I feel half blind using this interface, or like I'm trying to read a book by scrolling through each letter individually. I can't see the information about my character's status, stats, or gear at a glance. I have to look in a dozen places, one at a time, and cobble together the information in memory.

This is the opposite of what a user interface is for! It's like we're back in the dark ages of white-on-black text-only games. I can't wait for the UI overhaul mods.

Just saw this on Reddit and someone was nice enough to link back here. Thanks for concisely showing how horrible the UI is. Who will be the mod team to now take up the cause of saving the PC gamers from this mess?

The fact that you refer to UI space as "screen real-estate" is the most amusing part of the topic (and the only one I paid any serious attention to, sorry) :')

Think it's miles ahead of the extremely tacky Oblivion UI, at least this looks clean and the colors are not intrusive. And there's hot keys!

Google "Darnified UI" for Oblivion and have a look.

The author, DarN, is in the mod forums here and he and others are working on it. My impression is that he feels the same way about the UI the author of this thread does, but we'll have to wait and see. Hopefully *configurablilty* will be the watchword.

Edit: I forgot the link to http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1267229-modding-the-gui/

What's funny about that?


Oh it's pretty. But it's not very useful. I walked around for ages thinking I had a helmet on when it had been removed when I put on a circlet. They weren't both on-screen in the scroll list when I picked the circlet, so I didn't notice (could not have noticed!) the helmet being unequipped. It's fine that they take up the same head slot, but learning it hours later when I discovered I was under-armoured is bad. A total lack of feedback counts as a UX design failure. What's even worse is a partial lack of feedback that varies depending on whether the names of the items are alphabetically close! This is not how to design a UI or UX.

It's usable but awful.

My main concern with is how terribly the mouse interacts with the overall functionality of the UI. I'll have stuff in a larger font that isn't even selected, upon clicking an item (such as a note or book) the menu will then attempt to act like a controller until you make the menu the active window to allow for some more awkward mouse scrolling, and, is it just me, or is the contrast between highlighted and highlighted text items pretty hard to make out?

Morrowind's interface would be perfect. Even Oblivion's interface is way more organized and easy to use than the mess Bethesda called UI in Skyrim.

The image in OP is almost a perfect description of what's wrong with the UI. The only thing's I'd add would be:

1. The column of items should display, and sort by, weight and value as well, so that you don't have to scroll through every item to find the heaviest one or the one with the worst weight to value ratio.
2. When pressing tab, the items button is on the right, but clicking it brings up a menu on the left, and with magic it's the other way around. Unintuitive and adds unnecessary mouse movement.

It is absolutely mind boggling that a game of such high quality has such a poorly designed UI. It is beyond bad. I appreciate the OP. Good effort and good points raised.

Skyrim's UI looks like crap straight out of Google's new themes: waste of screen estate, insufficient UI element/selection differentiation, bland, dull look, and stupid decisions overall.

I'll celebrate the day hipster designers get over this margin and blandness fad.

I'm rather excited to hear that Darn is involved. I loved what he did to Oblivion's menu system; I'm not sure what sort of approach he'll take here, but I'm sure it'll be a vast improvement.

It saddens me that DarN has to get involved yet again to fix the interface. It's one thing if he enjoys it but I have to believe he does this out of expectancy at this point because it's unlikely that Bethesda will undertake something as drastic as changing the UI post-release.

Grats and yeah, that article sums up most of my feelings about the UI pretty well.

That don't work and can actually break the game. Have you played the game on PC using mouse + keyboard? I guess the UI is personal pref, but it's kinda hard to argue this is far from optimized or optimal for a M+K setup.

I agree with those who say that the interface is obviously designed with a controller in mind. The lack of any UI elements that typically work well with a mouse (dragging and dropping, tabs, movable/resizable elements and more) suggests that the humble PC mouse was not even a consideration in this design - at all.

However, I also think the interface is bad design even when you do use a controller. This is because many of its most crucial design flaws are related to poor usage of real-estate. That's a universal flaw - it uses space badly, no matter what input device you're using.

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I agree; almost totally. As to the occasional objection that the game would have bits that look like a spreadsheet - that's why spreadsheets look like they do, and changing it to give it a different feel is like publishing a book for English-speakers in Chinese simply because the plot is set in China.
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However, the Morrowind menus were also very bad because no words were displayed to describe inventory items - only tiny little itty-bitty icons some of which were almost impossible to differentiate visually unless you had very strong eyes and visual acuity to match. Having said this, double-spacing is for paper copy so that corrections and comments can be made. It is a drafting tool and has nothing to do with gaming and should be the first thing to go. Secondly, if memory serves me, the international standard for accessible font size is 14 points, not 48 points. Many of the younger generation like to view things in 8 point fonts. Hint: Font sizes should be adjustable - and all functions including secondary functions such as "Take All" should be bindable to alternative keys.
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The biggest blunder, by far, is the fact that different keys are used for the same action in different contexts. Go to a chest and remove some items. Then go to another chest and try to put some books away (and save the game first!). What happens is that you are more likely to try to transfer the book in your inventory the same way you just transferred the gear to your inventory. The book opens because you have to use the "R" key to transfer items in your inventory and the "E" key to transfer items in a container. But wait, it gets better! Now, because you opened the book from your inventory, you can't close it or put it away (unless you've read the instruction booklet – which you should never have to do for a game in a series and you are already familiar with that series). "[TAB] to put the book down" needs to go at the bottom of the screen with the other navigation indicators (such as M2 and M1 for forward and back).
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[Lot's of words considered "offensive" because of their "foreign" or class roots] - followed by an assortment of exclamation and question marks!
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Now for something more constructive. I'd like to see equipped gear grouped together first, followed by any unequipped favourites, then all unequipped quest items - and then other items grouped by classification. I'd also like to see the transfer or sale of favourites disabled (until they are "unfavourited" - and while people are at it, "defavourite" is a more likely construction given the active context in which the word is coined). I'd also like to see item stats listed in sortable columns to the right, instead of popup tooltips. The inventory also needs a "transfer all" for each of the item classes (e.g. "Transfer all weapons", transfer all apparel" etc.) wich applies only to items that are not marked as favourites. That would bring an end to sending items across to a container one at a time when one is usually preferring to be doing something else and is simply trying to offload plunder as fast as possible. Better user interface design could make this process much faster and much less of an interruption to gameplay.
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One more thing I'd like to point out is that there are no "abilities" in Skyrim. This has been ah, "simplified" down to Magica, Health and Stamina (or some such). What you see in the constellations are the perks trees (and it looks a bit like some compensatory opposite of "simplifying" down here). I think these are a grand idea and organised very well, but it would be better if there was the option to take in the whole "sky" at a glance. The usual configuration for a single hemisphere is a circular diagram of the constellations around the centre - and thus you can preserve the astrological feel of the perks trees while offering the whole picture at a glance (with skills on the circumference). And there would be room to the left or right for the eight abilities (strength, intelligence, willpower, agility, speed, endurance, personality, luck) that were, no-doubt, cut to make room for this astrological device in the game. This would allow the game to increase in sophistication without losing options - and that is what RPGs are all about; options.
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And, for the love of Talos; the best and, ergo, only correct way to display an inventory is as a spreadsheet. By all means, contextualise the inventory. Throw in some icons. Change the colours and the background. Play with the fonts. But an inventory list without adjustable scaling/font size, item stat columns and working sort buttons is worse than useless.
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Methinks the reason why the inventory breaks immersion has nothing to do with it resembling a spreadsheet and everything to do with it being such hard work to use.
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[EDIT]Typo[/EDIT]

That's a good idea - I forgot about Favourites when doing the chart. They should also be automatically moved to the top of the list, right underneath your equipped items. They also need a different marker to signify that they are a Favourite. The current white arrow is easy to mistake for the 'equipped' arrow, and the last thing we need is more mix-ups and confusion.

I don't think Morrowind's menu is perfect by any means, but I do think it uses screen real-estate better. By spreading items out (rather than putting them in a thin, linear list), a lot more of them can be visible at once. And that reduces the amount of scrolling necessary. I propose that Skyrim's list should also be spread out, since it currently only takes up 1/5 of the screen and that's quite a waste of available space. That space should be utilized to help us find what we want more easily. But it should not be spread out in a way that replicates Morrowind's flaws, either. The addition of icons might help, but I wouldn't propose getting rid of labels entirely. Especially because in Skyrim, quite a lot of items look very similar to one another.

Has Bethesda mentioned anything about all the UI criticism yet? I realize it has only been two business days, but you would think there would be a response somewhere (blog/post) with the great sales that I am sure the game got. For instance, saying they are going to add obvious things like SORTING, EQUIPS to go on TOP of their scrolling list, etc? At least until some modder redesigns it.

Also when is the Creation Kit being released? And why are modders waiting for it anyway? Does it require after release work by Bethesda?

One of the devs is working with a group of modders to help them mod the interface. It looks so far that no major official changes will be made, though we may get them to address focus issues or scrolling issues, as those are JUST PLAIN BUGS.

I know, I know. Adjectives fail me, too.

Also, please, if you know where the mod is posting, please do not pester them. We need all the help we can get.

I know I want to, but look at me, I'm not doing it. Nope, not even a little.

(looks askance)

Nope. Not a word.

I like the look of the menu over oblivion's for example where you were pretty much looking at a piece of paper. However i vastly prefer oblivion's menu over this. Such a pain in the a** when doing pretty much anything in the menus. I want a menu system where i can get to the other parts with a simple click. Like if i am done equipping gear and want to look at my magic i have to close the inventory then open the magic side panel then scroll down to the correct school the click it then scroll down to the skill/s i want then fiddle with them trying to get them in the correct hand and then going back to the inventory if i put the dam magic skill in the wrong hand thus replacing my sword.

For fighting, left click should be left hand and right click should be right hand while dual wielding, not the other way around. Also the fact that it says nowhere how to close menus, i spent a good 5 minutes the first time i played figuring out how to close a container that i didn't want to "loot all" because it had some junk in it that i didn't want. Then the stupid crap where 90% of the time the game chooses what it wants you to click in a speech menu and no matter what you do you can't choose something else unless you close and reopen the chat. Then the crap where you try to change a category at a vendor and the vendor menu just closes.

Also something irrelevant to the topic that i hate is when talking to an npc and trying to listen to what they are saying some dbag npc walks by and starts talking to you. And when you are trying to listen to some npcs conversation with each other (with subtitles on) another npc walks by and says something stupid like a kid talkin sh** to you and his subtitle pops up over the one you are trying to read. (since you can't hear what they are saying over the countless npcs who say something to you as they walk by)

I love this game but the menu system and controls are just trash.

The inability to jump from Magic to Equipment without going back to the game and re-entering the menu is another serious oversight. It hurts the most when the above happens, and you accidentally put a spell or a sword in the wrong hand. Now you have to hit at least three buttons to go back to the game and then back into the menu to switch out whatever you messed up.

The inability to do it all at once is probably one of the biggest failures in major gaming history.

Thanks to Zeno for the very definition of constructive criticism!

To everyone else: please lay off personal attacks both on each other and on designers. It's quite possible to criticise a game design decision without resorting to insults.

I'm not sure what difference it actually makes to gameplay, but do note that the settings default to xbox controller, so unchecking that might make it handle better with a keyboard/mouse. I think that's a bug that only affects some users, though.

I endorse this post.

I'm not sure it's quite a matter of "Good job Zeno, but everyone else needs chiding!" Almost every post in this thread has been constructive (not just mine), and almost everyone following it has been doing the right thing. I'm sure all those people don't enjoy being included as a part of that "everyone else" when they've been no less constructive than the OP. This thread has been full of great suggestions.

Disabling the controller process (enabled by default) seems to help with mouse input lag for some users, but unfortunately there's no way to change the interface layout. It even looks as if it'll be significantly harder to mod the interface than it was in Oblivion.

I, I, P, P.

• I to go into inventory
• I to exit inventory
• P to open spells
• P to close spells

That's TWO buttons to go back into the game and then into the menu. Not "at least three".