Thoughts On Ui (Lobby)

[zelgaris]

Third of my wall of text "Thoughts on ..." threads - feel free to check the previous two and leave a comment:
Thoughts On Controls, Movement, Customization, Melee, Ninjaing, Etc.
Thoughts On Mods (Capacity, Polarity, Slots), Motivation, Challenges, Gamestyles And Endgame...

I wrote this little introduction after the whole text was written and I have to confess the little wannabe designer in me died a lot of times...
I assume anyone, who ever played a game with good UI has to consider the current Warframe UI and especially the mods section as terrible and it really is terrible. We are in beta, stuff changes, gameplay is important, no time for polish, etc. but UI itself plays a pretty important role in giving good first impressions and thus cannot be ignored. And when issues are ignored, they won't be corrected.
Good UI is complementing the gameplay, not damaging the whole experience, especially when it has to be used on regular basis (to fuse mods, change load out, chat with friends, and so on).

Let's start with saying, that UI API would be the best solution, but even with that, the default UI must still be coherent, accessible and user friendly.

What you will read is a complex and sometimes boring examination of the current UI with some suggestions to improve it. I just did my research :) Also this was written in span of several days, so maybe something got fixed already.


Launcher
Launcher could use some graphical improvement. The whole launcher window could look more like one of the windows from the arsenal section or the login window so it fits the game visuals.
Let's use Starcraft II launcher as a good example, how launcher can fit the game.
Not much to say about launcher than this :)


Login Screen
Not the best one, but fulfilling its purpose quite sufficiently, although:

- Remember password check box is missing, we want it, but for safety issues this will probably never happen.

- Another issue is that TABbing to next text field (or SHIFT-TABbing back) or clicking into the text fields immediately delete the content, i.e. made a simple mistake in the login email, how about writing it all over again. It's somehow adjustable because we can't just select the whole text and delete it, since standard edit functions aren't available here (and not even in chat).

- Bloom gets activated when login button is clicked on (you notice this, in case you play without bloom option on and you should if you are sane). It stays on until the login is successful (i.e. in case you mistyped your password, or server is down, enjoy the bloom).

- Location of the X button is really odd in the login screen. It should be located somewhere near the login button (beside or below), so we clearly see our options, but the same button is used in lobby to log out, not exit, and in case of higher resolution than 1280x720 (i.e. the default one for the UI), the position of the X button changes between the login and lobby screen, so it looks inconsistent. I suggest just replacing it with text button similar to LOG IN but with "QUIT" or "EXIT".

- The info popup window, which appears in case of unsuccessful login due to error in password or email, doesn't help much ("Login Failed, check your info") and here, we can experience the ignorance of ENTER and SPACE during these popups. Also although everything except the info popup is darker, the keyboard input focus stays in the login screen below, so we can happily fill the text fields while the info popup is still there and even the LOGIN button reacts to mouse hover, but doesn't react on clicking. It shouldn't work this way, the info popup should take the focus and keep it until closed. ENTER or SPACE should work as OK (only ESC works in this particular case). ENTER or SPACE as OK works only in case we aim the mouse cursor on the OK button - really odd behavior.

- Considering sounds, LOGIN and EXIT button hover sound is different from the default hover sound of the same buttons (see top main menu in lobby). It also use different click-release sound in comparison to others, but in case of LOGIN it is acceptable, since we are actually accepting something.
EXIT button use "accept-sound" instead of "click-sound" (more on sounds later). Confirmation window buttons also use improper hover sound.


---
Let's talk about some general issues we encounter many times before the examination of the lobby and main menu.

General Inconsistencies and Issues
Below are listed and described some common issues of the current UI, which will be encountered and closely described further in the text.

- Inconsistency
- ENTER, SPACE and ESC
- Mouse Input
- Sound Issues
- Visual Issues
- Transitions


Inconsistency
Lack of some kind of coherence, consistency, unification is evident in the UI and not only in that. Just mentioning it here, because it's the main problem with the UI so far.


ENTER, SPACE and ESC
These three are pretty standard keys used in many games and applications, but in Warframe, their usage is inconsistent at many places, while their usage should be at least consistent while not standard. Only then, we can use them effectively with the expected results.

Explanatory ENTER/SPACE/ESC issues:
1) Zoom to a random sector (e.g. Mercury) to see the individual levels, then click the profile button in top menu and then close the profile window with ESC. You will stay in the zoomed in sector. Now while in the sector, open avatar image and then close it with ESC. You will close the window and also zoom out to the star map while you should stay zoomed in the sector.

2) In lot of confirmation windows ESC key works as "cancel" button and that's pretty standard behavior. With this in mind, in mod screen in arsenal, click on a mod, then on fusion button, then hit ESC to cancel the fusion and see how it returns you back from mod screen to arsenal screen (or different previous screen). While the ESC is normally used as a shortcut for BACK button, in case of action, that could be canceled, it should work as CANCEL button instead.

3) Staying in the mod screen, let's fuse some mods and after the confirmation window appears, we can hit ESC for cancel/no, but we can't use ENTER/SPACE to agree/yes.

4) The behavior of ESC differs in situations between key-release and key-press/down. For example, when exiting arsenal by ESC it is clearly a key-press. But when in mod screen after doing some changes, hitting ESC calls a confirmation window but pressing and holding ESC to cancel the confirmation doesn't close the box and it is closed only after the ESC is released. And now something funny - when you press and hold ESC to call the confirmation windows and release the ESC only after the window appears, it immediately closes.

5) It looks like the ENTER and SPACE, when they work (e.g. when aiming a mouse cursor on a choice in confirmation windows), also works as key-release.

For accepting in the confirmation window I am talking about SPACE in addition to ENTER, because when using standard WSAD controls for movement, SPACE is really close, suitable and pretty convenient for the confirmation use.

 

Consistency and unification is the key here, so following two basic rules below would solve the issues:
1) ENTER/SPACE act as OK/YES in confirmation windows
2) ESC acts as BACK/CANCEL/NO with priority on CANCEL


Mouse Input
Not much to say about it, maybe making the cursor react according to the elements would be nice.


Sound Issues
Ranging from inconsistency between buttons sounds, annoying sounds, missing sounds to problems with sound configuration in the settings.

Explanatory sound issues:
1) Already mentioned on forum, even though you mute all sounds and music, some sounds still play (e.g. credit spend sound after purchase in market).

2) Mouse hovering alert and news emits a beep sound and the sound is heard even when we are in arsenal or other screens, i.e. the alert and news aren't visible. Open arsenal, move your mouse right above the Warframe tab and start moving it down to the button for choosing a warframe and back. This also happens with the planets, when in Foundry and Market but not in Arsenal and Contacts. What is below/behind these screens should be completely ignored.

3) Elemental mods on weapons, especially the electricity mod, emit a sound when entering arsenal, leaving arsenal, returning to lobby from other sections, etc. The sound is really annoying and clearly shouldn't be there - we see the effects visibly, we don't need sound that plays on any possible situation.

4) Several inconsistencies in button hover and click sounds, i.e. two visually same buttons emit different sounds on hover - let's describe some of these sounds for further usage:
- "pip-sound" - sound the LOGIN button makes on hover (same sound as hovering over alarm and news)
- "accept-sound" - sound the LOGIN button makes on click-release (also the exit button in the login screen do this for some reason...)
- "dt-sound" - sound the buttons in main menu make on hover (I consider this as default sound for most buttons, it's used almost everywhere, e.g. for all elements in the main Arsenal screen)
- "click-sound" - sound the buttons in main menu make on click-release
There are others, but these four are used the most.
Some of them were already described in Buttons don't make sounds or make improper one thread I've wrote few days ago.

5) In confirmation windows, click sound is made on button-press while in other places, it is made on button-release. This should clearly be unified. Considering the confirmation windows, in login screen, try to click the exit button and than click and hold on NO - you will hear the sound but the window won't disappear until you release the button with cursor on the NO button. While LOGIN button sound is made on button-release.


Visual Issues
Ranging from inconsistent placement between different screens, unwanted overlay, bad button naming to completely missing buttons.

Explanatory visual issues:
1) Some buttons are missing, e.g. back button in customize colors screen is still missing although already reported several times on forum.

2) Some tool tip information is old/misleading/wrong in the grammatical sense, e.g. hover on mod customization button in the arsenal and the tool tip shows "Configurate upgrade artefacts". Not only this is not true, but (not being native English speaker) there is "and" missing between the first two words.

3) Some buttons, which should be located at the same position to support the consistency aren't located in such way, e.g. back button in various screens

4) UI elements (tabs, windows) from various screens aren't positioned in coherent way

5) Some button naming is inconsistent with the rest, e.g. there is a cancel button in weapon/warframe mod modification screen, while it should be a back button (the "cancel" doesn't have any meaning in case we don't change the mods, while back makes sense in both cases)

6) In mod modification screen and warframe/weapon mod screen, buttons (apply, cancel, sell) appear on the screen out of nowhere when conditions are met. The buttons should be always there, but should be just visibly inactive. It is sometimes pretty confusing.

7) Excessive screen shaking and bloom everywhere - when equipping mod, when in-equipping a mod, when we open a market windows, when the highlights change in the main market windows, when we click on something in the market. Who thought this is good idea? This is not about artistic freedom.


Transitions
Transitions between the screens are just too slow, especially the one we are using the most, i.e. from Solar map to Arsenal. It is only 3 seconds from click to arsenal to moment we can click buttons. Doesn't seem so long, but for an action, which should be in best case scenario instant, it's pretty long. Also the way the tabs in the arsenal screen are showing, I would say it's a direct provocation by the UI designer here.
Almost everything just takes too long to show...


Daily Reward
How does the reward actually works? As far as I know, you have to accept it before doing anything else in the game.
Let's have this little example with melee weapon affinity bonus. To which weapon the bonus is applied? To the currently equipped one or to all? What if the equipped weapon is ranked up. I miss the reward bonus, because I forgot to reequip the melee weapons (other weapons, warframes) before quitting the other day? Doesn't sound fair.
We should be able to accept the reward when we want in case it is some kind of affinity bonus. Also right now it's hard to say whether it actually works or not - in case it is blueprint reward, we can check the inventory/foundry, but if it is the affinity bonus to weapon or warframe, there is no way (well, we can write the information down before quitting the game in the previous day, but...).  


Main Lobby

Main lobby consists of:
- Top main menu
- Solar Map (with tenno sitting there)
- News and alerts information at the top left corner
- Minimized chat at it's default position

Default Resolution
In case you are using lower resolution than/or 1280x720px the top main menu will cover the whole top part, because the 1280x720px resolution is the default one and smaller are just scaled down (tried this by taking screenshots from various resolutions and then overlaying them). Having 48px high main menu leaves us with 1280x672px of the screen space for arsenal and other screens.   
In case you are using larger resolution than 1280x720px you notice the top main menu is located in the top center and as other UI elements it doesn't scale up.
You will also notice that the location of NEWS and ALERTS is relative to left border (with some padding) rather than to the menu and it sometimes tends to bug out (see image below).

And you will also notice in mod screen that the top line with texts (Fusion and Mod Collection) are partially covered by the top main bar - http://zelgaris.com/_temp/wf/wf-mods1280x720px.jpg
And in mod equip screen (weapons, warframes) some  mods in the bottom section can't be read properly after cursor hover - http://zelgaris.com/_temp/wf/wf-mods1280x720px2.jpg  
Seems like a problem for a default resolution.

Up scaling UI
The obvious suggestion is to allow UI up-scaling so we can actually use the whole area of our bigger than fullHD monitor for the UI elements rather than a small window of 1280x720px dimensions in the middle of the screen. Menu stays on the top border but the rest is vertically and horizontally centered - lot of unused screen real estate.
Upscale should be configurable from settings and it should contain a upscale percentage option for fine tuning and "upscale to fit the resolution" option.
Solar map should be unaffected by up scaling, since it is already scaled according to the used resolution.
I personally would exclude chat from the up scaling option and make and individual upscale option for the chat.

 
Chat (EDIT: 2013-07-15) 
There are lot of threads discussing how the chat in the current incarnation is annoying and hard to use and read and one have to agree with them - they are almost all valid points.
So here is a list of suggestion I've already written somewhere else in the forum and added few more:

- Allow us to resize the chat by dragging all corners, not just the bottom right one (which is, considering the position of the minimized chat window as unintuitive as it can be).

- Allow us to lock/save the chat position as well as dimensions (pretty fundamental). There should be two saved positions - one for lobby and one for mission. Right now it resets and minimize every time we go back to lobby.

 

- Allow us to open the chat by clicking (or double clicking) the region/squad/council/etc. tabs in the minimized state. Right now I have to click to change the tab and then click the expand button.

 

- Allow us to open the chat in lobby by a key shortcut (TAB default, but configurable)

 

- Allow us to focus/switch on the chat window without the need to close every other open window/screen (shortcut, TAB or T default) or allow us to focus the chat even though the other windows/screens are open simply by clicking the chat title bar. It looks really funny on large resolution, when e.g. the market is taking so small space, but you still have to exit the market to be able to actually write something in the chat, which is located in the remaining free space.

 

- Never reset the chat position. To prevent disappearing when the resolution is set to lower, add a "reset chat position" button in the controls or somewhere else in the settings.

- Allow us to change the colors of our nicknames - some limited pallet is needed to prevent blending of the text with the background (i.e. bad readability) and reserve colors for DE staff and special alerts. The current yellow white chaos is bad and it's hard to navigate in it.

 

- To further improve the orientation in the chat, add a bit different shade under every other message so each message is clearly distinguished from the other.

 

- Allow us to increase or reduce size of the font and use better font - it is really hard to read no matter the resolution since it doesn't scale up (CTRL+mouse wheel, browser style, or through buttons).    

 

- Allow basic text-field operations, such as select on double click, copy, etc. in addition to already implemented Paste (keyboard shortcuts, CTRL+C, CTRL+V, etc.)

 

- Allow us clicking URLs to run the webpages in browser. Seriously, it feels like trolling, when you, devs, post a global chat message containing URL... you expect us to rewrite it manually into a browser? But I can understand this, because this feature is so common and natural one easily forgot it doesn't work in the warframe game chat.

 

- Repair the resizing of chat during mission - after any attempt to resize it, it minimize itself to two rows high version immediately when you release the mouse button and stay like this until next mission..

 

- Allow us to disable/hide the chat during mission (toggle through a hotkey, configurable).
 

- Move the default position of the chat or the tabs with player health/shields somewhere else, because they are now covering each other. One has again to wonder, who is working on the HUD and UI, and why he/she just ignores things like this. I would suggest moving the party health tabs to the bottom left corner, because all the other HUD elements are in the corners...see http://zelgaris.com/...coop-tab-v1.jpg or better http://zelgaris.com/...coop-tab-v2.jpg (unification!)

(talking about the party health tabs, we still don't have our sentinel there, yet our own stats are there, although we have them already in the top right corner...)

 

- Promote and encourage the usage of chat by having it open by default when entering lobby. Consider lobby as an equivalent to global chat in any other MMO with permanent world. Also allow people to minimize/hide the chat by default in options, or just properly save the position and state of the chat windows (see above).

 

- In the frame of chat encouraging, allow us to use chat in/during "Clam and Exit or Battle" screen in Defense missions and "Mission Successful" screen (in both) when evacuation point is reached. So we can talk a bit right after the battle and "gg" each other. Right now, basically nobody is checking the chat after the mission because the chat is minimized by default. I don't get it, why is that so, because you have a cooperative game and chatting should be encouraged after the fight with fellow tennos.

 

- And as well by default open the SQUAD chat tab after returning to lobby from mission (though allow people to turn this on/off)

 

 

 

I probably forgot something advanced, but you got the general idea.


Main Menu  
The top main menu, the most important menu in the whole game, is composed of some transparent almost invisible strip with clearly visible buttons. As other UI elements it doesn't upscale with larger resolution (and I won't repeat this further, since it applies for all other UI elements).

Improvements and issues:

1) Make the whole strip with the menu much more visible (i.e. less transparent or add a border) to clearly show it is there so the ALERT/NEWS don't look so randomly located on the screen at higher resolution.
Other possibility is to make the main menu bar dynamic, i.e. expand/widen its parts/buttons to fit the whole strip from left to right, so it could looks something like this
http://zelgaris.com/_temp/wf/ui/wf-ui-tmenu-wide.jpg in comparison to this http://zelgaris.com/_temp/wf/ui/wf-ui-tmenu-orig.jpg

(wide version top, original bottom)



2) Buttons in the main menu should have same height, spaces between them should be the same, it should be more cohesive. I understand lot of you will consider this a nitpicking as I understand the reason it looks like this is probably caused by the changes in the main menu during the development, but for example, there is a big azure glowing center button in the menu, but it actually isn't positioned in the center, it is 11px off to the left (even the text is not in the center of the button). The buttons (Arsenal, etc.) on the right are closer to the center button than the wide button on the left. Their heights and vertical position in the main menu strip differs. The options and log out button are even smaller. The left padding and right padding of the menu aren't the same (really noticeable only at 1280x720px and smaller).
Good UI should follow and stick to some rules. But let's say it's visible only to afflicted eyes, because it's a matter of few pixels. But this lack of unity and coherence is much more visible in other places, especially in arsenal and its subsections.

3) Buttons in the main menu, after clicking, don't remain in active state, e.g. Arsenal screen appears after clicking on Arsenal button, but the Arsenal button in the main menu doesn't change to match the situation. Should look like this http://zelgaris.com/_temp/wf/ui/wf-ui-tmenu-active.jpg
It should stay active in a visual way, so we clearly see where we are in the UI structure, since there is no actual mentioning about being in arsenal screen (the same applies for foundry and market. On the other hand, clicking Contacts opens a small window with Contacts in the title...)


Now let' talk about individual buttons from the main menu and let's start from the easiest.

Avatar Image Customization  
Not much to say about this in addition to the already mentioned improper behavior of ESC key and BACK and MARKET buttons don't make any sound on hover (and BACK also on clicking).
Choosing the icon, on the other hand, make the accept-sound.
I strongly suggest joining the avatar button and profile button into one and actually forbidding us to change the avatar in game. Why? Because it doesn't make sense to be able to do so. Changing avatar icon at forum makes sense, not in the game. It's completely counter intuitive - when I join a random mission with random people, I want to check the ESC menu or Z key to see, who is playing which warframes. What I actually see are some random icons, which are completely unrelated to the warframes, the players are actually using during that mission.  
We shouldn't be able to choose the avatar icon in the game - the avatar icon should be chosen automatically according to the currently used warframe. 


Profile and Stats  
Buttons at the bottom of the window use pip-sound instead of default dt-sound sound on hover. Clicking BACK, TOP PLAYERS and MY RANKING buttons doesn't make any sound.
BACK button works in strange way, because clicking it when in Top Players or My Ranking screens, returns to the general profile screen.


Game Mode Select (i.e. Center Button)  
Already mentioned, for a center button, not being actually in the center, it's kind of a personal failure :)
Considering the sounds - we have a special "accept" sound after choosing the avatar picture, but when choosing one of the most important things in the main menu, there is just the normal beep sound... so change it to the accept sound, when we set the SOLO/PRIVATE/ONLINE.

Logout
Normal confirmation box with common improper hover sounds and click sound on button-press rather than release. We can click fast on the NO button to hear the sound twice instead of once :)
Also, using ESC to CANCEL the confirmation box or using SPACE/ENTER instead of mouse button doesn't make any sound.


Settings  
Standard bottom buttons don't make any hover or click sounds.
Impossible to move between the setting sections until the section completely loads, i.e. takes unnecessary too much time.
It is also possible to hear the sound of hovering over the planets in Solar map.
In graphics settings, maybe it's only problem with my computer, but even when every line appears I am usually still unable to click anything for few seconds.
Isn't Gamplay a bit weird name for a section, where I set up network and chat region, i.e. prett unrelated things to gameplay?

Display settings - some options have immediate effects, some have to be confirmed. Confirmation box on ESC and BACK asks us, if we want to save the settings, but even if we don't stuff like Local reflections are ignored (i.e. I can turn Local reflections ON, then hit back, NO, go to the setting again, and Local reflections will be set to ON; same thing with brightness, contrast, etc.). Confirm buttons works only for options, that aren't applied immediately, i.e. lack of unification and coherence.
Confirm shouldn't close the settings windows, it makes setting resolution as other options, that has to be confirmed, unnecessary longer.

Controls - clicking back/ESC from keyboard/gamepad customization return us to gameplay section of setting instead of controls. Gamepad/controls customization use different sounds compared to settings, doesn't make sense. Also in both cases, there is only CONTROLS in the top left part of the screen, while there should clearly be specified, whether it is keyboard and mouse or gamepad.


Foundry
Sounds:
- Scrolling through blueprints and resources makes "click-sound", which is used for clicking on buttons.
- BACK button miss default hover sound and has unique click-release sound.
- It is possible to hear the sounds of hovering over planets below the foundry screen
- BUILD buttons miss default hover sound and click sound
- Confirm boxes have the same problem as others

Visuals:
- Visually completely different from other sections, why?
- Blueprint background is green even if we don't have enough credits, i.e. we clearly don't fulfill all requirements, so it should stay red AND the credit amount should be red as well. Keep the color unified. You are using red in case you don't have necessary amount and green, when you do, but credits are always white.
- BUILD button should be grayed out in case the blueprint cannot be constructed and should be unclickable. In case you really need it there, at least tell us what individual components we lack instead of telling us "You do not have the required components to build this item" - this is helping nobody and being unable co click on the button and showing us a tool tip with what we are missing is much more elegant solution without need of separate info window.
- Also CONSTRUCT is maybe more fitting for the foundry than BUILD.  
- We are still not able to cancel building in case we change our mind. I assume we should be able to do it, for example until the half of
- We are still not able to build more Orokin Reactors/Catalyst (i.e. two same items) at once no matter how much blueprints we have. Why is this intentional? Is there any logical reason? Since we are not limited in building different items at once...
- Also right now, window with Unknown error showed up when clicking on build, so I tried to build the Banshee Chasis one more time, again the same error, so I closed foundry, reopened it to see it took me 30 000 credits instead of 15 000. Not cool.
- The sound of building in progress  playing in loop is annoying

 

Edit 2013-07-22

 

1) Allow us to build more same items at once

Self descriptive (also main topic of this thread), related especially to OrokinC, OrokinR, Formas and building processes of dual side-arms. Somebody here wrote it's "ruining rushing plat mechanism", I say "Just making it more user friendly and less $&*&*#(%& considering we can built ton of different items at once, yet not two same".

 

 

2) Building times are too long.

Don't get me wrong, I actually like there is some kind of built time and we don't get everything at once (although I wouldn't mind that at all), on the other hand, waiting 3 days for new Warframe, that's just crazy... yeah, as somebody said, it's unique, but "unique" doesn't always mean "good".

There are people arguing that if you have 12+ hours to wait for new weapon/warframe/something, you can grind for more resources and thus waiting is good. Yes, you can, or you can just quit the game and forget about it for next 12+ hours. Not sure if quitting the game is what devs wanted to achieve :)

 

I say 12 hours is the limit for waiting, but there should be a way to speed up the waiting process. We already have an option to rush the building time in foundry, yet we need to modify it a bit...

 

 

3) Rush cost should be relative to remaining built time

Why can we have this system working in Dojo, yet foundry is unaffected. It's yet another case of how Warframe lacks unification.

I find it utterly unfair that rushing Vauban warframe one hour before the building is complete costs the same 50 plats as rushing it immediately after I hit "BUILD" button. I am a paying customer and sometimes I pay so I don't have to wait, but the most common scenario happening lately to me is this:

- I am ending my 1-3 hour play session and I decided to built something

- I start building it with an intention to claim it next day (or after three @(*()$ days in case of warframes) or later the same day

- When I start the next play session, I check the foundry to see I have an hour left

- In that moment, I would really like to pay some platinum for the remaining hour, yet this stupid system doesn't allow me to do so and wants to charge me the full rush price. Not going to pay that. So I would wait and DE don't get any platinum.

 

The point is, if you want to people spend real cash, make them to want to spend the real cash and make the spending as intuitive, user friendly and fair as possible. Paying 50 plats for 3 days of waiting and paying 50 plats for last hour (or less) of waiting is just wrong.

I assume you see the evident problem here.

 

But there is only this one option to rush the building, while we can still have another and that is...

 

 

4) Credits based payment for rushing building

I assume this option will get a lot of hate from paying players, but having a really expensive alternative is the way to go.

There is need and strong emphasis for proper balance between platinum and credit rushing.

I can already hear the arguments about how nobody would pay platinum for rushing, because they can pay ingame credits. If they really want to spend hours and hours of grinding to spend credits for rushing rather than paying for costly modding, let them do it. If they are grinding for other things already and having 8+ hours playing sessions, they will hardly pay any platinum for rushing manufacture anyway.

 

I just prefer to have more options. If I see three options (pay for plats, pay for lot of credits, or wait) I can decide to spend some time grinding for the credits to only find out, it's just takes too much time and time is money if you know what I mean. Sometimes you don't mind that it takes too much time, but sometimes you don't have that time (or don't want to spend it that way) - this is the right time for platinum payments.

 

 

5) Remove or drastically reduce the building times and manufacture costs of dual weapons, which are built from two single weapons

This is related to dual bronco, twin viper, akbolto and afuris. Let's be fair in this - creating mentioned dual weapons is just bullS#&$. In case of melee dual weapons, at least you don't lose your original weapons and you build completely new ones.

 

 

---

Considering above written, let's take warframe building as basic for our calculations. Building a warframe takes 3 days, i.e. 72 hours and rushing costs 50 plats.

Let's reduce these 3 days into 12 hours (above suggested limit) but leave the 50 plats there.

That is about 1 hour of rushing for 5 platinum, and 14 minutes for 1 platinum (we have to round up/down, so the partial rushing isn't cheaper than full rushing).

Considering the credit rush cost, I assume 1 hour for 100 000 credits is fair amount, yet DE should have some kind of statistics or at least some kind of information about how much money a player can effectively grind in hour to adjust the price. This price could be also adjustable and related to some kind of ingame statistics, because the credits can be earned in the game.

---

Market  
Sounds:
- Hovering on buttons in top bar (BUNDLES, WARFRAME, etc.) makes default button hover sound as well as default button click sound, however in home market screen, clicking/hovering on the small numbers don't make any sound and hovering/clicking over three big images of items also doesn't make any sound  (in other tabs, i.e. warframe, the hover sound is there)
- It is possible to hear the sounds of hovering over planets below the foundry screen (gets really annoying pretty fast)

Visuals:
- Flash effect when we select an item is just overdone and really painful for eyes, less bling more usability... reminds me of

- How about adding some bigger arrows to both sides of each market page (there is enough room), so we don't have to click on the small numbers or "next" below the market screen (allowing using A/LEFT to left and D/RIGHT to right would be great).
- Other screen have back button, but Market and Contacts don't, why? Unification...

Bug:
- When purchasing an item, error appeared telling me, I should try it again. Without doing so, I waited and in a while, the credits just lowered, the sound of credit payment was head and the blueprint appeared in my inventory. Since you are encouraging us in the info window to try to buy the item once again, it clearly shouldn't have work like this.

Suggestion:
- How about adding required component as well as price for building and build time in the description screen of the particular blueprint? The information are already stored there somewhere, show them to us, when we need them. Using unofficial Wikipedia to check everything is annoying... and this is not the only place, which would provide more information to us and not force us to check the wiki.


Contacts  
Sounds:
- Nothing makes any sound.

Visuals:
- Clicking on a person makes the Contact list close - I hope this is unintentional. It's standard in all instant messenger apps that clicking on somebody in the list opens a window. Yes I know it sets the chat to "whisper" to the person I clicked on in the Contact list, but the chat doesn't expand, so it's not obvious. And even so, this is hardly accessible behavior. BTW clicking on myself in Clan tab doesn't close the contacts.
- Contact list is also the only place (in addition to chat), where right mouse button is used.
- Also when Contact list appears, why does the whole screen turns blue? This is completely unique and unnecessary and a bit confusing behavior. We already have a way to show the window is active and that is making everything darker (see popup confirmation windows).
- Exit button is unique, why? We already have a square exit button in top main menu (and it is also used in market).
- Why is the symbol for recent players a typical Reload button?
- Why doesn't the contact window expand vertically, or why we can't resize it vertically - there is lot of place there.
 
And finally...
 
Arsenal  
Sounds:
- Buttons in main arsenal screen actually make make proper hover sound (gear slots don't)
- Some buttons make click sound (changing warframe/weapons, changing color, changing gear slot) , some don't (mods, weapon/warframe mods, back button, inventory button)
- Inventory screen -  hover sounds of buttons are all good, but DESELECT ALL, SELECT ALL, BUY SLOTS, SELL and BACK button have no click sound.
- Inventory screen -  clicking items we can't sell (i.e. select) still makes sound, clicking on empty space also makes sound
- Inventory screen - hovering over the numbers, next, previous, in the tabs don't make any sound although it made hover sound in market, clicking also don't make any sound


Visuals:
- Already mentioned slow transitions most notable in Arsenal section because here we spend most of our time, while not directly in the game.
- See these two screenshot below. The first one is showing arsenal section and other arsenal subsections (mods collection, colors, weapon/warframe mods).


The second is adding other screens.


You clearly see where this is going... there is just no unification in UI element placement. Padding from the borders of screen is different, position of buttons, even the same ones (e.g. BACK button), is different, while they should be located at the same place. It looks random, unpolished, there is no order in that an in addition, the usage of mod UI is just terrible.  

Unification is the key - same padding, location of the buttons should be coherent and in best case scenario back buttons should be at the same position no matter the screen. Foundry and market and contacts should all have unified look similar to arsenal.


Inventory screen - sell button is grayed out, when inactive, which is nice but this is as far as I know the only place, where a button is grayed out.
It is also the only place, where all three tabs have this unique "bookmarks" on top instead of using the same style as for example tabs in main arsenal screen.
When hovering over the bought warframes, the background below weapons glitches and changes.
The same is happening when hovering over weapons, the background below items glitches and changes.
While we are able to select more items at once, we cannot select more weapons/warframes at once or combine selections from all three tabs - probably safety precautions though.
Again, unnecessary transition between clicking next in the items and waiting till the items actually shows up...
Also only visual problem, but why the blueprints don't have the picture/image/icon of the particular item, so it's easier to navigate through them?


Warframe equip screen - you allow us to buy the warframes through the screen, yet we can't access detailed information about the warframes from the screen. We also don't see the rank of the warframe in the slots, while this information would be nice to have there.
Basically, give us more and clear information. Right now, we have to check wiki if we want to know basically anything... not an ideal situation.

Color/Skin select
BACK button is still missing there since Update 7...
Choosing color from the pallet doesn't make any sound.

Etc. it's just the same inconsistency all over again - actually the game is consistent in how inconsistent the UI is :)

I think there is no need to continue with this, although I probably missed a lot of stuff ...


See you next time, maybe on mods or HUD.

Anyway, since it is already pretty famous (although I personally don't like it that much), check this Mod collection and mod equip mockup thread - it's still better than what we have right now https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/28156-pics-my-take-on-ui-and-hud-inprovements-some-thoughts/

Edited July 22, 2013 by zelgaris

[zelgaris]

New hotfix and time to bump this topic, since most of the things here weren't still addressed at all :)

And considering the UI improvements (see point 2):

 

1) Transitions between sections and even in the sections (e.g. mod section when using sorting) are still so slow, please, remove them or make them fast

 

2) Considering the new sorting options in the Mod collection screen - it's nice we can have more sorting options and that the top bar isn't covering the top of the Mod selection screen, but while doing so:

- one line of mods disappeared, i.e. 8 less mods on the screen, i.e. more pages of mods... it seems like the reason for removal of this line was to have a place for the new sorting, if that's really the case, I don't know what to say about it... don't tell us there just wasn't a better way, while keeping the amount of mods on screen? Are you intentionally trolling us?:)

- new buttons miss any tool tips (but that is also the case for the older sorting options) 

- the new sort buttons have completely different style, different from everything else in the UI - that's not a

Basically we have this... http://zelgaris.com/_temp/wf/wf-781-wwh.jpg

 

But we could have something like this

 

I assume you see the difference, but to be sure:

- added "grayed out" buttons, so they don't appear out of nowhere (it's already done this way with sell button in the inventory section, btw)

- returned the fourth row of mods

- added constant highlight below the bottom sorting options and changed color to white, since after clicking the highlight was removed and it was inconsistent with the top sorting

- made the padding between icons in top sorting row smaller, since there is no need for

- aligned the top and bottom sort row to the same vertical line (so it doesn't look so random)

- moved the fusion and mod collection titles a bit

- made the total, duplicates, cores, rating line bit gray, because this information are too bright and they aren't actually helping much

- and other minor changes

 

 

3) Probably old bug, but when, for example, in mod collection screen, we click on Contacts, then on a friend, all windows closes, but the character is kept zoomed in (as is normal for mod collection screen). Hitting ESC is not working to return as back to the Solar map.

 

 

4) This is still happening in weapon/warframe mod equip screen

 

 

5) We still miss unequip all mods button from a weapon/warframe mod screen, because unequipping them now is hardly user friendly.

 

 

6) We still can't drop the mod we want to unequip to "compatible mods" bar, but we have to choose the page with empty slots and than move the mod there. Allow us to just drop the mod down on the bar or on the mods there instead of exchanging the mod for the one we drop it on.

- Or make a little place somewhere at the bar or near the bar we can drag and drop the mods to unequip them.

- Or right click and select unequip to unequip.

- Or right click on the mod to unequip.

 

 

7) We still have to apply the mod settings after leaving the mod screen, although there is no reason for this.

 

 

8) Related to 7) we can increase the rank of already equipped mods, but because we still have to accept the changes in mod equip, this happens:

 

 

I took out the Fast Deflection, clicked on MODS button, and there, the Fast Deflection is still counted as equipped, even it really isn't - but system think it is, since we haven't applied changes...

 

 

9) Why is the "equipped" icon in bottom right corner of mods also in the weapon/warframe mod screen? So we can make the connection easily? Or it's just a bug?

 

 

10) Allow us to chose to unequip the mod from a weapon, when it is not possible to fuse the mod because of exceeding the capacity. Right now, we have to go back to the weapon/warframe equip screen, unequip it (which is still a long process, see above) and then we can mod it.

 

 

11) Still no stacking for same mods with same rank...

Edited April 24, 2013 by zelgaris

[Guest Sess1on]

Great feedback!

[SluggoV2]

Very good feed back. I have to say that I agree with most of what has been addressed. Kudos!

[Kattefjaes]

A lot of that is very valid. I especially agree with the chat interface points.. The text rendered looks absolutely dreadful for me, small and blurry, like an accident with subpixel rendering and vodka. The line editing is charmless too, but my main objection is still mostly that it either needs to be properly resolution aware, or the font and frame size need to be adjustable.

Right now, it is just an eyestrain-inducing pile of crap, and I try to avoid using it (sorry DE <3).

Edit:

OK, it can be moved and resized, grudgingly. I can't find a way to alter the text, I have turned all the gfx tweaks on and off in case that is screwing up the subpixel stuff. The problem is with some form of post-processing, it's similar to how it looks when the screen isn't really in the native resolution of the monitor. Weirdly, it looks pin sharp if I take a screenshot with Steam.. hmmm. It's like something is filtering the pixels- stuff that is supposed to be all bright pixels is.. well, shades of grey- so with a really thin typeface, bits of it are too spindly and merge into the background.

The ability to use a bigger pointsize or a "thicker" font would help, maybe, until I know what the problem is. Note that this has never happened with this setup in any other game, including some MMOs and things with piddly little text boxes :)

Edited April 28, 2013 by Kattefjaes

[Zzz702]

"- Allow us to increase or reduce size of the font and use better font - it is really hard to read no matter the resolution since it doesn't scale up (CTRL+mouse wheel, browser style)."

Yessssss pleaseeeee! I play on my tv from about 15 feet away, I can make out words but the ability to adjust overall font size would be a godsend

[zelgaris]

I have to say I am glad that there are people, who actually read through all of it :)

[zelgaris]

Bumping this thread, because lot of I written here is still valid, such as bottom part of mods being cut on 1280x720px in the "Configure upgrade artifacts" screen, widely known as mod configuration screen, but hell, why not calling it the proper tooltip way, right? :)

I assume that rechecking the tool tips and correcting them properly isn't that time demanding.

 

 

 

Anyway, the cutting, still happening...

 

 

or

 

 

etc.

[zelgaris]

Bump, because the issues written here like three months ago (chat, problems in default 1280x768, basically everything) still weren't addressed properly or at all.

And I still think having a good UI is actually a pretty important thing.

[bumwald]

Three cheers for zelgaris!  HIP HIP HOORAY!  HIP HIP HOORAY!  HIP HIP HOORAY!

 

Please address these concerns asap.  More weapons are nice, but a clean, usable interface should be a priority.

[zelgaris]

Edited "Chat" section of the opening post according to https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/79521-chat-improvements/

Will edit more parts due to some (small) changes lately.

[zelgaris]

Another update to opening post - Foundry related.

Check the standalone thread - https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/83530-allow-us-to-build-more-same-items-at-once/

[Deaths.Reap3r]

omg. too much. lol. too much...

[zelgaris]

Since there was a mention in latest livestream about improvements to UI...

[Fourdee]

Good feedback, shame its only going to fall on deaf ears (DE).

[zelgaris]

Good feedback, shame its only going to fall on deaf ears (DE).

 

Good one ;)