But professionals should be held accountable for the things they write, and the point of my response was that the majority of the author’s grievances were false–that is, stemming from misunderstandings or non-facts. The only reason I agreed with him on some points (aside from genuinely agreeing with him) is because it would have been underhanded of me to point out all the things in the article that were wrong while ignoring the things he did right.

Not quite consistent menu layout:
This paragraph just baffled me. I can only gather from the mess of an argument that the author is misinterpreting the word “consistency” to mean “must be exactly the same all the time, every time”. Why exactly do the investigative options on the left HAVE to be morally colored? “The answers “C-Sec” and “Attitude towards humans” aren’t actually morally colored in this case. No hints that the system has changed.” No hint, except, ya know, for basic reading comprehension.

Missing information (again):
Another jumble of words that don’t form a coherent argument. “The red answer is something I can say because I’m an asshole. The blue one is greyed-out because… nobody knows.” Protip: the blue one is greyed out for the same reason the red one isn’t; because you’re an asshole. It would also be correct to say that the blue one is greyed out because you weren’t a nice enough guy. It’s nothing more complicated than that. This actually isn’t an interface issue so much as it is the author’s failure to understand a perfectly clear game mechanic.

Conclusion:
I began writing this after reading part of the third page, and figured I should read the whole thing in order to give honest feedback. In doing so, I stumbled across a few things that the author actually got right, but the vast majority of this article was a testament to the lazy and the entitled, those for whom the idea of thinking for themselves, using basic short-term memory, etc., is just so terrifying they would rather bitch and moan at a developer on every minute detail. And that’s what almost all the greivances in this article were, with few exceptions: minute. The author built them up to be so world crushing, when most of them were nothing, and the few he made valid arguments for were inconveniences at worst.

I’m certainly not saying that we shouldn’t critisize when we perceive a fault, but try to keep things in perspective and realize that getting hung up on inconveniences is a poor excuse not to enjoy a game.

Missing information (again):
Most of this paragraph made sense, until this line: “…you can’t tell if…characters can actually wear it.” I don’t know, man, I’m fairly certain one can tell what species each squad member is, and Shepard I’m almost positive is human. All that leaves is armor proficiency (light, medium, or heavy), which is spelled out pretty explicitely in the Squad menu. Oh, I’m not saying you even have to check the Squad menu every time, I’m actually saying that, after the first few looks, you should bloody well know what level of armor the squad mates you’re using can wear. Asking the player to use the most basic short-term memory recall should not be considered a sin.

Unpolished underlying mechanics (again):
Ignored for irrelevance (again)

Button layout inconsistency (again):
Sooo, I think the author’s complaint is that Bioware chose certain buttons to perform certain functions in the galaxy map, and he didn’t like the ones they chose…somehow, having B zoom out and X exit the map would have been much better, because it would be consistent with the other menus in which B zooms out and X…does a lot of different things. Huh, feels like the consistency argument falls flat there. “This means you lose whatever position you’ve managed to navigate to…” Managed to navigate to. Managed. As if it’s an effort to navigate the map. I remember when I “managed” to press the shift key so I could make those quotation marks. That was hell. I myself actually did press the B button on the map a few times on my first playthrough when trying to zoom out. And ya know what? I learned from it. I didn’t continue to press it expecting it to do something different.

Missed chances for cross-referencing:
Missed chances for cross-referencing (again):
The author really didn’t need two paragraphs (complete with subtitles) to make the same point. To the point itself, yes, cross-referencing definitely would have been very nice. Having said that, it is not at all difficult to flip through your Journal and keep a cluster and planet name in your mind for all of two seconds while you navigate the map to your destination. I know it sounds like I’m making excuses for Bioware, but I can’t word this any other way. Cross-referencing was a miss on their part, but the work-around takes seconds. This isn’t Fable II. The menus don’t take minutes to load. Stop being lazy.

Not all team members available (again):
This was a valid complaint the first time the author mentioned it. Repeating it serves no purpose other than to sound whiny and draw attention to the irony that “redundancy” is a word that appears frequently in his very own ranting. “Finally because of all those restrictions you will find yourself sticking to the same 3 characters though the entire game…” That’s quite the assumption. Not sure I even needed to point out ridiculous it is, but hell, it’s done.

Unpolished underlying mechanics:
Skipping the first argument since the author admits that it has nothing at all to do with the interface. “…each of your 3 characters NEEDS to be equipped with 4 weapons…” <— blatant lie. In fact, unless the player really wants to change things up for whatever reason, each squad mate needs only one weapon, and the game goes out of its way via the level-up stats to strongly hint to you what weapon is best suited to each character. Protip: Wrex, the huge guy, the one who likes to get up close and personal with the enemy, the one who leans towards health increasing skills and biotic barriers; he wants a shotgun. I never had to worry about what pistol, assault rifle, or sniper rifle Wrex was carrying, because he never needed to use them. But ya know what, if you REALLY wanted him to use a pistol, you could pour his level-up points into pistol training and equip him with one of those instead.

Underuse of visual aids (again):
Yep, not being able to see what a piece of armor would look like before you bought it was disappointing, as was having to highlight something to see its price.

Missing information (again):
Again, no argument from me on this one.

Small menus (again):
Agreed.

This article was, for the most part, laughable.

I had to get that negativity out of my system. Seriously though, it’s a very well written (mostly) and coherent article from a language standpoint (indeed, better than anything I ever wrote in English class), but the whole thing reads like…I don’t know, like the author is the laziest, privileged, self-entitled SOB in the world.

There’s absolutely no way I can write this and not be accused of being a fan boy, so I won’t bother to argue that point.

Are all the things the author listed actual flaws with the interface? Yep, no doubt about that. Are they as mind-numbingly, earth-shatteringly crucial as he spent three pages droning on about? Not even remotely.

Blind re-using of generic interface elements:
He actually starts out pretty reasonably when talking about character creation. Sliders were definitely not a good choice for collections of presets for the reasons listed, but “Finding a certain preset again after you flipped through some alternatives is often just impossible”? Hyperbole doesn’t suit the argument.

(Bad) Styling obscuring function:
The apparent function the author is arguing for is the ability to “compare the three health bars with each other”, though he never makes it clear exactly WHY one would need to do that. No, really, why would one need to compare the health bars of squad members when all that matters is how much health they have as individuals? If Kaidan is near death, then he is near death regardless of what percentage Shepard’s health is at. The player’s decision on what to do in that scenario will never be altered depending on how Shepard’s health compares to the dying squad mate. And since the “comparing health bars” greivance is rendered moot, the rest of the paragraph is void. But damn, does the author hate italics. Maybe italics murdered his parents or something.

Poor choice of icons:
Agreed. No reasonable person would instantly recognize that icon as representing a grenade. And yes, there was no need to add all that noise onto the medi-gel icon when a simple cross gets the message across on its own. As for legibility, I guess the author would have to agree to disagree with any other player who has passable eyesight or who owns a television/monitor from 1993 onwards.

Poor success feedback:
I had trouble picking out the actual problem being complained about in this paragraph. “There is no way to bring [that information] back up or read it in a log of messages.” And…where’s the problem? You already know that you gained some amount of XP/loot, even if you didn’t actually read the pop-up (just the act of something on the side of your screen popping up alerts you that you’ve been rewarded in some capacity). You know, that pop-up doesn’t specifically list exactly what loot you receive. You actually have to go into the menu to check that, but I don’t see the author complaining about that. “Players need to SEE that they get better.” Agreed, and they can see it every single time they open the squad menu. If it turns out the author has ADD and needs a reminder of his progress every half second during combat, then I apologize profusely for my insensitivity.

“If you manage to pick up that your character has leveled up…” I know that feeling, bro. I remember the first time I played the game, back when I was deaf and couldn’t hear the multi-toned level-up chime. I was also blind too, so I couldn’t see the Squad sub-menu button flashing in that “Hey, you’ve leveled up, dummy!” way that it likes to do.

Missing Information:
Nothing in this paragraph made sense. I don’t like saying that because it makes me feel like I’m tossing out a half-baked, lazy counter, but when the argument I’m trying to counter doesn’t make any valid points in the first place, there’s not much I can do. All I was able to get from this paragraph is that the author believes that much of the information in the level-up screen is presented without context. That’s my only guess, since he decided to give only one, specific example. “So you get information like that upgrading a certain skill “Regenerates 5 health per sec”. This seems like good info but it’s only useful if you also know what you current rate of health regeneration is and whether the improvement increases you rate by that amount or replaces it.” I’ll make it easy for you: your current rate of health regeneration is zero until you level up certain skills or apply certain armor mods. We know this, not only out of common sense (though that’s a big part of it), but because at the very beginning of the game, we can observe the fact that Shepard and Kaidan’s health bars do not regenerate in early combat. And the improvement increases your current regen rate; it does not replace it. That part is PURELY common sense, since the game never once suggests that various health regen bonuses don’t stack (again, simple observations).

Inconsistent use of visualizations vs. quantifications:
“So in the HUD, you don’t actually see the number of health points, just percentage bars.” Not sure I agree with this criticism. A percentage bar on the in-combat HUD is wonderful for “eye-balling” how close to death you are. But I’d also like to know how many health points I actually have, which is what the out-of-combat menu is for. I don’t see why we should have both read-outs look the same just for consistency’s sake. “…what is a “Paragon” anyway?” I have a beter question for the author: what is a dictionary? “The number of experience points lacks punctuation for number formating. Proper number formating is imperative in such long numbers – especially when you use fonts that have such a great disparity in character width.” Agreed, absolutely. Reading those particular numbers can get bothersome.

Not all team members available:
Yes, this was definitely a pain, but it was manageable, granted that may be beside the point. “This prevents you from using the information in the stat screen to make an informed decision about which members to choose for the away team.” The flaw with that argument is that you don’t need the stat screen to make an informed decision. Liara is the full biotic, the player will know this after she has been with the team for five minutes. If you’re about to drop onto an uncharted world and you suspect you might need someone with Electronics skills (assuming the player doesn’t fill that role himself), then you’ll be choosing between Kaidan, Garrus, or Tali. I wasn’t looking at the stat screen as I typed that, I simply have a general knowledge of my squad mates. If you don’t, then you’re not paying attention.

Loss of functionality by merging functions:
Yep, agree with the author here.

Under-use of visual aids:
“Recognizing an item as an item you saw previously is almost impossible given the amount of different gear.” Under-use of visual aids was unfortunate, but if you can’t recognize words, that’s a different problem altogether, and a personal one at that.

Missing information (again):
Yes, I agree that weapon and armor stats should definitely have changed and reflected the bonuses that installed mods granted, but YOU know what mods you put in your weapon, so why care that much? If the author’s grievance is that the lack of changes in the weapon stats left him wondering if anything changed at all, then he’s questioning the game’s coding, which is an entirely different subject.

Menu convention violations:
I agree with what the author MEANT to say about the upgrade system. In my opinion, he explained it poorly and made it sound like upgrading was a permanent thing that couldn’t be reversed (that is not the case). But I know what he was thinking, and I agree, the upgrade menu was probably the weakest part of the game’s interface. However…

“So you can only say “Yes, I want to transfer the upgrades” and “No, I don’t want to transfer the upgrades but I still want the new weapon”. There is no “No, I don’t want the new weapon, I was just browsing and accidentally pushed a button…” Blaming the game for one’s own mistake is nothing short of foolish. If I hit a button, whether deliberately or not, it’s my own fault. To correct the problem by switching back to the original weapon, the difference between having an “I made a mistake button” button and not having one is literally one button press. One. Button. Press. And concerning upgraded weapons not being highlighted, that’s yet another trifling non-issue that the author is blowing up into a crisis. If you left upgrades in weapons that you’re no longer using, that is, again, your own fault. Reaming a game for not anticipating every mistake the user is bound to make is childish.

Those red and blue “Paragon” and “Renegade” bars on the character screen have the same color as those conversation options. I immediately think, “Maybe if I have more Renegade/Paragon points those things won’t be grayed out.”

See, if that’s true, what are the Intimidate / Charm stats for?

And in any case, it would have been nice to just see what exactly you’re missing so you don’t have to randomly try out permutations.

At any rate. I learned a lot about UI design from your article, which is what I believe your real motive for writing this was. Thank you.

it is not entirely about neglect. it is also about inflicting pressure on ones own self and trying to accomplish too much because of it. if you try to observe how design behaves in the developing world, you will notice that designers become overburdened with all the fancy tools at their disposal. as a result, the end product is a nice shiny black plastic bag that just happens to be full of random junk to someone with a critical eye, but to the average consumer – it looks perfectly fine. to me, there is a similar phenomenon at work here. only in the form of an extremely popular game produced by people who are claimed by many to be gods of the genre.
ergo, a vast majority just may consider ME1 to be a superior game simply because of its convoluted interface. now, this does not in any way imply that the design is deliberate. it is simply performed with oversight to a lot of details and without the application of actual context.

“Now there are cases where an obtrusive interface can be the whole point of the experience.”
i have not read your article yet but – in such cases, the entire experience revolves around an obtuse interface. which makes sense because the experience remains contextual to the object that generated it. there is no disconnect. it doesn’t give a right signal, then turns left all of a sudden.

On the contrary. The more you are invested in the subject matter, the more precise and distraction-free tools you seek out.

Now there are cases where an obtrusive interface can be the whole point of the experience. Games like “Uplink” or “Street Rod” come to mind. I have written about this phenomenon here.
http://gamedesignreviews.com/reviews/street-rod-game-design-and-usability/

But this is not one of them. What we have in Mass Effect 1 is the result of neglect, not deliberate design.