Comprehensive UI Thread

from Elemental Forums

I was writing a post with my general 1.1 impressions and realized that I had a few specific comments on the UI.  I thought it might be useful to put a UI post together and have everyone list their UI frustrations/ideas.  I'm not so worried about UI bugs (since we've all reported those in the support forum already, right?).  I'm more thinking we should point out elements of the UI that could use tweaking or improving.  I've seen some of these mentioned elsewhere, but it might be useful for them to be compiled in one location.  Hopefully I'm not duplicating another thread, but I didn't see anything.


My thoughts after playing 2 crash free large map 10 opponent games of 1.1 are:

  • Inability to target a particular member of an army stack for a spell.  (I realize that it's been acknowledged, but should be repeated for completeness).  
  • The inability to do anything else from the city level up screen.  Sometimes I want to check things besides the stats of that particular city before making my decision, but I can't.  
  • The sovereign, the sovereign's family, and heroes should all be distinct dot colors on the empire tree.  Maybe even ranged, melee, and cavalry units should be their own dot color.  Mousing over the dot should tell me the name the dot corresponds to.  I realize you can just expand the city's information, but the less clicks the better and if I'm looking for a particular unit expanding one city at a time then collapsing it can get to be a chore.  Especially late game.  
  • More lists.  There is a list for active enchants and for cities.  Give me a list for heroes.  Give me a list for armies.  Anything that can fit into a list I want a list.  I want to be able to actively managing things from the list.  
  • More information on the diplomacy screen (When talking to another empire) especially in regards to hero trade/marriage.  
  • Better item shop.  The ability to see my current character's equipped items and change out directly in the item shop.  As you build up your heroes remembering everything get's to be a lot or leads to lots of clicking in and out of the shop as you try to see what people have equipped.  Especially frustrating when you buy an upgrade and then have to leave the shop, click equip, equip the item, leave the equipment screen, go back to the shop, click inventory, and then sell the replaced item.  


Those are my immediate thoughts.  In general I like that the UI is unintrusive (minimalist even?).  It has come a tremendous way from the early UIs.  I just want a little more functionality open to me.  


What are everyone else's thoughts?  Please try to be constructive so this thread is useful.

elemental
6,457 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Inventory and shop screen:

NWN2 Inventory/Shop

 

Please to make a same. v_v

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Good list.  A UI improvement would really increase the enjoyment of the game.

 

I really agree with improving the shop interface.  Ideally there is one screen that handles all shopping, trading and equipping.

 

The other UI improvement I would like to see is a much more visible way to see the destination of units.  Ideally, a big red arrow would pop up between the unit and the destination.  Also, a toggle button (preferably a hot key) to turn on all arrows at once.

 

On the build menu for cities, sometimes it shows the build queue and other times is shows the city specs.  Ideally, they would both be up at once.  If one of the bottom two menus needs to be replaced, the one on the right would be better than the one on the left.

Object Desktop - Get all of our enhancement utilities in one suite
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Oh, also for shopping: it would be nice to be able to equip suits of armor.  It would be the same cost and stats as individual pieces, but far less clicking and inventory management.  (I guess this can be modded in as new items)

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Two things I would like to see changed:

1) Whenever a player hovers over an icon of anything that requires resources (for a building or improvement), the UI should display the number of resources required and an icon/picture of that resource. What we have now is a number and a string: '25 materials' - this looks cumbersome and I always catch myself reading the word. The brain can identify pictures and symbols faster than words - it will be easier on the eyes this way.

2) Instead of having a huge message box pop up every time your sovereign finds goodies, there should simply be an animation of the icon of the resource they found plop into the sovereign and fade away.

 

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Tactical battles need better feedback for when units are near death.

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top

I think the UI needs some more love (hear: tweaking) to cut down on the number of clicks to perform usual tasks. For the record, I'm a front-end developer myself, so I do realize it may be more complex than it seems, but at a glance, it seems there are a few reasonable ways to achieve that:

Break the infernal cycle shop<-->inventory<-->trading

  • the shop window has plenty of space to embed an inventory window, allowing to (un)equip as needed.
  • Allow switching hero in the inventory window
  • The trading window would benefit from showing the full inventory as well; you could simply highlight what is equipped (heck, let us change it as well!). Additionally, displaying full heroes' stats there would mitigate another issue: I see currently no easy way to compare your heroes
  • IMO, the absolute best thing to do would be to merge the inventory & trading window (trading window = 2 * (inventory window + hero switching) + drag&drop), and make it available in the shop (fire the shopkeeper if need be!)

Add some shortcuts

  • when you double-left click on the city center, you get the building panel (lower left), while double-right click gives you the training panel. This is a fine idea, but it would be way more efficient if we had the same behavior on the city icon (upper left on the screen), and not just the current single-click focus and center.
  • the same principle could apply to heroes icons (circles right above the lower menu bar) w/ double-left click to get the inventory and double-right click to get the spell casting window

Review some windows

  • The building panel should be tabbed so that you can get to the training panel in one click (and vice-versa)
  • I would also question the need for "intermediate" windows, like the city one (upgrade+train+rename): while the city is selected I would make the (tabbed) building panel visible at all times.

Hope it gets to the right peeps! :frogboy:

Cheers!