I Redesigned the Path of Exile 2 UI (not enough icons ;)

[@Loreworx]

Hi everyone. I've edited the video after posting for the following reason: - I talked about currency exchange screens and how they're used in a predatory fashion in the free-to-play market, where games charge fees to exchange premium currencies. I thought I was pretty clear I was talking about the market in general, and how POE2 doesn't need to do much to be viewed as more consumer friendly, but I did use the game's currency exchange window to jump into that discussion and some viewers took that as me saying Grinding Gear Games and POE employs the predatory strategies I talked about. So to stop the confusion, and for the sake of my mental health (as I'm tired of replying to the comments lol), I have removed the parts of the video where I talk about monetization strategies in free-to-play games. Next time I open a parenthesis to discuss the gaming market in a video that's supposed to be about a specific game, I will be 50x clearer to avoid possible misunderstandings. Lesson learned, so thank you for the criticism :)

[@GrotesqueSmurf]

You're the GOAT for updating the video where a pinned comment maybe would've been sufficient!

[@Loreworx]

@@GrotesqueSmurf it became the focus of the comment section, on a video that's supposed to be about UI. I'll do better next time! Thanks for the feedback and for watching :)

[@RanggaXD]

Really cool video!!

[@Loreworx]

thank you so much for watching :)

[@viktorviktormusic]

16:46 wow, the planning mode would be fkin awesome!

[@aliceberethart]

I just want my UI to be larger than life gothic architecture and overdone grandeur like a Master Gerhard fever dream meets Michelangelo. I want my health bar to be supported by eight flying buttresses. I want my inventory slots a mosaic Sagrada glass. I want my spells to be the keys to a church organ, and every time i press them they blare Beethoven, and out of the pipes ghosts expel in a harrowing dissonant lament.

[@chowchow4642]

Bless u man 😂

[@WolfheartFPS]

cool stuff!

[@Loreworx]

always an honor to have you here wolf!

[@viktoracs4045]

U say way to much inaccurate and wrong things, i disagree with your opinion on the ui, but that's subjective, but u also make objectively false statements too ( an example the currency exchange window, there are no place holder there, if you play the game you learn the meaning of stuff there, it's already implemented in poe for the latest league, also your rant about f2p monetization which relates to poe in no way, for people who don't know poe it sounds misleading, the window u show has nothing to do with real money, poe has only 1 real money currency.

[@axxessdenied]

he forgot the most important aspect of having people open their wallets on a f2p game. Make the game something people actually want to invest time/money into.

[@Loreworx]

Placeholder refers to the misaligned text, lack of outer glow on numbers, etc. Im talking about the ui elements. Currency exchange talk was about the free to play market in general and some of its predatory monetization strategies. I thought that was clear. I also thought it was clear i think poe2 is better than that. Did you skip parts of the video by chance?

[@Loreworx]

@axxessdenied literally something i said. Almost word for word. Lol

[@viktoracs4045]

@@Loreworx i watched the full vid, and i can only repeat myself, there are no placeholder in that window, they implemented it half year ago in poe 1, and it was just only an example, there are a lot of other inaccuracy in the video

[@ex0stasis72]

12:24 This makes me think that the background used to fade from dark to light, which is why they added the dark outline around the text on the right, and then someone went and swapped out the background but didn't update the text style with it.

[@nikkoi9144]

The so called "currency" isn't what you think it is, those "currency" items, are basically crafting materials for your gear, each "currency" does diffrent things to an item, they are aquired only in-game by a player via playing the game, that's a new concept in f2p games i know may shock some of you, you cannot acquire them by purchasing on a real money shop, sorry diablo immortal pay piggies thats the way we roll in PoE. The currency exchange is basicly a player market house where people exchange things they own with eachother. The real money shop has "points" 1$ = 10 points, they cannot be exchanged to any in-game item, and cannot be traded between players. Basically you buy those point's, and with them you buy microtransactions like skins, character effects or stash tabs.

[@ex0stasis72]

Exactly! This was the moment when I realized that he hasn't even played the game or the first game before. Any POE player would know that the word "currency" is not something you pay real money for. Currency items are just crafting materials.

[@Azerog]

Being able to plan the passive skills would be a cool feature

[@lysanderhuynh]

I think this is a good idea like a loot filter because it enhances gameplay without compromising the game. This is an improvement like Lucid should have made the Lucid Air's back end light up white instead of 'non-lit' black. These would have been good aesthetic changes. Good job!

[@Loreworx]

ill take your word on the lucid thing 🤣 thank you for watching!

[@saveborg1091]

The planner it's actually a good QOL thing they can add

[@fear0600]

Great showcase! I think it would be awesome to see you do this for a from software game!

[@Loreworx]

Id love to but i cant criticize fromsoftware. They can do no wrong and their fans would simply click the video, click dislike, then leave. Retention would be atrocious and the video would be shown to nobody lol

[@fear0600]

@Loreworx that's a shame, I'm dying with curiosity, but I completely understand. Can I just ask how you would rate their UI on a scale from 1 to 10? That would put my soul at peace :D

[@Loreworx]

It's tough for me to do that without really analyzing it. I would need to really look at Elden Ring for instance to adequately judge the interface. But my impressions are that the UI is fine. It ticks the boxes it needs to tick. It has the flair the game needs it to have. I do think it comes off as a bit text heavy on the game screens, but I'm a bit biased, as I try to avoid using text (because you have to localize it). Overall, Elden Ring takes a safe approach... it splits screens into panels, and goes from there. The HUD is the tried and true fromsoftware HUD. Thankfully the game has a really cool map, and that gives the UX a nice pick-me-up, as players get a little dopamine rush when they access a screen that looks completely different from the others. So, if I were to give it a score without really analyzing it, it would be around 7. Does its job well, but doesn't wow anyone. Hope your soul gets some peace :P

[@fear0600]

@@Loreworx thanks a lot, it was very nice of you to give me this much detail!

[@stefanjoksa]

They don't want to make a "guided" path, because what's good changes over time with addition of new things, with buffs and changes to certain other things. Simply put, if you make a guided skill three, it might not be great compared to other builds. Johnaten Roggers talked about this in his interviews. They would rather have players have all the freedom, included the fear of making a mistake, then push them into a direction that the designers think would be good for new players. They want more player action in their game, not less of it. If you make a mistake, own that mistake, learn from it, improve and move on, in the future try to not to make that mistake but rather use the accumulated knowledge for creation of a unique build. They're fine with players quitting because of the complexity, because they know that the community is always talking very positivly about the game so those players who quit because of the complexity will eventually come back and stay for decades exactly because of that complexity for which they quit earlier. I know this because I and many of my friends have done this exact same thing. We quit because the game was too complex and we couldn't figure it out and then we started learning, either through guides or through making our own mistakes or a mix of both, and now we're long term players who come back for every other, if not every, league that's released.

[@satoiify]

Good takes. I like it.

[@EduHBa]

Good ideias for the passive skill tree! The planning mode would be great, cause its so easy to lose yourself in the skills, it would be nice to mark the ones you think will work for the build. And the new players' more "simple" skill tree would help new players a lot!

[@Loreworx]

Yeah, the way you present stuff changes everything. I know the game's already very successful but I cant help thinking of how many customers they may have lost because of how daunting the tree looks to new players. There's no need. You can't reach those far away skills anyway. Planning feature would eliminate the need to use one of those "plan your builds" websites. You could use your second weapon set to plan things (if you don't use the 2nd set), but that's obviously not ideal. Thank you watching and writing!

[@EduHBa]

​@@Loreworx Yeah, I'm loving PoE 2, but relying on external sites its kind of a downsite. The trade site, for example, its a indispensable feature to the endgame, but it would be better if it was implemented direct into the game like an AH. Planning using the 2nd weapon set would be inviable latter in the game, as it has a limit to the points you can have, and you could only take an alternative path to the one you're actualty following. It would be nice if you could just mark any skills in the planning mode (not necessarily linked to the skill path), cause latter in the game you have a special crafting mechanic that you can allocate any skill in your amulet. Hey, np, great vid!

[@Loreworx]

@@EduHBa The trading site is both a positive and a negative. I think it's really awesome that you can browse when you're not gaming. It's kind of genius, really. Means you could have your mind in the game even when you're at work lol.. But there's no reason they couldn't add an action house in-game and synchronize it automatically with the website. In the end, everything's possible, it's just a matter of having a 30 minute planning meeting, and getting the ball rolling. I'm assuming that's low on their list of priorities though because the website currently fills the need.

[@SolearGnG]

It felt like you didn't have much work with this one. THB, I think it's pretty good UI.

[@tips1pxl]

I was also thinking that a plan mode would be super cool to have, I keep forgetting what I want to get after hours of playing. Bookmarking passive nodes and potentially having the shortest guiding path to those nodes would be such a good qol feature. Let's hope they add it.

[@axxessdenied]

just type into the search bar what you're after and leave it there

[@tips1pxl]

@ yeah but that’s not good enough obviously, what if you are tracking multiple things etc

[@chrissidoku4779]

Designers: For the love of god, let us fix this abomination of a skilltree! Jonathan: It's dark fantasy, let them suffer!! 😆

[@kebabsoup7617]

I think the salvage bench should have the popup. With this bench you could accidentally destroy your main weapon with no means to undo it. It's good that it has this extra "are you sure this is what you want to do?" step.

[@Loreworx]

You don't need the little window for that. You could enter "salvage mode" by activating the bench, which would then auto open your inventory, and everything else stays the same. The little window adds an extra step. You can have the "tutorial text" that's inside the window, on the bottom of the screen itself, and still get an "are you sure" prompt.

[@aZanzuZ]

3:10 it's bad idea we had a hidden info behind the Alt key unpressed in poe 1 for years. And it was bad for the new players.

[@Loreworx]

I didn't play poe1 so forgive me. How was it bad for new players? I just looked at poe1 tooltip screenshots and don't see a button prompt. If you hide info in the tooltip, the correct implementation would be to always have the button prompt on the tooltip. That's what bg3 does. I don't see how that would negatively affect new players. If you don't show the button prompt though, then yes.. but that would be bad implementation.

[@MultiDraco999]

13:54 Nerfs was the ign of chris wilson, CEO of grinding gear games. He's been relegated to the business side of things/semi stepped down. He has not been involved in directing content for either games for a while now Can be seen as a funny gag or Chris not being involved anymore

[@GrotesqueSmurf]

Just a quick notice: I know you didn't per se "assume" that PoE2 has predatory practices regarding the currencies, but you also did no research to debunk that theory. So here is the information: There is NO exchange between premium currency and ingame currency in the game. The window is for ingame currency (crafting materials) ONLY. Premium is ONLY used to buy MTX from the store and isn't exchanged. Also it's 1:10 ratio to real money, so no obscure ratios etc. Hope this helped you understand it :)

[@Loreworx]

Yeah, I thought I was clear I was talking about the predatory monetization practices in the f2p market in general, and that poe2 was obviously better than that. Apparently I wasn't clear enough, so that's on me.

[@GrotesqueSmurf]

@@Loreworx I know that wasn't your intention :) Just wanted to clear things up a bit. Awesome video nontheless, I like the way you approach the interface. Edit: I saw you updated the video just because of that part - you're the man! Definitely getting subscribed

[@plzsirmoregruel9590]

made contrast ratio on gem cutting menu worse

[@PROdotes]

The gemcutting idea is nice, but it suffers from readability... maybe the skill name can be at the top, and the level at the bottom... with a redesigned outline or slight colour change... maybe even in the bottom corner... dunno... it's one of those design things where you just "play with" till you find something that looks nice on multiple backgrounds...

[@Loreworx]

Readability is usually pretty easy to solve. I thought it was readable, but if you don't think so, a simple increase to the black outer glow behind the text could do the trick. Thanks for watching!

[@ex0stasis72]

2:58 Love POE 1 and 2 but one of my gripes, especially after taking a university-level technical writing course is that you should almost never use center text alignment. Almost always use left-aligned text and use intending or different font choices as needed. Reading a paragraph of center-aligned text is just uncomfortable because you don't have a common anchor point for your eyes to go back to at the end of each line. Diablo 4 for this right, and I don't even like Diablo 4.

[@AlexAegisOfficial]

8:44 looks like the icons are aligned, and it's just the border thats not

[@Loreworx]

The icons were just slightly misaligned, but it's made worse than it is because of the frames. thanks for writing!

[@barmiiiii]

so much misunderstandings that would be obvious after just playing the game

[@noahkarottu7783]

I love what you said about making players feel guilty about not spending money and letting whales do their thing lmao. Look into Warframe's monetization system, its the best I've ever seen. Hell I never feel bad about spending money in that game. 1 Their currency gets you sooooo far for how much you spend, a couple hundred plat goes a long way. 2 They give discounts for premium currency randomly on login days (every time I get a 50% or higher I spend money lol even if its 5 bucks) 3 you can TRADE premium currency with players, tons of people farm items and character parts and get platinum for free. My brother has made hundreds of plat free to play. 4 pretty much anything you buy is always relevant, no cut content and they are always rebalancing and listening to the player base like no other dev team I've seen

[@finalfragment8432]

"I just know it's gonna be an IGN 7"

[@NoName-mi8js]

I don't think POE2 allows you to give other players microtransactions because of RMT.

[@Loreworx]

hmm didn't know that. thank you for the info! it's a pretty neat monetization tactic, provided the right circumstances and the proper safeguards.

[@stevestrangelove4970]

the skill gems is a mess. Having skills divided by weapons, but also by magic and then you realize that shields are inside the mace category but buffs are divided into classes... wtf? Why not divide them by their basic keywords? Strike and Cast, and then a subdivision for AoE, Hex, Buff, etc? Also, they need to add multy search on the passive skill tree. Sometimes I want to see both the bleeding and one handed skills at the same time to plan my path.

[@Yeehim]

About the skill tree - the devs explained in an interview that they could 'hide' part of the passive tree from new players, but they don't want to. Why? Sooner or later, a new player will have to see all of it. They would rather show up front 'this is what you're getting into' all they from the first level, then have someone realize hours into the game that they're not into this kind of complexity. This way right of the bat you tell new people "This is what Path of Exile (2) is, if you like it, go ahead" if not, you only wasted however long the download took and however long the first level up took. They want to be honest and clear what game people are getting into, even if it will offput some. Also, the whole section on the currency exchange, f2p games and such is such a clear indication you didn't even do basic research about how PoE economy and monetization works.

[@Loreworx]

On the skill tree: thats fine if that's their decision. It's open to criticism. As is everything. On the currency exchange: i gave an example of how the f2p market uses predatory practices in currency exchange screens. I never said poe2 does this. In fact, i was pretty clear i think theyre better. I dont know how that got lost in translation.

[@whalegum]

@@Loreworx The reason why he didn't like the comparison is because you make it seem like the currency exchange is something related to their monetization which it isn't. The currency listed on the exchange is in-game currency that cannot be purchased for money or exchanged for any monetary gain whatsoever. The currency used for microtransactions is only available in the skin shop and cannot be exchanged or traded or used in any other way than simply buying yourself some skins.

[@mategido]

This is nitpicking on a crazy level, I like the ui, different sizes tooltips don’t matter at all, some descriptions could be shorter I’ll give you that

[@axxessdenied]

Just because you can redesign something - doesn't mean you should. DATV was genuinely vomit on the screen. Path of Exile 2 is fine. It maintains that old-school ARPG vibe while having plenty of info. The passive tree doesn't really need any changes. Having the search option makes planning way easier. Gemcutting changes - prefered the old way. easier to read. I don't need giant icons. The only real gripe I have is salvage / disenchanting windows.

[@Loreworx]

Thanks for watching and for sharing your opinion. We disagree, and that's ok :)

[@gsczo]

Speaking about UI, I currently really dislike the initial PLAY button on the character screen lol, it's not centered, barely centered under your character if that was the goal, and also distracts from the cool background, they should either just put the button below the character selection tab, or at least actually centered, lol.

[@Loreworx]

youre totally right! good thing they didn't show that in their video or I would have been all over it cause it drives me nuts when things aren't centered lol the button is left of center and the character is offset to the right. Absolute insanity! 🤣

[@TheTekOr]

Absolutely. The first couple of times I returned to the game I've spent a few moments searching for the "play" button because it should obviously be next to "create" and "delete" buttons under character selection box. Also, it's a brown button that is placed on the brown floor, doesn't really scream "click me!".

[@infinitenex8165]

"will be"free to play after early access ends in 6-12 months

[@Loreworx]

Yep

[@procrastinathor4594]

Remember, it is still beta 🎉❤❤

[@Loreworx]

Yep! And it's already great 😊

[@Venomenn]

So you have taken the icons and made them larger, and that fixes something... Weird video man

[@aritramukherjee8292]

Very misleading

[@hardc0l2e]

Funny about your take on currency exchange, don't mix it with cosmetics and stash microtransaction, the games don't mix those.. all the trading in currencies is used for crafting and stuff in-game like maps, etc.. no trade between cosmetics and crafting orbs, they are separated. The only advantage of F2P to those who have paid stash is more stash. This is not Diablo Immortal or those with battle passes or boon things.

[@Loreworx]

Im referring to the f2p market in general. I thought that was pretty clear. I also thought it was clear i think GGG and poe2 are different, and much more consumer friendly.

[@b4g4b3l]

Its not fp2 yet ! its 30E ! not bad ideeas

[@Loreworx]

yep :) i should have been clearer. thanks for writing

[@Yeehim]

Also I find your ending section on gifting paid items hilarious in context of PoE as GGG doesn't support it aside from a case by case basis that you have to arrange with their support staff. They have a really hsrd stance against RMT up to the point of going against streamers who gift their stream followers items for following/watching/subscribing.

[@Loreworx]

Didnt know that about them. That said, i never said they allowed it. I talked about it as a monetization tactic that f2p games can use to indirectly monetize users that do not spend money. I thought that was clear.

[@POJ92]

Skill tree fog of war would be so good for new players

[@Valka077]

absolutely not. you need to be able to plan ahead

[@POJ92]

@@Valka077 people can do that in Path of Building etc for PoE1, but having it built in too would be better of course. Having both options is good. I think I read somewhere they want to add the ability to import skill trees or something.

[@TheErtagon15]

No, that's a terrible idea that bases itself around the concept that one can make a game for everyone

[@Souzarion]

Guys you missed something important the Fog of War was optional all veteran players and New ones could toggle it off

[@laesy]

The talk about currency exchange is completely misleading for someone that don't know POE that well. All in-game currencies are free. There is 1 paid currency and it is used for cosmetics and stash tabs, nothing to do with anything you talked about while showing the in-game exchange.

[@Loreworx]

Im talking about the free to play market. I thought that was pretty clear.

[@esmolol4091]

Nice

[@Loreworx]

Thank you for watching!

[@TheTekOr]

I wish this video was based on the real game and not speculations that come from watching trailers. But the criticism of UI is good.

[@noahkarottu7783]

Just a heads up you dont have to mess with cropping and stuff to get the ratio of an image you want. Theres plenty of ai tools now that extend a photo pretty seamlessly, Photoshop's ai generator has cleaned up a lot of stuff super quick for me XD. Also I was playing and was thinking the same in reguard to third person! I would love to play this game in third person. Ik its built for top down but it looks so sick when you zoom in but you cant see anything because of the camera angle and lack of ability to turn it. the animations and models look so cool but I cant really appretiate it becuase its just a mess of colors on my screen. Honestly I'd be happy if there was a horde mode where all the enemies come from the top of the screen (so that they dont have to deal with turning the camera angle, im sure the game isnt' built to handle that) and then they let you angle the camera up more when you zoom in. Man that would be so sick!

[@Loreworx]

Trust me i tried extending with AI. Several different ones. It looked hoooooorrible 🤣 A lot would have to be redesigned for 3rd person, but the game looks so good, it would be awesome