Overall I’ve really been enjoying the game but there are a few things that really bugged me while playing
I know that there are bigger issues to worry about, but just wanted to share my thoughts on this and see if you people agree.
Although I don’t think the UI is terrible, I do think the UI design (the inventory in particular) looked much better on the Blizzcon playable Demo that they first showed back in 2019. And this in particular is the reason it bugs me so much. It used to look much better and they made it worse. I can’t see a way to attach screenshots here, but if you google or watch gameplay videos of the 2019 gameplay you’ll see what I mean.
Let’s break down why the original design looks better:
Colors - first thing that strikes me is that the colours in the inventory in the original design are much more muted and balanced. The current design I think is too much in your face, too saturated and too wild. To me it feels like it’s gone closer to Diablo 3 or Diablo Immortal (even closer to Wolcen) When you open the inventory it really needs to scream at you which items are rare, which items are legendary, which are magic. The orange is too orange, the yellows are too yellow and it just looks a bit like Christmas lights. I really liked how in the original design it only hinted at the item rarity with a subtle color highlight.
Item Tooltips - I thought when you hovered over an item in the original demo, the tooltip design looked really good. It had nice design and the only way to tell the rarity was by the name of the item. Now when you hover over an item, the entire tooltip lights up in yellow, blue or orange. And this ties in to the above issue with the overall colours of the inventory. I don’t think it’s needed that the game screams at you what rarity the item is. Just a simple change in color of the name of the item should be enough to communicate that.
One more smaller issue wit the tooltips is I think the item icon inside the item information is a bit unnecessary. It’s just a slightly zoomed in version of the icon in your inventory. It’s not bringing anything. You have the icon in the inventory, you see a slightly zoomed in version, once you hover over it, and you also see a detailed version on your character once you equip it. Think it’s a bit too much and makes the item tooltips cluttered.
Potions - although not specifically inventory related, I thought the potion icon design in the original blizzcon demo looked much better.
While we’re on the topic of potions I also think the potions/health globes dropped on the ground look bad - too big and too much like health globes as opposed to potions like in D2R. I do understand that it’s probably so you can see them better while in combat but I think it’s too much. Does’t fit with the rest of the more realistic style of the game
It really annoys me as I think they have gone a step back with these changes and they had something that looked far superior. I’m only writing about this as I believe it is an easy fix as it already exists. If you agree with me please respond so that we can voice this concern and hopefully get an updated look at some point.
Even if we don’t see a UI design update at launch I really hope we do get a design closer to the original blizzcon demo at some point