Poor interface

[anatoliy]

Another annoying decisions:

• Wonder movie cannot be closed neither by Esc, right click or Enter. Hunt for X button instead!
• Over centrist and long trivial Diplomacy cinematic conversations. Just shut up and get to the point. Pressing Esc just makes them shut. But after a sec ONE button "OK" will slooooowly and fashionly emerge )))

 

[Kwami]

Do others also occasionally have boosted techs that they couldn't possibly have boosted? I'm not sure if this is an interface problem, mind, as it seems to me that the boost is actually applied.

You probably got the boost from a tribal village reward.

 

[ond_magiker]

I find the lack of keyboard shortcuts to be disturbing.

(Looks for the Force choke-shortcut)

 

[Giorsoine]

Yeah I really miss the center on unit shortcut key. Every time I press C now I get the civics tree. Annoying as hell.

 

[PendragonWRB]

My list of UI shortcomings so far:

- Tribal huts are all but invisible
- No notification of city growth (I want to micro manage that)
- Map scroll is unusable due to interaction with menus (it should not scroll if your mouse is anywhere near the menus)
- Font is WAY to small, there should be larger version available at all resolutions
- Hardly any right click to Civilopedia links
- Please don't play the leader introduction EVERY time I load a game, just the first time I start the game
- Tile growth status and next tile targets completely missing (THIS IS A MAJOR FLAW)

 

[Kwami]

My list of UI shortcomings so far:
- Please don't play the leader introduction EVERY time I load a game, just the first time I start the game

I mean, the alternative is just a boring loading screen. Is that really better?

 

[need my speed]

I mean, the alternative is just a boring loading screen. Is that really better?

Yes, because it'd have no voice narrating words again and again when I'm trying to do something else.

 

[Jeckel]

UI designers would tell you that throw everything into one screen is bad, because organized data is much better when there are many things to manage. The problem is this isn't the most elegant way to solve that.

No. A good GUI designer would tell you to put all related data on the same screen. Yes, organized data is better, but that is kind of the point. Having related data hidden behind multiple clicks isn't organized.

Thing is, in the past 5-10 years or so, UI designers have thrown everything we learned in the 90s and early 2000s about UI design out the window and are now just in a free-for-all, resulting in a lot of UIs like that. This isn't limited to Civ6, but is an industry-wide phenomenon. I can't wait till the pendulum swings back to more sensible UIs, hopefully in the next 5 years lol

^ This. This right here. I don't know if the professors and teachers aren't doing their job right, if it is the influence of mobile popularity that is causing the loss of basic desktop practices, if the drive to look fancy is overriding common sense, or a combination of those and other factors, but interface design has gone to the dogs this decade. It is all sliding panels and fade in/fade out popups with things buried behind multiple clicks when one full screen or dialog box would be much cleaner, clearer, and real estate efficient. Fingers crossed that the pendulum swing reversal only takes 5 years and the pendulum doesn't simply fall off and continue on this downward spiral.

 

[grandad1982]

I found this post on the Steam forums on how you can turn off the auto cycle. http://steamcommunity.com/app/289070/discussions/0/340412122407085484/?tscn=1476998986

Thanks.

Still doesn't make up for there being no in game option but I'll take what i can get.

 

[comatosedragon]

Okay. Overall, a much better experience than the CIV V launch. But I still agree with most posters in this thread about the following negative things:

* No Unit List
* No UI Upscale for 1080p
* No 'back' button in the civilopedia
* Civilopedia not accessible from main menu (just like civ V launch)

and a couple other minor (so far) things also. But the game does so much right (IMHO), that I am able to overlook these small issues, as long as things are fixed in a future patch(almost no doubts there).

 

[Grotius]

I agree with most of the UI complaints, and I agree that they're mostly minor annoyances.

My top complaint is the general lack of hotkeys. My #2: more links in the Civilopedia.

 

[beorn]

Game is certainly fun, I have a very positive first impression.

But scrolling will not work at all for me, not at the edge of the map, not at the edge of the screen. This is very annoying.
I've seen many of the other things listed above, but the only one I don't think I can get used to is the lack of notification that a city grew. Seems important to me.

 

[skyclad]

Beorn make sure you have the scroll enabled. For me it was disabled by default. Still doesnt work that well as you can read in this thread though

 

[RedRover57]

I don't know if this has been mentioned already, but the unit movement is making me nuts. In addition to the auto-cycling issues (which is stress-inducing) it's also a pain to have to click on the move unit button in the lower right in order to plan out your best travel route. Plus, it will often show that you can move to a spot in one turn and after clicking your unit stops midway because some other factor wasn't taken into account with regard to your ability to move that distance. And it's annoying to have to click an additional button to end your turn for a unit when it can't move further (like onto a hill after already moving one tile). Maybe I can hotkey some of these things and I don't realize it yet, but right now I seem to be having to use way more mouse clicks per turn than in Civ 5.

Edit: I was able to hotkey away most of these issues. It's not as smooth as Civ 5, but tolerable. The auto-cycling is a pain however, particularly when the screen jumps to the next unit before the previous unit was finished with its move.

 

[genyl]

No. A good GUI designer would tell you to put all related data on the same screen. Yes, organized data is better, but that is kind of the point. Having related data hidden behind multiple clicks isn't organized.



^ This. This right here. I don't know if the professors and teachers aren't doing their job right, if it is the influence of mobile popularity that is causing the loss of basic desktop practices, if the drive to look fancy is overriding common sense, or a combination of those and other factors, but interface design has gone to the dogs this decade. It is all sliding panels and fade in/fade out popups with things buried behind multiple clicks when one full screen or dialog box would be much cleaner, clearer, and real estate efficient. Fingers crossed that the pendulum swing reversal only takes 5 years and the pendulum doesn't simply fall off and continue on this downward spiral.

I develop front end and take pride in building functional applications. I have been using computers for 30 years and my knowledge comes from experience.

In the recent years there seems to be a new job called "User Experience designer" and probably something more strambotic and pompous like "UX master facilitator"

Then your boss eats the bullfeathers and calls one of this "experts" to improve the UI. It doesn't matter that the users are happy with the app, the important thing seems to be creating a beautiful , albeit unusable, app to show it to the big bosses in meetings. As important of destroying the usability of an application is to drop as much buzz words as possible: breadcrumbs, user path, colour pollution, hicks law...ffs they are talking about "pinkies" now

All this being delivered by an "expert" who is a young girl that has read a few books and uses whatsupp to chat with her mates.

End result: massive efforts done in a massive development project like this being massively let down by the decissions of an unqualified junior

 

[Sic]

I mean, the alternative is just a boring loading screen. Is that really better?

Are you kidding?

It is several orders of magnitude better. Not only is it better in terms of not hearing the exact same soundbite over and over, it is better because it won't make the start of a new game tedious even before it starts. The opening screen is supposed to be an event. Right now, it is getting watered down by being shown every single time you load a game.

It's not a bad idea to have the "features and abilities" of a civ listed when you load a game, but the rest should not be there at all. Not the "start quote", and not the "leader quote". It's extremely tedious.

 

[comatosedragon]

Just realized/noticed two other things to add to my list:

* No Hall of Fame (that I can find. Do you have to finish a game first?)
* Can not adjust the number of City States (actually, the whole 'Advanced Setup' screen is lackluster)

 

[Zhahz]

Overall I think the UI is pretty damn good. There's lots of info (nearly on par with the better UI mod for 5) and it's unobtrusive (I like how dealing with cities isn't a major transition for ex).

But I do have issue with:
- WASD is now pretty much standard for moving the camera and should be in the game.
- the unit cycling is brutal, particularly how it cycles after you click on a unit that has movement/actions available, and the fact that it cycles seemingly randomly instead of to nearby units (most annoying when warring)
- lack of 'w' wait key is annoying (I unbound whatever screen was tied to 'w' to preserve sanity)
- tooltip delay, inconsistency in tooltips popping up, and lack of an option to change tooltip delay is annoying
- ESC key behavior is unintuitive at times (popping game menu when you think it should close a popout/popup)
- City State popout is less smooth than I think it could be or I'm using it wrong (would like that clicking something on the list would put the bonus summary at the bottom without having to fully click into a full city state info panel that has no quick way back to the list)

None of this is even remotely game breaking to me as the game is pretty damn amazing overall, and some things me and/or others will complain about is personal taste.

 

[Gin-san]

- When you Press "M" to see the the movement costs, pressing "M" again doesn't close it. You have to click on the tile you're standing to cancel the arrows. very annoying.

- There's no keybind for "Show/Hide Yields". You have to do it every time manually with the mouse.

- Too many clicks needed to open citizen management. First you have to click on the city and then the management button.

Not trying to be picky, but those were all features that were in Civ V and made the game a lot more comfortable.

 

[Esperr]

Users beware, if you attach to units together and then upgrade one of them while garrisoned in a city, the game will tell you a unit still needs orders but wont show you where. This confused me for a while, had to restart and reload the game several times before I figured out it was referring to an awoken battering ram that had been sitting idle for thousands of years.

Also, edge scrolling man. Its 2016. Other then that, great, awesome game.