User Interface Feedback

[DingusBungus]

Let's talk about the UI.

I thought the Grounded 1 UI was great and loved that you could find UI customizations in the form of the SCA.Bs around the map. This UI in comparison feels a lot more dull, while also being less functional and more confusing.

I don't want to be super negative with this post because I absolutely love this game. I just want to give some feedback about what, from my perspective, feels like a big step backward in the UI from Grounded 1.

I'll start first with the positives

What is good about the new UI?

1. All of the menus themselves are quite functional.
2. I love the new map! It takes on a more realistic look than in Grounded 1 and I think it's awesome to be able to see Sites and Wonders on the map. This also encourages exploration because you see things on the map that look interesting and naturally want to go there.
3. The entire "Show Stat Details" page is incredible. I love seeing all of the details of your health, stamina, damage type, resistances, etc. I also love that the gear and mutation effects also show you the exact place they are coming from! This was an awesome idea that makes it very clear what is contributing to your success (or bringing you down!)
4. I love that the mutations are broken up into categories now. It makes it a lot easier to find things than in Grounded 1 where there were just a huge block of tiles with symbols on them. I also love that it shows your progress and what is required to level up each one!
5. The molar upgrades being done from the player menu is sooo much better than having to run to a field station. I never thought about it in G1, but it is a huge QoL improvement.

When does it feel less functional and more clunky to use?

1. When entering the inventory with Tab, it should ALWAYS default to your inventory. There is no reason to save the state of which ever knob you had selected before when 90% of the time, you will want to look for your inventory. I found myself hitting tab to open the inventory to be greeted with my mutations menu. Confused, I back out to the game and hit tab again hoping to get to my inventory to instead be greeted again with my mutations menu.
2. There is only 1 hotbar now! When I first played Grounded 1, I thought it was really odd that there were multiple, cycling hotbars. But then the more I played the game, the more I found myself using them and cycling between them. Bring back that feature!
3. The hotbar doesn't show in your inventory menu until you go to drag an item to it. I find this to be an incredibly odd design choice. It took me a solid 10 minutes to figure out how to assign something to my hotbar from my inventory when I had 1000+ hours in Grounded 1. 
4. The knob on the top right instead of tabs is confusing, especially when combined with issue 1 mentioned above. Since the knob radial is small and up in the top corner, my eyes don't shift there to realize I just need to change which menu I am in. And with only small symbols to denote which menu it is, I find myself flipping through them to find the correct thing. In Grounded 1, we had big text tabs at the top that draw your eyes and make the flow between menus a lot more intuitive. As a side note, perhaps make it more obvious that you can swap between them with Q and E. Took me 10+ hours of play time to realize that.
5. Sorting in your inventory and in chests does not have a dedicated, static menu button, just a keybind of Y that you need to hold? Why not just tap Y? Why do I need to highlight something in the inventory of a chest I am looking in to be able to sort it? Add back static sorting buttons in the menu itself.
6. When you are riding your buggy, you can't access the buggy's inventory. Seems like it may just be a feature that hasn't been implemented yet, but I thought I would point it out.
7. I wish you could see the various buff symbols with tool tips in the main character UI instead of in the "Show Stat Details" menu.

I generally like a lot of the QoL improvements that came to some of the menus, like the detailed stats page, the map and the mutations page. But the overall look-and-feel and general intuitiveness of the UI has taken a few steps backward.