Why are people defending bethesdas incompetence

The same reason they defend Skyrim as an RPG.

There's nothing particularly new or surprising here. I knew the UI was going to be crappy when they first showed it at E3 about a year ago.

In order to fix the UI, they'd practically have to design a new one. Not many companies are willing to do something that extensive after a game's release. Even if it is a POS.

What's surprising is that they designed this so poorly to begin with.

Hence my theory about group think.

Enlighten me?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

I'm familiar with the phenomenon, I wonder what specifics you think apply in this case? In other words, what happened here?

Basically just that as work on the UI progressed, people were unwilling or unable to point out it's deficiencies. Which, of course, ultimately lead to a rather poor design reaching retail.

Comments about it's seemingly poor design started after they showed it at E3. There was still plenty of time to adjust or change it, but they didn't. It went right on through anyways.

Agreed.
And it's only limited to the Kinect? Disgusting, what happened to you Bethesda? Bought out by EA?

Kinect isn't sorting anything. All it does is pass a command on to the game... same as a keyboard or a controller.

And there were all the public statements about how spreadsheets were bad and they were going to design a UI that looked like it was made by Apple, which would have made it uncomfortable for anyone on the inside to point out the metaphorical Emperor's lack of cloths.

EDIT: But I am not sure I understand what the problem is for all you PC guys who can easily download a free Skyrim UI mod . .

You would think that. If that was true, though, then it's blatantly idiotic that they wouldn't pass this functionality along to the other platform, or at least to other xbox users.
The only possible reason that it's non-transferable is that it's somehow literally tied to the Kinect itself.

Which, even in that case is blatantly idiotic.
There's no good outcome for Bethesda on this one.

That certainly would have played into it, I would imagine.


I kind of explained this in a previous post. By using Kinect and voice commands, these changes can all happen in the background without any real changes to the UI. To allow others to sort without voice commands means that it has to be done with the controller or keyboard. To make that work would require significant changes to the UI. Something they apparently don't want to do.

I wonder if they will reverse course in a future game or just continue to blunder forward into the "streamline functionality away" direction?
One of the greatest masters of design of our time, Frank Lloyd Wright, said:

"Form must follow function."

The other possible reason is they just don't want to . . . that seems to be their reason for a lot of stuff.

As someone with a degree in Architecture, let's not go into that. The Form vs Function debate is still raging to this day in the field of architecture. I could easily counter your Frank Lloyd Wright with Le Corbusier's famous quote of "Less is more."

I agree with "less is more." I too have a degree in architecture.
I also agree with the maxim about "it's not when there's nothing left to add, but when there's nothing left to take away."

However, in my opinion, both of those assume you aren't sacrificing functionality in doing so.

I've settled on the opinion that a truly great design requires both form and function. If something does not adequately fulfill the purpose for which it was built, then there is a problem with the design, but it also needs to look good. If that makes sense.

I came to that conclusion after doing a case study on the Yale Art and Architecture building. The people that favored Form applauded it as iconic. The functionalists decried it as not working very well. Funny thing is they were both right.

These guys are so out of touch it's sickening. I hope they don't destroy their own creation through hubris.

i must say. that is so weak it hardly can be captured in words.

but i do appreciate you making it clear.

and fyi- no dlc money from me. i'm sure its trivial, but maybe if enough people don't buy it in protest of this sort of crap the loss will approach what m$ paid you to do this in the first place.

pretty much last straw for me.


++

As the conversation shifts to 'we wanted to make it like if apple designed an interface'

If somebody at Apple tried to get this interface through alpha testing they probably would have been fired on the spot. Or at the very least sent down a paygrade and 're-trained'

For all the slickness of Apple's interfaces the paramount features of them are usually:

1. Intuitive, generally makes good and consistent use of available controls
2. Efficient, both in displayed information and controls
3. Reliable, does not miss input events, is repeatable
4. Elegant, aesthetically pleasing and highlights IMPORTANT information

Skyrim meets _at best_ only the fourth criteria.

Less is more is more like less should unfold to more.

The second quote causes substance disorder, anorexic teens and movies of 2000s.

I understand the concept of this, I just don't understand why. Why is the UI so poorly designed that it takes a separate piece of hardware to sort out their inventory screens in the first place? That's just ... inadequate programming from concept day 1.

And that leads back to my thoughts on groupthink. Someone had an idea, it got pushed through, and no one was willing or able to stand up and tell them all what a bad idea it was. Probably the same reason they tried utilizing Radiant Story so heavily at first. Only there it eventually become so obvious that it wasn't going to work that they couldn't rationalize it anymore.

Who do you think is going to tell Todd Howard "NO"? No one that wants to keep their job.

If the person at the top doesn't want whatever changes is needed than it won't happen.