The cursor UI has real problems (Destiny)

by General Vagueness , The Vault of Sass, Saturday, August 23, 2014, 12:36 (3539 days ago) @ Xenos

Because they would either have to clutter the screen with the text permanently being there for things like attributes (Strength for example), or make the cursor stop on them just to show you the tooltip.

So?

Because both are VERY bad UI design. We've gotten used to the first one in a lot of games, but that doesn't mean it's a good UI decision. The second one is probably about the worst UI design you can have in a system that has a selection go from element to element. The idea behind console design going between elements is that if you can select it you can hit A and expect something to happen. Having it so all it does is show you a tooltip is a wasteful action along the way and confuses users.

Why not just have the player press X to bring up the description, or have it pop up on a delay, or have some area of the screen designated for descriptions? Those don't fix the problem of having stats as selectable items that could get in the way unless you add that text to other things, but they address the other points.

The real issue I think with what you feel about the UI and what others feel is that you feel having to move the cursor to an element and hit A is more work than having to hit down, down, down, right right, right, A. While many of the rest of us obviously feel the opposite.

It's not the work involved, it's the time taken (as I've said). If you know where you're going and the system is designed well (or even just designed OK) it's faster to just press a few directions; you can see this in PCs, even, with people that prefer to use keyboard navigation (and don't like programs that don't support it).