edit: Guys. Work arounds aren’t solutions. This should be fixed. Just stop with the ‘but but but’. It’s just an icon. We know you’re smart. We know you can read. We know you use hotkeys. None of that is relevant. I haven’t made the mistake either, but I can see how somebody easily could.
“Just take your time and read” / “Just pay attention”
That isn’t how UI and UX design works. It’s just not. People expect standards, and they expect the path of least resistance to be safe. In this case, 2 clicks on a red X button can completely destroy all of your time and energy investment in this game. This is completely unacceptable.
This is a serious issue that is destroying characters left and right.
This should be a Defcon 0 CRITICAL TICKET. Release a patch for this ASAP.
All you have to do is replace the close icon ‘X’ with a trashcan icon. Making characters type DELETE would be good, at least update the icon.
The fix for this bug is low risk, but leaving it in will be CATASTROPHIC to some players who will delete DAYS of playtime on accident.
I have not deleted a character on accident yet, but I have clicked it a couple times even knowing it’s the wrong button.
Again, this should be fixed IMMEDIATELY.
59 Likes
Hit the escape key. I don’t know why people click it. Not to mention it’s under the character list. How do so many people not pay attention or know how to close a game. Why would a red x at the bottom of a screen even be thought of as the way to close the game?
4 Likes
A red X is not the symbol for delete. Ive read 3 books on software design and all of them universally use a red X to mean close the program.
Even the blizzard app uses a red X to mean close. Not delete.
19 Likes
Well they dont read tutorial (about 1 min), and dont care when the ui pops a question about character delete. But you know… its the games fault.
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All the people that I know who played d2 don’t run into this issue. Heard no issues about it during beta. Help me I don’t read feels silly.
4 Likes
Ahahahaha so many people that are apparently illiterate
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I’m fine with it being changed because so many people screw it up, but we need to stop pretending it’s a UI thing. It is absolutely in line with UI design. Look at your browser, there’s an X to stop loading a page, Xes to close tabs, an X to close window. UI communicates by X being bad and by where it places the X. If it is placed on a character tab and not on the window then it deletes your characters and does not close the window, it is very obvious and intuitive. And you should be hitting esc anyway.
Change it because people can’t figure it out, and for no other reason. Look at all the threads about people selling their high end gear to vendors and you’ll see it is obvious, there is no UI problem there is a “goobers spamming clicks constantly without ever looking at their screen at all” problem.
1 Like
Notice how those are all ‘close’.
A trash can icon is what has always been used to represent deletion on a computer.
An ‘X’ icon means close.
If it was intuitive and obvious, nobody would make this mistake.
It’s only obvious if you take the time to analyze the entire screen and compare every component.
You have to take in the fact there is a character list above the X, and you have to see on the complete opposite side of the screen at the bottom of a list of buttons is another button that says exit diablo.
It’s way too easy to make this mistake. UIs are not supposed to make users think. That’s the entire issue.
Everyone saying ‘oh well if you just take your time and read everything…’ have no understanding of that fact.
9 Likes
Nope. Stopping a page load doesn’t close, closing a tab leaves the window and all tabs but one up.
Again, Xes don’t all close, and something else duplicating one function of an X doesn’t change what X does. Like you can have two words that mean the same thing. Most delete functions are right click not trash can icons, that doesn’t mean the trash can icon is meaningless. But, if you want a trash can because people can’t figure out the obvious, that is fine with me. Having an X on a character tab that says “delete” when you hover and stops and prompts you to confirm you want to delete if you click it is really good UI design that it would be incomprehensible for you to misunderstand.
So you also think that selling high end uniques is a UI problem and that vendor functionality is unintuitive because lots of people are screwing it up?
Change it because ding-dongs need help. It’s perfectly fine as a UI, it matches every other UI you use and outstrips them all in precautions taken to prevent accidental misuse.
Imagine if the president of the united states had a Launch Nuclear Weapon button next to their alarm clock.
WELL YOU SHOULDA READ THE BUTTON FIRST DUMMY HURR DURR LOW IQ
The real answer is: No, you shouldn’t have put that button there.
7 Likes
Also didn’t delete, but agree that it’s a huge issue especially with a controller. In another section of the forum Blizz support confirmed they’re working on it.
6 Likes
With all due respect, as a Software Engineer with 17 years in the industry you are just blatantly wrong.
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With all due respect, you didn’t mention how it differs from worldwide accepted UI and didn’t acknowledge the automatic stop a user has to lower their head and push through in order to complete the deletion.
You guys know the fix is probably going to be a button in the same place that says “delete” and the warning popup won’t be changed, something like that will be the fix right? Like what degree of difference is there between what is there now and what you would consider a fix, less than 1%?
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The devs are aware of it and most likely they will change it soon.
Source Tech Forum.
Until then, just press ESC to quit the game, it’s no rocket science 
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And to those who say pay attention, read, and whatever. Dont forget there are players who play 20 hours and dont sleep. At that point you start working on auto pilot and intuition. And indeed, red x is close on a computer so intuition can lead to pressing that button.
Its the probably the worst issue with the interface. There are many, many things that should be fixed though. I think they should ditch the whole lobby and character selection screen and redo it entirely. While they are at it, drastically reduce system requirements as well. Its nice to be able to play on older systems using legacy graphics if needed. As it stands, the lobby seems to require more PC than the game itself though.
2 Likes
Yes, of course it’s a UI problem. Especially since you can usually buy back items sold. That’s just plain inconsistent.
However the cost of deleting a single item is far less than the cost of deleting an entire character. And reworking the entire shop UI in D2 would be a lot more work, which is also changing the base game that people are used to.
The intro screen is an entirely new interface made specifically for D2:R. Changing a single icon would save 90%, and making people type ‘DELETE’ would solve it for 100%.
I have already done so on these various threads ad nauseum.
During a multi hour session a red “X” has meant “close” every time the user has seen a dialog, and now on that one screen it suddenly means “permanently delete your character”.
The confirmation dialog is the same size, and has the exact same size and color text as the “confirm exit” dialog. Users have been conditioned to click through “exit” dialogs and have done so thousands of times.
Find me another example of another game with this many people accidentally deleting their character. The proof is in the pudding.
5 Likes
Change the 
into a trash can symbol, like the one in our post controls to delete a post.
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The fact that Diablo 2 original had you type in “DELETE” to delete your character was good and fine, and then for whatever reason D2R devs decided it’d be a good idea to change that.
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With waning respect, yes I did. It should be a trash icon. That’s what i’ve said all along.
1 Like