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Hello Tenno,
This is Part II of our last UI Dev Workshop. While our last Dev Workshop discussed intent and purpose in designs and showed mockup UI designs, this Workshop will discuss ‘coming changes and why’. All of the philosophical points in Part I remain consistent - Part II mainly highlights some action items we are taking based on feedback. Everyone’s favourite part of a Dev Workshop is the "Ctrl + F Friendly Table of Contents," so here we go:
Table of Contents:
1) Item Labels.
2) ‘Hold to Confirm’ Experiment.
3) Console UI Pass / Improvements
4) Item Details
5) End-of-Mission
6) Mastery Icons
7) Bonus: Forge All!
Item Labels.
In a near-future Update - Item Labels will be ON by Default. The ‘Need For Information‘ outweighs the concern about ‘Overwhelming’, and since it is indeed optional, we are simply inverting this. Toggle as you see fit, but be assured new players will forevermore be just a little bit more clued in to what they are looking at.
‘Hold to Confirm’ Experiment.
We are removing this experimental interaction in most cases - it’s only staying in real-time combat scenarios to prevent accidental clicking.
The removal of Hold to Confirm will be implemented first in the Intrinsic and Avionics screens, where places you would normally Hold to Confirm will now simply require a click + Dialog like usual.
The addition of Hold to Confirm is going to be placed in the ‘Abort Mission’ screen (on death) to prevent accidental Mission aborting, as well as remain in the real-time Railjack Payload and Refine management.
Controller-friendly UI Pass / Improvements
There are several areas we are going to review for better controller usability including:
- Refining the base cursor velocity while using a controller.
- Expanding the options available to customize cursor speed (for example: cursor travel time when using the D-pad).
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Making it easier to manually interact with scrollbars using the cursor (vs. scrolling with the right stick) while using a controller:
- Increasing the detection area to interact with the scrollbar.
- Increasing the effect when hovering over the scrollbar to make it more pronounced and obvious that you are using it.
These should improve a lot of interactions for any controller users on PC or Console!
Item Details: Detailed Purchase Dialog
This screen actually starts with a story - the day we had our Dev Workshop review meeting, we also released the Kuva Nukor, Kuva Hind, and Kuva Bramma. Players immediately began chat-linking these items to view their details. All Stats are hidden behind a ‘hover’ on About, and thus we had a perfect day to make a decision on the changes for this screen since we could watch in real-time how players interacted with the new content.
As a result, we will be re-tooling this screen to be less hover-dependent and provide stat information at a glance, as seen here in this mockup:
End of Mission
As we work on the re-design of this screen, we will ensure there is an expanded version of the screen you can access. Once you choose this expanded version, the game will remember it and only present you with this version of the screen for future missions, until you choose to collapse it again. We are still working on mockups for this which will come in a future Workshop or Devstream!
Mastery Icons:
These are being iterated on and we will have more to show soon.
Bonus: Forge All!
Open the spoiler tag to see a Placeholder feature request coming for Railjack - Click to ‘Forge All’ in Dry Dock before you head out on a mission.
Conclusion
The Warframe Story and experience is one told through the sum of its elements - from unique worlds, to distinctly weird characters, we believe our role of storytellers also applies in the UI. However, there is also a role for stat-based prioritization in the UI which we will integrate in a more balanced manner as we review and redesign screens.
