Foreword
So, with that first topic I would want to start series of topics related to UI with a perspective to continue giving feedback in new series related to other aspects of the game. I don’t have that much free time and for this reason I will be posting my feedback and suggestions in parts.
First, I like this game, like the visuals and like the idea of fusing mechanics from different games (survival, soulslike, ARPG etc.). But currently the state of these mechanics and how they work together seems little bit off and unbalanced. The game requires a lot of adjustments, and this also applies to the interface. So, lets dig in.
Main Interface (Life bar, Stamina bar etc.)
How it looks now.
How I suggest it should look like.
I apologize for my Paint.net skills but the point was to show the main logic behind changes. So please don’t mind alignments, colors, font size etc. Now point by point:
- First, I don’t think that numbers above EXP bar are really that matter. But the thing I want to address here - they take to much attention considering their low importance in comparison with HP for example. Moreover, these are the only numbers that we have near our character’s portrait. The only case where these numbers are important is in our inventory when we are using EXP flask. But for that purpose, we already have another element of the interface:
Possible solutions:
- remove them entirely from the screen UI;
- make them smaller;
- give players an option to hide them via settings.
- move the EXP bar to the side of the portrait (see below)
- Unlike EXP the HP numbers would be helpful to see. During a fight it would allow us to see how much damage we can survive or what food we should use to restore HP. Nothing to add here.
Possible solutions:
- just add the numbers
You also can give us on option to hide/show it via settings
- Stamina bar. During fights I noticed that I’m constantly looking at my HP and Focus. And the circle bar that shows us our stamina gets lost on the screen very easily and it’s very small though.
Possible solutions:
- add a stamina bar below our HP bar. I’m not really sure about numbers here but I think it wouldn’t hurt anybody if we had the same option to hide/show them via settings.
- Focus bar. The situation is pretty the same with the HP bar. Because we are constantly using this resource it would be nice to see the numbers so we could decide which rune attack to use or understand if we have enough Focus to use any attack at all.
Possible solutions:
- the solution is the same as for HP bar - just add the numbers and give us an option to hide/show it via settings. And maybe make the bar little bit bigger (thicker).
Conclusion
As you can see, I also made some changes in the positioning of bars. From my point of view it looks more organically this way. Hope devs will like this idea. I don’t think that I’m some kind of innovator or that I designed a new UI which never has been seen before. It’s classic and classic is good, at least in this case. Feel free to leave a comment and sorry for grammatical mistakes if there are any. I’m not native
EDIT 1: added an alternative UI for the EXP bar.