basic failures of UI design made me quit 2 hours in :/

A friend of mine tried out the game last free trial. I had him elaborate a little bit more and this is what he had to say.

"It's basically awful as a whole(the UI). The lack of context on mouse over being the worst. There's no indication something can even be interacted with

Looting especially needs that. That early sequence with the burning village, not one of the corpses indicates you can interact with it, but you're supposed to get things from them.

It's not the golden era of point and click anymore, highlighting matters when graphics are at a level that you cannot distinguish between foreground and background. "

 

This is interesting feedback - while I personally prefer a game where everything can be interacted with and therefore no highlighting is necessary, other players might expect the opposite.
Adding a highlighting and explanatory text that encourages players to explore (while warning about repercussions for stealing) is probably a good idea.

 

The cursor turns blue when you can interact with a NPC & turns green when you can interact with an item.

 

Understanding the rough state of the UI is not easy for new people coming into this game. But it is good feedback you give.. I was excited to hear the dev teams intended ideas for ui improvements in the future. Here's to better UI experiences in the near future

 

cursors change... and a tooltip comes up as well if applicable. e.g. [loot]
Wonder if a default setting was wonky. That would be unfortunate.

 

Maybe a cel-shade-style glowing outline or 'sparkling' particle effects would be preferable. Maybe it only shows up when you're in range of a lootable object. Something you can turn off in the preferences, of course.

I also liked, in Diablo-style roguelikes, how you could hold [Control] or whatever to see a label over all lootable items on the ground.

 

I think the Baldur's Gate series also had something like that too. I would be interested in having it in SotA as well.

 

I hope the team takes a lot of this to heart. The way many of us keep making excuses for how poorly done the user experience of this game is makes me want to scream "Have all of you people not played anything in the last 30 years!?" The things that get lauded for being brilliant, deep and immersive" are basic roleplaying game design. I keep hearing about all of this genius and can't help but feel that I am missing something. Here we have all of these industry vets that repeatedly make rookie mistakes. Anyone who points this out is one of the naysayers or should go back to reddit or something. Since our project is gearing up for a world wide release, I hope that the team takes what we've been saying for years to heart. Claiming that you want a game that "makes you think" is one thing but applauding things that are obscure because "there's ogres OK!?" is quite another. The next NPC that says "I don't understand what you mean" when you ask them about something they just got done telling you is going to be made into a popsicle with my polearm and you know where the stick is going to go. I feel badly for calling this covfefe and my husband who played the Ultimas said that is exactly what it was like to deal with the NPCs. I couldn't believe it. He said "that's the thing, NO ONE was doing that. Games where you could talk to NPCs just didn't exist and that is why people loved it." I get that this was born at a time when there wasn't anything. It was super immersive because your imagination filled in a lot of the blanks.
Now we live in a time where the visuals and story are not just spoon-fed to you but you drink them from a firehose. I want the game to succeed and to have a better hope of this we need to redefine difficulty and intricacy without being complex for complexity's sake. I believe that the Ultimas provide the inspiration that led to Phantasy Star. I don't want this game to be the springboard for the next incarnation or any other game. It's cool for other games to get inspired by ours but I want this to be a worthy end state for all of these evolutions.

 

I'm not sure I understand your friends critique of the UI. They aren't even legitimate complaints, as everything you mentioned are things that already exist in game. Mouse-Over works on nearly everything, the cursor highlights different colors depending on what kind of interaction you can have; lootable corpses/containers,etc., highlight green and NPC's highlight Light-blue when you can interact with them, Harvest-nodes change the cursor to an icon that reflects the TYPE of harvesting that can be done on that node; mining, foraging, etc. If you have other complaints about what would make the UI better that is fine, but complaining about things that already exist will result in nothing getting changed, and the Devs can't address problems that don't exist.

 

Maybe that person was colorblind. ESO just introduced combat highlight user color customization for this very reason. Even if not colorblind, a red highlight when the boss was on lava was not working for anybody!

 

I actually find the tool tips annoying as hell in most cases. Maybe they should add more, but also increase the hover time.

My two pain points are for tool tips.

1. I am dual welding and whenever I hover over a weapon (even just passing over) the screen fills up with information about my weapons getting in the way of seeing what I am doing. This is especially bad when crafting, as that UI consumes everything.

2. When video recording, it is nearly impossible to avoid the tool tips on everything in the game. It is more than annoying.

 

Screenshots and video recording are made more difficult when we use F9 to hide the UI and tool tips still show. Has this been reported as a bug?

 

I don't know, but you are probably right about that.

 

No offense to your friend, but I'll have to start out by saying I'm actually not sure I believe 100% what's said in the thread title. If there was something I didn't figure out about a UI first starting a game, but then figured it out before 2 hours was up, why would I quit the game right when I figured it out, instead of taking that opportunity to actually play the game... ? When there's another free trial, I'd encourage him to play the game again, now with the knowledge of how things work.

I actually do think there are still some major problems with the UI -- and say that as someone who actually does UI design -- though I don't know if I would say this is intrinsically problematic in the sense that its not impossible to figure out. I think some people might not know what to expect coming from other games, though.

I'd say the visual appearance of the UI is certainly not helpful; in this case, the cursor and tooltip appearance. So for example, take the arrow cursor turning green for interactivity in the context of moving decos in your home. The cursor in the game for "picking up" an item is exactly the same as the cursor for "using" an item. In most apps, cursors normally not just change color but change form. So you have the hand pointer cursor when you have a clickable link, and a "grab" cursor that appears for moving things. Diablo games for example have different cursors as I recall, based on a gauntlet pointing to or grabbing things. But in SotA, you don't know whether the green arrow is going to pick up a deco lantern or turn it on -- though you do figure it out once you try it for the first time.

In this case, rather than a "grab" cursor, I would suggest for instance some influence from the U6/SE UI,


See that little hand icon for "pick up"? Could make it a gauntlet or a hand or whatever. There's also a "use" icon there that might be useful for the game, to differentiate the use/pick up functions. Probably could do that without the triangle though, there are a lot of examples of "pick up hand icon" on Google Images. A "talk" icon might also be useful, when pointing the cursor at NPCs, and an "attack" icon when pointing at mobs while in cursor mode. Indeed, in SotA, the harvest cursors (showing your harvest tool) are a lot more helpful, because they tell you what you're doing when you click. They don't stand out too much often (a sickle might blend into the background), so there is that problem, though they're better.

I was also mentioning the puzzle at Boreas Colossus in another thread, where you're supposed to click on some runic text on the wall. I figured this out quickly, but its not clear *why* you would click text on the wall. What are you doing? Are you touching it? Maybe a hand cursor would help in this case. Or maybe it would help if your avatar reached out when your mouse was over it to look like he was reaching out to touch it, and then E would confirm the action. Perhaps some similar animation could also be applied to interactibles in general.

A side note here -- I hate to plug other ideas into the discussion, but such an icon could be also be a good way to dovetail into adding a short timer/progress bar for looting in the game which I discuss in another thread and think would help User Experience in many ways. There could also be a way to cycle through actions, if you were allowed to both harvest and loot a body (ie harvest corpse wax vs loot weapons from a skeleton).

Similarly, it might otherwise be good to have a key press toggle between "pick up" and "use", or "move" and "use" in the case of house decos -- so in the latter case, you might have to press down Ctrl, for instance, to move a deco, instead of the current method of just turning a decoration mode on and then dragging. And the Ctrl key would change the cursor to the move cursor.

As for the tooltips, I just find them first of all too utilitarian in that they're tiny with little spacing for presentation, and instead boxed in. The tooltips should be designed for presentation, not for utility. They also often appear under the cursor, which means some of the letters are often covered up, and in odd places, like to the bottom right of the item under the cursor -- instead of right above it, like you'd expect for presentation purposes.

The UI actually is frustrating in some cases in the degree it feels utilitarian, because this cuts down on its usability from a new player's perspective. Having many functions only able to be done through context menus, and tiny context menus at that, is another good example of this. The tabbed interfaces for vendors and merchants also isn't ideal. Chris has mentioned what he's called "programmer art." I feel a lot of what's in the game is "programmer UI."

I think there would also be no harm in showing some sort of subtle highlight when you have your mouse over something, if it can be managed nicely. The main value of this would be that unfortunately not everything is interactible or moveable or able to be picked up. Its different from a game like U7 where literally everything was something you could try to pick up and use. In SotA, some items are locked down ... I believe that's your friends point, that most things are part of the background and non-interactible.

You also have all the mobs labeled, and mob corpses labeled, so yea, there is this inconsistency here in the UI at least. You have a mob corpse labeled, but then a story corpse non-labeled. So the inconsistency might lead to confusion.

I'm not sure we need a mode like Diablo which labels everything on screen you can use or pick up. Its okay that some things are hard to find without you paying attention (even pesky garlic plants)... and actually some things are designed to be hard to find (secret door passages) which means that players should be taught how to find things on their own without game cues in order so that they're later prepared to find the things they have to look for. If players were given on-screen labels for every item they could interact with or loot in the beginning, they'd then get stumped when there are secret doors and such, because they were never encouraged by the game to look for them.

If players are having a hard time starting out even expecting they could loot or interact something, maybe some NPC could just say something that will better nudge them in the right direction.

Though I still think even changing even small appearances in the UI like making the cursor change rather than just turn green or making the tooltips look and function more appropriately will help.

 

Given the fact that the cursor changes colors when you can interact, it sounds like your friend was looking for an excuse. When I rolled my first avatar,I had zero trouble seeing what to do and noticing what I could and could not interact with.

 

Yes, but THE AVATAR is not STUPID.
I don't know if you have ever gardened before, or if you have ever learned how to identify specific plants in the wilderness, but once you KNOW how to do it, you are NOT STUPID. In real life, you KNOW what a damn garlic plant looks like, and assuming it's not midnight on a new moon, you'll be able to spot a garlic plant with your trained eyes.

What THE AVATAR is NOT, is someone who is trying to find 2 pixels on a screen of (3840 x 2160)=8,294,400 pixels. In THE AVATAR's life, a garlic plant is a garlic plant, not a needle in a haystack.

Sure, maybe certain things like secret door passages would be tough for even the avatar to identify but nobody said that pressing the 'show obvious items' button should 'show unobvious items too'. It's not that hard to NOT program the ability to not see secret doors; you just don't program it.

 

@Ayelis

Yea, which is why Surveying skill *should* help you... Personally, I do find you get used to spotting them the more you play, and now see garlic plants wherever I go. But it would be nice if Surveying worked better for people.

My point about secret doors was more only that if all the player ever interacts with in the UI is tagged for him in some way, he's not even going to think there might be some interactible that's not tagged and that will hold him mback. Maybe tagging some but not all interactible items with a key will work, too, but at the same time the game should also get you used to the idea that you might be able to interact with things that aren't tagged, and the UI should be better and help you even without the tags on things.

Though, yes you're right, I could imagine the game mechanic designed in a way where you normally will interact without the tags, but bring up the tags to help you... and perhaps Surveying could play a role in this, in that if you have a low Surveying skill your distance is small for the plants tagged for you and if you have a high one your distance will be a bit larger.

 

I have this problem with all games. There are some items you can sit on and some not. Yeah I get that the cursor changes for you but there are some items you are supposed to be able to interact with but the ui seems to get confused to know exactly what you're picking. Your character's line of sight and the camera's frustum seem to impact selection and collision. Whatever they're doing is nor consistent which makes you have to fiddle with it. I dream of being flagged but I want @valor to kill me because I suck (which I do) but when I get to the point where I can survive that hit I would prefer to fail at hitting him back because of his dexterity and avoidance abilities not because I didn't get my camera swung just right.

I get that collision and picking are tough/math intensive to get right but with all of the fund raising that we're doing we're creeping up to the budgets that we use as an excuse for things not being on point. The difference is it is coming out of our pockets. I'm going to put on my to do list to ask the devs that used to work for the big game houses whether we're tougher on them than their previous management was (if they're still talking to me that is!

 

Oh god no.
Not that my opinion matters more than everyone else's, but it's simply not everyone who needs games to treat them like a baby.
While I get that many people these days prefer to put as little effort as possible into something, you'd also remove much of the possibility for puzzles and the secrecy of secret doors by doing this.
Simply stated is would spoil (as in spoiler) a great deal of the game.

 

TWO hours?
Only two hours?
In my first two hours in game I learned about chat, talking and interacting with NPC, chatting with the Oracle, picking up items. jumping and general movement.
I set up the appearance of my avatar, interacted with a magic mirror, and explored every inch of that little rock in the sky.
After that I was dropped in a burning village with a bard who tried to help me survive.
I clicked on everything, learned about blue vs. green arrows, how to gather, mine, harvest, run from zombies and skeletons.
I picked pumpkins, got swords and shields and generally spend another three hours just exploring the intro scene.
TWO hours?