In my opinion, the safer thing to do is to focus on fixing the UI bugs and unhardcode everything. For the rest, we have UI mods.
I'd rather they fixed the bugs and the other issues (and also unhardcoded as much as possible). UI mods are fine and dandy for you and me, but for the general playerbase they're pretty much irrelevant. I'd prefer BG:EE made a good impression on everyone, including those who only play it casually.
Which is, coincidentally, also in Beamdog's best long term interests.
I don't think the current UI is bothering many new players aside from the bugs. It seems to mostly be players of the original back in the day who have problems with the desing of the current UI.
Ya'll are crazy. The 2.3+ UI is great. Both the blue stone and the obsidian are MUCH MUCH better aesthetically than the ugly gray stone ever was. It also does a better job of making information available to you than the old style. Its virtually better in every way. This is what I was talking about before, I would be PISSED if Beamdog redid the UI again, and we ended up with just an "okay" UI again because people can't take off the nostalgia goggles.
The BG2:EE skin is a better version of the old BG2 skin. SoD skin is ok but too dark for my taste. But the BG1:EE skin is ugly as hell, grey stone is in my opinion much better than the blue one (if only they did an HD version of grey stone) but I can live with that.
I think when people complain about the UI, it's about the usability not about the aesthetic (like you can see with @Adul great list of things to fix).
I personally prefer the blue stone over the old gray and the SoD black, but that's just personal preference.
However, the blue stone wasn't a 2.0 upgrade. The 1.x editions also used the blue stone. The 2.x editions actually used less blue stone and more of that paper with large colored selection bars. Thus, saying that the 2.x UI is much better because it uses the blue stone is kind of nonsense.
The great thing about 2.0 was how it made the UI customizable. Naturally, a fixed UI and a customizable UI have a totally different backend, so they had to rebuild the UI from scratch. How they rebuilt that new UI begged some questions. It felt like something they were working on and suddenly had to rush to the end, as it's not even similar between BG1 and BG2.
To be clear, none of my previously listed UI-related gripes has to do with what UI skins are available under 2.0+. Personally, I do prefer the vanilla grey stone style over the Beamdog blue marble and obsidian styles, but that's subjective, and it has no bearing on my grievances with Beamdog's poor handling of the UI.
Cool, but its not poor. Its the best UI these games have ever had.
Despite having more bugs and issues than ever before?
Not really. I always smile when people talk about the EEs being bug ridden. Remember the originals? Or the 1.0 release? In a vacuum it looks like a lot of bugs, but relative to where it came from, its a marked improvement.
Cool, but its not poor. Its the best UI these games have ever had.
Despite having more bugs and issues than ever before?
Not really. I always smile when people talk about the EEs being bug ridden. Remember the originals? Or the 1.0 release? In a vacuum it looks like a lot of bugs, but relative to where it came from, its a marked improvement.
Well I regularly play both BG:EE and vanilla BG1, and I can tell you that's not true as far as the UI is concerned. Vanilla has plenty of bugs, even some pretty serious ones, but the UI is far more polished and easier to use in the original game. It's not even close.
Cool, but its not poor. Its the best UI these games have ever had.
Despite having more bugs and issues than ever before?
Not really. I always smile when people talk about the EEs being bug ridden. Remember the originals? Or the 1.0 release? In a vacuum it looks like a lot of bugs, but relative to where it came from, its a marked improvement.
Well I regularly play both BG:EE and vanilla BG1, and I can tell you that's not true as far as the UI is concerned. Vanilla has plenty of bugs, even some pretty serious ones, but the UI is far more polished and easier to use in the original game. It's not even close.
And I completely disagree with half this statement. The new UI is far easier to use and makes relevant information easier to find. The new one is less buggy, but its also less everything. It flat out doesn't tell you certain things and its straight up butt ugly.
Cool, but its not poor. Its the best UI these games have ever had.
Despite having more bugs and issues than ever before?
Not really. I always smile when people talk about the EEs being bug ridden. Remember the originals? Or the 1.0 release? In a vacuum it looks like a lot of bugs, but relative to where it came from, its a marked improvement.
Well I regularly play both BG:EE and vanilla BG1, and I can tell you that's not true as far as the UI is concerned. Vanilla has plenty of bugs, even some pretty serious ones, but the UI is far more polished and easier to use in the original game. It's not even close.
And I completely disagree with half this statement. The new UI is far easier to use and makes relevant information easier to find. The new one is less buggy, but its also less everything. It flat out doesn't tell you certain things and...
The BG:EE inventory and record screens show more information, that's true. However, Beamdog could have added that information without breaking much of the rest of the UI—for instance, see the BG:EE v1.3 UI, which has pretty much the same amount of information, but isn't broken like the current one is.
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Which is, coincidentally, also in Beamdog's best long term interests.
I think when people complain about the UI, it's about the usability not about the aesthetic (like you can see with @Adul great list of things to fix).
However, the blue stone wasn't a 2.0 upgrade. The 1.x editions also used the blue stone. The 2.x editions actually used less blue stone and more of that paper with large colored selection bars. Thus, saying that the 2.x UI is much better because it uses the blue stone is kind of nonsense.
The great thing about 2.0 was how it made the UI customizable. Naturally, a fixed UI and a customizable UI have a totally different backend, so they had to rebuild the UI from scratch. How they rebuilt that new UI begged some questions. It felt like something they were working on and suddenly had to rush to the end, as it's not even similar between BG1 and BG2.