No probs with the UI here ...

But how do you live without hotkeys?

I love how the people who don't complain about the UI love to complain about the fact that the others love to complain about the UI.

Personally I think I am having technical issues.
1) I can't get the hot keys to work (I'd be happy with 3)
2) At some points on the UI I can't use the enter key, I have to move my hand back to the mouse to click it (even though it may show the enter button)
3) Vice versa of 2, sometime I click on something with the mouse, and it won't work, I have to move my hand to the keyboard and hit enter.

Other than those issues, it's really preference, I think it's an okay UI, I kinda miss a character screen to show all equiped items and character stats, but oh well.

If it wasnt for soul reaver, god of war, mortal combat and resident evil, Id wish consoles were never invented.

The problem with the UI is that it's very clunky for players like myself that love to use every option available in a fight.
I use scrolls, spells, shouts, class spell, potions and different weapon combos short+shield, short+ dagger, bows and staffs.

In a enemy encounter vs 4-5 enemies I spend more time navigating the menues than actually fighting.
8 quickslots where you can't save weapon layouts is a joke in a game with so many tools to use in combat.
And the favorite list isn't very helpful when you got 30-40 items in there and its very slow to navigate

I suspect everyone saying the UI is just fine, play a fighter with a very limited use of equipment.


To get a more fluid combat I would like much more options to bind the keys how I like to play

Numlock number keys, numeric keys 1-0 and maybe also add shift+1-0, thats 29 quickslot keys right there.

A possible option for the favorite list would be to have one for each hand.
Press Q for left hand favorites and E for right hand for example.
That would make things a bit easier.

In a game like this where i enter the menus 100+ times during a gaming session. With 2-300 hours of gameplay. I want things to be pracical, not look good.

Drop the fancy star system in the perk three. I want to quikly be able read up on the diffrent perks and place my points.
Same thing with the map. It look very cool the first 10 times you use it,
but after a while I just want to have a normal paper map to quickly see my suroundings which is not covered in clouds.

A proper trade window where I can see items I sell/buy would also be handy, pluss a buyback option when you missclick on items in trader window.
This feature is used in all RPG games with trading for a reason. it works. The player have full controll.

Add every other small bug/limitation and it gets very frustrating to use.
I really hope the developers adress some of this issues and don't push it all over to the mod comunity.

It's quite simple: anyone who is happy with the UI as it stands does not know what a good UI is.

I think it is kind of clunky even with hotkeys (terrible without) but I understand it is probably difficult to optimize an interface today that pleases all users when there are many hardware choices to play the game. I have no hate for the UI and am enjoying the game until I run blindly into giants.

Its quite simple, everyone has a opinion.
Mine is that the Ui is fine and I like it, yours is that it svcks. Neither one of us is wrong.

The UI is not great. People who think the PC UI is fine are the same people who think Bethesda can do no wrong.

The UI doesn't work very well with the mouse, this is a fact. We all have the same game. Often the game UI doesn't respond to mouse clicks or it thinks you are clicking somewhere where you are not.

EDIT:

Even if the UI had no mouse issues, which it does even though some sad people would lie and say otherwise, it still wouldn't be a good PC interface. My 1, 2, 3, etc are all completely unused. I'm forced to have multiple functions bound the same key (like E to loot and hold E to move an object and holding Z for a certain amount of time to cast varying shout levels). I have to pause the game every time I want to change what spell and ability I'm using, which is very often.


If you think this UI is fine on PC you're probably a console gamer who has just moved onto PC gaming with Skyrim.

There is no PC interface. There's only a console interface.

I didn't read any of the responses, but here are my issues with it in no particular order.

1. No visual notification of switching using hotkeys, just a subtle sound and the hope that I remember what hotkeys I currently have. There should be a small interface displaying your current active hotkeys and an update to that when you swtich using your favorite buttons.

2. I hate having to pause the game to use things like potions. I want a hotbar where I can drop potions or something so I can quickly access them in the heat of the action.

3. I think their should be more options in the customization of your personal game. For example an on/off trigger for friendly fire. A option to turn on notification when you steal something (aka are you sure you want to do that its against the law) so that I don't accidently steal something off a merchants desk when Im actually just trying to start a conversation with the merchant. I would like to be able to make notes on a map so I can mark locations myself. Just settings like that which offer more customization, this is a big game and for the size of the game the options/settings menu is horribly light it reminds me of a console game which I hate, its why I dont play console games.

4. While I love the constalation (perk) system, the interface controls are horrid, again very consolish. I want to be able to click on things and go to them directly.. Scrolling from side to side with so many clicks just to get where you want to be is awful, not being able to see all your options at once is just stupid to me.

I have a few others but I think the theme here is that this is a console interface, which as a PC gamer with a mouse and keyboard is really a drag. I think they could have done a lot better.

I can't say I'm a fan of the UI, but I see what they were going for with designing for a console. After trying it out for a while, it's not terrible. In fact, once you realize that it's made for the console world and adapt to using the default layout (WASD, E and TAB). Then navigation becomes reasonable. My main irritation is that they went to all the trouble to "stream-line" the UI, but, as far as I can tell, you HAVE to use a mouse to click Yes or No on the confirmation dialogs. Other menu items allow for the Yes/No using E and Tab, not sure why they are not consistent.

Similarly, as others have mentioned with the maps. One (local) allows click-and drag. Whereas the world map allows you to use the WASD keys (or mouse to the edges of the screen).

EDIT: I forgot to mention the Perk screen. Again, inconsistent, it’s almost impossible to navigate, reliably, with the WASD keys. But, you can click on a perk and jump right to it, which is nice. But, just not polished.

So, really, the frustration I have is consistency, or lack thereof.

That having been said, I’m loving this game! Too bad work is getting in my way!

This hits the nail on the head and is the very heart of the problem.

The UI is much too consolified for PC users that simply have higher expectations as far as UI goes.

The issue I have with it is you can't just click on a choice in dialogue or item menus. You have to make sure you scroll to the choice(So that it appears largest) and highlight it before clicking it. If you try to click the option without doing that first, it either closes the item menu, or selects your previously highlighted conversation option.

It needs to respond to the mouse better.

So if im playing a mage and i use more than 8 spells, alot more actually, im supposed to pause it unfavorite then favorite something,
then press q find it bind it, use it, then unbind it, rebind the other spell i need again in a fight, god forbid i cant strafe and press 7 and 8.

And god forbid i use weapons and a shield as half the time it doesnt go in the right hand or show up at all, plus im short even more binds.

That is completely ridiculous, ive seen snes games with better keybinds than this.

Not really. The interface still requires a ridiculous number of user actions to get the required information, even on a console (or, thus, even with a controller). I tried playing the game with one and while it was marginally better, I've never controlled a first-person game with joysticks, so I couldn't kill anything or control where I was looking, and the interface still was far prettier than it was useful.

My main problem with this, however, is that the nature of the interface makes it unlikely that it can be properly fixed by mods, compared to Oblivion's. Honestly, what was wrong with the grid-based system of Morrowind? It had faults, much like every aspect of the game, but damn it if it wasn't functional.

The perk selection screen is a pain to navigate on PC, it could be so much more simple and easy and most of the screen is wasted on their astrology style design which is neat but not practical and gets old very fast.

The favorites system is just plain awful for PC, where it'd be much better to just be able to bind sets of weapons/spells to various keys(ideally more keys than the default 1-8).

The inventory screen is alright, it could easily show more however - the screen space again is dominated by something that, while neat, is rarely used and not very practical(the item viewer).

There are also too many "are you sure you want to do this?" warnings which create unnecessary extra steps.

I really hate people who come at stuff with a "I'm used to it so it isn't bad" attitude. People in the dark ages were used to not washing, that doesn't mean it didn't stink.

The UI for PC is awful, it's full of bugs and not being able to navigate it with the mouse is just completely stupid.

I mean, go to a conversation with an NPC, then try to click the exit option rather than backing out of it by hitting tab. The game thinks you chose the highlighted dialogue option alongside hitting the exit button, even if that dialogue option is somehow tied to advancing a quest etc that you didn't want to deal with yet. It's an obvious bug that 20 bucks worth of QA slave time could have uncovered if they would have cared to fix it.

Or remap the key for Shouts, now if you go to any of the menues the bottom will show they key for favoriting things as the key you remapped shouts to, but you still need to hit Z to acctually favourite things. Not only were they too lazy to make a UI that can be controlled with the mouse in the first place, they were also too lazy to test if remapping keys would cause problems with their system.

So, yea, the UI for PC is bad, it is full of bugs and a perfect example of "lol, thei'll buy it anyways, so why fix it" It's just bad form to build a game of this quality and then completely neglect a large portion of your players like this. Oblivion had a UI that was annoying to deal with for PC users, sure, but at least it wasn't full of glaringly obvious bugs.

Why on earth can you not bind all letters of the keyboard along with shift ctrl and alt modifers, plus mouse buttons.

Absolutely no justification, most poor attempt at a UI i have ever seen in any game in my life.

No eye candy. People love a pretty interface with all the bells and whistles they can easily see/use. A well composed user interface can actually ADD to the imersiveness of the game experience. In Skyrim there is nothing.

This is the problem with the UI:

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1266556-usage-of-screen-real-estate-in-skyrims-interface/

For those who aren't that inclined to click on the thread link, have a look at the image from the thread.

http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/5696/skyrimrealestate.jpg

Ha, that picture is great.

Yea, I really wish they would have just given us the Morrowind UI for this game.

Seriously, with Skyrim there is a clear trend starting to develop. Every iteration of Elderscrolls the gameplay gets better, but the UI gets worse.

It will be like Elderscrolls VII: Elseweyr, photorealistic graphics and the UI is a text prompt. /equip Iron Dagger

cd Player:\backpack
dir
cd Player:\leftpocket

I could get behind that! At least it wouldn't be cluttered.

Yeah, I hated that. Trying to mouse through that was a pain.


Using the WASD keys with E to select negates, at least for me, any reason to use the mouse in the menus. The world map can be moved around by shifting the mouse to the edge of the screen; if you hold MOUSE2, you can also adjust the perspective to top-down. I will concede that the key-mapping is a bit stuffed, though.


I have no input lag. I don't know what everybody is going on about when they discuss this.


I'm pretty sure that having a menu issue is a bit of a subjective thing. However, you are right about there being issues with selection. Just exit the conversation and re-enter it, and the problems are gone. But, I don't understand why people are getting so worked up about it; it's not that big of an issue, and I really don't think that it requires the amount of fuss and bother that people seem to be putting into it.

Also, why does one have to read a review to identify problems? If I identify a problem, but no other reviewers do, is my problem illegitimate? No, it's not, because problems are subjective. Many people have problems with the UI, and I don't. I'm quite fond of it, actually. Does that mean I have to read a review because my opinion is wrong? No. My opinion is just as legitimate as yours.

Exactly, It was designed for a console not a PC which is what irks a lot of people. It could have been so much better.