[2023] UI Improvements Plan

A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.

Hello Lumia Island survivors!

We've gotten a lot of great feedback about the UI in Eternal Return 1.0. It's always great to hear your input since it helps us a lot when working on improvements.

After making such big changes on the game, it's always hard to know what the reaction would be on them, and we are sorry if we couldn't meet your expectations. There are many things that will need further improvements and polishing. The reason is that some of these were either things that we got so used to while working on them for so long or things that were pointed out during the testing period but that we weren't able to adjust on time. And especially, some things related to optimization had to be pushed aside since we didn't have the resources to focus on them.

However, based on the rigorous feedback we've received from you, we're prioritizing UI improvements and moving forward in a way that will allow us to improve the current situation faster.

Fixing the UI is not something that can be done in a day or two, as there are a lot of interrelated features and it requires a lot of code modifications and testing as well as design work.

There are also a lot of issues related to the optimization structure of the UI, so we don't think a rollback would be the fastest alternative, as it would require much more time than focusing on making further improvements.

We've summarized some of the feedback we've received from all of you and how we're acting in response to it.

Crafting Guide & VPad are our top priority concern to address.

• Feedback 1: It's hard to see materials in the Crafting Guide.
  
• Feedback 2: Remote Drones are no longer available in the Crafting Guide.
  
• These two feedbacks will be addressed by displaying materials under the Crafting Guide and adding Remote Drones to it.
  
• Feedback 3: Crafting Guides don't disappear when completed, making it inconvenient to add new items.

We're going to fix this by allowing you to left-click on a crafted piece of equipment and turn it into a Legendary item directly in the guide. The current inconvenience will be mitigated, and a feature that allows it to disappear automatically will be added later in the future as this is currently connected to many other aspects in the game.

Inconvenient Aspects of Equipment, Inventory and Skills will be next on the list.

• Feedback 4: Inventory has become too small.
  
• Feedback 5: The empty space between the skill icons and the HP bar is annoying.
  
• Feedback 6: Equipment looks too small.

Of these, feedback 4 and 5 are relatively straightforward, but we think we need to tackle them sequentially, as there's a high risk of running into code issues if we tackle them at the same time as feedback 1 to 3. After taking all into consideration, we've decided that the functional issues with the Crafting Guide are more pressing, so we'll tackle them first and then move on to this part of the project.

We're aiming to solve 1 to 3 before the end of Preseason. And if time allows it, we may even be able to do 5. However, number 6 is going to take a little more time because it's going to require some bigger changes.

We will also look into how to proceed with the inconvenience related to Overlay (F8).
Issue 7: Show enemy weapon masteries and tactical skills when enabling F8 Overlay.
This was excluded because the existing feature had a fatal optimization problem: dynamic UIs with information that needs to be updated in real-time are the most difficult to optimize, so it can have a huge impact on optimization immediately. We will try to find a technical way to reduce the optimization load and keep you updated.

We apologize once again for the inconveniences caused with the new UI and we'll try our best address all your feedback as quickly as possible.

As always thank you for your patience!