So, there are a lot of little things about the user interface that if improved could make navigating the in game menus and such a much smoother experience, and just make the user experience better in general. Many of the ideas I have were also mentioned by an individual in the French forums (http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/comment/681198) but I didn't see anyone in the english forums talking about these things so I will post them here:

I really appreciate how much this game deviates from World of Warcraft in gameplay, but when it comes to the UI it could have taken a lot more cues from the hyper-successful MMO. I think all of the UI improvements I am about to mention were features in WoW, and most of them are fairly standard in MMO gaming in general.

1) Shift-click any item, quest, or skill to link it in the chat window. Having to right-click and select a link option is just a clunkier method to begin with. Also, you can't right-click an item that you see linked in chat, and therefore there is no way to relink an item from chat that you might not possess yourself. Being able to link a quest in chat is a huge help when trying to find questmates or asking other players questions about a quest you are on. And being able to link a skill is great when discussing builds.

2) Shift-click any player name in the chat window to get information about that character (class, race, level, location). Currently it looks like shift-clicking doesn't do anything different than an ordinary click. At least maybe have character info be an option in the right-click drop down, maybe?

3) Hold shift while hovering over any piece of gear in your inventory to show comparison to what you currently have equipped in that slot. When you are in your inventory it does this by default, but when you are at a crafting table there is no way to do this. When I am selecting gear to deconstruct or research there is no way to quickly check the gear I am currently wearing in that slot to make sure I actually want to destroy that piece of gear to advance my profession. I have to exit the crafting table completely, go into my inventory and compare the gear there, then I have to try and remember the name of that item that I want to deconstruct/research while going back into the crafting table menu. And then I have to do all this again for each piece of gear in question. This is a huge UI flaw.

4) A "craft all" option would be very convenient. When I have mats to make 100 sweetrolls that I'm making solely for the provisioning xp and am planning to just vendor trash them afterwards I really don't want to have to actually push a button for every single one. That is another huge UI flaw in my opinion.

5) Our UserID should not be displayed in game. The only benefit with this is that when you "ignore" someone it ignores their entire account, and when you "friend" someone you will see them online even if they log in on an alt. These are two minor benefits versus a list of major problems this introduces. Firstly, this creates huge confusion when interacting with guildmates. I know the people in my guild by their UserID because that's what it shows in the guild chat, but when we group up for things it shows their character name and I have no idea who is who. Secondly, the obvious immersion killing problems this creates for role players (this is an MMORPG after all). Thirdly, there are privacy issues. I like to make all my account names formulaic so I never forget them, they are always the first initial of my name then my last name. I don't want everyone in an MMO I am playing to know my legal name and I certainly don't want my badass fantasy RPG character to be known by my boring real life name. Fourthly, maybe I want a character that people on my friends list don't know about, an alter ego per se. Fifthly (is that a word? I dunno if I've ever gotten this far before =p), the security issues, although this isn't as big of a deal as some make it out to be (most hackers use key loggers or phishing scams anyways), it is still just one more reason why displaying UserIDs in game is a bad idea and just seems like lazy programming to me. I think the two aforementioned benefits can be achieved without actually displaying UserIDs with just a little creative thinking.

6) In game voice chat. We're already paying a subscription to play this game, we shouldn't have to also pay subscription for a Ventrilo server as well. And most the free voice chat applications for gaming out there are not cross platform and are usually windows only, and this is a cross platform game, so... Also, this is the year 2014, this function should be in all MMOs at this point, period.

7) A search field for the guild stores. Seriously? No search field for the guild stores? This makes buying materials (probably the most commonly bought things in an auction house) a real hassle. Currently we can only filter by item category, so we have to rummage through literally hundreds or thousands of irrelevant materials to find the few stacks of mats we actually want. What is this all about?

8 ) Option to right-click on those character panels that come up at the top left when in a group. It would be really convenient if you could just right-click on those character panels directly to bring a drop down with options like kick, make leader, whisper, etc... instead of having to open the group window in the menus. Just helps with streamlining and makes things quicker/easier and would be a really easy function to add. (EDIT: #8 was changed because the feature it previously suggested has been added to ESO. This feature was mentioned by one of the commenters and definitely deserves to be on this list.)

9) Option to "inspect" another player. I'll see some guy in really badass looking gear and be like "Who are you wearing" like some red carpet fashion critic, and I should be able to find that out without having to ask the player to link all the gear he/she is wearing in chat. In addition to seeing the player's paper doll of gear, being able to see that player's class build would be nice too for those of us who are into theorycrafting.

10) Trying on gear. I'd like to be able to see what my character would look like wearing a piece of gear without actually possessing the item or before equipping a BOE. So before buying, binding, or crafting the item I could see what it would look like cosmetically. Maybe it could be an option from a right-click drop down menu on the item's icon or something. It would be really useful in this game, especially considering the same piece of gear can have at least 14 different possible racial styles. Being able to zoom/rotate your character while in the inventory menu section would be nice little bonus as well.

Extra credit:
Allow us to copy and paste text from the chat window! This would be great and save lots of headache in certain situations.


Thanks for reading, I know this is a long post, but I really think these UI functions would GREATLY improve some of the little nuisances many players currently find with the game.

This was also posted to the ESO subreddit where the dialogue with other gamers got very productive weeding out the pro's and con's of some of these features with a bit more nuance than they did here. Here's a link to the subreddit version if you would like to join the discussion over there: http://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/244tix/10_suggestions_to_vastly_improve_esos_user/

P.S. I would personally like just a couple more hotkeys for abilities, although I know this is entirely subjective and just something I would like personally and that others may disagree with, which is why it is not in the main body of my post. Maybe even just having the option to assign keybindings to swap the current quickslot item to one of the other items slotted in the radial menu? Using the mouse with the radial menu to change what is in your quickslot is just not viable while in the heat of combat. AND FIX THE PHASING ISSUES, it is a game ruiner. This is an MMO, at the very least I should be able to SEE the people I am grouped with and hunt with them as well.