An explanation for everyone to understand. Regarding UI

I am starting this topic in the hope, that we can bring some more attention to the UI again.
And I beg you to read it first before you respond any very useful comments, like stating that "the UI is fine".
This is regarding PC btw.

Ok, let´s get to it:
An average of 10 shields, 10 grenades and around the same number of weapons, stuff my inventory up after every 3-5 missions.
(I am Ego 372, have 43 inventory slots, but that is not important for the following.)

This forces me to sit down somewhere, and manage my inventory. Meaning I compare things, equip things and salvage things.

Keep in mind here, that I currently only have 3 loadouts. I don´t wanna know how much of a pain it is for someone with 5 loadouts.

Let me take you through the process of doing one of those inventory cleanups.
I open inventory, I mostly start with the grenades. I click on them, compare with all new ones, and pick the one which is an upgrade.
Of course, I need to equip the new grenade in my other loadouts. Even if I don´t use the other loadouts, the "old" grenade is still in there, which means I cannot salvage it, or sell it. (I also don´t have the option to have loadouts free of anything, btw.)

OK. I am going into the other loadout to change the grenade slot, but OH YEAH! I cannot change any item when I just swapped the loadout within the UI menu. No, I have to swap loadout, press escape to be back in the game, and reopen the menu again. Only then it allows me to change any items I want to have equipped.
Of course I will have to do that another time, for the 3rd loadout. (Thank god I only have 3 so far! Look at that. I am happy to have less loadouts, just because it is such a pain to deal with them. That shouldn´t be lol. But let´s carry on...)

Now that we are done with comparing and equipping the grenades, let´s salvage them so we get rid of the part regarding grenades only.
Let´s open the menu to go into the salvage screen. Oh yeah. Let´s click another time to actually be in the actual salvage menu(WHY?!). Oh nvm, that didn´t work. Let´s double click.
Ok nice. A list of a gazillion items. Let´s browse through it to get to the grenades. I need to scroll down all the way, because they are at the very bottom (I of course have to scroll down for every single other grenade as well, later).
Finally I am tagging one I want to have salvaged (I again need to double click in order to go into the weapon specific salvage/mod menu).
I need to double click again for selecting the salvaging option.
I then need to click again for a "start"-this-action button.
I THEN need to click AGAIN to confirm if I am sure that I want to destroy this item.
YAAAY! We did it! One grenade we got rid of! :D

OK. Let us go all over this BS for the other 8 grenades or so.

I´ll will write this in caps now, because I cannot stress enough, how much of a madness this is:
THIS WAS ONLY THE GRENADES! YOU STILL HAVE TO TAKE CARE OF THE SHIELDS, AND ALL THE WEAPONS, LOL!

I will spare you with the rest of what a PC user has to go through in order to get done with an inventory cleanup, and fina-fkn-lly can go back to actually playing the game again.

As painful as it was to read this, it is as painful to undergo this procedure EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.


I want to point out here again, that this you will have to do after every 5 missions or so. Meaning, that I am probably spending equally enough time (probably even more) managing and cleaning out my inventory, than I am actually playing the game.

This is what is wrong with the UI. All the people saying "the UI is fine" FCK YOU! How on earth is this FINE?!
I apologize for the random rage there.



On a side note: It also might be a superb idea, if you could see the stats of an item when it´s lying on the ground before having to pick it up. That way, you could easily decide if you want to grab it or not. As you can see, it would be a big time saver.


All this very painful experience with the lousy UI always makes me log off, just because I cannot handle to go through this process of cleaning up my inventory. I log off, simply because I cannot be arsed to sit there for 20-30 min to undergo this madness, after every 3-5 missions I play.

I beg you to put some work into this, Trion. Not for me, but for you, in order to bring this game the success it deserves, fix this horrid UI of yours currently in place, along with the dreadful chat of course.

I really cannot understand how noone in the beta rose these issues?! Unless they have, and Trion just had to make the release date. In which case I hope, that these things will be fixed with the very next patch on the 15th, or the immediate next upcoming one.
Because let me tell you this, while we all love the game and the gameplay, and we really do.
These not so unimportant issues make or break the game IMO. No matter how good the gameplay is, if you cannot get around your UI, it´s all worth nothing.

Agreed. /signed /inkedinblood /cheer /you'reright!

The people that brought up the various UI issues were just ignored by Trion.

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Originally Posted by Ikagawa

The people that brought up the various UI issues were just ignored by Trion.

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We talking Beta, I assume?

I don't understand why we still have to complain about menus in this day and age, but there you have it, every game seems to just get this wrong. If you're going to have hundreds of different guns under a dozen groups why not have a Seperated tab for each group? SMG's under one tab, LMG's under another etc. And why do we need to access more than one screen and use multiple button presses to compare items? How about a popup with the gun's info we're hovering over and a comparison popup of the 2 guns we have equipped, you know like every other game? And if you are going to just have one huge list of guns in my inventory them why are all the guns I have equipped to different load outs, without any indication that they're part of a load out, on the same list? The crappy item management has caused me to completely disregard entire classes of weapons and just automatically salvage/sell them; oh, a pistol? Scrap. Ooh, a sawed-off shotgun? Scrap. And how come I've been using the same exact shield since the beginning? Why even have different shields if none even come close to the one I got near the beginning of the campaign?

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Originally Posted by Rend

We talking Beta, I assume?

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That's what I've seen multiple people say since the game went live.

Nothing has changed with the patch, which is very disappointing.

Honestly, I use a gamepad to play this game on the PC. I frequently top the damage charts at arkfalls, and I am in the upper half of PvP. Conclusion? There is next to zero benefit to mouse and keyboard in this game.

As a happy result of using a gamepad to play Defiance, the only complaint you have that I encounter is needing to close my equipment UI, and reopen it in order to equip new items to multiple loadouts. Most of the things you outline as being boring and tedious take me not more than a few seconds.

How do I get around this? Well a couple of ways. 1, my loadouts are mostly different. The only consistent item in all 4 slots is my shield. The other is that if I pick up an item that I want in all loadouts, I equip it to one loadout, go to the vendor/salvage matrix and scrap/sell the stuff I would be junking anyways, clear it out with my new shiney perfectly safe in an equipped slot, and then I go equip it to the other slots without having to sort through a bunch of garbage to find it again.

As for picking up items. All weapons of the same name, regardless of quality have the same basic stats. The nano effect is displayed on the item popup. The only thing that's different is the extra effects that you get from high quality/high EGO items.

Trion is perfectly aware that the UI needs work. The Salvage Matrix is being overhauled for the next DLC. Hopefully allowing us to scrap an item in each available matrix slot, instead of one at a time.

The UI really isn't as bad as people make it out to be. It isn't perfect, that's for sure. But a lot of things you complain about are just learning curve, and using a keyboard and mouse to play a game with a UI similar to Borderlands.

I keep my inventory full 58/58 and really don't care about the items any more since the stats are all the same.

I still get the load out issue like what u described on PS3... Is a tad of a pia to keep closing the load out screen & re-open it just to swap weapons... I've not found any way around it other than closing & reopening the load out screens...