The Set Item Crafting UI Is Unintuitive And Misleading

Woefulmonkey

I have only been playing for about 5 months now, but I have reached level 50 in 4 crafting areas with my main character so I have been crafting pretty seriously.

I started creating ‘Set’ items a few months ago but I would never have even understood what they were without finding receiving guidance from other users and reading articles on crafting online.

To be clear, I had found a ‘Set’ crafting station long before reading about them, and I had no idea what they were or how they worked.

That is a Clear indicator of a bad UI design. A ‘Good’ UI should guide customers to ‘Active Successful Use Of A Service’, this UI leads customers to ‘Either Not Use The Service At All Or Fail To Use It Correctly’.

Even after months of using the ‘Set’ interfaces to create items for my friends and my ALT characters, I find myself accidently crafting a ‘Normal’ items when I meant to craft a ‘Set’ items. I get why you would want to allow ‘Normal’ items to be crafted from a ‘Set’ stations, but I have no idea why that would be the ‘Default’ option offered.

I have a few suggestions which I think would greatly improve the interface for Set Item Creation Stations.

1. ) The UI should put the ‘SET’ items options ‘FIRST’ not ‘SECOND’ so by default you are in the ‘RIGHT’ place if you came to a “SET” location to craft something.
2. ) The ‘SET ITEM’ menus at the ‘SET’ crafting station should be an obviously different color than the ‘NORMAL ITEM’ menus. I would say they should be Purple or Gold similar to the way you differentiate quality in other views.
3. ) If you are at a ‘SET’ crafting station and you craft a ‘NORMAL’ item there, you should get a popup warning box reminding you that you are at a ‘SET’ crafting station and asking you to confirm you ‘Really Want To Make A Set Item There’.

These seem like easy changes to make, and I think many crafters would appreciate them.

SirAndy

Woefulmonkey wrote: »

I get why you would want to allow ‘Normal’ items to be crafted from a ‘Set’ stations

I actually don't get that.

It's been bugging me for years. There's really no reason for set-item crafting stations to even have "normal" as an option.

davey1107

Bethesda’s game philosophy has always been to use as little in-game tutorials and support for the various mechanics as possible. They’ll say that this allows players to explore and discover on their own at their own pace. This is partially true, but it’s also because they know an army of “free labor” will write guides for them.

As far as the crafting stations, it’s possible that it’s a programming issue. I’ve done some design for games, and stuff like that comes up often when we want to have things work a certain way. (Are programmers particular, or just lazy? This is never clear).

My guess is the crafting stations work on a programming level something like: I am a smith station. Therefore slot 1 = weapons, slot 2 = gear, slot 3 = special weapons, slot 4 = special gear. Slots 3 and 4 are either set to null (plain station) or if active are set to (regular item value) + (lookup set type) = set piece. Regardless the programming math, the fields are relying on their position to determine how the station works. Programmers probsbly could rearrange the fields, but it might mean digging pretty deep into some code they’d rather not spend time messing with.

But yes....on an mmorpg we worked on last year we were doing menus and we wanted the list of ships owned in another tab, but we couldn’t change the order because of the programming specifics. And this ANNOYED my designer for weeks and he’d gripe about it every chance he got, lol.

lientier

I dont know on which platform you are on.
But on PC the set is the default selection (at least when you know enough traits to make it). Maybe it checks the first item (robe for clother, bow for woodworking and euh what is the first weapon for blacksmithing?) and if you don't have enough traits it switches to normal. But from what I remember, it always displayed the item with enough traits for the set first ( I remember being confused looking for a hat, which didnt show up because I was in the set selection).

Feric51

lientier wrote: »

I dont know on which platform you are on.
But on PC the set is the default selection (at least when you know enough traits to make it). Maybe it checks the first item (robe for clother, bow for woodworking and euh what is the first weapon for blacksmithing?) and if you don't have enough traits it switches to normal. But from what I remember, it always displayed the item with enough traits for the set first ( I remember being confused looking for a hat, which didnt show up because I was in the set selection).

I'm not sure what device the OP is on, but on Xbox-NA, the set crafting stations are always set to "non-set" items as default. This is even true for attunable crafting stations bought with writ vouchers. However, once you interact with a station(say clothing) then switch to woodworking, I think it stays on the "set" tab.

I too have ignorantly crafted normal items while trying to craft set pieces, and usually see a loss of about half my materials on CP160 items and about a 75% chance of getting my trait stone back when I decon the item.

Rouven

The result of the craft is clearly shown though. But it's definitely one of those situations where I typically double check all.

I actually find this worse when crafting something for a writ. Back to quest text - back to crafting screen - back to quest text ... the wording is often not quite the same - check again ... ok, cross my fingers ... craft. (Playing on PC)

Rosveen

Rouven wrote: »

The result of the craft is clearly shown though. But it's definitely one of those situations where I typically double check all.

I actually find this worse when crafting something for a writ. Back to quest text - back to crafting screen - back to quest text ... the wording is often not quite the same - check again ... ok, cross my fingers ... craft. (Playing on PC)

I use addons to craft writ items for me because I don't trust my short-term memory.

Rouven

Rosveen wrote: »

Rouven wrote: »

The result of the craft is clearly shown though. But it's definitely one of those situations where I typically double check all.

I actually find this worse when crafting something for a writ. Back to quest text - back to crafting screen - back to quest text ... the wording is often not quite the same - check again ... ok, cross my fingers ... craft. (Playing on PC)

I use addons to craft writ items for me because I don't trust my short-term memory.

What do you use? Seems to only work for me for the regular daily cooking stuff.

Jayne_Doe

Feric51 wrote: »

lientier wrote: »

I dont know on which platform you are on.
But on PC the set is the default selection (at least when you know enough traits to make it). Maybe it checks the first item (robe for clother, bow for woodworking and euh what is the first weapon for blacksmithing?) and if you don't have enough traits it switches to normal. But from what I remember, it always displayed the item with enough traits for the set first ( I remember being confused looking for a hat, which didnt show up because I was in the set selection).

I'm not sure what device the OP is on, but on Xbox-NA, the set crafting stations are always set to "non-set" items as default. This is even true for attunable crafting stations bought with writ vouchers. However, once you interact with a station(say clothing) then switch to woodworking, I think it stays on the "set" tab.

I too have ignorantly crafted normal items while trying to craft set pieces, and usually see a loss of about half my materials on CP160 items and about a 75% chance of getting my trait stone back when I decon the item.

IIRC, this is the case with the controller interface, which defaults to normal items in the crafting interface at set stations. So, if you're using a controller on PC, you'll have this issue just as you do on consoles. It's true that if you use one set station to craft set gear and then move to another one, it stays on the set tab (at least some of the time).

JasonSilverSpring

Rouven wrote: »

Rosveen wrote: »

Rouven wrote: »

The result of the craft is clearly shown though. But it's definitely one of those situations where I typically double check all.

I actually find this worse when crafting something for a writ. Back to quest text - back to crafting screen - back to quest text ... the wording is often not quite the same - check again ... ok, cross my fingers ... craft. (Playing on PC)

I use addons to craft writ items for me because I don't trust my short-term memory.

What do you use? Seems to only work for me for the regular daily cooking stuff.

I like lazy writ crafter. I hope I got the name right as I am not at my PC.

Rouven

JasonSilverSpring wrote: »

Rouven wrote: »

Rosveen wrote: »

Rouven wrote: »

The result of the craft is clearly shown though. But it's definitely one of those situations where I typically double check all.

I actually find this worse when crafting something for a writ. Back to quest text - back to crafting screen - back to quest text ... the wording is often not quite the same - check again ... ok, cross my fingers ... craft. (Playing on PC)

I use addons to craft writ items for me because I don't trust my short-term memory.

What do you use? Seems to only work for me for the regular daily cooking stuff.

I like lazy writ crafter. I hope I got the name right as I am not at my PC.

I shall check that out, thanks.