Beyond having the UI be a smooth experience, the UI should be the major step for the game to be more accessible to new players.
Notices are a big part on helping players understand whats going on, either for new players or new features. Here are a few examples. If you put your mats on a grinder or crusher and extract you are given a timer below your mana bar, this timer will depend on the quantities you put inside the grinder. This means you might have to wait 1 or 2 minutes and if you remain in place things will eventually drop in your inventory, if not they will appear in a bag next to the grinder. If a new player uses all his extract mats on a single go for the first time he is left with the feeling 'did I just loose my items? I received nothing back' and its just the icon is too tiny to notice. Or in the case you pick up/buy/are given too many things , you can't move other then rotate and as a new player you think you're bugged, you're stuck and this can seem obvious but it's not for a new player. What's missing? a simple notice telling the player the grinder is processing the materials like' items are being extracted'. That will instictly make you search for a timer somewhere and at least let's you know you're waiting for something or a 'you're overcumbered' notice on the 2nd case.
A lot of small UI things like this are lacking and can make the game more acessible but not any less hard or complex. And no, leaving this text in chat is not a better solution, chat is random and could easily be overcumbered by users and the important notice be overlooked or not seen at all. So I'm of the personal opinion, even those notices we already have on chat should be moved either to a different window, to the top of the screen, right of the player health bar(looks the most clear but discreet to me) or both and leave just the most important notices to pop up on screen and also on a notice UI-board.
If the UI informs you on things that already happened like 'you're overcumbered', 'you're bleeding', 'you're poisoned (without saying which poison)',etc the understanding of the game mechanics that a lot of new players are unaware of can become more acessible for players who would have to go through that experience to get the knowledge anyway but the UI won't allow them to feel so lost as what's going on and what's causing it. If devs are taking this into consideration everytime, that would make a giant diference for new players or when new features are added, it's a giant upgrade on acessibility, without making nothing easier.
It is also important to work on bugs, for example: how when you close main menu you get stuck on hotbar menu everytime or how split stack doesn't have a close button and if you're inventory shows up low on screen and the item is low too so the split stack menu remains there even after you close you inventory until you log out. And many other bugs players have reported.
Please feel free to leave your sugestions to improve UI, acessibility through UI improvements without changing the dificulty of the game and also report other UI bugs that aren't usually considered bugs, maybe just bad UI design (with pictures if possible).
Notices are a big part on helping players understand whats going on, either for new players or new features. Here are a few examples. If you put your mats on a grinder or crusher and extract you are given a timer below your mana bar, this timer will depend on the quantities you put inside the grinder. This means you might have to wait 1 or 2 minutes and if you remain in place things will eventually drop in your inventory, if not they will appear in a bag next to the grinder. If a new player uses all his extract mats on a single go for the first time he is left with the feeling 'did I just loose my items? I received nothing back' and its just the icon is too tiny to notice. Or in the case you pick up/buy/are given too many things , you can't move other then rotate and as a new player you think you're bugged, you're stuck and this can seem obvious but it's not for a new player. What's missing? a simple notice telling the player the grinder is processing the materials like' items are being extracted'. That will instictly make you search for a timer somewhere and at least let's you know you're waiting for something or a 'you're overcumbered' notice on the 2nd case.
A lot of small UI things like this are lacking and can make the game more acessible but not any less hard or complex. And no, leaving this text in chat is not a better solution, chat is random and could easily be overcumbered by users and the important notice be overlooked or not seen at all. So I'm of the personal opinion, even those notices we already have on chat should be moved either to a different window, to the top of the screen, right of the player health bar(looks the most clear but discreet to me) or both and leave just the most important notices to pop up on screen and also on a notice UI-board.
If the UI informs you on things that already happened like 'you're overcumbered', 'you're bleeding', 'you're poisoned (without saying which poison)',etc the understanding of the game mechanics that a lot of new players are unaware of can become more acessible for players who would have to go through that experience to get the knowledge anyway but the UI won't allow them to feel so lost as what's going on and what's causing it. If devs are taking this into consideration everytime, that would make a giant diference for new players or when new features are added, it's a giant upgrade on acessibility, without making nothing easier.
It is also important to work on bugs, for example: how when you close main menu you get stuck on hotbar menu everytime or how split stack doesn't have a close button and if you're inventory shows up low on screen and the item is low too so the split stack menu remains there even after you close you inventory until you log out. And many other bugs players have reported.
Please feel free to leave your sugestions to improve UI, acessibility through UI improvements without changing the dificulty of the game and also report other UI bugs that aren't usually considered bugs, maybe just bad UI design (with pictures if possible).
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