With a new edition of the game coming out soon, let’s take the opportunity to take a step back and see how the user experience can be improved with a few quality-of-life changes. Many of these things are already possible on PC thanks to add-ons, but incorporating them into the base UI means they would also be available for consoles, and the number of add-ons needed on PC would be reduced. Please feel free to add your own!
Reaction-based Target Frame Colours
With the introduction of overhead nameplates and the associated redesign of overhead healthbars, there has been a large increase in the representation of reaction-based target colouring. For example, an enemy target has a red nameplate and a red healthbar, a neutral target has a yellow nameplate and a yellow healthbar, a friendly NPC has a green nameplate and healthbar, and an allied player has a blue nameplate and healthbar. Yet throughout, the target frame (at the top of the screen) remains fixed with a red healthbar regardless of the target’s reaction to you. For consistency with the overhead healthbars, and for quick reference to a target’s disposition, I would like to see an option for target frame healthbars using the same colour palette as overhead healthbars.
Difficulty-based Quest Colours
With the release of One Tamriel, the previous quest colouring system was discontinued (since quests are no longer based on location level). There were five colours in the old system (grey, green, yellow, orange, red), which indicated the level of the quest with respect to player level, and was effectively a measure of quest difficulty at your level. I would like to see the five quest colours reintroduced, again as a difficulty measure, but this time based on the five ‘experience multipliers’ mentioned by ZOS_JessicaFolsom a couple of years ago. Every quest grants XP based on this multiplier, and the multiplier is based on a quest’s difficulty, so it would be good to visually represent the difficulty and amount of XP you can expect from completing each quest: Grey, Very Easy (x0.1 XP multiplier); Green, Easy (x0.75 XP multiplier); Yellow, Standard (x1 XP multiplier); Orange, Hard (x1.5 XP multiplier); Red, Very Hard (x2.25 XP multiplier).
Accurate Resource Numbers
Adding resource numbers to the UI was a great QoL change already, but for many players, the fact that they are rounded to the nearest thousand significantly diminishes their usefulness. Please do not contract and truncate bar numbers, or at least give the option to show them in full. When facing an enemy with 41397688 health, showing that as 41.4m is not particularly useful for working out DPS effectiveness.
A similar thing could be said for the new buff timers, which truncate everything to minutes, or even hours. Hours, minutes and seconds (as hh:mm:ss), or minutes and seconds (as mmm:ss), would be much more useful.
Guild, World and Crafting Skill Progression in Loot History
Loot History already goes beyond its name by including XP rewards and AP. This goes most of the way towards accounting for skill increases, but it would be a good addition to the feature if it also included Reputation rewards for Guild progression, Inspiration rewards for Crafting progression, and increases in the special counters leading to progression of the World skill lines (Legerdemain, Vampire, Werewolf).
Campaign Name in the Loading Screen and Player Lists
This was mentioned a long time ago as something you guys liked the idea of, yet we haven’t heard anything more about it. The idea here is to say, for example, Cyrodiil (Thornblade), or Cracked Wood Cave (Haderus), in the loading screen, as well as in player lists such as the Friends List, Group List, and Guild Roster. On the loading screen, it lets you know which campaign you’re logging into if you go straight into Cyrodiil. In the player lists, it lets you know which campaigns your friends, group members and guildies are in, so you know where to go to join them.
Dungeon Loading Screens
There is already an indicator within the picture on a loading screen when you’re entering the Veteran version of a dungeon as opposed to the Normal version. It would be useful if this was extended to also include the loading screen text; for example, you’d see Blackheart Haven (Normal) or Blackheart Haven (Veteran) depending on which one you enter.
Beyond that, it would be nice is Version II of a dungeon had a different loading screen image; this is already the case for Crypt of Hearts II and City of Ash II, since they were added after launch, but it would be great if this was consistent throughout all dungeons with two storylines. This same artwork should also be used in the Group Finder; even CoH II and CoA II do not use their unique loading screens there, and use the same artwork as CoH I and CoA I.
‘In Combat’ Indicator
Allies and followers already have the ‘sword’ icon overhead when in combat, but there is not a similar indicator for the player. If you enter a UI screen, the edges glow red, but there’s nothing to show that you’re in combat when not in a menu. A non-intrusive indicator for the player would be to put a red glow/outline on the compass, and the option for an overhead marker for the player wouldn’t go amiss either.
Alliance War Notifications
With the introduction of Battlegrounds, we are seeing the addition of PvP notifications beyond the existing “X Gate is Open”, “X Scroll has been Captured”, and “X Player has been crowned Emperor”. This is the perfect time to add in options for showing capture of keeps and resources in the notifications too, as well as adding in the option to turn all of the existing ones off for those who aren't interested in seeing them.
Public Dungeon Icons
There is inconsistency within the game over what icon represents a Public Dungeon. In Wrothgar and Vvardenfell, a Public Dungeon is indicated by two crossed torches. This is also the indicator of a ‘Public Dungeon’ when you approach the door of any Public Dungeon, and the indicator on the Loading Screen for all Public Dungeons. Yet in the 16 base game zones, the icon on the compass and map is something else, which looks a bit like a stone arch. For consistency, the map/compass icon for Public Dungeon in the 16 base game zones should be updates to match the icon that represents a Public Dungeon in all other uses.
Style Indicator for Gear
Mostly self-explanatory, but the idea here is that the item tooltip would say what style the item is.
Clock
Showing the in-game time, as we have had in previous TES games.
Disguises as Costumes
Yes, all of the other ones are UI improvements, and this one is a gameplay improvement. Still, it comes under QoL. We’ve been asking for this ever since the Collections interface was introduced and pets, mounts and trophies (now mementos) were removed from the inventory. Please provide a Costume version of an outfit as part of the quest reward for a quest that introduces that outfit as a Disguise (example – a Colovian Uniform costume when you complete The Colovian Occupation).
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