types. That way if you know what you own, but not what you named them, you can find them more easily.

[PhiThagRaid]

3 minutes ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

That way if you know what you own, but not what you named them, you can find them more easily.

Yep, sounds like a nice addition.

 For me it is somewhat the opposite,  I know their names and what I use them for, but don't care what type they are.

I did add some extra points to my previous post.

[Krilexis]

Would love a favourite for companions and foundry yeah. Especially for foundry so forma blueprint is always on top for exemple. I discovered recently the favourite loadout its so useful. 

I think they didnt rework yet the Foundry UI so we might get those changes.