Maybe someone can convince me otherwise, but the D4 Interface is absolutely dreadful. It’s cluttering the screen, has no customization, lacks consistency in placements with at times duplicate stuff all over the place… I don’t even get how you can get something like that.
What’s wrong? Here is my list.
Character selection/creation:
- The bars at the top and bottom cover a lot of the screen, while adding little value. At max zoom, some characters still don’t fit in completely. The play button at top does nothing. The menu information could be placed on the side like the news feed, or the bars could be transparent.
- The Character menü and the world tier selection cover roughly half of the screen/background image. What’s the point of the little wolf on the druid screen, if it’s covered by the world tier menü?
- There’s a lot of wasted space between the level/class icon on the left, the character portrait (why is that even needed if the character is right in the middle?), and a lot of empty space next to the character name.
- When creation a new character, you have the escape button at the bottom bar, and a return button top right. Similarily, when customizing your character, you have a return button top right, and a back button on the menu, but no more bottom bar, yay. The back button at the top right sadly is missing from the class selection.
- The Name (Required) field is kind of lost between the game modes and the start game button, while the finalize button does nothing.
- Fun fact: When on the gameplay option screen, the “next”-button disappears, but you can still click it to get to the first option.
- Personally, i don’t like by character displaced to the right instead of centered due to the sheer size of the options window.
Ingame GUI:
- No customization, not even moveable parts. I like my chat bottom left, and my minimap buttom right. I’d also like to remove the display of the keybinds.
- No persistent information on how to access: Skill Assignment, Talent Trees, Character sheet, Inventory, Specialization windows. That’s horrible.
Map Menu:
- Escape closes the map, yet going by the top bar it should open the game menu.
- No consistency in what’s displayed on the bottom bar (e.g, "Esc - Close)
- If you track a quest from the Journal, the selection ring could get a ping-effect. It’s hard to notice.
- Region Progress: Triple redundancy of Close, X, and Escape.
- Region Progress: What happened with the top and bottom bars?
- Codex of Power: has a unnecessarily large bar below the book icon and the tab selection.
- Codex of Power: lacks a keyword search similar to the talent tree.
- Codex of Power: Icons feel pointless, as they are shared within a category. In D3, each legendary power had a unique icon due to it’s item.
- Codex of Power: Why does the “show my class only” checkmark need it’s own row, instead of being placed next to the types?
- Codex of Power: The types icons are small, and could use a mouse over tooltip.
- Challenges: No Seach
- Challenges: The completion mark/date feels misplaced
- Challenges: A “has reward” filter would be nice.
- Social: … → request trade → “this player is to far away”. That optiononly clutters the menu here. If the player has to be next to me, i can go “e” to interact and trade, which is more intuitive.
- Social: View profile is minimalistic compared to D3, which showed builds. It’s also rather hard
- Social: Clicking on my character should immediately open the profile, with the status-display present there.
- Social: When clicking options on my own profile, i can… … invite myself to a party/clan, add myself as a friend, trade with myself, block and report myself, and the best, view my own profile. That button shouldn’t exist.
- Clan: Clans seem to lack features. The only notable information on this panel is the newsfeed, which is unuseable due to the sheer number of entries. The roster information can also be accessed on the social menu.
- Clan: On the same note, no clan chat log…
- Clan: When viewing profiles from the clan list, the profile window is clipping behind the top bar
Inventory:
- Why are Material&Stats combined?
- I won’t pvp, i don’t need Red Dust displayed at the bottom.
- Sort: What does the sort button sort after?
- Item Tooltip: I’ll just point to this reddit thread for better readability https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/11wogm7/my_take_on_a_potential_diablo_4_ui_change/
- Material&Stats: Window slightly covers the level information
- Material&Stats: The currencies are listed under stats, instead of materials, while also being redundant since they’re displayed at the bottom of the inventory.
- Material&Stats: Core Stats are redundant, they’re directly to the right.
- Material&Stats: Why aren’t materials simple an extra tap next to aspects? Is the need for the item name display that important?
Specializations
- Specializations (Rogue): Double text of “specializations” at the top.
- Enchantments: For whatever reason these seem to be accessed via the skill assignment window, while all other class mechanics are accesed via the character menu.
- Book of the Dead: In town the ability panel should open on the left. Instead of closing the selected summon window, you can then easily swap by just clicking on the next.
- Book of the Dead: Icons for the different effects would be nice.
Skill Tree
- In general, the tree layout has a lot of empty space, while taking up a lot of space.
- There is so much space, yet at the same time the available point display feels out of place. E.g. the available point display from the 2019 tree (which i can’t link) looked much better. Well, the whole tree was more to my liking because it fit in one screen.
- The whole tree feels like the background design dictated the form of the tree. Instead of practicability. A more simplistic, condensed view would be better. (e.g.
- The gold display adds little value, and could the placed next to the single point refund cost.
Blacksmith
- The spacing between the line of “Salvage by item quality” and the line above it is kind of non-existant.
- The salvage buttons take up a lot of space, compared to the simple approach of D3.
- Salvage and Repair could be one tab, as half the repair tab is empty.
- The cost indicator for upgrades is pretty small at the bottom of the tree. Ideally it should be between input and outcome. Required vs. available mats display is unclear (why not used/available format for mats AND gold)
Alchemist/Jeweler
- Mayve add a craft all button to the elixiers/materials/gems window
Occultist
- Clicking on the Codex opens the codex, clicking on aspect should open the aspect tab.
- Same story as with blacksmith, the cost feels out of place.