[PC] Update 23: Visual Accessibility UI Themes and General UI Feedback Megathread

[NeoXalon]

Pretty much in agreement with everyone here, the new UI looks great but it doesn't feel as usable as the previous UI. One nitpick that feels bit jarring is with the Modding screen when you select a Mod with more than one quantity, the mouse cursor will default to the center of the screen when selecting an amount. It is not that pleasant when you decide to move the mouse at that point.

[TimFlint]

Apparently my post here got deleted, afaik I didn't break any rules, I didn't get any warning about breaking rules, I didn't even get any message about it being deleted. So here I go again:

It's bad, it's really bad. It looks sleek and nice, yeah, but that's it. It's blatantly obvious that you tried to emulate the sleek, minimalist styles in other games' UIs without understanding how or why this can or cannot work. You sacrificed functionality for looks. You're hiding information for the sake of a sleeker aesthetic, when my first priority when interacting with a UI is to get the job done. How it looks is secondary. Further, you ignored player feedback after the initial UI teases, you ignored decades of best practises in UI design, any design really, and that makes me quite worried that you actually intend to keep it that way with maybe a few cosmetic changes here and there. But without adressing the core issues.

So once more the important bit: The job of a user interface is to get information from the game to the player, and actions from the player into the game. As efficiently as possible. Tucking all the information into mouse-overs and letting a player sift through identical symbols so that it takes 2-20 times as long to get the info one's looking for or to do what one wants to do, for no benefit but a sleek look is ... it's honestly so absurd and misguided a decision that I cannot even understand how it got past the initial "hey, how about we [...]" part of the design phase.

PLEASE re-retool the UI or revert it all-together, put function over form. Remove all the mouse-over stuff, put names back on the items, put as much info as feasable into the screens so that a player can gather as much info as possible at a glance. THEN make it look pretty. As it is right now it's just bad. Nice looking - but bad.

[Ham_Grenabe]

I appreciate the better use of vertical real estate (eg in inventory). That’s about the best I can say about the new UI. I’m not particularly impressed.

Aesthetically, it’s drab. If I had to use one word to describe it, it would “brown.” Style-wise, it feels like it comes from a sword-and-sorcery/Baldurs Gate kind of game.

Functionally and usability-wise, it’s got real problems. Interface elements that move under your cursor. Information that is hidden—for instance, no labels on anything in inventories of potentially thousands of items, many of which use the same icon. Tasks that take longer than they used to with no upside to the user. I found myself asking “who thought that was a good idea?” several times as I tried to do some routine tasks like sell things for ducats it look over my prime parts. In the end, it was easier to just not bother.

If I had to pick one major issue that’s a showstopper for me, it’s the lack of text information unless you hover your cursor. Adding text labels to all inventory and inventory-like screens is at the Drop Everything And Fix This priority level. 

[Saberpeep]

I feel the leave squad button should be moved so that it is always visible below your name/icon, the hover action did not translate well to the new ui. 

Also I'm sure you heard this before but the Ducats menu in the relays really needs labels.

[Avynire]

Theme looks nice, but harder to look for item. It needs to show the name of the item 

Please add Syndicate augment mod sort by frame. 

[beol]

I think I understand ..

We have trading, but the interface is terrible and you have to use a third-party website to make it functional.

We have a codex in-game, but it is useless (even after tedious scanning) and we need to go to the wiki to see useful in formation on anything. 

We have UI screens .. and until now we used them in game. This does not match the pattern.

.. so .. 

This is a prelude to creating an inventory API, so someone can make a 3rd party website we can use to actually see what is in our inventories. 

 

Which is to say, DE plz add names. 

[N64Gamefreak]

I don't like the fact that other players' warframes, weapons, companions, and auras are now hidden in the Esc menu.  I don't like that we can't see other players' mastery rank in the Esc menu.  I especially don't like being unable to see what my current matchmaking settings are in the Esc menu.

[KenthNisshoku]

please show the items names automatically instead of being shown only when hovered on

it is really difficult to differentiate items or prime parts from each other

and also allow us to get back to the menus by putting an icon on the upper left instead of making me press escape or back several times to choose from the menu categories

[TheRogueAce]

While the overall look seems good (although I'm not sure it's actually an upgrade or more a lateral move), the changes to menus make the game harder to navigate.

1.  Inventory-type menus with simply images are next to useless, especially for items that all share the same logo.  The old method where some basic information in text was included was far more effective and efficient, even if fewer items were displayed on the screen.  Please return at least a basic text descriptor to all types of menus.  Don't be like Microsoft who hasn't learned from all their products that images may look pretty, but they aren't very useful as controls.  The same goes for the party information.  I don't want to have to hover to see who I'm paired with and make sure everything is setup right (relics, keys, etc). 

2.  Please add back the direct menu link on the navigation screen.  I appreciate the "change loadout" button, but typically I want to check a mission and go direct to the arsenal to change weapons and other configurations.  The new "change loadout" button unfortunately leaves you restricted to loadouts you already have configured.  In the old system, hitting the shortcut button or simply pressing escape brought up the full menu, allowing you to access all features without having to fully exit navigation first. 

3.  I'm not sure what the point was, but rank ups in game now simply tell you something ranked up, but no longer what.  The old descriptions made more sense and told you what you were leveling up and some of its effects.  I suggest reverting those notifications. 

Unrelated to the UI update, but inherent in the same patch, the alignment (sun/moon/neutral) dialogue choices in The Sacrifice appeared to be reversed.  The aggressive options were suddenly the sun options instead of moon.  I have no idea if alignment will ever be of importance, but at the very least the alignment should be consistent throughout the story. 

 

Edited June 17, 2018 by TheRogueAce

[Gweredith]

The riven menu you get when typing [riven mod] in chat is both buggy and difficult to read. It overlaps the chat (which, by the way, we are no longer able to 'exit' by pressing escape, like we used to. Now we must click the little  -   button on the top right of the screen). The icons are really small, making riven names very difficult to read. Additionally, there is a lot of unused space that could be used by increasing the size of riven icons. Win-win.

[AlirezaNosrati]

visually   impaired

 

thank you for  adding these themes to the game and making it easy  for us to read texts. i had a few suggestions, maybe offtopic  but pls read :|

please do something about arsenal and foundry, it's really hard to read names and amount of resources required for me.  maybe make background black and texts  white like other menues... and another problem i have is with corpus  security terminals     please change the background  there too.  also it's hard to see the red    marker when   in a mission.  

and if you could add an ingame tts so other friends   who can barely see  play the game, it would be awesome. 

[FargoneMyth]

The new UI is bad, please change it back. It looks nice but it's functionally abysmal compared to the previous one. We want functionality, not pretty lights.

[Zzinged]

I really miss the hamburger menu located that used to be at the top left of the screen. I used to be able to mouse over that while in navigation and go straight to the arsenal. Now, I have to press esc several times (depending how deep into a menu I am) in order to get back to my equipment screen!

[StarShadow29]

Hey DE,

           First of all I would like to say that I understand how much effort you put into this UI and the potential in this new UI is amazing. The new UI does look more visually pleasing when compared to the old UI.Thank you for working so hard. But there are many things that make it nigh unusable in its present state. The most glaring of them to is

- No names on the icons.

- The icons for items, etc are now gray like we haven't unlocked them yet but at the same time there are some icons like infested icons which has wierd colours on one part of the icon. And I know that you don't like to hear this word and I also can fathom how awful it must feel to see this word in your feedback so many times but I must say this else my wording would not convey my message adequately. This gray colouring on an otherwise colourful and thematic game just looks bad.

But don't worry DE, we have faith in you. You have made very nice changes to the previous UI and we know you will bring those changes over to this new UI too even if it takes some time. Many people have given their feedback above me so I will not go beyond stating the glaring issues that I have found. I just wanted reply to give you some encouragement and remind you that while there some misteps, you are doing well and best of luck.

[Leorion]

I've posted before but I'd like to add another point : Please allow us to access the quick menu. The "Esc" or "click method" - both used to open the quick menu help a lot when bugs happen. Here is a really unfortunate game-breaking downside from the UI change.

Whenever I lose connection to the host, it presents the message "The connection to the host has been lost. You will be returned to the multiplayer menu." The game should automatically take me to the menu, but I have to click okay for it to perform this action. Unfortunately, due to the new UI, the game isn't responding to my mouse, and so I would usually force it to by pressing "esc" and then moving the mouse - pressing okay and ending this entire thing.

But with the change, I am stuck. The game won't recognize my mouse, and the game does not respond to my keyboard keys and I am forced to quit the game in it's entirety.

EDIT : I realize this is not the right thread to post feedback about the UI, please delete if needed. I've already found a thread talking about this.

P.S : Extra information: My ship is still responding to my keyboard AND my mouse clicks - moving about, but I can't click the Okay button at all.Screenshot below of my game-breaking scene.

 

Edited June 17, 2018 by Leorion

[Karpik]

After playing a bit on black/gold theme, my eyes got tired. I don't have any colour blindness or visual impairment. My monitor is not-that-far from window, and reading muted gold text on black background became a nuisance, due to brighter light source from window. (my curtains are light colour, so they don't make room pitch black). Existing UI, as well as map, are sporting white text in most places, and I didn't realise it mattered until I had to use gold text.

I switched to black/white theme (hence I write feedback here!) and it was a lot better. Ok, I might be a bit of a no-life who can spend 10h+ in one sitting in Warframe, but good UI should defend itself.

After switching to black/white theme, I realised I can process information faster, especially when checking squad's gear. So... I guess I'll be sticking to black/white theme for now. 🙂

[--PV--Darkfreak]

Why the hell are mods deleting comments?

I didn't get a warning, didn't break any rules, nothing?
Yet one of my posts got deleted =/ .. 

So here I go, AGAIN

 

The new UI looks "nice" and that's about it.
You traded usability and functionality for 'prettiness', which is bad, BAD, when redesigning a User Interface.
Functionality, ease of use, information, should always be a priority above how it looks, and especially not traded for 'better looks'.

So:

1. Items/Inventory view is worthless without the names showing (without hovering). Every receiver looks the same, give us back names.
2. Baro Ki'Teer's shopwindow doesn't show how many ducats or credits I own, not very handy when I don't know how much I can spend?
3. Selling prime items is an even bigger chore now that my issue from point 1 is also present in prime sale window.
4. Squad equipment hidden; This makes radshares and vault runs more tedious as you have limited time to check each players relic/key now.
5. The missing hamburger-menu; Why would you REMOVE functionality in a blatant way like this?

I'll go ahead and quote myself (inb4 that post gets deleted as well for whatever reason:

On 2018-06-15 at 11:02 AM, --PV--Darkfreak said:

An option to switch between:

Grid-view
(like it is now)

and

List-view
(a top-to-bottom list, with icons on the left, name in the middle, and potato/forma/mastery/MR-req on the right)

would've been lovely

^ that's mostly regarding my inventory-view point. 
My other issues stand regardless.

[-Anterior-]

I like the atmosphere.I want to display the name on Item icon.

[(XBOX)Tucker D Dawg]

With the new UI, please let us select more than one item when the inventory window is displayed during the trading session.

For example: If I want to trade a warframe, I have to select the first slot, search "Banshee", select the first part, then select the second trade slot, search banshee AGAIN, select the next part... etc.

This is highly inefficient.  We should be able to select the first trade slot, search banshee, and select up to 5 (or remaining trade slots) items before returning to the trade window.

 

[Neumeier]

Speaking as a Color Blind person, the best attempt at implementation I have ever seen for Colorblindness is currently done in the game "Sea of Thieves".

In the access options for that game they have various forms of the Ishihara test, to narrow down the exact type and severity of colorblindness. 

The only problem with Rare's implementation is it also saturates the world, to the one's chosen, which isn't the most helpful thing for colorblindness.

Incidentally the reason why it's so hard to program/correct for colorblindness is that there are four types of colorblindess, and 3 of those types have severity. Just because someone is "Red-Green" color blind, does not mean they are as "Red-Green" color blind as some else who is. 

Usually it is enough to not have reds, and greens mixed, and to not have blue and yellows mixed.  

[MajorKool]

Idk if someone already point this out, but there is a nice UI/Model bug with the profile/nav map.

Here is the list of actions to perform to make this bug:

• Go on your nav map
• Select a planet
• Access your own profile with the left top corner button
• (Here, you see that nav map UI is still there, and sometimes your Warframe ha a strange posture)
• Go back to the nav map with escape
• Zoom out and ... "Voilà !"

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) Have a nive day ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Edited June 17, 2018 by MajorKool

[Distillia]

PC player here! 

Pros: 

• Graphically appealing
• Smoother transitions
• Tabbing to see stats when hovering rather than transitioning to another window
• Easy access to party privacy for party leader

Cons:

• Drastically reduced QoL - we lost a lot of front-loaded information gathering that we gained in other updates.
• Selling inventory is made more difficult, unable to tell what is sellable before clicking/hovering
• Buying items is made more difficult, can't see the names or prices of items at a glance - you need to hover over each individually.  Whether or not I have mastered the weapon is gone (downgrade for me, I'm back to referencing an offline list to track mastery)
• Mission - quick tab to reference a player's frame and gear no longer exists. I now must hover or *gasp* talk to a player about what gear they're using
• Must back out of the Navigation completely to access the quick menu
• Unable to hover over players in menu screen (bug? sometimes I can sometimes I can't)
• Can't see open slots in inventory

I'll add more if I think of it... Overall I feel like I've lost a lot of information I used to have access to at a glance. That's really important to me as a player, and what I want to get across the most. 

Edited June 18, 2018 by Distillia
added another line!

[FLSH_BNG]

I now need to hover over each item to determine if it is indeed the one I was looking for, which makes for a great deal of trouble when there are several that use identical icons.

Some of the menus don't have an 'accept' button or equivalent, as a result I am unable to add fish to my empty fish tanks.

 

Aside from these immediately pressing issues, I have no problems with the new UI. I like that there are more items in inventory menus visible, but having to check that every single one is what I'm looking for has made management an even greater chore than it had been in the past.

[StrikeAgainst]

Adding to previously mentioned points... you can't see how many weapon/warframe slots are still available anymore! This is a huge minus! How do I know if I still have enough room for the next gun I wanna get?!

[digimbyte]

You need to fix the order of the Squad bar to the following and add a Quick menu button

 

and Fix this UI bug of a fake quick menu button that appears when you idle but removes itself if you move the mouse

Edited June 18, 2018 by digimbyte