suggestion How would you improve The Long Dark's UI?

[Ghurcb]

Throughout the history of The Long Dark, the UI have been updated a lot, going from this

To this

 

The difference is staggering, yet there's still a lot of room for improvement. Here are some of my suggestions for making TLD UI better.

 

1) First aid menu.

Honestly, that part of the game only got worse as it was updated. 

Back in the days, we had a separate first aid tab, where one could only use the items, that would help to recover.

Now you have to find the correct item in your inventory first and only then use it.

  

Not only that, but you can waste your medical supplies by using them for wrong afflictions. Seriously, how can you even ATTEMPT curing food poisoning with a bandage? Do you just eat it? Well, you can't use it afterwards, so this is my headcanon now.

The worst part is that players would only use the wrong item in two situations. It's either a misclick, or a misunderstanding of game's mechanics. Neither should be punished, in my opinion.

 

The best way to fix this would be to add a "use" button to the status menu, and to make it so the players can't treat afflictions with items that won't help.

  

 

2) Crafting menu

When I turn my mousewheel ONCE, the blueprints tab scrolls though a WHOLE PAGE. That's extremely disorienting.

  

 

It would be better to change it so that a single turn of mousewheel would only scroll though a single recipe. Like this.

  

 

Another way to improve the crafting menu is to add the "available recipes first" option

This option would be especially useful for the new players, who don't yet know if they can craft anything from the materials they have.

 

3) Missions.

Why can't I move it with my mouse wheel?

 

4) Start fire

There are two problems with this part of UI.

First, all the materials are sorted alphabetically, and not based on the success chance. Just... Why?

Second, nobody cares about fire starting base chance. Sure it does matter, but no one needs to see their crit. chance as they aim. The same applies here, you can already see the chance of success, anyway. On the other hand, it SURE would be convenient to know the time it takes you to start a fire. Unfortunately, it's nowhere to be seen.

I think, this menu would look way better like this.

 

Well, those are all the UI-related problems I could think of. If anyone has something to add or disagree with, fell free to comment. 

Edited December 17, 2021 by Ghurcb

[Guest jeffpeng]

I can't but agree with pretty much everything you've lined out.

I also feel like the cooking menu is terribly cumbersome. Finding what you want to cook amidst 20 cups of tea in your inventory is quite the hassle. Plus I think that the selection what you want to do with a fire was actually a step back. Back in the day you had one screen combining all of this more or less elegantly, but definitely better than it is now. I realize that this is probably mostly for console accessibility, but for mouse users it definitely was a step back.

Also: automatically including the latest picked up items in the radial instead of the ones you picked up first would really help. Also preferring hot items in the radial and marking them visually as hot would be very helpful. Personally I really like the radial menu (I know many don't use it at all), and that would actually make using it even more convenient.

Finally: I'm a hotkey type of guy. We got keys 1 through 4 and all of them offer useful actions. We also got 5 to 0 on our keyboard, and we can't do anything with them. If I could bind an item to a hotkey, like a flare or my preferred weapons, that would be pretty damn great.

[Ghurcb]

Here's another one. When you press Tab, it should also show the temperature. I hate that I have to open status menu every time I want to check how cold it is.

[Kranium]

quick menu: I want to use the 85% torch, not the 100% torch every time. I'd also like to choose which weapon gets armed with the hotkey.

[Guest jeffpeng]

8 hours ago, Ghurcb said:

Here's another one. When you press Tab, it should also show the temperature. I hate that I have to open status menu every time I want to check how cold it is.

I'm pretty sure this is a conscious design choice. The game has been trending for some time towards obscuring numbers and mechanics instead of further clarifying them. There is also an argument that can be made for that. For example the condition: A person would not know its exact condition. Similarly a person would not know the exact temperature unless having access to a thermometer. One can debate if that is a good choice or not, but it's a choice the developers made nonetheless.

There's a difference between making available what the player can do and what the player can know.

[Ghurcb]

1 hour ago, jeffpeng said:

I'm pretty sure this is a conscious design choice. The game has been trending for some time towards obscuring numbers and mechanics instead of further clarifying them. There is also an argument that can be made for that. For example the condition: A person would not know its exact condition. Similarly a person would not know the exact temperature unless having access to a thermometer. One can debate if that is a good choice or not, but it's a choice the developers made nonetheless.

There's a difference between making available what the player can do and what the player can know.

Well... You can still see the temperature in the status menu (it's just more annoying). So I wouldn't say it's "obscured". Obscuring it further, on the other hand, isn't possible, as your clothes are defined by their bonus to your temperature, the same applies to fires. I'd say, managing the temperature is one of the central mechanics of The Long Dark, and if anything shouldn't be hidden from the player, that's it. 

Edited December 18, 2021 by Ghurcb

[SpanishMoss]

2 things: you should be able to see current afflictions with TAB, 

the snowshelter UI should be updated to include pictures, not just words

[ajb1978]

One thing I miss from an earlier build 5 years ago is the journal actually looked like a journal.

 

[ilenisaatio]

Damn! That older journal looks nice.

On the topic of the journal: I'd really love if it'd be easier to get to "today" instead of having to scroll through every single day. Gets a bit old after a while. Also, being able to export the entries into just a plain text file would be awesome. Such an option would ofc also have to be once you die.

[ajb1978]

2 minutes ago, ilenisaatio said:

Damn! That older journal looks nice.

On the topic of the journal: I'd really love if it'd be easier to get to "today" instead of having to scroll through every single day. Gets a bit old after a while. Also, being able to export the entries into just a plain text file would be awesome. Such an option would ofc also have to be once you die.

I just throw all my quick notes in my "General Notes" now, and don't bother with writing day-specific notes. And for that matter I alt-tab out of the game, type it up in Notepad so I'm not burning up in-game time, then alt-tab back and paste it into the notes all at once.

[Dr. S.]

Lots of great suggestions. My wish:

The 1 and 2 keys allow you to cycle through light sources and weapons. Holding shift (or alt, cmd, etc) should cycle in reverse order. 

[Fuarian]

19 hours ago, ajb1978 said:

One thing I miss from an earlier build 5 years ago is the journal actually looked like a journal.

 

I second this. Twice.

[A Lamp]

I would love to re-see the photos of each region when choosing where to start your next adventure, just like this one from BI:

Althought i still don't get it why they removed them...

[SysGhost]

A tiny one: Have the focus follow the mouse pointer. When I scroll items in storage/containers with mouse wheel I want the scroll to happen where the mouse pointer is hovering.

[Ghurcb]

14 hours ago, SysGhost said:

A tiny one: Have the focus follow the mouse pointer. When I scroll items in storage/containers with mouse wheel I want the scroll to happen where the mouse pointer is hovering.

This! Honestly, I've no idea why it's not in the game yet.

[ChillPlayer]

On 12/17/2021 at 7:22 PM, jeffpeng said:

I also feel like the cooking menu is terribly cumbersome. Finding what you want to cook amidst 20 cups of tea in your inventory is quite the hassle.

I came to this thread exactly to post this wish. I have a nice fire going on and I select "cook" on the cooking slot, why on earth do I have first to scroll past 20 of teas before I can select the meat I just harvested, don't you know that there are wolfs around me? So when harvesting beside a fire I usually drop all meat immediately to the ground and then right-click-move them onto the cooking slot. But this really feels cumbersome and unintuitive, I can't remember when I wanted to heat up an already cooked tea the last time, 99% of the time when I click on the cooking slot I want to barbecue some meat and not heat up some tea.

The other thing related to fires: when I use accelerant the fire is started very quickly but why does it take so long even when there's a 100% chance that the fire will be started? So much drama for nothing.

Also, there seems to be a bug when starting a fire with a low condition firestriker. It says that the chance is a 100% but I had it two times that the firestriker broke while starting the fire and thus failed to do so. Luckily it didn't save, I quit the game and tried again, then it worked. The firestriker can break ,yes, but it should do so after the fire was started with a 100% chance, otherwise the UI is just lying.

[Ghurcb]

14 hours ago, ChillPlayer said:

I came to this thread exactly to post this wish. I have a nice fire going on and I select "cook" on the cooking slot, why on earth do I have first to scroll past 20 of teas before I can select the meat I just harvested, don't you know that there are wolfs around me? So when harvesting beside a fire I usually drop all meat immediately to the ground and then right-click-move them onto the cooking slot. But this really feels cumbersome and unintuitive, I can't remember when I wanted to heat up an already cooked tea the last time, 99% of the time when I click on the cooking slot I want to barbecue some meat and not heat up some tea.

The other thing related to fires: when I use accelerant the fire is started very quickly but why does it take so long even when there's a 100% chance that the fire will be started? So much drama for nothing.

Also, there seems to be a bug when starting a fire with a low condition firestriker. It says that the chance is a 100% but I had it two times that the firestriker broke while starting the fire and thus failed to do so. Luckily it didn't save, I quit the game and tried again, then it worked. The firestriker can break ,yes, but it should do so after the fire was started with a 100% chance, otherwise the UI is just lying.

Yes, I think cooking menu would benefit from having a tab, where you'd choose what to cook (like in the crafting menu). The categories could be "meat", "drinks", "canned food" and maybe "water", cause I see no reason for it to have it's own menu.

On a sidenote, it takes 0.25 L of water to make a cup of tea/coffee. Can has a volume of 0.5 L, a cooking pot has a volume of 2 L. It would make a lot of sence to be able to cook up to 2 cups of tea/coffee in a can and up to 8 cups in a pot. It would also make a lot of sence for all drinks to have a weight of 0.25 L, as it makes no sence that they restore twice the hydration the same amount of water would.

[I_eat_only_wolf_meat]

1. Harvest all cattails in 2m radius option

2. Disrobe (remove all clothes for traveling under waterfall)

[Guest jeffpeng]

On 12/18/2021 at 9:51 PM, ajb1978 said:

I just throw all my quick notes in my "General Notes" now, and don't bother with writing day-specific notes. And for that matter I alt-tab out of the game, type it up in Notepad so I'm not burning up in-game time, then alt-tab back and paste it into the notes all at once.

For that reason alone the game time should pause when you are in that part of the UI.

22 hours ago, ChillPlayer said:

So when harvesting beside a fire I usually drop all meat immediately to the ground and then right-click-move them onto the cooking slot.

That's why I don't use pots for cooking unless it's super duper imporatant to min/max the last bit out of available firewood. Just hammering 3 and then do it in the open world is so much more convenient. Maybe .... just let us move meat "into" pots that way. (I know, not trivial at all.)

23 hours ago, ChillPlayer said:

The firestriker can break ,yes, but it should do so after the fire was started with a 100% chance, otherwise the UI is just lying.

Kinda disagree there. The firestriker is a tool that you use, and during using it, it might break and hence the fire fail. Makes sense to my convoluted brain.

On 12/18/2021 at 5:54 AM, Ghurcb said:

Well... You can still see the temperature in the status menu (it's just more annoying). So I wouldn't say it's "obscured". Obscuring it further, on the other hand, isn't possible, as your clothes are defined by their bonus to your temperature, the same applies to fires. I'd say, managing the temperature is one of the central mechanics of The Long Dark, and if anything shouldn't be hidden from the player, that's it. 

You could definitely make that much more obscure without removing agency from the player. You could replace things as +6°C on the bearskin with "extraordinary warm and 0.5°C on the windbreaker with "hardly warming", etc. And even the resulting compound temperature you could replace completely with things like "warming up fast", "slowly getting colder" and "freezing real bad". Technically the arrows on the HUD are more than enough to see if you are warm or cold, and to approximate how fast your temperature is changing. I'm not saying they should do that, but there are arguments to be made for designing a game like this, one of them being that burying a player in numbers and stats is pretty much the worst thing you can do in terms of immersion. Our natural state of being is very much uncertain.

[Adamo]

I’d like the currently highlighted item to be more obvious, especially on the left hand side where you pick theme such as clothing , fire, tools etc on my tv it’s easy to think you’re choosing a theme and you’ve actually got something selected which if it’s uncooked meat will of course be eaten doh 

[Morrick]

Count me with those who miss the older UI for the Journal. Now, technically I can't 'miss' it, because when I first purchased The Long Dark on Steam, v.426 "Faithful Cartographer" had just been released, and featured a big UI overhaul. But as I was exploring the Time Capsule on Hinterland's website, I watched the videos introducing the changes in older releases, and when I saw the older Journal UI as it had matured in "Penitent Scholar", my first reaction was that it looked way better than it is now.

I always found the Journal part of the UI to be the least attractive and, in fact, it is also the part of the game's interface I visit the least. The calendar looks like a big Excel spreadsheet, and I never feel like writing exploration notes in a space that doesn't really look or feel like a journal. The old Journal interface felt more immersive. It felt like your survivor found an old abandoned journal and started taking notes on it as their journey of survival progressed. The current interface is needlessly abstract. It's a pity, because the charcoal map still retains a similar look, and still feels immersive.

And not only did the 'journal' part of the Journal look great, just look at the interface and illustrations of the Skills section! Much clearer, I think.

Edited to add: I also like that older font better.

 

 

Edited January 8, 2022 by Morrick

[ArcherAC3]

Damn, the old journal looked so much better than what we have now, it was one of those things they had no reason at all to change and only made it worse.

Same goes for the old first aid screen and many other small changes, such as the old bars showing stats and the wind indicator (which actually looked like a shield deflecting wind, instead of whatever it's meant to be now).

I've saw people commenting about the old journal UI though that it was changed to please console players. Well, coming from a console players, I'd change back to that old UI without giving a second though.

[Admin]

Thank you for the suggestions, and the feedback. 

[Ghurcb]

It would also be great if spray paint markers, that are close to each other, would not combine on the map automatically into this "house" marker.

Due to the map's scale, markers that are placed on two different buildings can "stick together", when I don't really want them to.

I'd like to be able to combine the markers manually.

[Ghurcb]

Here's another one I only noticed yesterday.

So, I disabled the HUD in options in order to immerse a little further. Turns out, with the HUD disabled, when you press Tab, it only shows you the time of day. Why? It's the least important bit of information!

Basically, Tab should reveal your condition and needs as well.