Pic of possible enhancement:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/GKuzW.jpg[/img]

While Skyrim is overall a terrific game and certainly the best I had to play this year, the aberrantly unusable, loathsome UI is clearly the very worst part of it and the worst disgrace PC gamers will have to endure this time. This is what happens when you let "designers", rather than engineers, create user interfaces, and do so without any usability study, user feedback or insight. They'll create something cute and grossly impractical. After looking at it for the first time and enjoying your, say, 3 seconds of pleasant visuals, you'll want to get the work done, and discover it's no good because it sacrified everything for looks. And the worst part of this is that the Skyrim interface, except for the perks department, is not even good looking. It looks bland and half-assed; a quick 1980s hack with transparent backgrounds.

I can list usability issues for hours:

• No icons on items makes stuff much harder to see and find. We're back in the 80s.
  
• Can't see how I look.
  
• Shameful waste of screen estate: huge item and stats, single-column list of items; silly margins make everything look bland. Like Google's new themes.
  
• Can't see stats for everything even though there's more than enough screen estate for that; can't easily compare items, detect what's encumbering me, etc.; this is awful.
  
• Text columns are thin, while the rest of the screen is empty.
  
• Have to scroll through the section list on the left even though it would fit on the screen if it worked properly and didn't have such awful margins.
  
• Tiny differentiation for equipped, favourited, and stolen items.
  
• No use of colour at all. No efficient use of backgrounds. It looks ugly and harder to read. Seriously, it throws away usability and doesn't even look good.
  
• When selling items, I see the price I'm going to get paid, but I can't see the actual item price simultaneously. I would make the stats less huge and more informative.
  
• Books don't display the page number or the total of pages.- Stuff on the left hand side of books is tilted and difficult to read.- Books are slow to open, slow to close (except when they get away quickly because of a bug), and irritatingly slow to navigate. Remember how fast Morrowind was?
  
• Can't navigate the map with the mouse by clicking and moving as anybody on a PC would expect.

And don't get me started on the bugs:

• Can't rely on the mouse; it'll randomly exit the menu or hit the wrong option.
  
• Even if you risk using the mouse, sometimes you'll need several clicks on the same spot to get things to change. This is easily noticeable in configuration and controls.
  
• When you customize your keys, hotkeys displayed at the bottom bar (e.g. [F] favourite) are sometimes wrong, and sometimes right, which makes it a matter of trial and error. Will I favourite this sword, or drop it and get the guards annoyed?
  
• Enlarged section name (which you can change with the mouse wheel) isn't always the active selection (the active section is really hard to tell; it's whiter).
  
• Can't tell if equipped weapons are favourited because the tiny, lame dots marking favourites gets overridden with the tiny, lame hand letters (L or R).
  
• The favourites menu isn't ordered by keyboard shortcut. It doesn't seem to be following any reasonable order; it's just a lump of things.
  
• Favourite and hotkey the following: 1 - Flames, 2 - Sword, 3 - Bow. Now equip flames and sword, then hit 3 to equip the bow, and 3 to unequip it. The hotkey for the bow is lost.
  
• Can't dual wield properly from hotkeys.
  
• UI doesn't warn that you're giving an item away when you sell it for 0 gold.
  
• Navigating the perks constellations is a frustrating matter of trial and error.

As reported:
http://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/mdvn0/skyrim_is_the_goty_but_its_interface_is_an_awful/

Waaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh

Can't see how you look?

Yes you can. Go to 3rd person view and swing the camera around to the front of your character before entering the inventory and guess what. You can see yourself while switching out armor/robes/clothes.

also needs some kinda buff and debuff bar, i figured since i was a orc (green) i was always being told im look sick, i guessed wrong

Honestly, the people making these posts are incredibly [censored]. <-- Does it say censored? I sincerely hope it does.

Sure Witblitz, continue to play with the sims, we can live without you.
But when this mod will be out, I am sure it will be ok for everyone.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/GKuzW.jpg[/img]

I actually agree pretty much with the OP. Anyone calling QQ at it needs to grow up and accept a good game can have flaws.

^^That UI mod looks plain awesome. I hope it ends up working properly; I hate mods which look so promising and then fall flat.

ppl just need to stop [censored]ing and enjoy the game for what it is

console users shouldnt be allowed to post here.

You have my support. I [censored] you not as an amature developer I can fire up Unity and create a better interface is a few hours. This interface stinks of failure to the maximum degree. Its a console interface, pure and simple. Zero effort was made to properly convert this controller based interface to a mouse and keyboard structure. I love the game, hate the interface.

This type of mentality leads to bad games and the thinking developers generally have about console players having low standards. If something is flawed, feedback should be given. Eventually mods will be out to fix the problem and it'll all go away.

I was told that too...what does it mean?? How do I stop looking ill?

Amazing conclusion (not) + someone feels terribly spoken to.

Is it really that bad? Im used to it already and have no problems with it, i dont know if im wrong but some people seem to make such a huge deal about it, its just an interface...

The UI is pretty awful.

I can't wait for something that's not only more practical, but something that also looks like it belongs in a fantasy game.

So make it look like Oblivion, completely disregarding the radial menu that makes the instant access to parts much easier, adding a couple of more stats on the list and not fixing anything else.

BRILLIANT

god bless you.
I hope the screen I posted can help people change their mind.
There are people already working on it but it needs time. I just want to give credit to the work and thank for support.

The UI it undeniably a complete disaster on the PC. It classifies as one of the worst UIs ever.



That's certainly an improvement, but any inventory systems that relies on scroll-lists is still sub-par. Bethesda sure don't give half a damn about their PC customers. And Pete saying that the UI works great on PC... lol. It's amazing how many flat-out falsehoods came out of that guy's mouth in pre-release hype.

Yeah, it's horrible for PC, not like you can skip most category change by using the mouse...

All of you making pathetic 5 year old posts saying "Waaaaahhhh" or "We can live with out you" ... grow up!

Its a valid complaint. And with enough educated and respectfully worded complaints about the same issue, something may well be done about it (Though probably for sequels and not Skyrim)

The point is valid. A lot of people (Mainly but not limited to PC players) find the UI disastrous.

The OP didnt say Skyrim Suxzxzxzx. just made a valid point.

looks like you moved everything up.

That doesn't address even half the issue. And there's also the problem of the mouse not working in half of the menu system.

The OP is 100% right, the interface is a mess for the PC version

My point is if the UI has problems, it's universal, not just for the PC.

That's false in itself.

The fact that different platforms have different needs means that the UI doesn't suit mouse selection, while is suits easy scrolling with controllers. While there are some issues such as the layout which may affect both consoles and PC, the major issue id that the UI just plain doesn't suit PC controls.