Recipes UI Suggestions

Discussion in 'Tradeskills' started by Asterix, May 19, 2020.

  1. Asterix Developer

    Hi Everyone,

    I am one of the Engineers on the team and the team looking for feedback and suggestions regarding the Recipes UI and it's functions.
    • Is the user interface confusing or straightforward? What changes would you make to it?
    • Are there any features you don't like in it? Are there features that are missing from it ?
    • Is the Recipes UI easy to find ?
    We may be asking for feedback with other systems in the future, so please keep your feedback and suggestions limited to the Recipes UI. Also note, not all suggestions will be implemented into the game, and remember to keep in mind technical limitations and scope of work to accomplish such suggestions. Thank you in advance for any and all suggestions you’re willing to give! The team and I value all of your feedback.


    // Asterix
  2. Aniwiel Member

    Revamp the system to create ingame filter. It's easier to edit it outside. For example creating a filter for all blood of luclin repeatable recipe is impossible.

    Add fiter for level or expac
  3. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    (1) Check out DarqUI's crafting window. It has a lot to recommend it.

    (2) As Aniwiel mentioned, setting up usable filters in-game is extremely difficult. Quite a while ago, I got exasperated with it, pulled the recipe file into an editor, and created the categories I wanted in the order I wanted them. I make my filter available on EQ2Interface.com.

    It would be quite helpful to be able to do this in-game. I'd set up a separate filter editing window that makes it easier to see what recipes one has, and allows drag-and-drop addition to filters and in reordering filters.
  4. Ra'Gruzgob Well-Known Member

    Perhaps over time I got used to it, but at first I wanted to have opportunity in UI, to delete writed recipes (or without UI, through CLI, tho' somehow). Also, another person with whom I played found that it would be nice to be able to delete unneeded recipes (he himself can't write now because he is very seriously ill). Of course, if this were done, then we could accidentally delete some recipes that we will need later. However, those recipes that can be bought at any time from merchants clog up recipe books our characters. Such recipes can make up most of recipes writed in their books. And even if sorting recipes is comfortable, all same, this process takes our consideration and tires, because most of them are refuse (or eventually turn into refuse). I can also add that I tried to use alternative UIs for recipes, those that are available at eq2interface.com but those that by default in game client is seemed more convenient (same opinion about this was at another person, wich I mentioned). That is, I would like to be able to delete through interface those recipes that can be easily purchased from NPC
    Robynous likes this.
  5. Ra'Gruzgob Well-Known Member

    Perhaps impracticable to do this (make it so that can delete recipes from book), but to along available selection one can make secondary option to hide recipes, that is, to have two options: “hide” and something like “better hide”. This would help sort recipes. Because in relation to some recipes it's quite certain that they are not needed and will not be needed, and in relation to others there is no such certainty, or they are rarely needed..
    Robynous likes this.
  6. Mercychalice Well-Known Member

    I'd like for the options to filter by class, armor type, spell type, adornment, ingredient, tier, level, etc, would be better than going through the current filter options, similar to the broker's interface and search fields. The current filter options seem buggy at best. For example, I can go to a chem table, and filter, say, by paladin, and sometimes it will only give me a handful of recipes, and sometimes it will give me all the recipes, and sometimes it won't apply the filter at all, or sometimes, I've had it revert back to a previous filter I no longer need, and I have to clear the entire target, book, and station to re-filter correctly. I would also prefer it to include all recipes that can be made on station type, i.e., I would not like to have to reset it from Default: Elaborate ___ to Unfiltered every time I go to make something. I would prefer it to stay Unfiltered, but it doesn't do this.
  7. Observing Active Member

    Tooltip for the product, not just the recipe, which 90% of the time I don't care about the ingredients or fuel
  8. oakmiser Well-Known Member

    If we could have the creation of our filters be easier to use. The chief complaint I have when creating a new filter is that when I am selecting multiple levels I have to hold down the cntrl button.

    For all crafting that IS NOT experimenting it would be great if you had a label over the crafting reaction arts on the small hotbar that appears during crafting that labels the left Durability and the right Progress, and also notates it on the bars of each level of item progress. For us veterans this isn't a big deal but for a new player it could be a game changer in understanding how things work.
  9. Observing Active Member

    Add a built-in filter that searches our quests and shows recipes needed by all our active quests. For example, rush writs and research missions.
    Hartay, Robynous, Finora and 4 others like this.
  10. Katz Well-Known Member


    I would like to recommend that you do look at the available ones mentioned here. I have used Sigrdrifa's filter for quite a while and it greatly improved my experience with using the recipe filter.
    Spindle, Zynt, Rosyposy and 1 other person like this.
  11. Xianthia Well-Known Member

    Filtering by slot and tier would be a great start.

    Able to hide and/or unhide multiple recipes at a time. maybe this could be accomplished with a tick box on each recipe and then able to tick multiples at a time.
    Finora, Rosyposy and Breanna like this.
  12. Ra'Gruzgob Well-Known Member

    thanks, right, first you have to do it (to tick box a hide) separately for each recipe and not at once for group of selected recipes, and this only thing that causes tangible annoyance
  13. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    The more recipes you know, the longer it takes for the server to load the list. So if you have a lot of recipes, as most level 120 crafters do, you need to open the crafting window and wait a few seconds before you select a filter, otherwise it's trying to filter on a partial list at best.
    Rosyposy, Katz, Mercychalice and 3 others like this.
  14. Observing Active Member

    1. The filter is a drop down list. it would be nice if it was hierarchical with "folders"
    2. Pull filters from multiple files somewhere in the EQ2 folder structure so you could mix and match filters your own filters with 3rd party UI developer filters. Not like the mess trying to integrate multiple partial custom UIs.
    Hartay and Finora like this.
  15. Zinloz New Member

    1) Don't have a finished craft cause the search box to lose focus.
    2) When pressing enter from the search box, pass control back to the general window so I can continue using hotkeys for the skills. The search box retains focus after hitting enter.

    I'd find these useful because when I'm making various things, normally for quests, I am searching in between hitting buttons, and it's cumbersome to do this.
  16. Whilhelmina Well-Known Member

    First, thanks for asking!

    I had done manually a lot of filters in game, but I went over and started using Sigrdrifa's filter too. This in an amazing tool and if this could be made in game, it would be way better.

    What I really want to see in the recipe UI is a search field to filter the recipe books. Currently, we can open the UI and type the name of an individual recipe and get all the recipes matching said name in the window. I would like the same thing but in the filters tab, to filter recipe BOOKS and not individual recipes.
    For example, I could then type "studies" and only have all the books with the name "studies" show, like "advanced alchemist studies volume 1" but also "shadow alchemist studies volume 13" which are nowhere close in the recipe book list. With our very long number of individual books, it's becoming increasingly harder to find a specific book in the list.

    I must also note that I'm using the DrumsUI tradeskills window which is way more compact (I use a lot of Drums UI pieces due to having a very small screen for years)
    Rosyposy, Quillyne, Breanna and 2 others like this.
  17. Zell Member

    you should implement a partition and expandable grouping style UI one with a + and - to open and close. allow the player to select the style they like them to be in for instance by tier, slot, trade skill used, ect. that way when people open the UI they can just + to see the ones they want and - on the ones they don't.

    also for the advanced use they could make there own groupings for this, and allow for them to set the sorting themselves as well so the preferred groups are at top when they open the UI.
  18. Zell Member

    sorry for double post i think the issue most are really having with the UI is simply there sheer amount of recipes in it.
  19. Captain Pengie New Member

    As several people have mentioned, the real problem is the sheer number of recipes you can have and the lack of a decent filter. Unless you have a huge capacity for useless knowledge and have been memorising releases and recipe books for years the current filter is virtually useless. What is needed is a filter similar to the broker so that we can, for example, search for:
    • cloth chest pieces useable by a Wizard in the level 20-40 range which have an INT bonus
    • drinks in the 30-50 range which provide both STA and WIS bonus
    • adornments which go on a helm and provide STR bonus
    • one-handed bladed weapons usable by a scout that will proc heals
    etc etc. This way if we are crafting for guild mates it is easy to narrow the list down to, say, a set of armour which matches their class and primary stat without having to memorise the entire encyclopedia of recipes or use an external wiki to get item names. You can also remove technique, knowledge and recipe book from the filter as they are totally irrelevant compared to item type, slot etc. We want to search for an end product, not what skill is required.

    Additionally, we need a better way to remove from view those recipes we don’t need to see as the current ‘hide’ function is far too cumbersome. I also get annoyed by having to hit examine so many times before being able to see the end product and the fact that it often creates an error if I am not standing near the correct craft station when I do this view.
    So my suggestions in order of importance are:
    1. Change the ‘filter’ to an actual search function similar to the broker which allows you to set level range, item type, usable by class, slot and multiple stat bonuses. Note that the broker only allows 1 but a multiple checkbox or similar is needed so you can look for stat X & Y.
      [IMG]
    2. Restructure the recipe display to incorporate the side-by-side view of DarqUI plus extend it so that the actual product is also displayed. Add in text to show what station is required (because e.g. sometimes carpenters need the woodbench and sometimes the sewing table) nd ideally if the finished product can be later imbued.
      [IMG]
    3. Alter the ‘hide’ function so that you can choose multiple recipes at once. Nobody has the time to go through 3,000+ recipes individually hiding all but the 200 they actually use. A new method (shift clicking, a user editable file or something) is needed so that you can get rid of large blocks at a time.
    4. Change the error notification on crafting station to only occur if you hit “BEGIN” and are not next to the correct station
    For me these would be the biggest wins to take away so much of the pain in finding the recipe you want.

    While you are looking at UI changes, maybe you could also look of these:
    • Alter the research window to include a sort which only displays the max level (similar to the abilities/spells sort) so that when we want to research a new level we are only seeing the most powerful version of each spell and don’t accidentally waste time researching an out-levelled version.
    • Fix the AA window so that it is blatantly obvious you are forward planning and not spending points you don’t have yet. It is far too easy to assign an entire tree and have it tell you that you have spent 25 of 25 points (or whatever) but you then get disappointed to discover you were spending points that don’t exist yet and will not get those abilities for another x levels.
    And BTW, thanks for asking for player input as it is far better than making a change and hoping people like it. This recipe book/filter problem has existed from day one and it is great that you are finally looking at it and getting player input for the change.
    Riles, Whilhelmina and Rosyposy like this.
  20. Captain Pengie New Member

    Had a bit more time and changed my mind on a couple of things so here are new pics. Wanted to edit the original post but it won't let me so this will have to do.

    1. Change the ‘filter’ to an actual search function similar to the broker which allows you to set level range, item type, usable by class, slot and multiple stat bonuses. Note that the broker only allows 1 but a multiple checkbox or similar is needed so you can look for stat X & Y.
      [IMG]
    2. Restructure the recipe display to incorporate the side-by-side view of DarqUI plus extend it so that the actual product is also displayed (via an expand arrow). Add in text to show what station is required (because e.g. sometimes carpenters need the woodbench and sometimes the sewing table) and ideally if the finished product can be later imbued.
      [IMG]
    AOE1, Hartay, Lateana and 3 others like this.