August Expansion Teaser Screenshot #3

A lot of other people seem to be unable to stop complaining about the change to the interface. But, think about this change for a second. In the old interface (which I DO agree, looks generally better; though I DO like this one as well) there was no real room for flexibility. If they wanted to ADD SOMETHING NEW, they wouldn't be able to without rearranging/redesigning the interface. Maybe that's the point; maybe they are planning on adding something new. I don't know what, but it's possible. And it seems to me that that's the only real reason they'd want to change it in the first place would be to add something new, a new menu option. Just my two cents. I have no idea what they would be adding (if I'm even right in the first place), whether it's for right now or something later on down the road. But it does make me rather curious.

Nice to see how fast you react to feedback. The new UI iteration looks better than your first draft, but overall i still prefer the old UI.

Menu Button:
Good change. I mainly use the menu to look up key shortcuts. I think the new menu will have better usability, because it shows a full list of all shortcuts without having to hover over the icons separately.

Dollar Sign:
The change is ok. I liked the dollar sign more, because it was smaller. The new shop button is larger and therefore even more immersion breaking than the dollar sign. The current draft looks better than the first draft, but the button is still standing out too much. The green color made sense for the dollar sign, but it does not make sense for the shop button. Make the shop buttons blend in a bit better and it will be a good change, because of the easier localization.

Globes:
I like the old globe design with ladies in the corners. I like how they partially cover the globes and fill the corners of the screen to create a nice border around the ui. The health and mana globes are huge, which makes them easy to read, but also makes them look a bit plain. Partially covering them adds detail while keeping the good readablity. The lady statues fill in the corners of the screen, connect the ui to the side of the screen and add a nice border around it. Without them the ui just does not look right. The lady images themselves are not too great, but they are kind of iconic for path of exile. They look a bit like elves and out of place, but they are still better than the Graeco-Roman statues from your first draft. The statues from the first draft were too small, too ugly and they looked out of place. They also looked bolt on to the ui. The bolt-on look was probably caused by beeing a draft rather than a final design, but i do not think you could have integrated those statues as well as the ladies, where the left lady is wrapping her arm around the health globe. If you decide to replace the ladies please use statues of similar proportions, which create a border around the ui, cover part of the globes and are well integrated by wrapping their arms around the globes, holding the globes up, or something similar.

Flasks:
The change is rather trivial, but the columns are slightly too distracting. The flasks are rather small, therefore i would keep the background simple to have the visual focus on the flasks instead of the background.

Graeco-Roman Style:
I like the roundish look of the current ui. If you change the ui design to Graeco-Roman you would probably have to replace the rope around the ui with columns and the ui would be square, which i would not like. I am not sure if you can get away with adding just a few Graeco-Roman design elements to the ui, because those elements are very dominant. The new columns in the flask area look out of place and the Graeco-Roman statues in the first draft also looked out of place. To integrate them better you would have to add more Graeco-Roman design elements and replace some of the tribal/fantasy elements. In the end the ui would look very Graeco-Roman and while that would fit act 3 well, because act 3 features many Graeco-Roman elements, it would look out of place in act 1 and 2.

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Iromizu wrote:

Please this. Points have its own icon you know. Similar SHOP buttons are in all cheap p2w games...

+1.

I don't like the text "shop and menu", symbols are much better.

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The new menu button has been improved.
The shop button now fits in better with the rest of the UI and doesn't stand out so much. The reason it's wider now is because the dollar sign was immersion-breaking

About that. I disagree.
The old UI had a metallic old rusty feel like much of Wraeclast. Even the buttons used here on the forum for shop looks more glass-like. Something that feels right with it's faint glow from the bottom that these teaser button's don't have.
As the buttons in the teaser stand now they are simply far too shiny and plastic feeling. This is causes the shop button to stand out more than before and the non stylized characters used for the word also break the immersion.
Looking at other posts I agree that the shop button should remain as a symbol representing currency, but since this game has no currency it could use the point's symbol as another has shown.
Symbols work fine for the Menu as well. Curious players will click it and discover it's a menu without text breaking the immersion. Making the button fit in more and removing the text
would be for the best in my opinion.

Thanks for reading.

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Kalidor wrote:

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Iromizu wrote:

This is amazing design and fits much better than shop or $ button !

As a learned graphical designer i'll have to agree with this and recommend you to use such a button with a "shop" howertag on mouseover, if you can since it doesn't brake the immerion as much. Otherwise, nice to see some changes to the UI, but imho sometimes less is also more (in regard to changes, that is).

Here's the thing - now we have 8 buttons in plain sight and you see what each one does while howering over it; with the new version new players will have to first figure out to open the slide menu and then find the thing they're looking for in the menu that pops up; while it might indeed be "slicker" and neater this way, it's also not as easy and intuitive as the current version is. We'll just have to see how it goes, but overall a good thing design-wise.

As for the statues: while i wouldn't exactly mind the smaller statues, to be honest i also prefer the current ones. For one becouse i'm a male and obviously like to see 2 girls better than a girl and a dude, for two becouse they're just beautiful and could still reflect the godesses Lunaris & Solaris, like someone else mentioned; in other words, it doesn't go against PoE's lore or artstyle in the least bit this way imho.

Looking forward to the patch guys; just don't mess around with stuff too much for the sole sake of "more changes".

Hmmm i can see a new support gem?? Could find one with the letter G that makes sense on clarity!!

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RoyalStar wrote:

I don't like the text "shop and menu", symbols are much better.

The proposed image by Iromizu above looks real good! However the problem with an icon is that new players may not realize what it is, hence less income for GGG. "Shop" is self-explanatory and I suppose (new) players are more likely to click it and see all the cool stuff they can tweak their characters and account with.


Can't wait for the expansion to be released! :D

Finally, could these NPCs represent different factions in the land that, normally, battle and ally with eachother? Meaningful PVP perhaps?

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