Bump. Great job. Now if only they would use some of this info and patch the game to make it better. Wait, I guess that they have to make it so that it is stable and playable first. I still can't play it for more that 5 minutes. Even then it is choppy.

Absolutely. A 'home' or 'summary' screen would solve a great deal of problems. On top of that, it wouldn't be a replacement for the other screens - just an addition. An option for when the player just needs to quickly check their skill levels, magic effects etc.

It's a step in the right direction. It's still needs the items to be listed with their weight, value, enchantment, and legal status, as well as a means to sort by these properties.

I still can't get over the fact Bethesda didn't put a paper doll in there, that they thought it was more important for players to know what a potato looked like from all sides than what your character looked like from all sides...

Agreed. And it makes it so hard to see what you have equipped, at a glance!

The item models look nice and don't need to be removed. They just need to be smaller, so that more space can be used for other stuff as well.

Time for you to get modding!

You've illustrated a number of my (our) major pet peeves with the interface - thank you.

I'd like to add that the SAME screen size/layout is shown in other resolutions as well ... I run my desktop in 1024X768 and the game started off with that setting. Later, I changed it to the other larger settings (like you run) and it's the SAME screen!

Also, the interface has mouse problems. Your thread is on the real-estate of the interface, so I won't add the MOUSE interface pet peeves.

The constant scrolling and re-scrolling (and because of the interface LOSING your chosen dialogue option and then dropping you back at the start of a transaction repeatedly) ... the menu scrolling is infuriating.

The interface ugliness starts at the very beginning, at character creation.

Well, you initially get a little text pop-up in the top left hand corner when you first contract a disease, but if you've got HUD transparency turned up it's difficult to see, and since the only time you'll contract a disease is during combat, it's incredibly easy to miss.

Anyway, I agree with just about every single point raised in the OP.

Nice illustration of a key flaw in the UI. It's almost like it was intentionally designed to be inefficient.

I even doubt that it makes sense for console/controller usage... I wonder, is the Fallout 3/NV interface design more or less easy/efficient to use than Skyrim's when using a controller? It seems to me that everyone has to deal with using more actions to get where they want to with this UI.

Very very true. The one thing I found odd was when discussing the skill scrolling, you said you must do 11 actions to find speech. Couldn't you just go the other direction and it would be like 7?

True. The UI is designed (poorly) for console, and it was not changed whatsoever to accomdate for PC. Neither screen size, or the use of a mouse instead of a controller.

Well put, and I agree. TES has always been my "only for the PC" game since I first fell in love with Arena, but I also have a 360, and enjoy several games on it. I'm pretty familiar with the "feel" of it's game controls. So now I get Skryim at a midnight release from Best Buy, and had been avoiding the forums for a week so that nothing got spoiled for me. Thus, I wasn't influenced in any way by anything on the forums. Yet when I start coming back to the forum, I find that people are thinking the same thing I'm thinking - this game feels like it was made for a console controller. It even *looks* like it was made for a console game. Of course over the ensuing days and hours, it become apparent to most of us that this was a shameless console port with almost no optimization.


Did you read Kiralyn's post? She gave some really good illustrations on this. You can just sense it when you are navigating the menus. If this was a pure PC game, I seriously doubt the menu/UI system would've ended up the way it is now. It's just not optimized for a keyboard and mouse. Sometimes clickable, sometimes not. Sometimes scrollable, sometimes have to use arrow keys. Sometimes you can't even figure out where to click, or the region for clicking is offset from where it needs to be. I'm not sure what you find to be "innate," but from experience with both, this feels far more like a console game/control setup than it does a PC game/control setup. Several people have already been reporting that controlling the game has gotten much easier for them after they plugged in... their console controller.


You sort of touched on something there that also bothers me. Game developers these days are overly concerned about cool and neat stuff without taking into consideration how cool or neat a player will think it is after dozens or even hundreds of hours of repetition. Some sounds effects are indicative of this poorly thought out ideas. In Skryim, I wanted to kick Hadvar in the 'nads because he just wouldn't shut up. "Come on, this way!" every 10 seconds when I was trying to explore and loot the place. In EQ2, it drives me crazy that they gave such a small pause between the idle sounds for mounts. If you are standing still on your mount for even 10-15 minutes, you'll want to smash your mute button and punch a baby. Every few seconds it's the same sound. Cool can become annoying pretty quick.

The perk and skill layout *was* cool. But by my third time navigating, "cool" had to take off, and by the 7th or 8th time, "annoyed" had come to sit with me.

SECONDED

this post made me crack up.

I have no problems with how the UI is designed. This [censored] isn't hard people.

harder than it should be, and it just does not fit with the enormity of the game and its genre = PROBLEMS

Also in regard to visual items in the inventory, it is funny how their is a button to get rid of the scroll bars to get a CLEARER view of the item. Yeah...like that is needed with its ginormous size already.

The user interface is not 'hard', it is simply inefficient. It breaks a lot of well-founded basic principles of design, but it is not all subjective stuff either. Some of it is also objective fact.

Example: Measure the number of actions required to perform tasks compared to Oblivion/Morrowind, and also measure the amount of time it takes to perform them. In almost all cases, Skyrim's numbers are much higher. This proves that the menu systems are less efficient. Raw data is a part of this, it's not all just 'opinions'.

Adjusting the way the interface utilizes available screen real-estate is one way to speed these tasks up, and that's what the chart is proposing.

So because you have no problems with it, the rest of the people that do must be too stupid to figure it out. That must be it. Thanks for enlightening us with your words of wisdom.

Yep. Had a sarcastic moment. My bad.

*Moderator note: Play nice!*

Well obviously we need to be able to see the awesome minecraft-esque textures on the bottom of our healing potion! It would have been cool if for example, said potion in 'giant' view actually had a list of ingredients you could zoom in on, like a little easter egg to up your alchemy, or unique weapons/jewelry had a maker's mark or reference to lore hidden on them. You could actually enhance gameplay, say inspecting a certain sword resulted in finding a rolled-up map in the hilt, marking a quest location. Of course that would be in the realm of next-gen technology, incredible games like er, Silent Hill 2. Having said that we could still have small-real-estate items and zoom right up to giant sized ones without clunking up the interface.

Anyway, I believe someone already mentioned sorting inventory, in the spirit of being constructive I'd say if we're really stuck with a crappy list-based menu system then a 'sort' at the top would be great. I think in addition to equipped items always being at the top, we should be able to at least sort by A-Z, Weight, Type and Value. I think these four would be the most useful from a gameplay point of view. A-Z is obvious, Weight would be useful for one of the million times you'll get overencumbered, Value could also work for this as well as seeing which items to sell first, and Type obviously groups items into their relevant categories, IE weapons grouped into Axes, Swords, etc. or possibly ranged, 1h, 2h.
(I suspect the reason this doesn't exist is because with the tiny space they've given menus onscreen, some idiot in the design dept went OH NOES THAT WOULD BE TOO SMALL TO FIT ON POOR 360 KID'S 1080p 42" TELLY!.. honestly, if they could I suspect they'd have just done the menus in braille.)

On a side note I also think shields should be equipped as a weapon as opposed to apparel, it makes very little sense since a shield is less of a fashion accessory than a combat-based item equipped to one of your arms. It would also make it easier to see a shield/sword combo equipped together in one menu list.

For equips it would be good if firstly, as others have mentioned, you can 'favourite' items OR hotkey/favourite from ANY place in the item menu with one click - it's simple; hotkeying an item auto-adds it to the favourites menu too. That way you get the best of both worlds.

While selecting weapons/shields/magic to hotkey, you could also be given a prompt when selecting hotkeys that already had something assigned. I'm aware this is against the rule of 'less clicks' but I believe it would add more function than form. The idea is that when you select a hotkey, say "4", part of the vast unused real-estate lists which items (if any) are currently mapped to that hotkey. The beauty of this would be that if you had magic hotkeyed to your right hand, and you selected a sword, you would know where the magic was equipped and then be asked "Where do you want to equip the sword?" With answers of LEFT, RIGHT, CLEAR BOTH, or CANCEL. If you wanted to keep just a single thing in that hotkey, selecting it would still do the normal Skyrim thing and replace whatever was in your hand while leaving the off-hand alone. That way your weapon hotkeys can all instantly equip a combination of dual wielded nastiness, or merely switch one hand if you so desired.

Oh, and finally, when looking at weapons, and especially armour, that vast screen real-estate could most definitely be used as a space for detailed comparison with your current equip, as opposed to just the little ^ sign to indicate that one of it's base stats is better than your current item. You could also have hotkeys still work within that menu, so while looking at the new battleaxe you just picked up and realising you're comparing it to your 1h sword, you could hit the hotkey that switched from your sword to axe and you could compare the stats for relevant weapons at the touch of a button, without ever leaving the screen.

But you can switch to third person mode first, if you remember, and the menu doesn't cover the entirety of your character! (No, I don't think this is adequate, just in case anyone thinks I'm being serious...) I'm not sure how easy it will be to create the "paper doll" image or move the position of your character when in the menu; maybe potential modders will just have to arrange the menu bits around them. I was another one who found myself sans clothing after working on my armour at the smithy and only realised when some obnoxious kid started repeatedly yelling "naked!" at me.

That happened to me tonight as well. An NPC called me naked. I also found out I had a common disease, because an NPC told me.

I would prefer to be able to easily monitor my own condition, rather than wait until NPCs say something.

Randomly exchange Y/N for choices with E/Tab in similar circumstances? Have menus pop up without the focus on the menu so the user never knows how many clicks it will take to select an item? Menus that respond differently to scroll commands? Massively misplaced information (i.e. how many menu levels are required for active effects or item weight)?

The biggest problem with saying the interface is badly designed is the implication of the word "designed." This can't possibly have been done on purpose, can it?

And, in trying to test the Container CTDs that appear to be related to the R/Ready/Drop/Get All combo keybinding, I discovered that the hotkeys are still being randomly dropped from the favorites.

(golf clap)

Yeah, Evanesco. This [censored] isn't hard, but it is [censored].

Nice job man! Dug out my login just to come here and say that. Stumbled upon it through reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/mcr6q/usage_of_screen_realestate_in_skyrims_interface/.

You know, the inconsistency between menus makes me think that perhaps Bethesda had different teams working on different parts of the interface. That would explain why the crafting menus for smithing and alchemy are completely different, and it could perhaps go some way towards explaining how no-one realized how difficult it was to access skills or active effects.

This could be a symptom of the left hand not talking with the right hand (Like with hot-keys in the game, badum-tsh).

Quite a few of these flaws are simply inherent due to the UI being designed for consoles first and being adapted to PC later. For instance;

• The currently "selected" item in each menu is always centred. This supposedly makes things easier to use from a console perspective, by giving a nice focus point for what the current selection is.
  The problem with a mouse, of course, is that we don't need all this fancy selection stuff or scrolling aids - we can just select the damn things.
  
• As a thumbstick provides a fair amount of control over how much scrolling should be done, the menus are much more suited to that than, say, a grid menu (which would look tiny - more on that later). Furthermore, you can just use the thumbstick to move between menus, making it quite effortless.
  The problem with this when it comes to PCs is, of course, the fact that we both have a much higher resolution than consoles and the ability to click wherever we want.
  
• Due to the lower resolution consoles run at, and the fact that most people will likely be sitting a metre or two from their TV screen, the visuals need to be quite large and readable. Thus, the large, sans-serif font and supposed wastes of visual space.
  Unfortunately, us PC users have large screens with resolutions that are generally much higher than an average console output. As the UI is simply enlarged and blown up up instead of, say, scaled to fit, we're left with gigantic text and vast pieces of empty space.

That said, I have no problems with the current UI myself - in fact, I quite like it. It looks shiny, and feels neat to use. Navigating it with the scroll wheel and keyboard works a lot better than people say it does. (Where DOESN'T the scroll wheel work?)

If I were to change the UI for PC, I'd remove the focusing and excessive spacing, reduce the font size, and vertically centre all the lists that fit on screen. Perhaps 'zoom it out' a bit, too. There's nothing wrong with having an interface designed for consoles as long as you can use it reliably on PC (Human Revolution? Although that was based on the original's UI...), and it seems Bethesda only did half the job there.

Thank you so much for pointing this out.

Funny that for once we get a relatively bugfree game (compared to previous titles from Bethesta that is - it wouldn't be one without any bugs!) but have to trade off with the fact that this is by all means a straight console port with little adjustment for PC.. Which the interface greatly accentuates

OP, it's nice to see someone providing illustrations of ways to improve something rather than simply complaining that a thing is broken. Thanks for that!

I can definitely see what they were aiming for with the menu and it's nice idea and the constellation is a great concept but implementation could use a lot of refining. You can see a lot of the game world through the semi-transparency of the menu but the placement of the selected object in the open part of the screen is an odd choice. They were obviously trying to make the menu be an unobtrusive as possible but then created something that takes a bit of time to navigate and ends up needlessly obscuring the background they're trying to show while still not providing information that would be helpful. I'd rather see my character there and maybe have an option to open up the objects if I need to see them. I've gone running around naked a few times because I didn't realize something was equipped. Also, I spent a bit of time making my character look the way she does, I'd like to see her when I open the menu. I would also like to see some stats with my items so I can quickly compare what I've got and it would be really convenient if I could chose to sort them by weight, value or name.

I also want the ability to have things arranged in more categories and be able to roll up those categories so I don't have to look at them. I like that books have their own list and the magic is arranged by schools. That was a good idea. What I also want is something like subcategories where I can see similar things grouped together. For example, in the Apparel menu I'd like to have all the armor together, clothes together, jewelery, etc and please, please, please lump the stuff I've got equipped all together and out of the way. In Oblivion I ended up enchanting everything I was wearing and everything I wanted to keep just so I could rename it and it would self-organize down at the bottom of the list. Something else that would be really appreciated is a way to separate things I want to keep from things I intend to sell. I've accidentally sold so many things I didn't intend and forgotten to sell others and that some kind of separator would be really great.

The choice of font is out of place but more puzzling is why it's so large and why I don't have the option to choose a text size? I'm only two feet away from my monitor, I really don't need the same kind of display that someone sitting on their couch six feet away from their tv would need. It doesn't even have to be much of a choice; big and small would probably be fine.

And why is there still no option to create an outfit consisting of weapon, armor, jewelry, etc and put the whole thing on a hotkey? Surely I'm not the only person who finds a need to have different combinations for different situations?

Unfortunately, I've not made use of the favorites or hotkeys in Skyrim because they don't work with the buttons they've been remapped to and the buttons that they do work with have been remapped to something else. Putting something in a container or giving it to my companion is a major chore and is an exercise I try to avoid whenever possible so I haven't bothered to check out the other things that require remapping to default.

The constellation is a neat concept but why so hard to navigate with a pointer? I had no idea you could use the movement keys to spin the carousel around. It never even occurred to me to try. I have a mouse that clicks things so it seemed natural to me to select the skill I want to level up and I guess that explains why I can't just immediately go to that skill but have to keep clicking on the next skill over from the center to get to what I want.

Bethesda does seem to listen their customers and have implemented a lot of improvements on complaints about Oblivion. (Which oddly enough, were attempts to address complaints from Morrowind.) So my hope is that it's not impossible for a mod to fix this mess and that Bethesda will take threads like this into account in the future.

I will say one good thing about it, I quite like the journal. That's where they got it right I think. You press one button to get into it and can select multiple quests to track. The information thus far in there seems fairly clear and concise. One thing linked to it I would like to change, however. Maybe it's a personal preference, but I'd prefer the HUD at the top that shows you when areas of interest are in range showed you a little less info - Fallout was fine with merely 'discovered' and 'undiscovered' points of interest - I don't need to know explicity that there's probably a mammoth or a bandit camp in that direction - I feel that rather ruins the immersion and sense of discovery. I'd assume it would be relatively simple for a mod to fix this though.

I also think detailed map notes, and, I'll say this a thousand times over - The ability to name your individual save games. On a game as big as this a PC, hell even a console gamer, can really benefit from personalised save game names. It really helps if you save at a crucial turning point in the game and actually CALL the save "CRUCIAL TURNING POINT IN THE GAME" so you know which of your gazillion saves to go back to if something goes amiss.