There’s a lot to like about the changes, but there are also some issues that I want to highlight. The TL;DR is that the new setup does not do an effective job of communicating function to players. It’s not just that I’m used to the old one - I ran this stuff by some people who haven’t played yet or haven’t played in a while too. I’ll give some visuals to help me explain. Here we go!
I’ll start here because this was the first point that confused me when I opened it up for the first time.
The label says “Use a Modifier Item”. What does that mean? We have affix shards, runes, and support glyphs. However, both glyphs do use the word “modifier.” So what’s it referring to? The glyphs? Everything?
But - it doesn’t even do that. Clicking that button brings up the shard inventory, without runes, without glyphs, no modifiers - which to me, given the wording on the description, would refer to glyphs.
Glyphs don’t go there. But if I have a rune selected, that is where the rune sits. And yet, if I have the crafting inventory window up from clicking there, it doesn’t include runes (like the one at the top left of the page does). Instead, if I want a rune, I click the tiny button to the right.
The label doesn’t describe the function of the button. And even though I know this, every time I bring it up to shatter something I still immediately go for the large button, which is the wrong choice, because it’s the most prominent interactive element on the window.
Here, if I want to craft more of an affix, I need to click the tiny arrow, not the shard itself. If I click the arrow, the shard goes into the big circle that I just discussed. Why doesn’t clicking the shard do that too? I like that the arrow shows you that you can go higher but the functionality is odd.
When I select something to craft, the Upgrade button is between the upgrade chance info and the fracture info. Those two pieces of information are closely related to one another - here’s your chance of success, and here’s what could happen if you don’t succeed - but they’re split.
Worse, they’re split in a way that significantly diminishes the prominence of the fracture info. The text is darker, and the destructive fracture info is in the part of the window where the gradient darkens, making it stand out even less.
Look at it on the full screen. I think you’ll understand what I’m talking about, especially in contrast to the bright orange in the middle (forgive the pedestrian gear, haven’t touched this Paladin in a long time). Imagine that this is taking up the full screen on a sizable monitor. The info is just lost:
Finally, there is a lot of unnecessary opening/closing of sub-windows on this screen, particularly if you’re doing multiple crafts on a single item. The amount of stuff popping up and going away and then returning can make it easy to lose what you’re doing and make an error in crafting.
Thanks for your consideration!
