Do you feel ZOS's UI design or visual communication design recognizable or not?

AvalonRanger

Do you feel that ZOS's UI design or visual communication design style are recognizable or not?

A: "Hey! Destroy totem ! "
B: "What kind of totem are you saying?"
A: "A...A blue glowing one. Kind of a necromantic design totem."
B: "Ah...Ok."
A: "It has something much amount of skull on it. Do you see?"
B: "Ah... Maybe..."
A: "Maybe?"

LoL ...and sign. I'm tired of these chatting through the dungeon with people.
I've been action game fan so far. But ESO is quite pile of abstract riddle visual design game.
(Or, other MMO game is also like ESO?)

Long experienced player may know some pattern of PVE combat mechanics of dungeon
or trial boss. But It's hard to accept for newbies. (Or people challenge new dungeon at a first time running.)

AvalonRanger

NO! Mostly nonsense. I want UI design improvement. Or better visual aspect for smooth gaming.

First of all, I respect ZOS's environment designers.
Their production power and technique is awesome.

But!

There're not much smart player's guide visual design at all in this game.
Certainly, we can check damage amount by death check announce.
But, I can't understand any of logic of instant wipe or dangerous damage for DPS
until doing Vet dungeon( or vet trial).

This is really bad. Because this bad game design prevent people are willing to
challenge Vet contents (or dangerous DLC dungeon even in normal) .

11years from 2014. But Situation is not so improved at all.

Pinja

The Black gem foundry last boss is cool, but so random. The guy was shouting "help your team mates so they can help you" wile I was kiting souls and I'm still not sure what he was talking about. We did it on non-hardmode vet, someone in the group explained mechs. It would've been fun to figure out, but it would've taken so many deaths.

colossalvoids

Or other opinion

Whilst I myself can recognise stuff quite easily generally, especially knowing the patterns throughout the years and how it's always the same things but rearranged... I do perfectly understand people having issues with visual cues be it UI elements or in-game objects, effects, npc callouts or whatsnot. That's getting even more apparent after playing different titles where such cues are made way more apparent, logical or outright easier to dissect fast in heat of a new encounter without prior experience.

Personally newer content can look as "too much" compared to years prior but that's partially caused by new set VFX's, new skills like messy beams etc. rather than the content design by itself, yet again that's a perception of someone who isn't playing this as a "main game" anymore but did so previously. If I'd be spending there tens of thousands hours as previously my opinion would probably be quite different. But I'm not blaming newer players for not being able to navigate the game at it's current state compared to way more cleaner product it was before, the "visual mess" progression curve was just smoother, now you're getting flashbanged at every corner from the very start.

AvalonRanger

NO! Mostly nonsense. I want UI design improvement. Or better visual aspect for smooth gaming.

>For example. New Doom series had "green color navigation sign" as guide symbol.

>Or most of parkour style action game has gripping mark sign at the ridge.
(Mostly white paint or yellow color sign "ex horizon zero dawn, Indiana Jones great circle".)

I want something decent "easy to acceptable" UI rule and basis.
In mostly, I couldn't understand sudden wipe situation in new group contents, and
how to avoid it because of terrible ESO visual design direction.

There're too many of different abstract effects at once on the stage.
This confuse people's mind at all.
Please do something, ZOS.

SwordOfSagas

Or other opinion

I go into new dungeons blind usually on release day, it's part of the fun figuring out how the mechs work.

Jaimeh

I personally like the NPC lines that direct your attention to a particular element throughout a fight. Sometimes, you can tunnel-vision during a fight (especially as a dps), so a NPC yelling about something can snap you out. As for whether they are easy to decipher or not, it depends on the fight, for some mechanics it's very straightforward, like Divayth Fir saying "Sever their connection, or are you trying to do this the hard way?" in HOF for example, for others it might not be as easy to decipher what they mean for you to do initially, but it can be a good reminder after you have figured out the fight. I like that they are not super prescriptive all the time, because discovering how mechanics work is part of the fun, imo.

AvalonRanger

NO! Mostly nonsense. I want UI design improvement. Or better visual aspect for smooth gaming.

SwordOfSagas wrote: »

I go into new dungeons blind usually on release day, it's part of the fun figuring out how the mechs work.

I can understand your feeling at some point.
But, sometimes or mostly I feel nonsense against ESO game design, and stressful.

One day, maybe 3 years ago? I did tank role at Vet Bloodroot forge dungeon.
My tank didn't suffer much damage (Or almost zero damage) by volcano projectile.
But my 2 DPS got instant death so many times by it. I couldn't understand what hell happen
until I check Youtube guide. Because I didn't think that projectile have such a lethal damage for DPS.
(Don't worry, currently I knew that tank should stand on volcano launcher on the ground. )

I hope ZOS director consider these game design problem more seriously.
Because I want to play group contents with more people as MMO game.

LunaFlora

Yes. I can easily understand dungeon mechanism even without google searching. Developer is doing decent visual communication with players.

nearly always the Dungeons and its characters make the mechanics quite clear.
i still read guides anyways, because i want to be prepared before i am in the dungeon and might have trouble paying attention to all the hints and signs.

Vaqual

Yes. I can easily understand dungeon mechanism even without google searching. Developer is doing decent visual communication with players.

When I started with MMOs pure animations without extra particles and the occasional oneliner from a boss in say-chat were enough of a tell to figure out a mechanic within the first 1-2 tries.
No we have abundant highlight colors, audio cues and a very consistent animation/outcome design and people still need add-ons to figure it out...

The learning and the improvement phase can be a big part of the fun and people are just willing to skip it for some pointless reward. Optimizing the fun out of the game and taking shortcuts usually results in a brief kick, followed by a loss of interest.
Once you understand a mechanic it is hard to unlearn it, so you get to have that experience only once. Therefor I don't mind if some fights are a bit harder to understand.

Destai

NO! Mostly nonsense. I want UI design improvement. Or better visual aspect for smooth gaming.

I realized why I jump so much instead of looting. It’s because when an enemy dies, the prompt shows up, but I can’t loot it until hits the ground. I shouldn’t get prompts that aren’t ready.

BretonMage

NO! Mostly nonsense. I want UI design improvement. Or better visual aspect for smooth gaming.

While I wouldn't say they were mostly nonsense, I think they could be a lot clearer usually. This is one of the reasons I don't like doing group content, because I tend to get confused by the mechanics and hate to be the weak link in the group. I feel like I'm always yelling, "WHERE IS IT" at the screen even for the simplest content.

AvalonRanger

NO! Mostly nonsense. I want UI design improvement. Or better visual aspect for smooth gaming.

BretonMage wrote: »

While I wouldn't say they were mostly nonsense, I think they could be a lot clearer usually. This is one of the reasons I don't like doing group content, because I tend to get confused by the mechanics and hate to be the weak link in the group. I feel like I'm always yelling, "WHERE IS IT" at the screen even for the simplest content.

Insightful opinion.

...hate to be the weak link in the group. I feel like I'm always yelling, "WHERE IS IT" ...

I'm ESO player from beta tester phase in 2014. But I still feel huge frustration with newbies.
Because we don't have decent common visual game design rule of ESO even in 2025.

If we have common wipe sign gimmick UI or lethal damage sign. We just yell "Watch the lethal sign!"
Or just say, "Destroy important object!" Then problem solved, but currently, we can't.

Soarora

Or other opinion

I’ve been running new dungeons blind, starting on PTS so no help either, since Bal Sunnar/Scriv Hall I believe. I generally don’t think figuring out mechanics is hard, it’s quite fun actually, but I recognize I have three advantages:
1. I know basic signs of mechanics, like yellow AoE = stand here or else. This is not covered anywhere, players have to be taught it from one of the content that has the AoE (like blackrose prison, cloudrest, or sunspire).
2. I’ve been playing long enough I have a gist of how ZOS thinks about mechanics.
3. I have subtitles on and I read the death recaps. The hint section genuinely explains a lot of mechanics.

So, I want to say it’s good and it shouldn’t be made any easier because I have fun figuring things out. However, across the board it cannot be said mechanics are easily understandable… here’s some that are commonly misunderstood:

1. Coral Aerie last boss HM - Mind Link
Ever since this dungeon came out, people have been saying the two targets of Mind Link is random. I never was convinced it’s random. It is in fact not random. I don’t know if it used to be random and isn’t anymore but I did testing with some friends just a few months ago and it’s not random. Tank almost always gets it for a reason!

2. Graven Deep last boss - “other world”/flesh atronach
There’s a trash pack that seems to be trying to explain what the mechanic is? I don’t know? Does anyone even know how this works? Yes, you kill more of the floating things and then the atronach gets smaller… how come with less then 4 players it can be a bone colossus? ??? What does the glowing sigil in the middle getting more glowy even mean???

3. Unhallowed Grave last boss - Fist
We finally figured out that the fist the main boss does on the tank is a resistance check but it’s still unclear if health plays a part or if it’s only resists. Or how much resists you actually need (all I know is major resolve = live).

Gabriel_H

Yes. I can easily understand dungeon mechanism even without google searching. Developer is doing decent visual communication with players.

I say this with someone with vision issues, who would like to have options to turn off effects so I can run my fav content without having to take painkillers.

When it comes to combat notifiers ZOS don't spoon-feed info - which imo makes it better than most MMOs. They expect players to work it out. In recent years they have altered the design to make the animations/visual cues more obvious in some cases. Base game HA from mobs is something I literally cannot see and have to rely on addons.

It does not take long to work out red candy (circle above head) means abc and blue candy means xyz, or a floor filling up with AoE and an NPC shouting "change the mirrors"

AvalonRanger

NO! Mostly nonsense. I want UI design improvement. Or better visual aspect for smooth gaming.

I've seen many of high CP player(over 1000) who can't handle just normal difficulty in rand team.
(But I've also seen few of skillful player who are CP below 900.)
I've seen many of fake tank and bad DPS, or almost fake healer in rand team.

Some of them might be just role cheater for skipping queue waiting time.
(They're out of problem. Too much bad players. Just use armory system.)

But some of them definitely didn't understand combat situation at all,
because of bad visual design of ZOS. <--- I think this is the major reason why
tank shortage never solved in the ESO.

katanagirl1

Or other opinion

Being able to turn off other player’s effects would be greatly helpful. We don’t have that option on consoles. Then we could see the aoes and other stuff more easily.

Personally I hate the npcs shouting out things during the fight. I am too focused on staying out of damage and looking at the boss or mobs that I need to hit. I can hear them but don’t have the brainpower left to listen to what they are saying.

I am only familiar with the easier group dungeons and earlier trials. I tend to struggle more in the later dungeons and trials. The difficulty of those is higher and there are more adds and more add groups. Generally, it seems like certain mechanics are consistent from one area to another. For instance, if the red lines are shooting out of an enemy, you know to bash them to interrupt them. However, when the whole group is hard stacked in one spot and you are forced to see the animations of every single person in your group, the center of your screen is just a bright white blob.

Other than that one suggestion I suppose it just takes experience and a knowledgeable lead to explain things. It would be nice to have mechanics that don’t require that, but it might not be possible.

AvalonRanger

NO! Mostly nonsense. I want UI design improvement. Or better visual aspect for smooth gaming.

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Being able to turn off other player’s effects would be greatly helpful. We don’t have that option on consoles. Then we could see the aoes and other stuff more easily.

Personally I hate the npcs shouting out things during the fight. I am too focused on staying out of damage and looking at the boss or mobs that I need to hit. I can hear them but don’t have the brainpower left to listen to what they are saying.

I am only familiar with the easier group dungeons and earlier trials. I tend to struggle more in the later dungeons and trials. The difficulty of those is higher and there are more adds and more add groups. Generally, it seems like certain mechanics are consistent from one area to another. For instance, if the red lines are shooting out of an enemy, you know to bash them to interrupt them. However, when the whole group is hard stacked in one spot and you are forced to see the animations of every single person in your group, the center of your screen is just a bright white blob.

Other than that one suggestion I suppose it just takes experience and a knowledgeable lead to explain things. It would be nice to have mechanics that don’t require that, but it might not be possible.

"Being able to turn off other player’s effects would be greatly helpful."

That’s right! Insightful. In 12 trial mission, there're so many of status effect show up at once.
It feel like scramble egg of the effect visuals, so I can't find out dangerous AoE at all.

"Personally I hate the npcs shouting out things during the fight. I am too focused on staying out of damage and looking at the boss or mobs that I need to hit. I can hear them but don’t have the brainpower left to listen to what they are saying."


I agree with this also. Moreover, sometimes, it feels like stupid visual direction for me.
"Don't move your muscle !"
Why deadra boss advise us?

mdjessup4906

Or other opinion

I feel like its very hit or miss. I want to say they're getting better about it, but then we get stuff like ossian cages tiny white glowy thing for portal exit gl seeing the activation among tge swarm of fully buffed up dps all trying to leave at once. and every freaking thing being different shades of eye strain inducing gray-blue. I know its Coldharbor but they can do something.

And for the moderately directionally challenged among us *cough notme* Why dont they put those nice big 'walk this way' arrows they have in some dungeons in all of them???

whitecrow

Yes. I can easily understand dungeon mechanism even without google searching. Developer is doing decent visual communication with players.

For the example you give I think it is okay. Other kinds of mechanics make me shake my head. Maw of Lorkhaj is my favorite trial, for the story and characters, but how would anyone be able to figure out the mechanics of some of those battles without looking it up or being told by someone who already knows?

spartaxoxo

Or other opinion

There's definitely ways it could use improvement. But, I also feel most fights are alright. I do feel it could a lot better with accessibility in some areas. Like the treasure map mounds are really hard to see with no option to use a glow for no real reason.