First impressions of new UI?
WanderingScholar
Member Posts: 17
I realize that there are several other threads already opened up to this topic, although quite a few of them have veered off subject.
I started a new bg2 game and played for about 2-3 hours just to get a feel for the new UI.
My thoughts: v2.0.62.2
-Character creation looks to be revamped to match the new "menu" system. This is where the dreaded scrolling begins. The artistic looking tiles have been replaced with dull text options inside a scroll down menu. It now takes an extra click to get to the kits for each class whereas before it was displayed instantly. Character creation should be completely reverted back in my opinion. The tile selection boxes were overall smoother to navigate and more artistic. I did enjoy being able to choose from a wide array of colors for my character.
-The save screen suffers from a similar fate as many other aspects of the new UI. Why space buttons away from each other and have extra "steps" to accomplish the same action. Just put all the buttons on the saves themselves like before..
-One of the first things I did in game was disable the character outlines and selection highlights since for me it takes away from the immersion of the game when your characters looks like paper cutouts separated from the game world. I also enabled the colored markings and classic selection circles under "feedback". For some reason I get a headache if I don't have the classic selection circles enabled since the new markers are ellipses and change the isometric look of the game field. It would be nice to just have the old EE thick colored markers back. I've mentioned this in another forum but if there is anything I'd like to see improved in these new updates it's the paperdolls. From all the wepons and armor you collect there is much more variety and complexity that could be added.
-Let's start with the area map, overall I thought it was an improvement. The only slight hiccup is that it's sometimes hard to locate your party at a glance when standing in certain locations on the map. The world map on the other hand doesn't need that silly travel button and the travel times look better displayed as a tooltip. Speaking of tooltips, all of the artistic scrolls that used to be tooltips have been replaced with less cosmetically appealing text boxes.
-The quest journal seems like an improvement in it's current state. Although, when your looking at entries you have to tab through the date first then tab again to see the entry. I don't have a problem with quest pop-ups.
-Now on to the inventory screen. Overall it looks to be relatively unchanged in my version. I can finally see all of my AC modifiers, but now my APR is missing... It looks like the circle displaying weapon damage still has some problems. Maybe if the numbers were slightly more condensed? The circle displaying hp should probably have the numbers oriented vertically, they are hard to make out in their current size. Also, the way your cursor "anchors" to items when you pick them up is a minor nuisance. It's more accurate to move items the way it snapped before.
-I'm really not a big fan of this equipment simplification system they added. You could already see the modifications each item made by swapping it in the slot and observing the changes on the stat displays. Now every time I pick up an item (even just to move it) the screen is jolted into displaying it's "effects" in a new stat sheet and lighting up character portraits. Why was this necessary? When your gaming over several hours the last thing you want is something constantly flashing in the background when doing something like inventory management. I know this was supposed to take the "guesswork" out of equipment but I've never heard of someone being troubled by this. You learn fast what kinds of equipment characters can and cannot use. The proficiency system is already intuitive enough for people to catch on about which weapons characters need.
-The character record is where things really go downhill..First of all I'm not a big fan of the chosen color scheme. Red and black text against that khaki colored background isn't nearly as crisp and clean as white against a dark background (I do like the stat modification coloring red/green). In a classic UI sin the five buttons on this screen are all spaced apart from one another instead of being condensed nicely in v1.3. The character's name seems to be the least visible thing on my screen. If you have a multi-class character you have to go digging if you want to see both levels. Also that silly flashing level up bar... In my opinion this whole menu system just doesn't cut it. The most v1.3's UI needed was a little cleanup in it's largest scroll box. You go to the old record screen and your Thaco, AC, HP etc... is displayed right in the open. Your character race, class, and alignment are front and center..and there is just 1 single major scrolling menu with all the extra details. If I was just starting out playing BG I'd be much more confused with the menu system and it's tedious scrolling. Ya, isn't it fun to scroll through all your status effects on top of that. What are spells doing in the character record menu?!
-The arcane and priest spell books suffer a similar fate as the character record. All your spells were displayed beautifully before but now you have to scroll (not just for the spell but the description too!)...and the icons for memorized spells are so minuscule...not to mention the silly "memorize" button...I would just revert all this back. If you're going to do anything maybe polish up some of the spell descriptions or just add some more art to these screens.
-Store layouts are another thing that apparently needed "fixing". Just put the stack of gold coins artwork you see on the inventory screen somewhere on the store screen. I don't know why it's been stripped down so much...The "steal" button was moved...Why?
-Lastly, some of my opinions on the feedback and game dialogue. It's awkward the way text lines up for many NPC's (it looks like they are missing a portrait). There really is no reason to separate character dialogue from the rest of the games feedback. Just have a single scrolling box not a separate one that you need to navigate to when dialogue is happening. Also, a minor note with the feedback, instead of having it display "Goblin takes 10 slashing damage from Imoen" reverse it "Imoen did 10 slashing damage to goblin" I think this looks better. Elemental damages really don't need a description as they are already color coded.
All and all I'm glad to see beamdog dedicated to building on such an awesome game. I'll have to keep playing and see what else I find.
I started a new bg2 game and played for about 2-3 hours just to get a feel for the new UI.
My thoughts: v2.0.62.2
-Character creation looks to be revamped to match the new "menu" system. This is where the dreaded scrolling begins. The artistic looking tiles have been replaced with dull text options inside a scroll down menu. It now takes an extra click to get to the kits for each class whereas before it was displayed instantly. Character creation should be completely reverted back in my opinion. The tile selection boxes were overall smoother to navigate and more artistic. I did enjoy being able to choose from a wide array of colors for my character.
-The save screen suffers from a similar fate as many other aspects of the new UI. Why space buttons away from each other and have extra "steps" to accomplish the same action. Just put all the buttons on the saves themselves like before..
-One of the first things I did in game was disable the character outlines and selection highlights since for me it takes away from the immersion of the game when your characters looks like paper cutouts separated from the game world. I also enabled the colored markings and classic selection circles under "feedback". For some reason I get a headache if I don't have the classic selection circles enabled since the new markers are ellipses and change the isometric look of the game field. It would be nice to just have the old EE thick colored markers back. I've mentioned this in another forum but if there is anything I'd like to see improved in these new updates it's the paperdolls. From all the wepons and armor you collect there is much more variety and complexity that could be added.
-Let's start with the area map, overall I thought it was an improvement. The only slight hiccup is that it's sometimes hard to locate your party at a glance when standing in certain locations on the map. The world map on the other hand doesn't need that silly travel button and the travel times look better displayed as a tooltip. Speaking of tooltips, all of the artistic scrolls that used to be tooltips have been replaced with less cosmetically appealing text boxes.
-The quest journal seems like an improvement in it's current state. Although, when your looking at entries you have to tab through the date first then tab again to see the entry. I don't have a problem with quest pop-ups.
-Now on to the inventory screen. Overall it looks to be relatively unchanged in my version. I can finally see all of my AC modifiers, but now my APR is missing... It looks like the circle displaying weapon damage still has some problems. Maybe if the numbers were slightly more condensed? The circle displaying hp should probably have the numbers oriented vertically, they are hard to make out in their current size. Also, the way your cursor "anchors" to items when you pick them up is a minor nuisance. It's more accurate to move items the way it snapped before.
-I'm really not a big fan of this equipment simplification system they added. You could already see the modifications each item made by swapping it in the slot and observing the changes on the stat displays. Now every time I pick up an item (even just to move it) the screen is jolted into displaying it's "effects" in a new stat sheet and lighting up character portraits. Why was this necessary? When your gaming over several hours the last thing you want is something constantly flashing in the background when doing something like inventory management. I know this was supposed to take the "guesswork" out of equipment but I've never heard of someone being troubled by this. You learn fast what kinds of equipment characters can and cannot use. The proficiency system is already intuitive enough for people to catch on about which weapons characters need.
-The character record is where things really go downhill..First of all I'm not a big fan of the chosen color scheme. Red and black text against that khaki colored background isn't nearly as crisp and clean as white against a dark background (I do like the stat modification coloring red/green). In a classic UI sin the five buttons on this screen are all spaced apart from one another instead of being condensed nicely in v1.3. The character's name seems to be the least visible thing on my screen. If you have a multi-class character you have to go digging if you want to see both levels. Also that silly flashing level up bar... In my opinion this whole menu system just doesn't cut it. The most v1.3's UI needed was a little cleanup in it's largest scroll box. You go to the old record screen and your Thaco, AC, HP etc... is displayed right in the open. Your character race, class, and alignment are front and center..and there is just 1 single major scrolling menu with all the extra details. If I was just starting out playing BG I'd be much more confused with the menu system and it's tedious scrolling. Ya, isn't it fun to scroll through all your status effects on top of that. What are spells doing in the character record menu?!
-The arcane and priest spell books suffer a similar fate as the character record. All your spells were displayed beautifully before but now you have to scroll (not just for the spell but the description too!)...and the icons for memorized spells are so minuscule...not to mention the silly "memorize" button...I would just revert all this back. If you're going to do anything maybe polish up some of the spell descriptions or just add some more art to these screens.
-Store layouts are another thing that apparently needed "fixing". Just put the stack of gold coins artwork you see on the inventory screen somewhere on the store screen. I don't know why it's been stripped down so much...The "steal" button was moved...Why?
-Lastly, some of my opinions on the feedback and game dialogue. It's awkward the way text lines up for many NPC's (it looks like they are missing a portrait). There really is no reason to separate character dialogue from the rest of the games feedback. Just have a single scrolling box not a separate one that you need to navigate to when dialogue is happening. Also, a minor note with the feedback, instead of having it display "Goblin takes 10 slashing damage from Imoen" reverse it "Imoen did 10 slashing damage to goblin" I think this looks better. Elemental damages really don't need a description as they are already color coded.
All and all I'm glad to see beamdog dedicated to building on such an awesome game. I'll have to keep playing and see what else I find.
8
Comments
The new mouseover for item comparision is also extremly misleading /and/ useless, because it only compares one stat. Items in BG have however usually a lot of extra stats, like additional elemental resistance, differences in ETW0 or special damage against certain creatures, or special abilities and so on. So you have to click on the items anyway and and compare by yourself.
Therefore I see myself forced to downgrade back to 1.3 (playing BG2 btw). Call me nostalgic or whatever, but I just dont like it that way and I really dont think BG2 needs a UI overhaul at all.
I have only played through Black Pits, and right now the interface looks good to me so far.
I still don't like the Character creation that much compared to the classic one but it's not a major problem, at least for me.
they look like buttons, even when you press the mouse down. But real buttons usually immediately activate after clicking ... in baldurs gate though, they are just highlighting after click and you have to confirm with just another button below, that looks the same but this time acts like a real button.
in fact, they are – by behaviour – selectors for options in a options list, they just don't look like that at all.
in new 2.0 UI, this is way better ... the style may lack (yet) a lot, but the behaviour is predictable when just looking at the interface, not only after trying to use it. this objectively is better user interface design than before by concept, but of course can make use of a lot of polishing yet.
Same goes for the character screen ... until 1.3, buttons were scattered, information was a text blob to search trough. the intermediate BG1:EE 2.0 version (the last minute "compromise") looks like the old, and has the features of the new, but it significantly lacks order, hierarchy and predictability again. there are 1 1/2 rows of buttons on the top, unclear the last two are some subsection of the above or not ...
Again, the BG2:EE 2.0 by concept is better, it's predectable what's going to happen when you click on something – just lacking style again.
I cant wrap my mind around why beamdog feels the need to meddle in an already 100% finished game like Baldurs Gate 2, bringing it back to beta status problems...
Also negative opinions will almost always be louder than positive ones when it comes to online feedback. If you were to undertake an actual scientific poll the numbers would likely be quite different.
I know its flawed, but even in a useless straw poll, the majority of people do not like the new UI:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/48484/what-ui-do-you-prefer/p1
Lets face it: This is not Starcraft, or WOW, or LOL, where the community anticipates patches a long time ago, because it has an actual ramification on their gaming experience. This is a singleplayer game which (most) people play a single time to get a 200 hrs experience which they will never forget. For this experience the UI was perfectly fine (or should i say *perfect*). There was no need to change this. There was literally nobody in the last 16 years who said "oh, i would have enjoyed this best RPG of PC gaming history if it would not be for this atricious UI". But now for some reason nobody knows Beamdog decides to force their own UI upon everybody who just want to play this games. And if even if we are generous their UI is just *mediocre*, its at best no improvement at all, while at worst it literally shits in the face of everybody else who think that bland html char screens and pokemon cartoon Minsk's are just not fitting for a game like BG2. And it make the game experience worse. Because its just ugly (I know it says nothing but I even showed it to someone who works in a design field and has a relevant masters degree and even he agrees with me that it is just a step back regarding look and functionality). And for some people like me who know that there was a better UI it makes it even unplayable, because now I am stuck with this ridicolus *thing* you call UI.
I mean, i dont want to take your new UI away from you. I dont care that after your 20th playthrough you may want to enjoy a different UI. But again, for people like me who just want to relive the old times again - for a single one and only playthrough - this forced "redesign" makes no sense at all and just destroys everything. Why does beamdog not let me replay this game another time to relive the epic experience I had in 2002?
Very new washing machines may have touchscreen LCD's but just ignore them for this comparison, that's a very recent change where as the physical button design has been around for decades. The biggest complaints I've seen in regards to physical buttons on a washing machine is that they wear out/break, not how unintuitive they are.
There are several other instances where this design is used too.
Computer screen interfaces have been around for 25 years now if not longer, they have a standard set of user interface elements developed and established on their own for their own requirements, like buttons, radio select options (think from where this name comes from!), dropdowns, check boxes, sliders, input fields and outputfields, scroll boxes, hierarchy/groupings and state indicators. That quite wraps it up and one can build almost every screen interface with them, each of them having their specific purpose and reason why no other element should be used for the task, and they have some basic interface look making them identifiable and show their function to a new user (this is not about style).
For the char creation, we have a list of options to chose from, it's a radio button list where you can select one-of-many. But the style until 1.3 was a button look, and it felt strange to me in 1998 when I was young and unknowing, as it does in 1.3 when I'm a UI designer, working this stuff day in day out now, getting interfaces done that work without a learning curve for new users, and making them usable for daily users alike.
In that aspect, the interface until now was just objectively wrong, and now it's on the way to get right.
Same goes for the character sheet ... Now having all side by side in actual use, 1.3, 2.0compromise and 2.0beta/bg2, I am preferring 2.0beta/bg2, as it shows hierarchy and logical structure instead of just putting all options where they seem to fit visually - knowing that the styling of this can be optimized, but it's fundamentally right.
Look if you want to just "relive your memories" the enhanced editions are not the option for you. They are, well, enhanced. If you really want the old broken UI from the 90's you can still buy and play the original versions without any of the changes you seem to hate so much. Got it?
A fan made a better version of the beta UI using the new modding functions of v2.0 and the positive user feedback on this fan made UI led the Beamdog devs to more or less copy/paste it over their existing place-holder UI and it took them roughly a day to complete this process since the fan had already done most of the work for them.
We still have not seen the UI that they originally intended to implement in to the games.
But you're a different person with your own opinions. Getting angry about it and venting on the forums helps no one. If you find a bug or features that could work better, report it on redmine so that something could actually be done about it.
Haven't noticed a single thing that's been "broken".
Got it?
Although I stated earlier that I thought the BG1(SOD) UI was an improvement over BG2's current mess (I still have to go searching for my APR), I still believe that the v1.3 UI is objectively superior (especially the character record sheet). I suspect that there are members of the beamdog team that agree with me but somewhere along development no one had the audacity or time to say "this just doesn't make any sense we should scrap this idea". I hear other people voicing their approval of the changes on this forum but I just can't see how they are getting there...Just look at a screenshot of the old EE character record...
Notice how THAC0, AC, Damage, and HP are all displayed easily. Your portrait is front and center plus all of your buttons are condensed nicely at the bottom of the screen. If I'm new to this game and I have to go searching for info (granted anyone that hasn't played a D&D game should read a manual first) the only place I have to go looking is in the single scroll menu to the right of my character portrait. If there is any improvement to be made it is that the info in this menu should either be separated by lines or spaced better along with adding some of the new artwork to the whole UI. On the new 2.0 interface I have one menu after another with scroll bars to go searching through for info, this can't be good for both newbies and veterans alike. I also don't understand how anyone can praise the new spell books either, as if you need to see a description every time you click on a spell. It also takes away from the appearance of being a spell "book" with all the scroll menus. If there is any confusion I suppose you could add some very small text near the bottom of the spellbook that says "right click for description", but this is probably unnecessary. Just update everything with new artwork, that's all that needs to be done...
The inventory screen however needs to be faster. It's also an improvement from the beta version that only had the comparison table, but there is a lot of lag when clicking on items.
I also miss the sound effects when you click to see the item description.
Still love it. Lot of info on one screen and even though the layout has changed, we'll get used to it in no time.
For me is two huge main issues with 2.0
1.)the character animation have these weird black lines on all backgrounds. I loaded the same exact save on 1.3UI GOG and on 2.0UI Beamdog and only the 2.0UI has these weird vertical black lines. It is NOT a display driver issue as i have just proved.
2.) the up-down arrows in the dialog box wont work, and i can't make the dialog box small medium or large. This just again break the immersion for me.
Some people have said this UI is in a Beta state and i concur. I cannot enjoy the current state of 2.0 it's just no fun.
Honestly i am REALLY shocked this made it past quality assurance.
I HAVE to use it in SOD but only until i hit 500,000 XP and it's off to glorious 1.3UI and BG2.
I've also reported as a Feature on Redmine that the Scroll Up/Down buttons on scroll bars should scroll significantly slower than they currently do. http://redmine.beamdog.com/issues/22081
However, Beamdog really did work hard during the public beta and a lot of problems were resolved during this last month. In my opinion the public Beta should have been 2 months instead of just 1. The game will probably be in really a good state then.
I hope they release patches more often than they have done in the past, and if we continue to report things on Redmine, eventually we will have a great version 2.x in our hands.
The problem with this, is of course the wait. It's annoying to have preordered and now have the need to wait.
- misaligned UI buttons
- the Character Record screen (dear god)
- the massive overlaying map markers
- lack of mouse scrolling in the dialogue menu unless you click a button
Blame tablets and crunch time I guess.