Tweaks to the UI

Sapior

Hey guys, my first post here!

I was watching the recently posted pre-alpha gameplay and was thinking about the UI. I like what has been done so far, but I think there could be slight changes made. Mostly, to the legibility of the text and UI elements.

I took a screenshot from the video and made some improvements (in my mind, at least) to share with you.

Here is the UI you see in the video:

(direct link to the image: https://i.imgur.com/D7lOJME.png)

Here are my tweaks:

(direct link to the image: https://i.imgur.com/J6dq1XH.png)

My reasoning behind the tweaks:

• The shortcut keys in the hotbar should be more legible to see them in a glance;
• The cooldowns should be inverted – going from a dark overlay to a normal skill icon;
• The party window is too small to have numbers in it, so I think removing the numbers alltogether would work better;
• The enemy HP bar should also be more legible and consistent with the other HP bars (comma to separate thousands is missing in the Default UI);
• The cooldown message 'Spell Not Ready' could work better if placed a bit higher up, with a backdrop. You could use the 'torn banner' style which is already used for the party member nameplates.

What do you guys think? If you'd be interested, I could make other mockups, for other parts of the UI we can already see in the pre-alpha gameplay video.

If you are still reading, thank you for your time!

dphantomtv

Honestly, in terms of UI I think fully customizable is the way to go. You see most games copying the trend now cause a lot of users have varying opinions on how they want their UI, so why not just give them the option to edit it themselves. Maybe not COMPLETE freedom, but perhaps having limitations will be nice since the user is often overwhelmed by the variety of options that is given to them.

However, I do think have some basic UI designs on default would be nice to have, both as a template for users to work off of and for users who don't give THAT much care about their UI.

All in all, I like the post, good job.

Sapior

Thanks for your comment, dphantomtv!

I have a neutral position about being able to customize everything, so I won't comment on that one too much. I remember modifying my WoW UI only when I had to heal raids, but other than that, I have never modified my UIs, since I never felt the need to.

What I'm trying to do here is redo parts of the UI that should be reviewed before releasing. For example, a more legible hotbar is universal and will work scaled up or down. More consistent nameplates or healthbars as well.