6 UI Mechanics that make me want to punch a hole through my monitor
1. Getting knocked out of fishing and losing my Patience II buff when I rotate my camera so I can see my fishing rod better. This wastes literally 5 minutes of my life because of a UI mechanic every time I do it. There's no reason Patience II should disappear when I get knocked out of fishing, or when the "fish sense something isn't right". After all, it's not like I can use the buff when I'm not fishing, right? And it's not like I could somehow keep the buff if I were to switch to a different gathering class since the buffs disappear on class switch. So, seriously, why not make the buff persistent as long as you're still a Fisher class?
2. Whenever a new submenu item is added, it gets added to the top of the submenu. Great if you're going by the "We want people to notice and use their new menu options" theory. Horrible once you realize players are going to be fighting against months' worth of muscle memory to keep from using a recently added feature that honestly doesn't need to be used that often. For example, I use the "Search for Item" option pretty much every time I craft... and as primarily a crafter, that means hundreds or thousands of times a day. Since it was added to the game, that option was in the top slot of the item submenu. Now it's the second item, with the top item being "Search for Item by Crafting Method". When I click "Search for Item by Crafting Method" by mistake, it takes me to that item's recipe... and I have to go and click on the class I was looking at, find the item I was going to craft again, and make a conscious effort not to do exactly the same thing again so that I can find out what I wanted to find out: How many of x item do I have? Since "Search for Item by Crafting Method" has been added, I think I've probably used it intentionally once or twice... compared to the hundreds or thousands of times per day that I use "Search for Item". So, if anything, Search for Item by Crafting Method should be somewhere near the bottom of the menu. Or, better yet, let us change the order of the submenu items ourselves when we edit the UI, so that we can decide the order they should be in based on how often we use them.
3. Contextual Submenus are overly varied. As a guildmaster, I find myself using submenus on characters fairly often... whether it's looking at a guild member's classes to see if they can participate in something, looking at their items to give them advice on gearing up, adding a friend, sending a guild invite, or adding someone to the party. Unfortunately, not all of these options are available on the submenu in all contexts of "clicking on a character. If I click on their physical character, I can only examine them or send an invite. If I want to look at their classes, I have to click on their party nameplate or look them up in player search or on the FC members menu. And if I look from those sources, I can't examine them. There are other options that are there or missing depending on the context from which you looked at their character, and it's frustrating trying to remember exactly which context I need to access their character from in order to get the information they need. I can understand the "Examine" option, since that's a chunk of character data that doesn't cross between zones (though, to be fair, it's a chunk of character data that could pass between zones on request with no noticeable performance impact), but why are the other options present or missing depending on the context? Why isn't the character submenu the same across all contexts?
4. Arbitrary linkshell limitations. There are only 8 linkshells per character... why? As a guildmaster, more than half of my linkshells are "alliance" type linkshells... what if I want linkshells for special interests (like crafting/gathering) or linkshells for smaller groups of friends? What if I want an officer's linkshell for guild officers? The 8 linkshell limit is just too small to allow for such things.
5. Storage limitations/item variety. I have 8 retainers... even with 8 retainers, I find it difficult to keep a clean inventory because there are so many different items in the game, especially crafting materials. Botany could probably have its variety of materials cut in half and this would not only make Botany more lucrative (because more of the materials would be used in more than 1 or 2 recipes) but would also reduce the number of retainers I have devoted to primarily botany materials from 3 to 1 (currently I have a retainer holding all of my cloth materials, a second retainer for my wood materials, and a third retainer for my food materials, and all three are full or nearly full). More importantly though... there's plenty of upward design space for more materials, but we're near or past the point where the average crafter is going to be willing to pay more for more retainers (and WAY past that point for the average non-crafter). So you're going to have to add more inventory space to existing retainers and to the character itself if you add more materials, which you're almost certainly going to do in 3.2. It's really non-optional at this point.
6. Seasonal wallpapers and other fixtures are destroyed if removed. Sure, this adds a level of realism (for wallpaper) but it becomes incredibly frustrating otherwise. Right now, for instance, we have an Illumination Module downstairs. We'd like to change that to an Ice Chandelier for Christmas... but not at the expense of a 2 million gil fixture that gets destroyed the second we remove it (apparently, Eorzeans haven't mastered the art of unplugging things and figure the only way to remove a chandelier is to smash it into 1000 pieces). I understand wanting to keep the item non-tradeable, but perhaps you could add some kind of fixture storage to allow us to swap out fixtures for seasonal decorating instead of forcing us to either not decorate, or have a hoard of extra (expensive) fixtures to replace the ones we blow up?