Ideas for improving game UI

[nea_caisa]

Here are some ideas for improving game UI after playing EL for some weeks:

 

- Maybe it’s a good idea for login screen to remember last user name just as windows does.

 

- Maybe a window for the #sto command will make this command easyer to use. Or, at least, putting result in an intuitive order.

 

- For manufacturing window. It is pretty hard for a newbie to look for recipes in the encyclopedia or remembering what are the used ingredients, checking for the nexuses required, etc

 

This is what I am thinking about:

 

Putting on top of the actual window 2 combo list boxes, one for skills (alchemy, potions, manufacturing, etc) and another one for items of selected skill. These items will be added to combo list according to level of the player for selected skill. For example, for alchemy skill selected in the first combo and current player level 0, the second combo will contain only bone powder. For level 1, the combo list will contain bone powder, fire essence and so on. The colours of the items in items combo box will be grayed if not all manufacture conditions are acomplished (there is not enough ingredients in inventory, no enough nexuses, no food, etc)

Selecting one of grayed items will display an error message, stating wrong contiditon(s).

 

In the perfect conditions (all ingredients available, nexuses, food level ok), if the player want to make an item, first select the skill to work on in the first combo, then select the desired item in the second combo.The ingredients will automatically be placed on the mix bar and the player can click the “mix” button.

 

In this respect, going even further, the manufacture and spell windows can be merged. Putting on a side all available sigills and adding magic skill to the skills combo list, the user can select a spell and cast it. Of course, the players that like fighting and cast spells during fight should be asked about best window size.If the size is too big, problems can occur because of the reduced visibility.

 

Finnaly, the posibillity to manually mix ingredients should remain. Maybe some players like it as it is or there are some “secret recipes” and so on.

 

I think this way game interface will become more friendly.

 

Best regards.

[ville-v]

- Maybe it’s a good idea for login screen to remember last user name just as windows does.

Already possible by changing el.ini.

- Maybe a window for the #sto command will make this command easyer to use. Or, at least, putting result in an intuitive order.

Already suggested. And you can always visit storage yourself.

 

- For manufacturing window. It is pretty hard for a newbie to look for recipes in the encyclopedia or remembering what are the used ingredients, checking for the nexuses required, etc

 

This is what I am thinking about:

 

Putting on top of the actual window 2 combo list boxes, one for skills (alchemy, potions, manufacturing, etc) and another one for items of selected skill. These items will be added to combo list according to level of the player for selected skill. For example, for alchemy skill selected in the first combo and current player level 0, the second combo will contain only bone powder. For level 1, the combo list will contain bone powder, fire essence and so on. The colours of the items in items combo box will be grayed if not all manufacture conditions are acomplished (there is not enough ingredients in inventory, no enough nexuses, no food, etc)

Selecting one of grayed items will display an error message, stating wrong contiditon(s).

 

In the perfect conditions (all ingredients available, nexuses, food level ok), if the player want to make an item, first select the skill to work on in the first combo, then select the desired item in the second combo.The ingredients will automatically be placed on the mix bar and the player can click the “mix” button.

Game isn't meant to be too easy. If you don't like it, don't play it.

 

In this respect, going even further, the manufacture and spell windows can be merged. Putting on a side all available sigills and adding magic skill to the skills combo list, the user can select a spell and cast it. Of course, the players that like fighting and cast spells during fight should be asked about best window size.If the size is too big, problems can occur because of the reduced visibility.

There is already spell quickbar next to your inventory quickbar.

[Aislinn]

It's a good idea to play a while before making suggestions, that way you don't suggest things already ingame

 

Also, have you ever tried "#storage item" such as ore for example? That would list all ore you have. Or #storage gold, or #storage red, #storage sword...you get the point.

 

For manufacturing window. It is pretty hard for a newbie to look for recipes in the encyclopedia or remembering what are the used ingredients, checking for the nexuses required, etc

I don't understand. You can have both the mix window AND the encyclopedia window open at the same time.

[Ermabwed]

You also learn the recipes pretty fast, at least the basic ones (not saying I remember all c2 ring recipes by heart). For the rest I always have a tab in Firefox open with the recipes. Works like a charm if you have "Search as you type" enabled

 

(and you either have or don't have the nexus, you will notice when it tells you to get the nexus, you get it and won't have problems with that from there on until you reset )

[nea_caisa]

Ok, i got the idea. Thanx for yours time & replies.

 

Bye.

[Ulrih]

I think it would be ver very nice if the shop NPCs and merchant NPCs would have a window similar to the storage window. That would reduce the need of clicking many times with the mouse, and might give the Merchant NPCs a small improvement as compared to the bots. Of course, it would make the selling of blue lupines easier, but anyway, I'd be happy with an user-friendly shop.

[Blodoks]

For the rest I always have a tab in Firefox open with the recipes. Works like a charm if you have "Search as you type" enabled

 

Maybe this tab works better

Manufacture_window

[carone]

I think this is exactly the kind of people you should be listening to when it comes to UI improvement ideas.

We've been using this interface way too long to be able to judge it properly, imo.

 

Alright, there may be ways to do the things he is asking for but that doesn't mean the way it's implemented now is perfect. We've all grown accustomed to the way it's in the game now and for us it's (relatively) easy to play this way and we don't really require anything else.

But this is a player who probably just started out and is having difficulty getting simple information out of the game like things in his storage. The information is available so why make it so hard to access the information?

Does everything in the game have to be a challenge?

I've never seen the old storage UI so I don't know what it was like but I know it used to be different(much harder to work with) and it was made much more user-friendly.

Why stop there? I for one would love to have a storage menu without being at the storage, sorted by categories instead of a huge list of all items or alternatively with a search mask as it is now.

 

And for those who want to feel special about themselves by typing in commands manually keep the old system.

 

As to the formulas in combo boxes: Another thing I wouldn't mind. But I'd make it so you could only enter formulas yourself not have them all available automatically.

 

Anyway, I think he has made valid suggestions and doesn't deserve the typical response of "It's already in the game, live with it (and suffer) like we had to for a long time or go away please".

 

There are probably more important things that require attention than UI improvement but that doesn't justify some of the responses, imo, not just in this thread.

[Aislinn]

Anyway, I think he has made valid suggestions and doesn't deserve the typical response of "It's already in the game, live with it (and suffer) like we had to for a long time or go away please".

 

There are probably more important things that require attention than UI improvement but that doesn't justify some of the responses, imo, not just in this thread.

You've either misunderstood what he was suggesting or misunderstood the responses. Either way, I do not see what you are claiming here.

 

If something is suggested and it is already in the game exactly as asked for, how is that a bad answer to tell him so? He wasn't suggesting an improvement, he was suggesting what is already here! (Several things I might add.) That is where actually playing a while would help and I stand by that statement.

 

If something is suggested for the zillionth time that is physically impossible to do and has already been stated as such, again...actually playing a while before suggesting helps here too.

 

If there are 3 ways to do something and the developers have chosen option 2 to do it, why are we required to have all 3 options available? It seems like a waste of time and space to do so, and by somebody pointing out that this CAN be done, just in a different, but just as easy way than suggested, again...how is that BAD?

 

Perfect is in the eye of the beholder. You can't please all of the people all of the time, somebody somewhere has to make a decision and go with it. And somebody else is going to whine and say "You should have done it THIS way!" At some point, it needs to be dropped and we need to move on to more important undone things.

[larrystorch]

I have a suggestion that I think would be feasible without too much trouble that could add to the usefulness of the #sto command. I think it could be helpful to add a "by type" switch to the command that would return all items from a storage catagory (armor, metals, minerals, etc.).

 

Example:

 

#sto -t books

2 Book of Gargoyles Summoning

1 Titanium Long Construction

4 Steel Shield Construction

1 Naralik Ring Building

1 Unicorn Medallion Building

1 WhiteStone Ring Building

 

Why would this be useful? Well, as you can see from the example above, not everything is named consistantly. Minerals, weapons, animal parts categories all have this issue. This would allow a player to do a quick item dump by category.

 

Now I am going to make a big assumption here. That every storable game item has a database attribute that tells it what category the item should appear under in the players' storage screen. If that is true, I believe that it would be easy to add a switch (ie: -t as shown in my example) that would return all items from that category.

[Learner]

I have a suggestion that I think would be feasible without too much trouble that could add to the usefulness of the #sto command. I think it could be helpful to add a "by type" switch to the command that would return all items from a storage catagory (armor, metals, minerals, etc.).

 

Example:

 

#sto -t books

2 Book of Gargoyles Summoning

1 Titanium Long Construction

4 Steel Shield Construction

1 Naralik Ring Building

1 Unicorn Medallion Building

1 WhiteStone Ring Building

 

Why would this be useful? Well, as you can see from the example above, not everything is named consistantly. Minerals, weapons, animal parts categories all have this issue. This would allow a player to do a quick item dump by category.

 

Now I am going to make a big assumption here. That every storable game item has a database attribute that tells it what category the item should appear under in the players' storage screen. If that is true, I believe that it would be easy to add a switch (ie: -t as shown in my example) that would return all items from that category.

Currently the filtering on #storage is done in the client with no access to any of the grouping or additional data on the item. Any feature trying to get into the server needs to get Ent's blessing first.

[ttlanhil]

doing it on the server would also cut down on network traffic a bit though... many times you get a list of over a hundred items when you only care about one or two

[larrystorch]

OK, my assumption of #sto being server-side was wrong and I understand completely about anything new server side needs the blessing of the God.

 

Server-side filtering, though it would reduce network traffic, could cause an unwanted load increase on the server, especially with an unfiltered query. How much extra traffic would there be send grouping data? Is storage data only updated when a person closes access their storage, or is it a constant transaction?