by
Shu
» 26 Sep 2014, 00:37
I was about to make a topic about that as well, but since it's here already, I may just add to it.
As already mentioned, the handling of mouse-look to UI-control mode and back is super cumbersome. The message boxes should probably also be removed, instead the chat page that also states what happened should be open by default (or a separate action log).
The whole UI has usability issues throughout, and I hope the devs will spend considerable time on it in the future. The most annoying thing I came across lately was simply leveling a 7x7 square of land for some construction. Switching constantly between observe mode (and therein between mouse-look and cursor mode), memorizing numbers I need to round in my head thanks to almost full float precision display, lower and rise ground and leveling seemed overly complicated and slowed me down a lot.
Add to that, that simple tasks take WAY too long. Shoveling some dirt up shouldn't take much longer than putting it back, and also snapping branches and gathering fiber are waaaaay out of proportion. Here, option sliders would go a long way: Click a tree, slide to "snap 20 branches", have one progress bar fill up, and be done with it. That's how I'd imagine good control.
Side note: Please highlight the set point value when such a slider opens, like when splitting stacks in the inventory. I as a keyboard fan would enjoy not having to select that number with the mouse before I type in my desired amount. Also, I've prayed "home" (spawn in my case) a few times too often because I wanted some number split that contained the digit 7, since the action bars still get inputs when such a slider is open without having manually put the text cursor into a text field. One time right as I needed to put in more fuel for some important smelting, making me lose a lot of wood and heaps of time in the process. (I know I could just have thrown the spell out of by bars, but I didn't really think of it at the time as a potential issue in this regard. It's not really obvious, in my defense.)
Crafting is another point that bothered me: Why do I need to right click a tool to get the appropriate crafting menu? That's overly complicated where it's not needed really. Especially newer players can easily be confused and don't always remember that it was the knife they had to click for making a bow.
A consolidated crafting menu, categorized by craft, listing everything you could make, graying out stuff not reachable because of lack of skill. That would make me happy. Just list the needed tools as a prerequisite alongside the ingredients, and it would be perfect.
I do feel that the UI is one of the most pressing issues right now, since how you make your game available often is even more important than the actual mechanics themselves. Also, a UI should not be a tool in making a game harder. That's for the mechanics to take care of.
Even in alpha, I may add, since I could imagine well that many interested people would be irritated by the UI enough to cease playing and testing all together, eventually forgetting about the game. That would be rather sad, since it looks like awesomesauce in it's infancy!
