Gedon Posted November 26, 2011 Share Posted November 26, 2011 (edited) I'm a UI (user interface) designer at a major software company but my own skills lie in development rather than coding/implementation. I absolutely love everything about Skyrim except the menu system. To me, it's absolutely terrible. If I had a wish list of the changes I would make to the menus, it would include the following: 1) Add a 'Deposit All' option (like the 'Take All' option). My char is an Alchemist, and when I am going to make potions I simply 'Take All' my ingredients from the container I stored them in & get mixing. However, when I want to put them back, it must be done manually, item after painful item (which gets particularly frustrating when you have more than 6 of a lot of your ingredients). Adding a 'Deposit All' would make this storing process so much faster & easier! 2) Show the total weight of each category of your inventory. Time & again I would forget to store my Potions or Misc and get to a dungeon only to be able to pick up 4-5 weapons or armour before I had to trek back to the town again after realizing my mistake. Frustrating! And easily avoided if within the inventory menu it displayed the total weight for each category of items in the right sidebar. Managing your inventory would be so much simpler! 3) Show companions' health bars all the time (when you look at them). Most of the time I have absolutely no way of telling the health of my companions, simply because their health is shown when they take damage. Maybe it disappears because it returns to full, but there's been many a time where I've had no clue whether to use 'Healing Hands' or not simply for this reason. 4) Why are there so many bloody names for the potions? When you upgrade armour it simply says 'Fine' or 'Superior' etc after the name. With potions, they've decided to name them all almost exactly the same, but screw the alphabetization by using different opening words (i.e. Potent Paralysing Potion, Paralyzing Potion, Weak Paralyzing Potion). I've had to scroll through dozens of them just to find the one or two I'm looking for. Haven't given this a lot of thought yet, but either by reducing the # of names & implementing a classifying system afterwords (Strong/Weak/Potent) or just by creatively renaming potions this problem could be reduced a great deal. 5) For the love of God, fix the buttons for taking/depositing items! Whoever designed this would have been fired in my office after being bludgeoned unmercifully. There's one button for taking items from your companions/boxes (either "A" for PC/360 or the 'X" for PS3) and a different button for depositing to them (the "X" PC/360 or square PS3). Let's just use the 360 buttons to avoid confusion. The same two buttons have different functions depending on which of the two you are doing. So when I am giving to a char I use the "X" button and the "A" button equips items on myself. When I taking I use the "A" button (and for containers) the "X" button 'Take's 'All'. WTF? I'm either constantly equipping items I mean to give, or 'Take'ing 'All' when I'm trying to deposit to a box. This is such a bad problem that I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around it, especially considering how many buttons are available on the bloody controller! Being consistent with controls is an absolute must & whoever it was who designed this is on my 'People to Punch Out Before I Die' list. So those are the menu/UI problems that are really detracting from my game. Ppl may not always realize it, but having a seamless, intuitive & consistent menu structure can make a lot of difference as to the impact of an app/game. I don't know much about modding, but is there anything anyone can do to help me fix these things? My dark elf assassin/alchemist would be eternally grateful! Thanx!!!Gedon Edited November 26, 2011 by Gedon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gedon Posted November 26, 2011 Author Share Posted November 26, 2011 (edited) (For my 5th point I forgot to mention that I also end up either eating or drinking stuff when I'm trying to store it too). Edited November 26, 2011 by Gedon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vannus Posted November 26, 2011 Share Posted November 26, 2011 Totally agree with your points. The UI is pretty terrible in Skyrim. My main dislike is the lack of item stats at a glance in the inventory. I want to be able to quickly look at my items and get an idea what is doing what, especially in regards to weight. Where are the sorting functions? I have the same issue as you when I find I don't know what's weighing me down. If I could just sort by weight, I could see I have a stupid, unnecessary pot or something that I accidentally picked up. I know Kenney is working on redesigning the UI, so I'd suggest taking any ideas to him, as he has the capability of carrying them out. His item icons mod is pretty cool and helpful, and shows that things are indeed possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gedon Posted November 26, 2011 Author Share Posted November 26, 2011 Totally agree with your points. The UI is pretty terrible in Skyrim. My main dislike is the lack of item stats at a glance in the inventory. I want to be able to quickly look at my items and get an idea what is doing what, especially in regards to weight. Where are the sorting functions? I have the same issue as you when I find I don't know what's weighing me down. If I could just sort by weight, I could see I have a stupid, unnecessary pot or something that I accidentally picked up. I know Kenney is working on redesigning the UI, so I'd suggest taking any ideas to him, as he has the capability of carrying them out. His item icons mod is pretty cool and helpful, and shows that things are indeed possible. Thanks so much for the advice! I will try to contact that person & see if they may be able to help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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