The great Blizzard UIs of the past were all designed to look like a physical interface. Weighty buttons, visual depth, stone/wood/metal textures, satisfying clicks and thumps. This UI looks like it’s from a dime a dozen app store game. This follows through right down to the floating combat text “DODGE!” “STUNNED!” “IMMOBILIZED!” DPS numbers popping up all over the screen. Diablo and Diablo 2 managed to give us detailed combat without the need for these ridiculous things. The game looks infinitely better when they turn off the UI.
Why? Why why why? Flashy bright blue and red outlined circles all over the ground to give us an obvious warning about the affix instead of making us read the enemy. If you want us to realize we’re dodging, make a dodge animation! If you want us to look out for a fireball, make the enemy wind up and force us to watch the direction they’re firing. This is all soooo lazy. We actually have brains! You’re making combat details blatantly obvious and impossible to miss. They’re being screamed at us through words instead of actually expecting us to watch what the characters are doing. It’s just a bunch of theatrics that are completely unnecessary and feel like they’re there to conceal the lack of actual combat details and depth, to ensure little Jaxon (age 7) sees enough he likes to make mom buy Diablo 4.
When I see this stuff, it reminds me of Diablo 3. When I’m reminded of Diablo 3, I’m instantly skeptical. I like some of their directions for this game, like art and world, but the UI and monster spells are so terrible. Absolutely terrible. I can’t say it enough. Spinning trap retextured to lighting spitting out of enemies? Really? The enemy becomes the thing he spit out on the ground. Why is it still screaming phone game/D3? I realize it’s far from release but I think they need this feedback.
It looks like it fits the world. I thought you guys were totally into this immersion thing. A UI that looks like an actual interface you have press, as if you are not you character, but rather, a godlike person controlling said character seems totally immersion breaking.
Snark aside, I think D4s UI is one of their slickest. Easy to read, clean, no bloat, and nothing confusing or distracting.
YEah no. Make me believe I’m in the world by making the interface match the contents of the world. Consistency and the sorts. The words and dps numbers all over the screen? Really?
There never was anything confusing or distracting (actually countdown timers were always distracting and they’re still here in spades) in Diablo UI. I don’t want a slick, clean Diablo UI. I want a rugged, medievil look that fits what I’m seeing on screen. I would expect slick and clean in a jrpg
I’m with Beefhammer here. I want my UI to be as minimalist as possible while being highly functional. I hate when my UI is full of distractions like sound effects, or a bunch of art. To me a successful UI is one that just seems to vanish while playing, and that never takes my focus away from the game.
Sleek, smooth, and unobtrusive.
Now as far as the text, flashing, numbers flying, etc., I agree, they are trash. We absolutely need the ability to toggle those.
There are a few reasons for this to appear that way;
flashy because visibility and readability of the area, some D3 bosses and I think elites too have tighter intervals on abilities the less health they have (I admit D3’s visuals lacking contrast heavily and I hope that doesn’t repeat at D4)
attacks has a visible wind up indicator because per tick damage (quarter-half second) is high, even if you act a second late you’ll get punished for it.
attacks coming from vertical dimension in which impossible to see in an isometric ARPG
if enemies were to attack you from a visible level, their animations have to reflect that for you to read it and dodge a highly punishing attack; in the process enemies get pinned for showing visual cues, indicators allow game to skip that phase
This is just outright horrible. Opacity is fine but brightness is at the top, something is off. They need to use more mute colors for contrast, not brighten the hue.
In regards to the UI, I personally liked some of D3’s earlier Hotbars a lot
Here is a Hotbar Concept from me (edited with Photoshop) with 7 Skills, 3 Health Potion Charges, Stamina for Sprint/Dodgerolls/Sidesteps and other buttons located to the side of the Hotbar:
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I also think it would be cool to use some of the old D2 skill icons for D4 and recolor them a bit, maybe a bit like this:
I agree with that. It is just waaay to bright and flashy.
If I had a choice in the art direction, I would not let have D3, D4, and D2 have any of these Neon Lights (especially on spell effects), which is what makes them so bright and shiny.
If they reduce the brightness and replace the neon lights, then the saturation of the colors can actually be slightly increased.
The upper images are my edits with 20% reduced brightness and 20% increased color saturation, while the images at the bottom are the originals.
And D4 is even significantly much more bright and also has much more desaturated colors than D2.
That action bar actually reminds me more of how torchlight1 & 2 looks like, equipping scrolls in the action bar and press tab to switch between primary and secondary right click.
It seems to me that early D3 development had already taken influence from torchlight since torchlight released before D3, but they decided to dumb down the action bar in D3 for whatever reason.
I would say that is not a good comparison. The only thing that TL2’s Hotbar and my concept have in common is that there are more slots available for skills than just 6 slots.
TL2’s Hotbar is also very, very basic, without much any fancy ornate things.
However, some of the original versions of D3’s Hotbar that were in the game, actually had things like slots for scrolls and other utility stuff, like this Hotbar here (but that was an official Blizzard work, not something I did ):
Take a closer look at the tab button on your screenshot (Diablo 3 hotbar early development) and in torchlights 2 video how the farthest 2 spells swap between each other.
I played torchlight 1 and it looks like the same concept.
If you notice the arrows in between of “RMB” and "Tab "D3 early screenshot, I just pressed the tab key in TL1 to toggle those two as my right click.
Yeah, thats exactly what I mean, early development D3.
Here is a Torchlight 1 video with the hotbar as comparison.
Sorry, I was drinking and ranting when I made this post lmao. I’m mostly just not a fan of the ultra clean look and the fonts, picky yes but I care about these details. Words and dps numbers popping up all over the screen instead of making us analyze actual actions all come together to remind me of D3 and Warcraft. Neon perfect circles on the ground aren’t very natural looking either. I know it’ll probably resemble the early games by launch but I really want them to know people care
Look D3 isn’t a Batman and Robin TV Show where you have Zonk or Pow. Even PoE has ground effects that you have to get out of in order to not take damage from them.
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