UI is a detriment to the game (User Interface)

PC General Discussion
1

I have played the Beta a fair amount so far and there is alot to say about many aspects of the game. Overall i am very positive, but i cannot understand what is going on with the UI (user interface).

At first it seemed they may have gone for an old school or classic look, but after looking at it a bit longer that doesn’t seem the case.

The UI feels cheap and doesn’t work well, functionalities that work well in other Blizzard games simply don’t in D4.

Social

  • no social tab in character select / menu, you can’t join party or communicate in menu
  • ingame social window is screen filling and has no direct functionality, it requires extra windows to do anything. Instead of having a ingame friendlist on the side, where you double click to whisper and right click for a drag down menu with invite etc. you get a pop-up.
  • whispering a friend is not possible while playing, you open a complete new social screen then click to get a window where you click whisper. Then you are able to type, but the full screen social tab is still open so you cannot see or interact with the game (pressing esc closes the whisper, not the social window).
  • profile window is just weird, it shows almost no relevant info like: level, abilities, paragon, records or achievements.
  • local player list is very intrusive, it shows Bnet ID and you whisper to eachothers Bnet application (like when you whisper a Bnet friend in other games).

Collections

  • no ‘search’ function
  • no ‘track’ function
  • feels clunky, hard to navigate, not intuitive
  • no link to the map or ingame: can’t navigate from the codex to the map to find a dungeon, or from collection to map to see related area’s.

Map

  • zoom function is nice and works well
  • filter options are nice
  • a ‘search’ function would be nice
  • Allow for a transparant overlay map toggle, atleast in dungeons. It is weird to play an aRPG without this funtion.

Character
First impression was oke, but after interacting with it ingame I see some glaring problems.

  • too big, it covers half the screen so you cant really do it in combat
  • overlaps other UI elements.
  • ‘Materials & Stats’ should atleast be ‘Stats & Materials’. But it should really be 2 seperate windows.
  • Stats window needs to be available ingame while playing. It is impossible to see the effect of item and ability interactions if you cannot see the stats window and fight at the same time.
  • There needs to be a way to save setups or gear sets. This game invites experimentation with gear, affixes, legendaries etc. It would be nice if the UI facilitates this a bit more.

Keybindings

  • we need more
    • more options
    • more customization
  • keybind option for stats window (and any other UI element)
  • allow scrollwheel up and down as keybinds (I can find something else for zooming, cause thats almost never used)
  • let me seperate move, force move, interact, attack, or combine as I see fit.

Conclusion and suggestion
After playing around with the UI to give some feedback, I am honestly indignant about how bad it is. I find it really hard to believe that this is the UI you made for the next-gen, ‘Blizzard-back-on-top’, ultimate version of Diablo… it makes no sense, sorry.

Hopefully this is just a UI for the Beta and on release there will be an actual PC UI. Because as far as I can see, the current UI is made for mobile or console.

As a suggestion I would point you to another Blizzard game: World of warcraft Dragonflight. Because it adresses most, if not all of the mentioned feedback.

  • every UI element is customizable in
    • Size
    • keybindings
    • place on screen
    • toggle of or on
  • Inventory system that would work way better, like bags for different item type that can be opened seperately (to save screen space during play)
  • achievement system
  • gear sets
  • friendlist

Just to be clear, this is not meant as a rant but as feedback. I have had a lot of fun in both Beta weekends so far and I will 100% be no-lifing this game on release. I love the gameplay, the feel, the sound, the combat. The itemization and endgame seem promising (too early to teel) and it will almost certainly be a great game. And that is why the UI must improve a lot, your game deserves it!

Sorry for the wall of text, I hope someone reads it.

15 Likes
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Fully agree, it lacks so many functionalities and in top of that is super intrusive, everything takes your entire screen.
The character sheet is the exception that “only” takes half your screen and still not enough because if you try to check your total stat tab while comparing two items you simply can’t because is entirely covered by the items tooltips.

Every element feels oversized playing on PC with your monitor right in front of you, clearly designed both in style and scale for couch gamers playing in a huge screen 3 meters away from them.

The only point that I would add to your suggestions would be to also review the “utility” binds (emotes, consumables, actions, etc) and give mouse/keyboard users the ability to change the controller wheel system to some extra bars exclusively for those same elements, and obviously improve the way you bind stuff to those bars to drag and drop for the love of god.

Currently when you get into the fullscreen list of stuff to bind to the wheel you have to click what you want once (aka press “A”) then put it in top of the slot you want and click again (another “A”) LOLW

And we haven’t even finished yet, after that you have to go to the fullscreen menu, go to keybinds and remember where the hell you dropped each thing to set the keybinds because you can’t do that in the same screen you drop stuff to the wheel… I guess there wasn’t enough room left in the customize wheel screen to include those keybinding options xDD but even if they did the whole thing would be the same painful, hard to watch, nonsense, time wasting mess for mouse/keyboard users.

Greetings mate.

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100% agree.

Please give us real PC user interface for the PC version of the game.

3 Likes
4

God please stop necroing old dead (for a reason) dumb threads.

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Care to give reason why it’s dumb idea to ask for appropriate interface, that is not a console port to PC without a second thought ?
The OP gave very valid arguments.
You just insult, but have nothing to say.

Thanks for the free bump though.

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Its subjective the interface is bad. If youre not incompetent it functions fine and looks decent and minimalistic, which some like.

Sorry you dont. Id suggest getting over it.

Go check the console forums. A lot want the pc setup.

This threads been dead a month… let it go.

There was no insult in my first response, but if youre so soft you thought there was, you should get off the internet… real life is going to be rough when you move out of your parents house and mommy doesnt shield you from everything.

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If that’s true, then it only confirms that this is not interface made for PC. An interface which is customized for PC would be very hard to use for consoles, thus there would be no demand for it from console players.

It’s a very high priced game, such thing as an proper interface with many customization options should be a matter of course. It shouldn’t really take much resources to do it.

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It works fine if your iq is higher than a bowl of jello. 100s of hours in the closed beta, 96 in the opens, i had no issues. Sounds like a you problem.

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Ok, that’s your opinion.
You probably didn’t play any PC-only ARPG with proper UI.
When I compare it with Last Epoch, for example, it is on a completely different level.

For me, it just looks like they did not put much work into it.

For example the emote wheel is clearly a controller thing. Sure, you can use controller with PC, but Diablo has been mouse+keyboard for like 95% of us from the beginning.

What triggers me the most is that instead of simple search function (for example in the skill tree) where you could type what you search for, you get some dumb buttons with pre-written phrases, that takes you more time to find the right one than it would take you to just type what you want to search for. Not even to mention the limitations of such search. I understand that for consoles, it is faster, but for PC, it’s a nonsense to have it this way.

Another dumb thing is that the character screen does not show advanced stats, they are hidden in the same place as ‘crafting materials’. We should be able to see those stats by default, on the main character screen, or at least be able to select such option.

Another one - having to scroll to see all stats of an item ? What the hell… that’s like for a mobile game. We should have an option to rescale the font size to fit in one screen when hovering mouse over an item that has so much stats they wouldn’t fit the screen with the regular font size.

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Ive been playing pc arpgs for over 30 years dude. Im guessing longer than youve been alive.

Youre entitled, and want everything super easy.

Its not bad. Its just not what YOU want.

Sorry buttercup. Whining here wont get you your way like it does with Mommy.

Get over it.

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Again, nothing but insults.
I’m 33 and highly doubt you are more than 20 years old, given your way of communication of some wannabe-cool-kid.
You are not able to put any arguments and I’m done with you. I just expressed my agreement with the OP, instead of creating a new thread with the same topic.

2 Likes
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Im blunt when it comes to ignorant and entitled people.

When you get older, youll probably tire of it too, but since you fit the category, you may not even see it. The entitlement and false sense of self importance of a 12 year old at 33. Sad. Bet that basement at moms is treating you quite well.

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I think its fine the way it is for a PC D3 user perspective

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The UI was designed solely with Consoles in mind. It is some trash mobile game UI that should never exist in a PC game. The fact they did it to cut costs on UI design is what infuriates me the most. No PC player could ever look at that crappy UI and think, “Yea, this is good”.

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Edit - damn you necro’d this post -.- either way, it’s a good post and I think it deserves another round of attention

This is the first UI thread I can actually get behind because instead of “hurr it made 4 console it bad” you’ve actually explained your reasoning behind everything. This is a great post and hopefully the feedback gets through to the dev team / are already working on some.

To me, the functionality of the inventory, ability bar, and tabs in the inventory worked well, but I didn’t really test some of the things in depth like you have.

I didn’t mess with the chat functionality too much as all of my communication were done on voice in discord, but these are some pretty eye-opening issues you’ve got there

I would like to see UI customization options but I don’t suspect we are going to get them, and if we do, I don’t suspect it will happen for a very long time, so personally, I’m okay with how the inventory and those main things you’d use functions.

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In regards to UI they should have copied 100% D2. Its 20 year old game that does it 20x better than whatever the intern came up for on D4

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No it’s not subjective, he literally just listed the reasons, and those are pretty common sense, in that we all agree reasons. The only thing that is incompetent, are your post responses.

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My pet peeve with the UI is that potion/emote wheel.

That thing needs a serious overhaul, would like a list of item icons that I can pick up and drag over to exact spot on wheel and -replace- the item/emote entirely instead of it then automatically shifting over to some other spot on my wheel.

The pages on the wheel are also awkward. Can we just summon the wheel using a hotkey for exact page we want, then add icons to it as above, rather than go through a menu to get to a page of this wheel?

3 Likes
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Lol coming from you, this means nothing. I dont even kniw why youre not ignored with the garbage you come up with. Fixed.

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Steven, this is your dad. Quit trying to bully people and get off the Internet. And go wash your dirty laundry.