INTRODUCTION :
First of all, I have to preface that I spent somewhere around 2h writing all of that. It started as a YouTube comment rant, but I felt like it could be interesting feedback for the devs and came over here to see that few people had done that already. I've read a bit on those threads and agreed with several things said there, but I feel like most of my gripe with the EU5 UI wasn't talked about there, so I'm posting the whole rant here.
(bit more context : as it wasn't meant for a forum at first, it has no images yet, I'll post them a bit later)
(and a little disclaimer : I realized I based my opinion solely on YouTube 1080p viewings, and didn't get to see better screenshots until later when I got here so my opinion might be a bit harsh. However, I think that most criticism still applies if you have smaller screen and lower resolution users in mind)
THE RANT :
"Regarding UI, I feel like there are several issues I'll try to tackle 1 by 1.
First of all, it feels as if the UI team has taken inspiration from VIC3 and CK3 without really capturing what makes them so good (in my opinion, those are the best UI from Paradox). But at the same time they didn’t really bring to EU5 what made EU4 interfaces recognizable with that "luscious" and “royal” feel.
I think that one of the biggest challenges in developing a UI for EU5 is that there are LOTS of icons, more than in any other Paradox Games (I might be wrong on that tho). And all of that is what brings most of the issues I’ll be tackling after, namely :
1- Fonts choice and treatment
2- Icons vs Images
3- Lack of contrast / Oversaturation
4- Hierarchy / Continuity
====
1- FONTS CHOICE AND TREATMENT
Before starting here, I want to exclude the font chosen for the countries’ names, that’s working PER-FECT-LY.
But apart from that, all of the other fonts aren’t working for me.
The main one isn’t really legible at small sizes and in low contrast situations. It’s changing size all the time, from one line to another and that doesn’t help AT ALL (see in “Economy Tab > Balance > Expenses” how “Diplomatic Spending” is smaller? Lots of other exemples I’ll tackle later). Those serifs aren't the best choice and the font doesn’t feel like it’s made to be used at small sizes (like in the overview panel on the right side of the screen).
There are also too many different fonts. In the top bar I can count at least 3, and again they aren’t used coherently. You can’t mix and have two fonts alternating between being used for the points, modifiers, and so on.
That’s where you should take inspiration in VIC3 for exemple. In the Market Tab, you’ve got a display victorian font for the name of the market, the main serif font for everything else you see at first glance AND the sans serif for the smaller plentiful text you get on hover with the details. Precise and concise use of the fonts, each perfectly fitting for their role.
Oh and PLEASE, we don’t need random italisation. I’m talking about Advances Tree’s advances’ names and the current date.
2- ICON VS IMAGES
So so so many icons, everywhere. I’m not sure if all of them are needed. You sometimes can have only one, but it means something different depending on its color (not very colorblind friendly tho). I reckon it’s a really difficult job, and here it falls a bit flat.
The huge issue I see here is that they’re treated like big images you’d see displayed at 250px, when in fact they’ll be displayed at 30px or even less. They need to be more defined, and either more legible or displayed bigger.
To illustrate how it is a problem, try to tell what happens on the right-hand side overview tab without looking at the text. Hard to do. Same goes for the “Production > Buildings” tab, with the Potters’ guild, Spinners’ guild or Weaponsmith having 70% of their icon being the SAME building over and over again. Instead, you can at least shift that percentage, or even better just show what they’re producing.
And what’s funny is that we encounter the opposite issue in the Advances Tree. Here we see each advance with an icon illustrating it, but they look a bit sad on a blue solid background sometimes. I don’t think it’s a finished state but that’s a perfect moment to take a look at EU4 missions and mimic the illustration going along with them, as it brings so much more personality.
3- LACK OF CONTRAST / OVERSATURATION
I started writing this point while looking at the “Society > Culture Tab” and I don’t see it as much everywhere else. Still I feel like some background colors don’t contrast enough with the text that’s being displayed above it. To come back to my previous exemple as well, the Culture’s overview is displayed above a cool illustration but it’s a bit too present to allow the player to read it well at first glance. And that’s where CK3 inspiration comes in as they do it quite a lot, in the “Character overview > Titles” tab for exemple, or when you’re looking at a holding, or basically everywhere else. It’s a subtle vignette effect, along with smart artwork composition allowing you to put the text where it won’t clash with the image.
On another point, I feel like color-coding stuff like Pops or Diplomatic actions (or shape-coding for colorblind accessibility) is a good idea and is pretty well done here. It’s something that already works very well in CK3 with the different stats. However, I feel like the fact that tabs' backgrounds are a bit too saturated clashes with the colorful touches brought by this color-coding and makes it “a bit much”.
4- HIERARCHY, HARMONIZATION & CONTINUITY
To get straight back to what I was saying in part 1 : font size, letter spacing … That’s something you NEED to harmonize or else it makes your eye stumble all the time. Same goes for text alignment where YOU HAVE TO take into account if there will be an icon or not before or after the text. I don’t remember that being a problem in EU4, VIC3 or CK3 so I think it’s a thing that will be ironed out at one point, but it really tires the eye at one point and makes it hard to efficiently find pieces of information.
Now that’s it done, we need to address one of the biggest challenges of creating a UI. It’s that it’s not a finite system, first of all it has to be made with several screen sizes in mind. But the worst part is the overflowing text, meaning : “What happens if there is too much text, for too little space?”. And here, I have to say that the choice isn’t the right one. (I have in front of me the “Advances Tree > Experience of the Baltic Crusaders”, and “Overview > Government > Integrating Upper Macedo…” exemples)
Changing the font size to fit in the space makes it so you lose all continuity within your graphic chart : “a title has to be this font size, a text has to be this font size” and so on. To deal with that, I feel like there are a few better ways. The first is to plan for it, and allow for you to have text on several lines, and not cram it on a single one. The second one is to cut the text and add “...”. You can leave it like that or allow for a full display on click or on hover for example.
I’d also argue there are quite a few issues with size contrast with the portraits and several other places. Or with the top interface, with Pops / Stability / Legitimacy that takes WAY TOO MUCH SPACE with the capacity cursors at the bottom that you could just display on hover or something else. But that’s a bit much to tackle here.
"
CONCLUSION :
That's it for the ramble, thanks for reading. I'll try to improve the feedback by illustrating my thoughts and even maybe do a few Photoshop modifications to show more clearly what I meant. Apart from that I’m really hyped for the game to launch and can’t wait to see how these new mechanics will flow together!
(edit : formatting)
First of all, I have to preface that I spent somewhere around 2h writing all of that. It started as a YouTube comment rant, but I felt like it could be interesting feedback for the devs and came over here to see that few people had done that already. I've read a bit on those threads and agreed with several things said there, but I feel like most of my gripe with the EU5 UI wasn't talked about there, so I'm posting the whole rant here.
(bit more context : as it wasn't meant for a forum at first, it has no images yet, I'll post them a bit later)
(and a little disclaimer : I realized I based my opinion solely on YouTube 1080p viewings, and didn't get to see better screenshots until later when I got here so my opinion might be a bit harsh. However, I think that most criticism still applies if you have smaller screen and lower resolution users in mind)
THE RANT :
"Regarding UI, I feel like there are several issues I'll try to tackle 1 by 1.
First of all, it feels as if the UI team has taken inspiration from VIC3 and CK3 without really capturing what makes them so good (in my opinion, those are the best UI from Paradox). But at the same time they didn’t really bring to EU5 what made EU4 interfaces recognizable with that "luscious" and “royal” feel.
I think that one of the biggest challenges in developing a UI for EU5 is that there are LOTS of icons, more than in any other Paradox Games (I might be wrong on that tho). And all of that is what brings most of the issues I’ll be tackling after, namely :
1- Fonts choice and treatment
2- Icons vs Images
3- Lack of contrast / Oversaturation
4- Hierarchy / Continuity
====
1- FONTS CHOICE AND TREATMENT
Before starting here, I want to exclude the font chosen for the countries’ names, that’s working PER-FECT-LY.
But apart from that, all of the other fonts aren’t working for me.
The main one isn’t really legible at small sizes and in low contrast situations. It’s changing size all the time, from one line to another and that doesn’t help AT ALL (see in “Economy Tab > Balance > Expenses” how “Diplomatic Spending” is smaller? Lots of other exemples I’ll tackle later). Those serifs aren't the best choice and the font doesn’t feel like it’s made to be used at small sizes (like in the overview panel on the right side of the screen).
There are also too many different fonts. In the top bar I can count at least 3, and again they aren’t used coherently. You can’t mix and have two fonts alternating between being used for the points, modifiers, and so on.
That’s where you should take inspiration in VIC3 for exemple. In the Market Tab, you’ve got a display victorian font for the name of the market, the main serif font for everything else you see at first glance AND the sans serif for the smaller plentiful text you get on hover with the details. Precise and concise use of the fonts, each perfectly fitting for their role.
Oh and PLEASE, we don’t need random italisation. I’m talking about Advances Tree’s advances’ names and the current date.
2- ICON VS IMAGES
So so so many icons, everywhere. I’m not sure if all of them are needed. You sometimes can have only one, but it means something different depending on its color (not very colorblind friendly tho). I reckon it’s a really difficult job, and here it falls a bit flat.
The huge issue I see here is that they’re treated like big images you’d see displayed at 250px, when in fact they’ll be displayed at 30px or even less. They need to be more defined, and either more legible or displayed bigger.
To illustrate how it is a problem, try to tell what happens on the right-hand side overview tab without looking at the text. Hard to do. Same goes for the “Production > Buildings” tab, with the Potters’ guild, Spinners’ guild or Weaponsmith having 70% of their icon being the SAME building over and over again. Instead, you can at least shift that percentage, or even better just show what they’re producing.
And what’s funny is that we encounter the opposite issue in the Advances Tree. Here we see each advance with an icon illustrating it, but they look a bit sad on a blue solid background sometimes. I don’t think it’s a finished state but that’s a perfect moment to take a look at EU4 missions and mimic the illustration going along with them, as it brings so much more personality.
3- LACK OF CONTRAST / OVERSATURATION
I started writing this point while looking at the “Society > Culture Tab” and I don’t see it as much everywhere else. Still I feel like some background colors don’t contrast enough with the text that’s being displayed above it. To come back to my previous exemple as well, the Culture’s overview is displayed above a cool illustration but it’s a bit too present to allow the player to read it well at first glance. And that’s where CK3 inspiration comes in as they do it quite a lot, in the “Character overview > Titles” tab for exemple, or when you’re looking at a holding, or basically everywhere else. It’s a subtle vignette effect, along with smart artwork composition allowing you to put the text where it won’t clash with the image.
On another point, I feel like color-coding stuff like Pops or Diplomatic actions (or shape-coding for colorblind accessibility) is a good idea and is pretty well done here. It’s something that already works very well in CK3 with the different stats. However, I feel like the fact that tabs' backgrounds are a bit too saturated clashes with the colorful touches brought by this color-coding and makes it “a bit much”.
4- HIERARCHY, HARMONIZATION & CONTINUITY
To get straight back to what I was saying in part 1 : font size, letter spacing … That’s something you NEED to harmonize or else it makes your eye stumble all the time. Same goes for text alignment where YOU HAVE TO take into account if there will be an icon or not before or after the text. I don’t remember that being a problem in EU4, VIC3 or CK3 so I think it’s a thing that will be ironed out at one point, but it really tires the eye at one point and makes it hard to efficiently find pieces of information.
Now that’s it done, we need to address one of the biggest challenges of creating a UI. It’s that it’s not a finite system, first of all it has to be made with several screen sizes in mind. But the worst part is the overflowing text, meaning : “What happens if there is too much text, for too little space?”. And here, I have to say that the choice isn’t the right one. (I have in front of me the “Advances Tree > Experience of the Baltic Crusaders”, and “Overview > Government > Integrating Upper Macedo…” exemples)
Changing the font size to fit in the space makes it so you lose all continuity within your graphic chart : “a title has to be this font size, a text has to be this font size” and so on. To deal with that, I feel like there are a few better ways. The first is to plan for it, and allow for you to have text on several lines, and not cram it on a single one. The second one is to cut the text and add “...”. You can leave it like that or allow for a full display on click or on hover for example.
I’d also argue there are quite a few issues with size contrast with the portraits and several other places. Or with the top interface, with Pops / Stability / Legitimacy that takes WAY TOO MUCH SPACE with the capacity cursors at the bottom that you could just display on hover or something else. But that’s a bit much to tackle here.
"
CONCLUSION :
That's it for the ramble, thanks for reading. I'll try to improve the feedback by illustrating my thoughts and even maybe do a few Photoshop modifications to show more clearly what I meant. Apart from that I’m really hyped for the game to launch and can’t wait to see how these new mechanics will flow together!
(edit : formatting)
Last edited:
- 18
