Crafting menus are painful to use, still feel unpolished

[Lennalf]

I want to get my friends hooked on this game, but when they saw the crafting UI it turned them off immediately!  It's so clunky, requires tons of clicks, and is hard to navigate for newbies.

 

Many of the crafting menus contain far more items than will fit, so vertical scrolling buttons appear.  The user has to click on those buttons repeatedly to scroll.  It doesn't even allow mouse wheel scrolling!

 

Please update the crafting UI to be more user-friendly.  Simply listing items in a grid instead of one long column would eliminate the need for any scrolling.  For a quick fix, allow mouse-wheel scrolling of the existing UI.

 

I originally submitted this feedback for original Don't Starve and the feedback was never used, which is very disappointing.  The current crafting interface is very poor and I expect better from Klei.  Crafting is a huge part of this game and shouldn't require so much clicking!  And based on the reactions of my friends, it is losing you sales.

[Michi01]

I want to get my friends hooked on this game, but when they saw the crafting UI it turned them off immediately! It's so clunky, requires tons of clicks, and is hard to navigate for newbies. Many of the crafting menus contain far more items than will fit, so vertical scrolling buttons appear. The user has to click on those buttons repeatedly to scroll. It doesn't even allow mouse wheel scrolling! Please update the crafting UI to be more user-friendly. Simply listing items in a grid instead of one long column would eliminate the need for any scrolling. For a quick fix, allow mouse-wheel scrolling of the existing UI. I originally submitted this feedback for original Don't Starve and the feedback was never used, which is very disappointing. The current crafting interface is very poor and I expect better from Klei. Crafting is a huge part of this game and shouldn't require so much clicking! And based on the reactions of my friends, it is losing you sales.

I think you can press caps lock and then wasd to navigate and enter to craft too.

[dotsnake]

I agree, I spend more time searching on the crafting ui than playing the game.

the devs are too busy trying to make multiplayer better, they might not have time for this, maybe a modder can do this?

[Tormod]

I agree. At least to some degree.
I don't think it's that hard, but I certainly use a lot of time fuzzing about. If I'm trying to make a specific item, then realizing I don't got enough rope (e.g.) - it's just awful to look for it when I just can't remember where I crafted that particular item.

 

Would be great if you could click the ingredient and be "hyperlinked" to the location of that item.

 

Another simplification would perhaps be to hide - or better sorting - of all our locked crafts (requiring prototypes) from the personal menu. Instead of the current system: have us go to the "research building" (science machine / alchemy engine) > click it > get a pop-up tab with all unresearched items (all clearly shown, red/green colour overlay based on if you have ingredients for it or not).

[Petzi]

I feel like a grid would take up too much screen space, but I'm all for mouse-wheel scrolling. About hyper-linking auxiliary items like ropes, it would probably feel too much like hand-holding and you memorize those effortlessly after playing for a while.

[Kokkaku]

Eh, I like the crafting menus the way they are.

I do agree though, allow us to use the Mouse Wheel to scroll through the crafting menu a bit faster

[outseeker]

+1 for mousewheel scrolling everywhere! For the mods menu too would be awesome.

 

I think perhaps if the list of craftables were taller and spacing tweaked a bit, that would achieve a much better visibility instead of having to recode everything to a grid?

[chronicpayne]

I created my account just to give this issue some attention I seriously think it deserves. DST is a FANTASTIC game, doing what it does well, really well.

 

But the UI/crafting menu is so bad. I won't bold this and put it in type 50 font but I really want to.

 

For new players, or even those with ten or twenty hours in the game like myself, I still find myself wondering where th e hell something is, or having found it, having a hard time finding it again.

 

Off the top of my head one major improvement could easily be made - remove the black coloring from the locked recipies. If i am unable to visiaually identify what I want to research, I am now forced to mouse over each item.

 

Make the menu larger, so I dont have to scroll up and down and can see everything, locked or unlock - then remove the blackout and use a light greyscale or something? Just enough so that I can identify what the hell it is without mouse over, but with enough of a greyscale to also convey that its not yet unlocked.

 

Please oh lords of Klei, the crafting UI is only "good" once youve literally memorized things 30+ hours later.  This could be soooo much more inuitive!

[chronicpayne]

As an addendum to my previous post, had a friend who we bought a copy of the game for basicly get too frustrated and quit last night over primarily this issue - he simply felt that with the pressure of a multiplayer server with no pausing, he was getting too annoyed not remembering what he needed, and primarily with just not being able to find things in the crafting menu.

 

I don't mean to badger you guys about this issue, but since this really only effects people looking at the game for the first time, and I know how easy it is to get used to a bad system, then not understand why new people have problems...

 

So that being said, i just wanted to remind devs that the UI seems to be pushing new players/my friends away.