PTS Update 46 - Feedback Thread for UI Modernization

Maxxermax · April 15

In the console versions and on PC, the gamepad UI is already flat. For the PC version, you can get an add-on to make it flat as well. There's no reason to make it flat natively.
I'm skeptical of the proposals to have a "legacy UI" option, because "legacy" things are generally no longer being reworked and are left behind.
...Or you have to get an addon to make it fancy again... Really?

meekmiko · April 15

Echoing the sentiments here. The new UI is extremely bad. The hard edges are hideous.

I saw someone say it looks like Bandits UI, but I've used Bandits UI for YEARS and can definitely say it doesn't. This is BAD.
Do NOT let it make it to live. (especially without it being optional!)

While on the topic of the UI.. WHY does every single type of mount now need its own tab?? It was fine with Equines, Felines, Canines, Camelids, Ursine, Bipedal, Heavy-Weights, etc, etc. Now there's just a jumbo cluttered unorganized list of everything what a mess.

Who was asking for the UI to be modernized??

Maxxermax · April 15

meekmiko wrote: »

...
While on the topic of the UI.. WHY does every single type of mount now need its own tab?? It was fine with Equines, Felines, Canines, Camelids, Ursine, Bipedal, Heavy-Weights, etc, etc. Now there's just a jumbo cluttered unorganized list of everything what a mess.

Who was asking for the UI to be modernized??

^^This.
... and a separate tab for Brekkas ... how many Brekkas are you guys planning to release?

Ezhh · April 15

Just to echo that splitting the mounts so much feels needless. I doubt your average player has so many mounts that this was necessary. I have a lot, and even I'm finding I have lots of categories with just a couple in. It makes it slower and more annoying to browse through to find the ones I want. The ability to select favorites already removed problems I had with categories where I did have a lot of mounts.

For the UI, to give specific feedback - the hard lines are just really unpleasant to me. I might appreciate this in a work-related app since usually such designs are minimalistic and space saving, but I compared to live and it's not even saving any space. The hard line to the left of various interfaces is especially annoying. I find the new resource bars kind of unpleasant as well. They simply don't fit well for me and I'm struggling more to tell when I have a shield up.

ADarklore · April 15

Honestly... I'm not sure why ZOS sometimes insists on fixing things that aren't broken. I don't believe I've ever heard a word from people complaining about the PC UI and if we did, there are Addons that give us this look already. Clearly, this should come with a toggle so that people can turn it off that don't want the 'modern' look and that will probably conflict with existing addon UI's that do it better anyway.

tsaescishoeshiner · April 15

Enemy and boss health bars look terrible and way too clean. They don't blend in with the world as well. They look more like an overlay to me, a computer element covering the world. They're just as easy to read, it's just an aesthetic issue.

Menus and similar UI elements are fine and I could get used to it.

Aesthetically, the new UI is very impersonal and clinical. I liked the slightly warmer UI, especially for a fantasy game.

Tommy_The_Gun · April 15

- Do you have any general feedback on the UI updates for PC?
Yes. When I 1st saw this interface, at 1st I thought it is a bug and something did not load properly. But once I realised that it is apparently new interface, I started to look for an option to switch back to previous one... but there is no such option.

The new UI is just um... ugly. It has same functionality as previous one, but it feels like a generic UI bought from a asset store. Like for example, every game made in Unreal or Unity has this interface by default. It is the impression I am getting.

Current UI has certain mood & feel to it. The new UI simply does not fit. Why it needs "Modernization" to begin with ? ESO is not modern. It is not Windows 8 or 10 or 11 or something that needs to follow trends. ESO is a medieval fantasy. If something, UI should be stylized, like it is now on live. The new UI looks like some kind of add-on that a min-maxer E-sport player would use for max frame rate / low latency or something.

So um...
Please, give us an option to still use older interface. It is way better.

- Any issues with broken, missing, outdated, or generally weird looking art assets
Yes, I had a weird issue with Golden Pursuit missing an option to "claim" rewards. UI simply kinda hanged & I had to change zones & it fixed the issue, but I know it is something unintended

colossalvoids · April 15

The same mistake a lot of companies doing nowadays "modernising" their UI's/UX but in actuality neutralising their style and responsiveness to the current standard that would be not up to the new standard in a year or even faster. It's bad, honestly. There was no point when it was needed by the community or asked for. There are add-on's for this exact thing, people would customise such a thing if that's an issue right away, there are already such options available. There's no need to force everything into this.

Syldras · April 15

colossalvoids wrote: »

The same mistake a lot of companies doing nowadays "modernising" their UI's/UX but in actuality neutralising their style and responsiveness to the current standard that would be not up to the new standard in a year or even faster.

The sad thing is that I often get the impression that ESO gets new features or changes because "the others have that now, so we need it too". Where's the artistic vision? The TES singleplayer games were successful not because they copied popular concepts, but because they gave us something extraordinary.

Aylish · April 15

I dislike the new UI. I loved this washed vintage styled borders from before.

The new frames look just like someone couldn‘t find or code a good transition between „here is menu“ and „here is no menu“ because there now is nothing for this transition zone on the screen. The washed edges before made the menus look like everything fitted well together - game and hud.

Everyone who prefers clean edges was always free to mod it via addons like Bandits or Dark UI.

Revert it back please. It is just not pretty.

DerAlleinTiger · April 15

I'm so glad to see that most people seem to be against the UI... "modernization" (implying the old one, I don't know, didn't function anymore or something because it actually had style and a design that wasn't ripped straight out of the Windows file browser or something?) and at least want an option to switch back. When I saw the health bars on the stream I thought "Maybe that's just their internal UI elements being funky, or a rough alpha design, or something." When I saw the actual PTS UI it really made me wonder "Who actually asked for this?"

I know it's probably futile hope, but I pray that ZOS actually listens to PTS feedback on this and gives us an option for this, if not reverts it. I don't care if the legacy version gets "left behind." I would rather be left behind than use this hideous excuse for a user interface. It's genuinely that unpleasant to look at and use.

Aylish · April 15

Sometimes it looks like (at least to me) that ZOS‘ future plans are 80% „What does an addon do already? Ok, let‘s make this one vanilla and sell it as cool new feature“.

We simply don‘t NEED clean UI from basegame. There are plenty addons for those who want it.
I was even sad that some years ago Srendarr got rid of the vintage frames for buff icons.

A switch for „using old UI skin“ sounds good though. I would accept the new skin if I‘m gonna be able to go back to the old one instead.

Vylaera · April 15

I love the rustic look of the old UI, the smoky black backgrounds, the rustic gold borders. The new UI looks like a prototype or something out of a mobile game. No shade to the artists, it's not bad in the sense it's low quality, it's bad in the sense it doesn't match the game and is a downgrade to what we had before. It lacks the soul and coziness the old UI had.

Also the old UI wasn't "dated", in the sense that the individual elements were bad, it was "dated" in the sense the layout was antiquated. They could keep the element design and refresh the UI layout if they're antsy to freshen up the interface.

I really hope they revert the UI changes, I'm really not a fan of the way it looks.

Razmirra · April 16

Having seen screenshots from guildmates of the new UI, I don't like it at all. Too chunky and blocky. I prefer the old UI over seeing this..

Waillyam23 · April 16

For comparison purposes (LIVE / PTS) :

daim · April 16

When I started reading the thread I thought that people were complaining for nothing but seeing the screen captures above I must admit that looks really boring.

That's not UI modernization - That is giving an engineer access to photoshop... no soul.

It reminds me of something...
BOSS: Guys! Lets do new awesome UI!
AD: Yes! Finally! I've some great ideas that I've been thinking for a long while. We could do....
BOSS: You got until end of the day.
AD: **** it. I'll just draw some black boxes and be done with it.

Waillyam23 · April 16

And now my critics :

for the live UI :

The ocasional dark spots in textures that "breaks" the continuity of the border/separators (more striking in greyscale). This issue I have was somewhat answered by the PTS UI but at a great loss (texture).
The imbalance on the UI backgrounds.
There is a lot of "dead space" that could be used to show more items/quests/collectibles/... .

for the PTS UI :

The transition between the flat texture and the gradient is so off-putting, the more I look at it the more I'm having the impression of a prepetual motion blurr ＞﹏＜
The imbalance on the UI background is still there.
There is still a weirdly shaped and placed texture under the menus.
We completely lost the textures on the background and the borders/separators. Yes it solved the problem with them not being particularly pleasing to the eye but we lost the grit in the UI that says "this is an elder scrolls game".
A middle-ground should exist between this:

and that:

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · April 16

The new hard edges on the UI honestly looks terrible and is a complete downgrade. I actually thought it was a graphical bug as it looks like it's just been cut and paste in without any blending. Just make it an option if you really want this work to be included.

ExtraPenguin · April 16

I echo many of the sentiments others have shared. The one thing I don’t see mentioned is that the text is oddly sharp / high contrast. I scale my UI to ease eye strain, so that might be related. I thought my Brightness was set wrong, but nope, it’s the default. The text isn’t unreadable. It just looks wrong.

SundarahFr3akinrican · April 16

I very much agree that this looks like a Microsoft Office UI update. I think the ESO UI should have a rustic aesthetic instead of a clean bright Cyberpunk system UI.

I do like how you can see crit chance percentages and what not now. I enjoy the more information we can get. But visually, while clean and easy on the eyes, it just doesnt match the games aesthetic.

Syldras · April 16

Waillyam23 wrote: »

[*] The ocasional dark spots in textures that "breaks" the continuity of the border/separators (more striking in greyscale). This issue I have was somewhat answered by the PTS UI.

[*] The imbalance on the UI backgrounds.

I don't see how this is an "issue". It's rather clear it was intentional for a rustic/aged/historical look and the "breaks" and slightly uneven lines are made to emulate the uneven ink flow that you have while drawing/writing by hand, and color abrasion that naturally happens over the years. I find that very fitting for a medieval fantasy game. Actually I even found the old look a bit too "modern" in the beginning, they could have made even more of the theme.

tomofhyrule · April 16

Waillyam23 wrote: »

And now my critics :

for the live UI :
The ocasional dark spots in textures that "breaks" the continuity of the border/separators (more striking in greyscale). This issue I have was somewhat answered by the PTS UI.

The imbalance on the UI backgrounds.

I wouldn't even call these "breaks" or "imbalances." It gave the whole thing an aged parchment feel, which fit very nicely with the medieval-ish fantasy artstyle of the game.

Look at the other games in the series:

Morrowind had hard lines, but bordered. The UI borders were textured though.
Oblivion definitely kept the textured borders, and added the subtle parchment-like texture to the UI as well.
Skyrim was the one that went for a more sterile UI, but even though the borders weren't textured, they did add knotwork to a lot of them. (I know I instantly downloaded a mod to change that font to match the world though)

ESO's had the UI it has for 11 years. At this point, changing it this drastically makes it seem like they're trying to 'rebrand' ESO as a "modern" thing instead of what it was.

Let people download Bandit's UI if they want. But a lot of people like the rustic look ESO has now.

Waillyam23 · April 16

Syldras wrote: »

I don't see how this is an "issue". It's rather clear it was intentional for a rustic/aged/historical look and the "breaks" and slightly uneven lines are made to emulate the uneven ink flow that you have while drawing/writing by hand, and color abrasion that naturally happens over the years. I find that very fitting for a medieval fantasy game. Actually I even found the old look a bit too "modern" in the beginning, they could have made even more of the theme.

I agree with you on the intention, but (it might be my ADHD speaking) the issue I have is that I often see that the contents of the menus are not respecting boundaries.

I'm favorable to the misty and rustic/aged textures but I think the shapes of the menus and borders will gain to be better defined.

Andarnor · April 16

I don't like the new UI. It,s way to angular and seems to be a ugly black box. It's not modern, it's comic style and doesn't fit to the game in my opinion.

The old Ui was more flowing, not so sharply cut off and overall seemed more coherent, not perfect, but wayyyyy better than the new one

sarahthes · April 16

I really like the UI. I'm a bit older and I find it easier to read. It also does look more professional/modern to me compared to the Ren Faire style currently on live.

DerAlleinTiger · April 16

sarahthes wrote: »

I really like the UI. I'm a bit older and I find it easier to read. It also does look more professional/modern to me compared to the Ren Faire style currently on live.

Funnily enough, the older I get the harder it is for me to read these "modern" UI's that are so sharply contrasted that they actually start to strain my eyes.

Also, why do you want a hobby game set in a high fantasy Medieval-esque universe to be "professional/modern"? That sounds so counter-intuitive to me. My actual work app has several times more character and style than this new UI.

But this is why I say make this an 'accessibility' feature for people who find it easier to use, but don't force this on all of us who actually get more eye-strain from it (and also like our videogames to have a bit more character than the Windows start menu).

DerAlleinTiger · April 16

Syldras wrote: »

I don't see how this is an "issue". It's rather clear it was intentional for a rustic/aged/historical look and the "breaks" and slightly uneven lines are made to emulate the uneven ink flow that you have while drawing/writing by hand, and color abrasion that naturally happens over the years. I find that very fitting for a medieval fantasy game. Actually I even found the old look a bit too "modern" in the beginning, they could have made even more of the theme.

Yeah, I'm kind of with you on that one. I don't see those as issues. I've actually come to adore those little 'imperfections' in the UI. Not sure what it is, but seeing them just grounds me into the game a bit more.

phantasmalD · April 16

I like the flat colored resource bars, but that's all. The blotchy, artsy borders on live are more stylish and have more character than these clear cute lines.

IncultaWolf · April 16

Soulless modern UI

I don't like it very much. Can only hope they make it optional

Ragnarok0130 · April 16

SundarahFr3akinrican wrote: »

I very much agree that this looks like a Microsoft Office UI update. I think the ESO UI should have a rustic aesthetic instead of a clean bright Cyberpunk system UI.

I do like how you can see crit chance percentages and what not now. I enjoy the more information we can get. But visually, while clean and easy on the eyes, it just doesnt match the games aesthetic.

This is the perfect comparison! I wonder if they’re using some MS UI people to “freshen up” the UI that didn’t need to be updated as part of a revamp of the game.