A Realm Reborn Items Menu

[Hulan]

As someone who designs UIs in one form or another quite often - the golden rule should always be "First, do no harm". Between cascading menus, non-optimal search algorithms, and failure to follow genre conventions, the 1.0 interface broke that rule in spectacular fashion. It may come as a surprise to some that the very last thing that dictates a good interface is how "good" it looks. That, of course, comes into play; but only after everything else has been dealt with.

As apposed to the 1.0 interface, the 2.0 interface looks quite well tuned to it's platform. Information is presented to the user in a compressed fashion without overloading them (I particularly like how they've compressed the equipment, stat allotment, and character info pages into one page). Similarly, everything response the way you would expect given the platform: context menus when right-clicking, drag-and-drop icons, hover-over tooltips. These are all things that people expect when using a mouse and keyboard. It has nothing to do with MMOs, or even games. It's learned behavior from years of day to day use on a computer.

Everyone will have personal visual preferences, but the ability to easily access controls - in this case items from your inventory - is ubiquitous and essential. What is "right" is entirely dependent on your platform. I would not be making this argument for the PS3, for instance. "Simplicity" depends entirely on user input. On a PS3, having a list-page like control makes more sense, given the absence of some 200 keys.

As for the problem of not being able to tell one log from another. The solution is deceptively simple: Don't make your players select items to craft. Design around your UI limitations and no-one will even notice they are there. If to craft an item, you just open a journal and select the thing you want to make and it starts the synth process as long as you have the materials, there's no need to hunt down the materials.

Honestly, between gearsets and the recipe book we've been promised, I don't foresee Inventories being used for much other than asking "how much space do I physical have on me?" Besides, while this is somewhat of a cop out, if you seriously want to be able to see the names of items next to them at all times (or even a list), it sounds like the user created content will be robust enough to allow you to make a mod that does that.

[TimonLoon]

As someone who designs UIs in one form or another quite often - the golden rule should always be "First, do no harm". Between cascading menus, non-optimal search algorithms, and failure to follow genre conventions, the 1.0 interface broke that rule in spectacular fashion. It may come as a surprise to some that the very last thing that dictates a good interface is how "good" it looks. That, of course, comes into play; but only after everything else has been dealt with.

As apposed to the 1.0 interface, the 2.0 interface looks quite well tuned to it's platform. Information is presented to the user in a compressed fashion without overloading them (I particularly like how they've compressed the equipment, stat allotment, and character info pages into one page). Similarly, everything response the way you would expect given the platform: context menus when right-clicking, drag-and-drop icons, hover-over tooltips. These are all things that people expect when using a mouse and keyboard. It has nothing to do with MMOs, or even games. It's learned behavior from years of day to day use on a computer.

Everyone will have personal visual preferences, but the ability to easily access controls - in this case items from your inventory - is ubiquitous and essential. What is "right" is entirely dependent on your platform. I would not be making this argument for the PS3, for instance. "Simplicity" depends entirely on user input. On a PS3, having a list-page like control makes more sense, given the absence of some 200 keys.

As for the problem of not being able to tell one log from another. The solution is deceptively simple: Don't make your players select items to craft. Design around your UI limitations and no-one will even notice they are there. If to craft an item, you just open a journal and select the thing you want to make and it starts the synth process as long as you have the materials, there's no need to hunt down the materials.

Honestly, between gearsets and the recipe book we've been promised, I don't foresee Inventories being used for much other than asking "how much space do I physical have on me?" Besides, while this is somewhat of a cop out, if you seriously want to be able to see the names of items next to them at all times (or even a list), it sounds like the user created content will be robust enough to allow you to make a mod that does that.

^ Nail in the coffin right here. No further posts are necessary in this crappy thread.

[DexterityJones]

As someone who designs UIs in one form or another quite often - the golden rule should always be "First, do no harm". Between cascading menus, non-optimal search algorithms, and failure to follow genre conventions, the 1.0 interface broke that rule in spectacular fashion. It may come as a surprise to some that the very last thing that dictates a good interface is how "good" it looks. That, of course, comes into play; but only after everything else has been dealt with.

As apposed to the 1.0 interface, the 2.0 interface looks quite well tuned to it's platform. Information is presented to the user in a compressed fashion without overloading them (I particularly like how they've compressed the equipment, stat allotment, and character info pages into one page). Similarly, everything response the way you would expect given the platform: context menus when right-clicking, drag-and-drop icons, hover-over tooltips. These are all things that people expect when using a mouse and keyboard. It has nothing to do with MMOs, or even games. It's learned behavior from years of day to day use on a computer.

Everyone will have personal visual preferences, but the ability to easily access controls - in this case items from your inventory - is ubiquitous and essential. What is "right" is entirely dependent on your platform. I would not be making this argument for the PS3, for instance. "Simplicity" depends entirely on user input. On a PS3, having a list-page like control makes more sense, given the absence of some 200 keys.

As for the problem of not being able to tell one log from another. The solution is deceptively simple: Don't make your players select items to craft. Design around your UI limitations and no-one will even notice they are there. If to craft an item, you just open a journal and select the thing you want to make and it starts the synth process as long as you have the materials, there's no need to hunt down the materials.

Honestly, between gearsets and the recipe book we've been promised, I don't foresee Inventories being used for much other than asking "how much space do I physical have on me?" Besides, while this is somewhat of a cop out, if you seriously want to be able to see the names of items next to them at all times (or even a list), it sounds like the user created content will be robust enough to allow you to make a mod that does that.

Thread over, this guy won.

[TimonLoon]

As someone who designs UIs in one form or another quite often - the golden rule should always be "First, do no harm". Between cascading menus, non-optimal search algorithms, and failure to follow genre conventions, the 1.0 interface broke that rule in spectacular fashion. It may come as a surprise to some that the very last thing that dictates a good interface is how "good" it looks. That, of course, comes into play; but only after everything else has been dealt with.

As apposed to the 1.0 interface, the 2.0 interface looks quite well tuned to it's platform. Information is presented to the user in a compressed fashion without overloading them (I particularly like how they've compressed the equipment, stat allotment, and character info pages into one page). Similarly, everything response the way you would expect given the platform: context menus when right-clicking, drag-and-drop icons, hover-over tooltips. These are all things that people expect when using a mouse and keyboard. It has nothing to do with MMOs, or even games. It's learned behavior from years of day to day use on a computer.

Everyone will have personal visual preferences, but the ability to easily access controls - in this case items from your inventory - is ubiquitous and essential. What is "right" is entirely dependent on your platform. I would not be making this argument for the PS3, for instance. "Simplicity" depends entirely on user input. On a PS3, having a list-page like control makes more sense, given the absence of some 200 keys.

As for the problem of not being able to tell one log from another. The solution is deceptively simple: Don't make your players select items to craft. Design around your UI limitations and no-one will even notice they are there. If to craft an item, you just open a journal and select the thing you want to make and it starts the synth process as long as you have the materials, there's no need to hunt down the materials.

Honestly, between gearsets and the recipe book we've been promised, I don't foresee Inventories being used for much other than asking "how much space do I physical have on me?" Besides, while this is somewhat of a cop out, if you seriously want to be able to see the names of items next to them at all times (or even a list), it sounds like the user created content will be robust enough to allow you to make a mod that does that.

Quoting this again because people are still breathing through their mouths in this thread.