A lot:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11/14/user-interfarce-skyrims-silly-choices/

Or, they could have designed two interfaces; one for PC, one for consoles. It wouldn't have cost much more money, but it would have made an entire sector of their players much, much happier.

It feels like the PC version had zero testing, like literally absolutely nobody played it until 11/11/11.

You need to also add there is a gap between the vertical bar on the left and the left edge of the screen. If you mouse over too far and click there your UI exits in one mouse click. I find this totally infuriating.

Its also too easy to sell, buy and consume things by mistake.

The UI is by far and away the worst part of what is otherwise a superb product.

The way the Favorite system is set up works perfect for me.

long live Edlin!!!

This game seemed really nice, and I'm finally getting into it, but damn, I REALLY hate the UI, it's like it's fighting me the whole way.

I'm left-handed, so obviously I want to remap, well, basically everything, and do so right at the start of the game, before doing pretty much anything else. As people have mentioned, there's huge problems here, especially for people just starting the game. For example, I bound "sheath weapon" to the END key (I use arrow keys for movement so it's quick to hit), then I get overencumbered and decide I need to drop some stuff.. OK, it says press R.. well I'm pressing R and nothing's happening! It becomes clear that for some reason the game doesn't update key bindings in prompts. OK, let's see what I mapped DROP ITEM to.. huh? There's no DROP ITEM command in the controls menu!?

Short of wiping all my key bindings, I ended up having to ring a friend who was playing it on PC also, just to ask him what the hell his R key was mapped to! Only now do I know it's the same as SHEATH WEAPON. Then I thought, why the hell is it bound to two commands? Why can't I have a seperate key for either anyway? It's not like I'm running out of keyboard space! The exact same issue occured with mapping items to favourites.

Which brought me to another one, people kept saying oh bring up your favourites and press a number key (1-8, BUT NOT 9 or 0, god no we can't have that! You must have 8, and 8 only!) so naturally I went to the favourites from the main items menu and was like huh? Well that doesn't work! Obviously I later realised that you had to do it from the QUICK FAVOURITES, at which point I realised the whole system was a pain in the [censored] and you should just be able to hotkey items from anywhere like any other sane PC title would have you do.

While we're on quick favourites, a minor gripe is that hitting the quick favourites button twice doesn't kill the window, it's not a killer but seems a little counter-intuitive.

One thing that's also crazy is that clicking on a consumable while exchanging goods between containers, actually consumes it! WTF? Why the HELL would you want to eat a potion while hanging [censored]-first out of a treasure chest?? The problem is of course if you don't realise this right away you could chug a few dozen random potions, and since you can't see both containers and view the items you move actually going in there, you can potentially come out of a container wondering why there's a blue haze around you and you just went invisible.. oh **** I just drank a load of potions! Now ok many people may laugh at this who noticed straight away, but really, I think it's intuitive on ANY RPG game that clicking on an item while a containter is open moves that item over. I mean, clicking on an item while a merchant's open sells the item, why wouldn't you extend this convention to any exchange?

Another thing I just noticed.. people kept saying 'you look a little ill..' and I thought oh, that's clever, maybe I've caught a disease, that's a nice touch.. let's check my status ailments. Now, maybe I'm being stupid or just blind or something, but where exactly ARE my stats? I mean not in the form of a huge, glowing constellation - I mean ALL my character's info in one, concise, easy to reference place? Stuff like, oh, what disease I've apparently contracted. Not 'how many bunnies slaughtered' and other pointless GTA-style rubbish. Update, I just found it, after much looking, in the MAGIC menu. Why the hell is a DISEASE listed in the MAGIC menu?

Yeah, basically, some people might not have a problem, fair enough. As far as I'm concerned Bethesda royally screwed up the interface. It's disparate, illogical and badly organised. Even on a console I'd prefer something like Dragon Age had. Ironically a game who's developers actually bothered to make the UI different for PC gamers, much to their credit.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1266556-usage-of-screen-real-estate-in-skyrims-interface/, where I have made an infographic illustrating various design problems.

It is not 'whining' as such, I'm just a designer and have been taking notes on where Skyrim's interface behaves strangely. It's been a constructive thread there so far - lots of good suggestions on how the interface might be improved in later patches. Whining is not constructive, but anolysis and suggestions can make the game better.

yes this is it exactly...

And yeah you can become used to the bugs to an extent like you can with anything that is painful but it is still something that breaks your immersion time and time again. This is just sloppy QA.

I wonder if they did any speed runs with a PC. I Suspect the PC interface was only hacked together just before it went gold.

Pretty much sums it all up.

Dug out my xbox controller for PC hooked it up and the game plays so much better now. Guess I'm stuck with this till someone mods a decent PC UI for Skyrim

I literally have experienced NONE of the problems you mentioned. How? I use a controller for my rpg pc games. woo

Agreed. Admittedly my previous post was venting some frustration there, but if noone ever complained, nothing would ever get improved. I checked your image link before and have to say I laughed, not only because it makes a very good point, but because I remember Morrowind coming out on consoles and ES fans going "ugh, don't buy it the menu systems clearly don't work on consoles". You'd have thought after that they'd have learned that both platforms need optimization. Then again I just went downstairs to see my housemate playing on 360. I asked him if he'd caught a disease yet and he said "what do you mean?", I told him to check his active effects in the magic menu and sure enough, he had a bad case of Rockjoint. Then he said "What the **** is it doing there? How was I supposed to notice that?" haha.

My main question is, can mods fix the UI? I can just about deal with it for now but I suspect if mods can change the UI, if only to put in something like better key mapping and a dedicated character sheet page, it would significantly improve gameplay.

My perspective:

Yes, the UI is complete and utter garbage. I would never be able to understand how anyone could not recognize this.
But...
So what? This game owns so hard I almost forgot that the UI is garbage. Yay, Bethesda slacked on the PC UI. PC still looks leagues better than consoles, and we have mods.
Darn is back, and he is, as we type, working on fixing the crappy UI. In the meantime, I am enjoying the [censored] out of this the great Skyrim.
(Oh no, I have to click twice every now and then.) (Oh no! I clicked "Misc" and it closed the menu!) (Oh noes! The mouse wheel has Down Syndrome!) I'm killing things and having fun!

The same thing that's wrong with the UI on console.

It svcks.

Absolutely nailed it there. Did I mention this guy should be working for Bethesda?

This guy should be working for Bethesda.

My only complaints with the UI is the skill tree and cluttered inventory (need an inventory sorter mod). Skill tree can be frustrating at times. Other than that, I'v never noticed any mouse problems or anything. I actually like the favorites menu and other UI features.

There is nothing wrong with the PC UI.

I have a few problems, but it doesnt detract from the game that much.

Can't rotate objects in zoom view, but can for Loading screens. (Weird)
Placing Custom destinations often offsets them far away on the map. Sometimes it wont place at all.
While Sprinting and attacking it often "sticks" in autorun for some reason. (The most annoying of problems)
Can't bind hotkey numbers past 8. (Waste of Naga buttons)
Difficult to start dual casting at times. (Holding a modifier key while selecting a hotkey would fix that. Ie. Shift 2 does dual Healing hands etc)
Switching from shield to casting and back redraws weapon. (Not UI problem, but obnoxious)

so do you work for Bethesda or Steam?

the conversation mouse behaviour svcks. the mouse should control where youre looking while WASD control dialogue options. As it is now you gotta drag the mouse to the corner of the screen to change view direction which is really slow and annoying when a convo starts with the person offscreen

I can only bind 1-8 for quickslots, when I have dozens upon dozens of more keys.

I can't use mouse scroll to instantly switch weapons/spells without a pause in combat.

The inventory is more cumbersome than Dragon Age 2's, one of the worst RPGs ever made.

Few things i had:

- Hotkeys get lost when you pick up a second item of exactly the same type. Example if you bound an iron axe and pick up a second one the hotkey is lost as if the game doesn't know which one to pick.
- Getting the wrong dialog (conversation, items, ...) option even if you click it
- Trade window closing on you when clicking another category

But still I only find those minor issues that can be solved. After playing for a while you get used to the interface.

One thing I would have liked is a different hotkey for your ability and shouts.

Meh.. I'm cool with it.

Nicely said.
I also noticed is if you pick up the exact same 2h weapon it screws up the hotkey bind.

Honestly if people think the UI is good I don't know what to tell them. This is the worst UI on the best game i've played in a long time.