5 réponses à ce sujet

[Quitch]

I'm sad to say I think this is the worst UI I've encountered in a Bioware game. Here are all the problems I identified, I hope some of them might get resolved one day.

 

Camera

1. Tactical mode reverses your controls. It's left-click to attack and right-click to select in action mode, but in tactical mode it's left-click to select and right-click to attack. Both make sense in a vacuum, but in a game where you can readily switch between the two it's a recipe for ****-ups.
2. Tactical mode camera movement. In action mode when I hold the right-mouse button to move the camera, A and D effectively become strafe. In tactical mode A and D continue to turn the camera. Perhaps I'm missing something, but I see no reason why this game doesn't use the standard WSAD setup of every other PC game, what purpose do turn left and right serve in tactical? I can change my own keys for this one, but the default setup seems incredibly odd to me.
3. Camera zoom changes with mode. In action mode I use the wheel to zoom, in tactical view I use the right-mouse button. Tactical view thus loses the full camera movement action mode provides.
4. Tactical camera is tied to the floor. This is what makes the tactical camera so clumsy, it's tied to the ground in a way it wasn't in DA1 (it's like we're back in NWN2 at release). Trying to target an enemy on an overhang? Your camera has to take the long way around.
5. Tactical camera sees less than action mode. Trying to disrupt a rift? It's not unusual that you need to come out of tactical view and back into action mode because the camera can't see things high up. This links into item 3, because the right-mouse button function has been changed into zoom.
6. Switching mode switches angle. The first thing I want to do in any fight is check enemy resistances (so I can change weapons). I have to change to tactical mode because for some reason action mode doesn't tell me this. Except the camera pulls back so now I have to push it in again (or scroll over) so I can view targets in the distance and check them out. Even if I could switch weapons on the fly the maximum tactical view is so close to the ground that the angle switch means you have to push in anyway (or scroll) to give initial attack orders.

Shopping

1. Can't access equipped items in store. This leads to a clumsy process to buying your new items, exiting the store, equipping the new items, then needing to go back into the store to sell the old items. Why can't I equip directly in the store interface?
2. Add-ons aren't stripped on sale. You don't seem to increase the value of an item with add-ons, so why are they sold with the item and not removed? It just forces a tedious manual process of accessing multiple stations to sell items with hafts, grips, etc.
3. Tiny display. Half the screen is dedicated to my character's look. A tiny fraction of the screen is dedicated to actually showing me the items in the store. I think SkyUI for Skyrim is a relatively good example of how it should work, though even the default Skyrim interface was better IMO since you could control the entire thing with keys pretty easily.
4. Valuables is used as junk but non-junk resides there. Everything you want to sell goes into valuables, except creature research items go here too. This means that the sell-all button is worthless because you don't want to sell research items you have yet to use.
5. No means to identify stocked tabs. You have to click through every tab on every store to find what it sells because the categorisation tabs don't indicate whether the shop sells any items from that category.
6. Schematics give you no information. I can't discern anyway to tell whether a schematic is useful. So that's tier 2 of some armour... but is that armour better than the ones I have now or worse? At the very least give me the same information the crafting screen does on the range of armour values available based on my current ingredients.
7. Only some stat information. I'm told this item will up my Willpower by 2. OK... so what's that give me in total? What other stats will that impact and by how much? You're not lacking for space so why not provide me this information?

Crafting

1. Memorising what you need. So you need to mouse through everything to see how many available slots you have. It would be much easier if the crafting screens told me how many slots I have open on equipment, and how many slots I have open on equipped equipment.
2. Why two screens? So I make this stuff at one station but then need to run to another station to use it. Why? It's just yet more entering and exiting menus.
3. Is it equipped? I can't see which items are equipped vs. which aren't until I select them. Give me a filter. Put a marker next to them. Anything!
4. Can't see other people's equipment. For some reason equipped items can only be accessed if I change to that character. Why? I see no reason at all why I need to select any character on this screen. Put their face next to their equipment, boom, job done.

Character Record

1. This stats affects another stat. That's great... by how much?
2. Ability descriptions lie. There are a number of descriptions which say things like "jump to nearby enemies", indicating they won't do friendly fire. Except they do, so the description is plain wrong.
3. Only three categories in the view. If you select either of the end ability categories you can't see the one at the other end. There's more than enough space to display all four at all times.
4. Unable to change character when in a category. I'm unsure why. If I have unsaved changes just give me the save prompt first, and if I don't why does it matter if I've selected a category or not?

Inventory

1. Useless information displayed. The inventory shows me DPS next to weapons and armour value next to armour. This is useless information, the raw DPS number doesn't mean a thing, nor does the armour value. I care about only two things: firstly is the item offering me a higher value DPS/armour value than I have now? Two, does it offer any positive stat changes over what I have now? Currently you need to mouse over everything in the inventory to find this.
2. Tiny display. Half the screen is dedicated to my character's look. A tiny fraction of the screen is dedicated to actually showing me the items in the store. I think SkyUI for Skyrim is a relatively good example of how it should work, though even the default Skyrim interface was better IMO since you could control the entire thing with keys pretty easily.
3. Unclear item can't be used when highlighted. Perhaps this one is just me, but I find the current setup is very unclear. White for use and red for can't be used is great, but then you highlight something and it becomes a dull colour. It's never entirely obvious to me at a glance that this isn't the "can use" colour. Something more distinctive would be better.
4. Inventory limit. Why does this exist? I cannot discern a purpose for this mechanic in a world where I can fast travel almost anywhere at any time without penalty.
5. Useless bars. A bunch of bars exist at the bottom of the screen without tooltips or any context. I have a bit of a bar. Is that good? Bad? I assume one is magic resistance, so do specific resistances like spirit resistance form part of that and, if not, why aren't they shown on their own bars?

Journal

 

For the most part this is a big improvement over previous ones, especially DA2.

1. No indication of new quests. The codex does this fine, it highlights which categories you should check out for new entries, but for some reason the quests journal doesn't do the same thing.
2. Forgets what I had expanded. The screen constantly closes the sections I expanded. If I'm doing the Hinterlands then I want to keep it expanded to see its quests.

Codex

1. Unread marker is hard to see. The yellow asterisk often blends in with whatever picture it's shown on. You'd be better off having the outline of the card glow or something.

General

1. Exit screen to change screen. If I'm on the character record screen I cannot change straight to another screen, leading to an unnecessary additional keypress just to change screens. I don't understand why I need to exit one screen to enter another, surely trying to enter another is telling you I want to exit this one? It makes the UI feel clumsy.
2. Tooltips/mouse cursor don't/doesn't update. This is a bug across the entire game. Sold an item in the store? Tooltip doesn't update to reflect the new item under your mouse until you rehover. Likewise, when you want to fire an ability without a target the mouse cursor doesn't reliable change to the targeting cursor until you move it.
3. Search gives you no hints. You find something and a sound plays and a highlight (usually, some things like scrolls seem unreliable) shows. Unfortunately the sound has no bearing on the direction, and given how busy the scenes are and the wide variety of lighting found in the game a highlight often doesn't stand out. I love how the hidden item mechanic works, and I wish search would do something similar using sounds which play from the direction of your discovery or at the very least some visual indication of which way to turn the camera. This would save me from search spam as I check each quadrant.
4. Looting is harder than it needs to be. I want to loot that thing, why are you making me manually walk up to it? Why is the looting range so tiny? Why can't I just area loot ala your very own MMO?
5. Bar charts without numbers. No thanks.
6. Difficulty levels. No information is provided around difficulty levels, including the all important friendly fire on/off element.
7. Health is segregated equally. The lines on health bars appear equally divided, making it hard to estimate remaining health. At least if every segment represented 100 or something then it'd be more useful as a visual aid.
8. Imports don't use my import name. You tell me you imported a custom world and give me a timestamp. Well I gave that custom world a nice descriptive name, how about you use that too?
9. Export before import. Why do I need to export from Dragon Age Keep before importing? Why not just show me all my worlds and let me pick one?
10. Why is the war room map two halves? Why do I need to back out the map to go into the other half? Why can't I just move about? Why not just have a button to take me from one half to the other rather than making it a two-setup process with targets in multiple locations?
11. Not obvious when NPCs level. Perhaps this one is just me, but the game doesn't seem to give you the same level of notification for an NPC levelling as it does you.

Combat

1. No means to control facing. Facing matters for a number of things, yet there's no way to turn a character, you have to move them which is much, much clumsier.
2. Where is the flank? Flanking is constantly talked about in the abilities, but there's no indication anywhere as to where the "flank" actually begins. Why isn't it marked ala DA1? When explosions are going off everywhere, or in dark areas, it's often not obvious which way someone is facing.
3. No access to inventory. So you've setup all sorts of elaborate resistances encouraging me to carry multiple weapons, yet I can't actually access them in battle. This leads to a tedious game of edging close enough to get a resistance view in tactical so I can change weapons to suit. And often the game is pretty terrible at granting me access to my inventory again later even though there's not a creature in sight. Could I really not strap another sword to my back or in a sheath?
4. No button to disable AI. Sometimes a fight is tricky enough that I'm going to need to manage all elements of it. This means disabling the AI on each character's screen, then enabling it again later. Just give me a button, or a key. Something! I don't want it off for every fight, there's way too many of them and most don't need my involvement.
5. Did I do more damage? I can't see any obvious way to know whether an attack got a flanking, critical or combo bonus without learning my average damage output in conjunction with every enemy type.

AI

 

Not strictly UI, but the issues with the tactical camera mean the AI issues stand out even more than in DA2. I miss the more advanced AI controls, but I'm taking that as a design decision.

1. What is friendly fire? The AI has no concept of it. It'll launch attacks with no regard for the impact on your other characters. Given the number of abilities with AoE this leads to tedious micro of every battle (or at least the opening of every battle), builds designed to avoid AOE, or regular camp visits to heal damage you should never have taken.
2. What are resistances? The AI will fire abilities against enemies that can resist them. Cold resistance and fire vulnerability? Fires frost ability anyway.

[Sjofn]

The tutorial for tactical view says I need to double click a portrait to center the camera on them. That's fine! But it doesn't actually WORK that way most of the time for me, I'll single click the portrait and it recenters the camera anyway. It's super inconsistent though and I cannot tell what its problem is, but it is DRIVING ME CRAZY.

 

I would also like to be able to enable camera movement when I move my cursor to the edge of my screen. That's the way I moved my camera in DA:O and DA2, and I hate that I apparently can't do that in DA:I.

 

ps: tactical view needs to zoom out way more dammit

[Kylisse]

If the tactical zoom is a performance-related decision they've made, I'd happily click on the "MAY DESTROY YOUR COMPUTER" checkbox to double the current zoom.

[Sidney]

Can we add sorting for inventory? Not only is my equipped item not sorted to the top the other items aren't sorted alpha or in any other way that makes sense.

[P3ngu1n]

Can we add sorting for inventory? Not only is my equipped item not sorted to the top the other items aren't sorted alpha or in any other way that makes sense.

 I THINK it's sorted by DPS/armor rating. Armor rating is completely ****** arbitrary though, I have no idea how much damage mitigation it's ACTUALLY achieving so it's a useless number that just means higher=better..... stupid.

[cynicalsaint1]

That about sums it up for me. 

 

Reposting my thoughts on how the crafting UI should work:

 

Have two main tabs - one for Weapons/Armor, one for Schmatics

Each is subdivided into their usual sub types

 

1. Select Weapon/Armor Schematic -> Craft -> Do you want to equip? -> If yes pick character

2. Select Upgrade Schematic -> Craft -> Do you want to install? -> If yes pick weapon/armor to install to

3. Select Weapon/Armor-> 3a) Equip; 3b) Install Upgrade; 3c) Craft upgrade

3a. -> Select character to equip

3b -> Select Upgrade to Install

3c -> Select Schematic to craft -> Craft -> Install to Item

 

This way we can craft, and manage equipment and upgrades from a single UI, instead of having to jump between three (one to craft, one to install upgrades, one to equip), which is all kinds of ridiculous.