OK here is a suggestion. If what I said is sort of what really happened with the HUD design (BS ability charge bar is the culprit). Have you guys considered building a circular gauge that surround the old heat meter (like an odometer)?

..and if anyone has a problem with it, well, too bad, there's are a lot of little kiddies with mum's credit cards that will keep playing our game. WIN.

But hei.. what about veterans, players that are supporting us from the beggining? The core of SK community? Eeeeh, to hell with em, they all just rant, demand new content.. Who cares from them. We are freeeeeee! WIN.

Hmm.. It all reminds me.. of a company.. doing the same things.. not listening, ignoring their fans and supporters.. meh, doesn't matter..

Because this new HUD is paving path for future updates, like Battle Sprites

Then they should have saved it till then while working on some polish for it a long with the BS, instead of releasing an unfinished buggy HUD.

If BS are to have charge abilities, where would you put that ability bar on the old HUD?

Where would you put it in the new UI that wont clutter it even more? Most of the borders are already occupied and the free spaces are in awkward places to put a gauge in. If you say they will figure it out when it's ready, there's absolutely no reason they couldnt have done it in the old one.

Ewwww, it's too square.

A little part of spiral knights has died.

-I like the new damage effects on enemies a lot. Good change here.
-I noticed that the tooltips when mousing over materials and consumables on the floor is gone. They were annoying as hell, so I like this.
-Player facing updates correctly when mousing over the UI while locked now. Thanks for squishing that bug.
-Missions updates don't cause the mission tab to pop back out anymore. Quite nice.

-The new HP meter feels a lot clumsier than the old one. I liked the way it squished around as you gained and lost HP. I especially dislike how the percentage shown doesn't update until the lifebar animation completes, and how you can't tell if you're at max HP with a quick glance..
-The UI as a whole is very hard on the eyes, especially at lower resolutions. Please go back to using flat colors. I especially hate the faux glass highlighting, it's tacky.
-The appearance of enemy HP bars seem oddly inconsistent - sometimes one wouldn't show on an enemy I was trying to gun down.
-Consumables are uglier, and freeze/shock vials are harder to tell apart to boot. The abstract icons were a better fit IMO.
-People mentioned the weapon switch popup being annoying, but they didn't say anything about that sound. Plink plink plink plink UGH MAKE IT STOP.
-You can click on the lock in the UI to unlock it, which seems counterintuitive to say the least. I noticed a couple of times my HUD had come unlocked without me realizing it, probably from franticly clicking around that area while gunning.
-I have no clue where to look to see how long the duration of any status effects on me are. Probably because I kept glancing to the bottom of the screen instead of wherever they are now. I'm not 100% sure they're even still shown.
-Having to drop consumables to rearrange them sucks. I try to keep pills and remedies on buttons 1 and 2 so I can hit them on reflex. This makes it harder to arrange my stuff without it getting swiped by an unscrupulous teammate.
-Someone invited me to a lobby and it took me a couple minutes to even realize it because I'm prone to missing small details. As annoying as some people found the popups, I much prefer them.

Any chance of hiding the closed window tabs and shifting the chat window down a bit when the UI is locked? Also, if you're changing consumable mechanics around a bit, how about having teammates who leave a party on the elevator drop their stuff on the next floor?

And all it takes is a second to glance at your health, heat, shield, and pet charge bar, right? More like 1.5 probably. And that's more than enough time spent not looking at your knight to kill you in several different ways.

Another thing I noticed: the vials still use the old "shine" animation, which is made to go over a circle. So the shine is an arc of light over thin air. And did I mention that the art style of the vials/pills is completely different from the rest of the game?

EDIT:

@Autofire

Oh...and happy birthday, Spiral Knights....I'm sorry you're so sick...

/cry

i agree with most of what has been said, so there's no point in repeating, however, I have a little more feedback which is for a few smaller things, and I'm too lazy to look if anyone's said anything.

"- Art for unbreakable blocks in the Clockworks has been updated."
This was complete unnecessary, the old blocks fit well, these ones look completely out of place and make no sense whatsoever, it feels as if though they made these blocks to add to the game's environments, they do seem like they might add to the game if they randomly appeared here and there to add variety, but completely replace blocks with this one, no. The advanced training hall shows this perfectly, having the blocks used as walls, and with the new ones it makes no sense.

"- Monster and player damage flash effects have been revamped for better clarity in combat."
The old flash effects where subtle yet still worked, they were clear enough and without being in the way. The new ones are less light effects, and add what seems like and image flashing in, it doesn't look as good, and it adds more to the list of clutter this update brought.

Lastly, one thing that bothers me most is the amount of hand-holding and constant display of info we don't require. We don't need to see NPC's names, we don't need arrows around every interact-able thing to indicate they're interact-able, the little bubble above our heads indicated that easily. Why do we need that bubble at the top that also gives the information? On enemies it only appears if auto aim is on, which goes to show the game is pushing towards being easy for the new players. I think that's what this update was made for, for the minority 12 year old new players, to strip sk of more challenge by giving even more info and nerfing the last challenging monsters.

When OOO comes in to their office tomorrow morning, I think I am not alone in pleading that they will at least ADMIT THAT THEIR NEW $@&&!@$ UI WAS NOT $@&&!@$ FINISHED.

(I'm reposting this from the testing forum just to make sure this helps in the effort to change the UI!)

First off, I want to say for the most part I like how the UI looks. It's much sharper and pleasant to look at, but that isn't to say that it's better than it was before because in actuality it's not for a game like this. I'm going to list the pros and cons overall from my experiences in PvE.

Pros:

-The UI looks much more sharper. Makes it pleasant to look at.
-I like the percentage health bars; I feel is more accurate than the bars we had before.
-Menus on the bottom left and right are nice. Being able to hide them is also nicer in combat.
-Being able to see our knights when we go up to haven is neat. Gives more personality.
-Chat scroll bar was much needed, great job on that.
-Monster health bars are great to have, but it's also nice to be able to disable the hovering ones if we choose to as it makes the game cluttered.

Now this isn't a lot I realize, but that's really all there is to this update pro wise. Now the cons and what should happen.

Cons:

-Give our names our player colors again; remove titles on top of our names.

It's hard to read and differentiate knights at all. Sure, friends are have blue names and guildies have green names, but what if you're trying to trade with someone and all you see are just people bunched together? It's just a lot of text. I found it easier to find someone by seeing a pleasant and solid color. Added to that, the title isn't necessary. No one truly cares about being a Vanguard, I don't think I've ever heard anyone brag about being one either.

-Return our player colors back to our map icons.

Why is everyone the same transparent light blue circle? This bothers me in Haven much like the previous con's text issue, but this problem shines especially in combat. I will use FSC as an example, everyone does it right? In Depth 25, players regularly spread out to clear rooms. As you spread out, icons turn into arrows which are EVEN HARDER to see on the map and don't move noticeably enough to tell who is downed or still up and fighting. This is extremely vital to party survival. I don't want to run around with a 1/3 chance of finding that single member downed at each arrow.
[EDIT]: This was changed with the second patch, at least while in the depths. The icon player colors have been returned back to their original state.

-Remove the portrait in the upper left corner COMPLETELY.

The portrait is truly unnecessary by all means. It's huge and obnoxious. My rank is just as unnecessary as knowing if you're Vanguard or not and I'm definitely sure everyone know's their knight's name...at least I sure hope so cause that'd be sad.

-Remove the health bar and shield bar in haven.

It's unnecessary and makes me uncomfortable when I'm in Haven or any other place that doesn't have combat involved.

-Remove shield bar COMPLETELY.

We should be looking at our knights's shield, which may I add does a wonderful job already telling us our shield's health, to see if it's in danger of breaking. There's no reason to glance at the shield bar all the time if you can just look at the shield's color. If it must stay though, refine the shield bar. It looks really unpolished compared to everything else.

-Move the health bar to the bottom of the screen; return quickslots to the top of the screen.

What I liked about the health bar before was that it was at the bottom where I could easily see it. I took a Vana mace to the knee today and frantically looked up to see my health on the upper left to see if I should use a pill, which dangerously actually made me look completely away from my knight. If I had walked into any shadow fire trying to compulsively move out of the way of Vana glancing at my health, I would have died. Spiral Knights is a fast paced game, we don't have 3 seconds to look at how much health we have at the top left of the screen It NEEDS to be returned to the bottom of the screen. Quickslots should just be returned to the top.

-Return Death Mark on downed party member's health.

With our health before, party members that have been downed can easily be distinguished by looking at their health bar which would be replaced by the Death Mark. How it looks now is just a completely empty health bar. At a glance in the midst of combat, you would actually think the person with the empty health bar is still up and running because it's still there and not death marked, but now that it's gone I have to ask if a person is dead or not because my eyes could be fooling me considering our health is a percentage now.

-Vials look a tad bit weird.

Heavy opinion here, but I'm sure I spent a good 5 seconds trying to figure out the difference from a T1 sleep and freeze vial at a glance. It may be just me, but I think vials could be...redone again? They were so easily to tell from before; freeze was white, sleep was dark blue. Now it's freeze is white, sleep is...a weird very light olive green. I don't feel strong on this, but I really don't like the way they look at all.

-Allow us to disable the weapon scroll.

I've no doubt that this is useful, some people out there get lost in their arsenal of 4 weapons they carry. I do sometimes. But even if I do, I'd like to be able to disable the weapon scroll because it clutters up the screen. Before, I knew what weapon I was carrying because I had it in my hands. Now though, I feel compelled to look at the scroll because it's so huge...but that's the problem in itself, it makes it hard to see enemies covered by the scroll. It can be helpful at first, but it's going to be problematic later. I'm not sure if this was the cause, but the weapon scroll possibly made weapon switching slower.

-Return Crowns and CE to the general interface.

Regardless of Nick said; which was a perfectly valid point, I think it would be foolish to not be able to see our Crowns and CE on the general interface. Spiral Knights revolves heavily on Crowns and CE. There is no experience points to increase your knights health and attack power nor are there skills. Your gear IS your power...and to get gear, you need that you need Crowns and CE. Crowns is a staple, no, CE is a staple. You can't do a darned thing progression wise without it. Elevators, crafting, you name it. It's flat out needed. And it's needed on the interface so I don't have to keep checking every few minutes to see if my mist has recovered fully when I could have just glanced before.

i dont think so, ooo never admited they did something wrong. prolly they would make a change here and there and said "its done!" but about admit they did a mistake we never going to see that. (remember when they saw the obvious error that was giving shadow keys only in lockboxes and featured ah? well they never admited their error as far i remember, they only made them be able to be purchase with energy).

I don't know... a "mistake" of this magnitude. It seems they are corned. They won't have time and resources to redo the whole HUD (which seems to be what is needed) and they would lose face (and maybe their heads) if they rollback to the old HUD.

I think most likely they would do is fix up some urgent UI issues in the new HUD and move on. So before you go to sleep, pray that the issues they are going to fix are the ones that are offending you the most right now.

Bug: When switching weapons with only three equipped, the weapon wheel is displaying the switched-to weapon twice in the wheel, once in the middle position and again in the upper position. (I have not checked this bug with two or four weapons equipped.)

Also, see all my previous gripes on the new UI earlier in the thread.

I'm not one to dare. I'm not one to challenge. I respect OOO and the SK team. But...I must ask....

When they started making games, did they feel the same way I do? Truthfully, it is how I feel. Games are meant to be relaxing. Something you spend your recreational time playing. It's not recreational when you can't enjoy it. I want to make things which you can enjoy. To put the "Fun" back into "Videogames" which so many huge companies somehow seemed to have removed.

One thing I really don't like about the new UI is the fact that when you're playing on a higher resolution, the health bar is really out the way. I was blazing through the clockworks earlier today and taking occaisional hits, then I thought to glance at the hp bar and went 'oh [bucket] I've only got 5% health left'. When the bar was down the bottom this was never a problem, however.
Also I miss my ce and crowns meter showing all the time. I liked boosting my ego by seeing lots of numbers there.
Also, in case people didn't know you can disable the ranks of people showing up in the options menu. I already have :)

I really like a lot of things about the new UI. I think however you should be customize and turn on or off the text pop ups, health bars, etc. these things are good for beginners but as a more experienced player, i don't need to be told what materia I'm picking up. I think being able to customize the UI would be great. If you could make it so it helps beginners, but as they grow they need less information on the screen, they can remove certain things. And there are other things you can add to the UI as optional additions that can be turned on, like showing hit boxes, or swing radius and stuff like that.

Why exactly did OOO feel that this update was necessary? Was it for battle sprites as Eltia guessed, or just because they felt the game needed a new look? If so, why was it released so soon? An answer to these questions would go a long way towards calming everyone down, as long it makes sense.

Alright, so I guess I sort of want to be heard too (implying I'll be heard). I was rather surprised/shocked to see that they implemented this so quickly. We've had how many balancing threads without as much as a Iron Slug/Callahan buff (which they already sort of promised...)?

So yea, why they would do this is truly beyond me, but I decided I'd take notes from the very beginning, making a small sentence (up to a small paragraph) on what I like and don't like as they appeared. Some things have been mentioned up to several times before and some things are just personal preferences, I won't care to elaborate here in this post.

This is what my notes looked like in the end:

WHYYYY?

Light / white gradient over miniature pictures in parties makes it hard to see who's who when they're wearing almost the same equipment (or equipment that looks alike). Makes you HAVE to read the name, hard to recognize by colour too since it's practically hidden behind the character portrait.

Health bar is far away from the center of the screen, where the action is taking place.

Portrait up in left corner hides menus that should have been a lot easier to access.

Horrible and confusing colouring on the inventory tabs. COLOUR BATTLE TO DEATH. SURVIVAL OF THE COLOURESTTTTT. Feels like the old UI had a lot more unity.

Picture at elevators asking to go down or up is just ridiculous...

Can't move vials and pills into slots I want without having more things to replace it with... What the hell...

Screen shakes while getting hit, what is this? An FPS?

Screen shakes every time you get hurt by fire.

Two numbers at the vials... I mixed up the numbers thinking I had two (it was on slot number 2) shock vials in missile puppy room... I mean, why would the number tag be the biggest clearest number?

I'd prefer my HUD to be rather static. Shield bar moving over the health bar? Why? They don't want me to see my health? I'd prefer not to have my health bar go into hiding in the middle of a battle.

I can already tell how my shield is doing by using it, why would I need an extra shield-meter that is completely obsolete and just covers my health so it is harder to tell if I'm dying or not... Not only that, but it is still far away from the middle of the screen where the action is taking place.

Weapon switching animation is a bit big? And is text really necessary?

Can't drop vita pods...

Can no longer see if anyone in the party is low on energy?

Why change the UI when there's so much else that could be done.

White names makes it harder to read the names in groups.

Combination of colours on names (guildies and friends).

Only having the personal colour on the rank emblem? And people with no rank emblem gets no personal colour on their name at all.

Three lines for every name? Really? You sure you shouldn't have four or five (more)? No?

What is up with the autotarget markers? (For instance:) Constant autotarget on the auction house? I KNOW what the freaking auction house is and what it looks like...

Minimap is useless, can't tell regular people apart. Hell, can hardly tell people apart from the minimap background itself...

Minimap hides people under other icons. Can't see if there is anyone in the guildhalls for example.

New graphic when you get on elevator makes it unable to see if someone leaves before you've clicked one of the buttons.

PLUS:

No more random invites/trades pop ups in the middle of the screen. Yay.

Health bar on top left is a bad idea, when it was on bottom center it was easy to control health level and status - now it's almost impossible during fight.

It's been said before. It will be said again. The new UI is a step back from the old.
Before I go step by step through the analysis of the new UI, I'd like to take a note and acknowledge the work OOO did on this.

It was bad.
While developers clearly spent some finite, nonzero amount of time on this UI update, they clearly did not use their resources correctly. Why a UI? Why so soon? Where are those swarming mobs, those grave scarabs, that Iron Slug buff you promised us, Nick? Where is the buff for Mad Bomber? Why did we change something perfectly functional into something... weird?
The change in UI was, in my opinion, largely a waste of time and effort; time and effort that could have been spent developing Sprites, balancing armor, creating new content, the list goes on and on...

Now that the elephant in the room has been indentified as an African Elephant and named Donnald, we can continue to the actual changes that came through this patch.

Roll the clip!

1. The item of highest concern is the Mist and Crowns being hidden from the HUD, tucked away in the inventory. Players have discussed theories of why this has happened, and I beleive Nick has mentioned that it makes the game less money-energy driven. I'll cut right to the chase.
Hiding the energy and crowns appears to be an underhanded way for F2P players to overspend energy, thus breaking into their CE reserves. This prompts them to buy more CE from the market with crowns, enlargening the crown sink.
The simple fact of the matter is that everything in SK is energy-driven (unless OOO would like to make elevators free forever, and make crafting use crowns instead of CE, but then Donnald might as well dance whiel playing the piano with his unicycle. Ofc he has a unicycle)
Hiding the energy is a HUGE no-no. Every soul I hve met so far has hated the implementation and concept.

2. Health is important, but not in Haven. But when time comes to glance at it, players have to look to the top corner of the screen now, to look at a slowly-draining health bar. Part of the problem may be most players being accustomed to a bottom-screen health bar. I think the problem runs deeper. The new pixeel-by-pixel system, as opposed to the pip or half-pip system, makes loss of health less numeric. Sure, analysts can use the new bar to figure out precicely how much damage we're doing, but for all intensive purposes, half-pips and pips were simpler and almost as informative.
Needless to say, we don't need health in Haven either.

3. Pips pips pips pippins. You know what's fun in clockworks? Wearing weak armor that grants you with no health bonus, running the hardest levels you know (HoI, LoA, GitM, C42, FSC, etc etc) with 5 pips. You know what feels awesome? Your party gawking at you as you carry them through the level. Now, what has changed about that now, you ask?
Simple; we can only see our own pips. Everyone else is a little red Pokemon bar to us. I can't see who needs a vitapod; I can't see who has trinkets. They can't see me either.
We also can't drop vitapods, meaning if I want to run something "hero mode", I have to avoid those +15 vitas in FSC like fire traps.
I can't pass vitas to a friend who wants them;
Oh did I mention LD? I need to mention LD. Donnald, why didn't you remind me about LD? Say what? you did? I ignored you and threw those ugly vials at you? Well I'm sorry mate. Here we go.
I can't analyze my team. I can't tell if they'll die in 4 hits, 3 hits, or 0.6 hits. I can't even remember if I can tell what class they're playing; the UI was too confusing for me to bear more than 3 games. When i take a hit now, I can't even tell. I don't drop pips or make that "bang" sound like before, or if I do, it's covered up by the newly added flashiness.

4. Vile Vials. Those things look like stickers for children, labled "Science for Kids! Throw beakers and tubes at monsters!" They. Look. Terrible.

5. General design. I'm sure it's been said before, but I think my first website in HTML has prettier buttons than this UI. The buttons are showy, gaudy, clutterd. No right-minded knight would use something this... badly lavished.

There are more minor things, such as weapon wheel and shield bar, but I think I'd be beating a dead horse by bringing those up again. What's that Donnald? That horse was your friend? Oh jeez I am so sorry... we'll put him to rest and give him a proper Greek burial, a Drachma under his long horse tongue.

Back to a more somber note.
This update really doesn't cut it for me, and many other players. The new UI is intrusive and annoying, and OOO's lack of regard for the Testing Server comments is making me reconsider my stake in this game. Admittedly I am purely F2P, so my quittling wouldn't lose you a cent, but for now...

I'll give it a week. If I return and find everything as it is now, you might not be seeing me again.
I'd urge any players with similar opinions to join me.

The ex-T2 LD Fiend,
Breaker-Xd

I know a lot of people thought the new elevator idea was cool. BUT COME ON i loved watching my party descend on the elevator it was cool! and simple and connected more with the game then a picture of my knights racing......

its not a bad idea i suppose..but its just not nearly as unique or cool as it was originally.

i honestly have found 0 appreciable things about this UI or update

@Klipik: I also don't believe they will bring back the old UI.

I just did a FSC run (I gave it one more chance), and there are no words that could describe my feelings about new UI and everything that they have changed. There is not a single thing I like. I cannot understand, even if I try to think about every possibility on why they did what they did.. There is no excuse, and the only way out is to go back, to old UI.

Idk, maybe they have a new designer or something, that is from another world compared to original one? I just can't see the person who "made" the SK look, remaking it into this?

True, content is not the only thing that matters. Having fun playing.. enjoyin the game.. That matters the most. And they took that away from me.

@Weedalot: You nailed it!

@Hideousfox: Yep, agreed. Elevators should also stay as they were.

In any case.. It has been a long, dissapointing night.. Time for bed.. Maybe things will look better when I sleep it over? Maybe.. If not, I think I'll go find my next adventure somewhere else..

where can i see which weapon i have equipped`?

cursed weapon has very little icon in the top left corner how am i supposed to know that the equipped weapon is cursed just in time before releasing a charge attack :l

* The health bar should be closer to the center of the view so we can actually see our health.
* the health and shield bar should be of equal length.
* Vitapods should be near the healthbar.
* the self portrait and party member portraits should be of equal size.
* the health bar should be an actual bar, the current can falsely show full health when you're hurt.
* the old items (vials etc) looked much better.
* the gatemap needs a shortcut.
* the energy (crystal and mist) needs to be able to show/hide manually.
* The advance to next level window shouldnt have quit and advance at the same position (it was better when quit was "up" and advance was "down").
* Enemies healthbar should flash or something when they die (now they can show empty and not die).
* Item slots numbers and quantity numbers is too confusing.

I dislike 5 things currently:
1. The new pills icons, they changed it so confetti uses the new pill icon and now it clashes with all the other items in my inventory which have a very flat but consistant look
2. I don't like the new indestructable blocks, I think they look like motors
3. I think the menus on the bottom of the UI are this deeper blue and the frame for the minimap and character portrait is sky blue, kind of clashes imo
4. If you've done a t1 cake nest there are small ckaes that look very flat and have terrible animation, I'll probably stick to t3 cake runs for the entire event.
5. I also want to have my CR and ce displayed onscreen
Positives:
I like the weapon wheel.
I like how your freinds and guildies are color coded on the minimap
I like the new explosive effect on attacks
I love the health bars
I like the new elevator screens
I love zoom in mode
Meh:
I'm okay with NPC names and the gigantic shield health bar and the menus being at the bottom of the UI
Getting an invite could be a little bit more noticable but it's an improvment over the old system where an invite would pop up in the middle of the screen and interupt everything

I think it's a pretty resonable UI and it's not going to make me quit playing spiral knights. OOO is pretty good about doing things players want so I'm sure we'll see minor changes to it in the future.

P.S. I would like the option to do something with knight names in town. Disable rank above the names. Change the font size of names. Display knight personal color instead of white.