I’m sure that many of these suggestions are common knowledge, but in the interest of completeness, I’m going to go through all of the changes that I think would make this game easier to play. I’m not going to touch on obvious stuff like optimization, crashes and bugs. I’m sure those will be addressed over time. This is specifically design decisions that I think need to be re-examined.
*Allow us to invert our mouse Y-axis.
*Allow us to zoom out from our character using the mouse wheel when in third person.
*Moose corpses are permanent. Once a moose is skinned, the corpse cannot be moved and does not disappear.
*Player inventory needs to have grids. Items in the inventory need to reside in a grid space. The entire square of an item should be clickable.
Trying to move nails around in a container is a finicky affair right now because it’s difficult to tell when you’re actually clicking on the item, rather than the container background. It’s also difficult to keep containers organized because items can sit on top of other items. It’s just messy.
*There’s little consistency in crafting. Some items need to be crafted at a station, some need to be crafted with tools. Knowing how to craft what is an exercise in frustration. There needs to be some standardization. For instance, when you open your inventory, there should be a crafting table and a list of all the things you can craft. When you select an item to craft from the list, the required ingredients appear in the crafting table. If you select something that requires a specific tool, a darkened picture of the required tool appears in the tool slot on the crafting table. The same interface would be used for crafting stations.
Forges, kilns and camp fires should have a separate slot for materials, fuel and modifiers (like flux for the forge).
It needs to be obvious by looking at the user interface how to use these objects and it currently isn’t. Anything put into the forge should immediately have a vertical heat meter on it so that it’s obvious what’s going on. There’s nothing more confusing that trying to use a forge for the first time and you put in your wood and ore (hoping that’s how it’s supposed to go), turn it on and then watch as nothing at all happens.
Basically, your crafting system is central to the game. Players should be able to intuitively understand how to craft what they need and right now it’s horribly unintuitive.
*Terraforming is a chore. It is by far the most tedious and unenjoyable job in the game. Allowing us to perform terraforming actions while in Observer mode would go a long way toward making it less horrible.
*Certain parts of the UI (the target box, for instance) seemingly can’t be reopened if closed. I closed my target box by accident when I was setting up my UI for the first time and I’ve yet to find a way to get it back.
*Rather than using a nested drop down menu for context sensitive actions, perhaps a nested radial menu would be more pleasing. If done correctly, using a nested radial menu in conjunction with the UI changes outlined above would allow you to get rid of mouse mode entirely. The mouse would automatically appear when it’s needed (open inventory, activate crafting station, etc.) and the player would be in free look mode the rest of the time. Just hold Q when looking at an object to bring up the radial menu and move the cursor in the direction of the option you want to highlight. Left click to confirm selection. No mouse cursor necessary.
*The inventory window and the paper doll should be merged into the same menu. Same with the character sheet and the skill sheet. They all should be accessible by tabs whenever the player opens any of them.
*Crafting time on tools, weapons and armor should be increased significantly. Right now it takes like three seconds to forge an iron shovel. It should take quite a bit longer, in my opinion.
It is obvious that this game is completely a labor of love. No one makes a game like this because they want to get rich. They do it because it’s the game they want to play. I respect that immensely. The single most important resource in this game (once it gets to the MMO point) is going to be players. Other players are the content. That’s why it’s completely essential that the game be accessible and user-friendly. It’s fairly complex, as games go. If you want people to stick with it, the UI absolutely has to bridge the gap between the abstraction of the game mechanics and the expectations of the player.