Navigation clutter - the real QOL interface design

This is my ui suggestion megathread, where I'm going to post all the overall ui improvements that came into my mind the minute I bumped into them.
Been playing a few months now and since day 1 I had issues with literally everything in this game, like functionality wise, and action accessability.

First I'd like to ask;
Is there any technical reason behind the heavy navigation design,
such as code restrictions or something?

I just can't figure out why they decided to put everything behind 20 actions when they could be executed in 2.


Like everything is behind ten clicks of drop menu this, popup window that, back and forth, with the unnecessary npc dialogue in between.
Sorry to have PC user standards, but when I look for and want to move items, I expect everything to be found in as few windows as possible, in one combined overview.
Why can't we just click the thing, and do the thing?
Why is everything behind 10 drop menu selections and confirmations?
Yeah I get it, it's made for console, and in the classic FF game style, but the frequency at which we interact with stuff in this MMO is ten times higher than if it was a single player RPG. This simple doesn't work. It is ridiculously inefficient and clunky.

Managing your storage/ accessing crafting items/ talking to retainers is just such a stress inducing painful experience. Click this, this that, this again, talk to retainer, blabla skip the dialogue, yeah I get it you are my retainer cool story, can you just show me my stash and bags, and then flipping through the pages, no... the thing I'm looking for wasn't here, need one more of the other items, back back back, esc esc esc, click click click go back, abort close this window, talk to the other guy click click click yeah hi how you doing don't care... can't move or delete this item now, gotta close everything again, can't reduce item quality, feeling like you're chin deep in quicksand trying to run.
Just absolutely enfuriating.

Every time I need to navigate in this game I'm this close to throwing my desk out the window. Hands down the worst gaming navigation experience ever, in any game. How did they come up with this stuff? I'm thinking they can't be possible this incompetend, so the only reason is what... artifical speed bump? Make the players get their stuff sorted and done slower = more time wasted = more profit since the game revenue comes from sub fees? Go figure.

Anyways, here is how they should have done things to make everyone actually enjoy navigating and operating the interface the game.
Just based on what I know so far and what I think would be a improvement in usability; less clicks with increased functionality.


Awesome 3000 symbol mark hit, continue to the next one...

All these images are done in MSpaint, just a rough concept so calm down. I'm not a PSpro. Focus at the functionality idea presented here, the quality of life features.
And sorry for the upload quality, if the images seem frizzled, first time posting images. Open them in a new window for full size.

Most important one first. The "bank".
Having to talk to each retainer (even though I only have 2) is so unoptimised.
The open/close back and forth spam is insane.

Make it all show up at once.
I managed to fit it easy.

Everything should be explained in the image.
You click on the summoning bell, you get whatever retainer you prefer to greet you with a "hello" which you do not need to click away. The summoning bell opens the inventory instantly.

You see all the 175 item slots in one view. Item type icons on the bottom, toggle them to highlight / take / deposit all items with that category tag.
Click click, all done. In and out. Items or stacks that have been modified get a slow glowing highlight frame that fades away over a few seconds, so you see what happened, or what went where. Optional.

You can browse your retainers by picking the tabs on top. Easy. No more back and forth talking or exiting the previous menu chains.

On the very top you have a toggle for the venture page.
I'm too lazy to edit it, but just imagine a list of retainers on the top too. So you don't need to go back, but can send them all to a mission/venture from the same page.
All the missions, availability, restrictions, conditions, rewards, timers in one place.

Last image shows the third window for gearing retainers.
Clicking on a item slot shows you the best/suggested 3-4 items in your armory/inventory. Just check if he has the best stuff available and you're done. No more oogling at random items in your armory to see if it's better or not, or if he can use it or not etc.



https://i.imgur.com/InXrfH0.jpg

Next stop: Armory.
Pretty much all in the image.

Just a question about the limit design here...
Was there a gameplay decision behind the restriction?
Like, do the devs not want us to play every class/job?
Do they think it's reasonable to add barely 1 slot per class/job?

I have just a few classes and a every job... let me translate that into kupo:
A few jobs and every profession. And my armory is already 99% full all the time.
I can't even start new jobs because I don't have any room.

You need low, mid, high end gear, because you want to level up alts, and reuse the gear for each type, melee, ranged, spell, physical, tank, dps. Add some glam on top and there's no room for any of this! What is the point with these sick limitations?
Why can't you just double the armory space and let players enjoy the game without having to juggle 2 empty slots all day?

You're a billion dollar company, you can't afford server space?
The game generates like $20 million every month, still no good?
What's the problem here?

https://i.imgur.com/pdmlhvG.png

Let me just spam the rest of it away and get back if anyone got any questions...

Vendors and crafting :

https://i.imgur.com/1rRjrR5.png

Proper crafting window with toggle features for item type/slot/class
and many more settings and features:

(remember, all OPTIONAL, nobody is forcing anyone to turn this stuff on)

https://i.imgur.com/urWPcrz.png

Quick and simple repair window improvement,
see everything and repair each section at once:


https://i.imgur.com/ElyjpEy.png

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Elemenz

I just can't figure out why they decided to put everything behind 20 actions when they could be executed in 2.


Like everything is behind ten clicks of drop menu this, popup window that, back and forth, with the unnecessary npc dialogue in between.
Sorry to have PC user standards, but when I look for and want to move items, I expect everything to be found in as few windows as possible, in one combined overview.

---

https://i.imgur.com/f2tv73k.png


But in seriousness, your interface suggestions are extra. A few people might want that much thrown at them all at once, but it's not good interface design and the majority of people don't need all of that at once.

As for "why?" the dropdowns match the way items are stored in the database tables, probably. Yoshi-P has often cited data access as one of the major reasons for some of the interface designs we don't like. And with the increased player traffic lately, don't expect them to increase the allowed simultaneous per-player data access volume to increase any time soon.

A lot of this is... information overload. Unnecessary information overload.

Good UI design gives the user as little clutter as possible with as much information as possible - WITHIN REASON. For instance - why do we need to show the armory bags in the armory menu when we can already see how much of each item we have? That's redundant information. Your new armory design already feels clunky. The old armory design shows exactly what the user has in their inventory with as little fuss as necessary.

Agree, the UI is very bad and outdated. Please improve. it's quite frustrating too often!

I agree with all of this. I'm still relatively new to this game but I think all of the problems lie in the fact that they have to support console players (ie, the UI has to work with a gamepad; they can't just design it for proper input devices (mouse+keys)).

My top UI 3 gripes would probably be:

1. Retainers: If it's too much work or not possible to simplify/unify the Retainer UI then at an absolute bare minimum allow me to MUTE the retainers. When then talk to me (when the "you called master" or whatever it says bubble appears), it is one more step of MANY i have to click through. Plus, I have to CLICK or hit the Confirm key, I can't just pound the ESC key until I back out to the level I want.

2. All of the Inventory screens (inventory, saddlebag, armoury, retainers, etc) need to be more easily sortable, by all of the various stats (clvl, ilvl, condition, spiritbond, etc), in the UI itself. Yea there's the /itemsort command that can be macro'd, and I have a few of those (sort armoury by spiritbond, armoury by materia). But I can't have macros for every combination of list/stat.

3. A way to more easily consolidate inventory between myself and retainers (and other places too i guess). As it is now I spend way too much time running /isearch and "Search for Item" commands trying to stack all of one type of item in one place (like making sure all of my Steel Ingots are on Retainer #1 instead of spread out all over the place).