Patiently waiting for open beta or release, I've been rewatching some old videos and somehow stumbled over the dialogue interface in the Quakecon gameplay.

> http://i.imgur.com/UtMY8dh.png

Now, I'm not a big fan of it.

I really like the overall design of the user interface, even with the beta-roughness in the released footage so far. It is clean, simple, and uses the Morrowind color scheme which I prefer over Skyrim's gray-and-black. It is also clear that they want to immitate Skyrim's interface where possible, but here, it just doesn't work.

In http://i.imgur.com/GqglClu.jpg, this layout was feasible because to the left of the vertical line, there was the name of the NPC, centered on screen, and to the right the possible dialogue options - nothing else. In ESO however, they immitate the Skyrim layout with the vertical line, but the text itself doesn't work well with it. To the left, there is nothing except the NPC, and to the right, it's just a horribly formated text field, with different spacings between the name, the dialogue text and the dialogue options - and different indentions for each of them. Further, the hyphens around the name are just ... -no-. Overall, it's very uncomfortable to read, which is a huge issue for an interface you will see a lot during normal gameplay.

So I sat down and had some fun with possible improvements. Let me know what you hate think about them!

#1 > http://i.imgur.com/yXkOeR4.png

If they want to keep with the Skyrim-style layout, one option is to make it look even more like Skyrim. However, putting anything to the left might not be easily possible with their current interface technology, how would I know. I assume there is a reason why all text is apparently kept in a single text field, so I left the dialogue options right under the text.

#2 > http://i.imgur.com/tedxtFX.png

If they can't or don't want to put anything to the left of the vertical line, normalizing the spacing and indentions would already improve readability by a lot, in my humble opinion.

#3 > http://i.imgur.com/RSLjgjg.png

However, dropping the Skyrim-style alltogether and keeping the dialogue interface more in line with the rest of the UI could also work. This version takes up a little bit more space, but I think it serves its function quite well without being as distracting as some other MMO interfaces. Also, I enlarged the font of the dialogue options in this one - especially for frequently used NPCs like merchants, this seemed like a convenient change - ,and added an alternative button highlight.

#4 > http://i.imgur.com/nu1KlJl.png

Similar to #3, but separating the buttons a bit further by imitating elements of the character interface.

So, what are your thoughts on the dialogue interface? Would you change it at all? If so, how?

And yes, I know the footage is quite old, yes, I know it's beta and yes, I know the UI will be moddable anyway.

Still, it shouldn't hurt to make some suggestions, and give us something else to talk about once in a while.

I like #3 and 4, they look a lot more cleaner and well laid out compared to the original, although I don't mind how it is right now.