Midnight Transmog UI Feedback

[Peterodox]

Game Version: 12.0.0.64529

Hi, fellow citizens of the Earth. I want to share my thoughts regarding the UX of the new Transmog UI and a few requests.
I understand that this is the first public iteration of this system, and some of the ideas I'm about to outline may already be in development.

Outfit List

The first hiccup I encountered was the OutfitList on the left.

1. Equip Outfit: Currently, the only way to activate an outfit is by clicking the icon on the left of TransmogOutfitEntry. But if we look at similar designs, such as Equipment Set, Mount Journal, and Pet Journal, you'll find that we activate a "preset" by either double-clicking the entry (equipment set), left-clicking to select an entry then clicking an "activate" button, or clicking a button on the context menu. This behavioral inconsistency may cause some issues in the beginning. Also, players may not realize that Equip Outfit is essentially a spellcast; its tooltip doesn't show in green that it can be applied with Left Click.

2. Drag To Action Bar: The tooltip of the outfit entry failed to convey that it can be dragged on your action bars. And the Transmog UI doesn't automatically lower its Frame Strata, the same issue we had with the SpellBook. Some players place their action bars closer to the center of the screen, and the gargantuan UI blocks them.

3. Icon Selector: Transmog UI uses the standard Icon selector, which puts current equipment icons to the top. In my opinion, it should prioritize the transmog item used in the outfit, items that provide the appearance. And also, maybe consider adding icons that indicate the "situation", like swimming or housing. Showing all icons is very daunting, making it hard to find a meaningful choice.

4. Make Active Outfit Stand Out: Currently, the active outfit's icon has a glowing border. However, the "Clear Current Transmog" button, which makes every item use its original appearance, has a checkmark on the right, highlighting that this setting is active. This is another inconsistency. So perhaps the regular outfit entry can have a checkmark too. Also, a minor issue: in WoW's design language, a green checkmark usually means something is completed or collected, such as achievement criteria, Trading Post products, and Delves Weekly Gilded Stash. Whereas a yellow checkmark usually indicates something is activated, such as an equipment set and a player title. But I understand that the green color stands out, so it's not a big deal.

5. Reorder: It would be nice to be able to reorder outfit entries.

Buttons

1. Checkbox: All checkboxes in the Transmog UI are tiny, and I'm referring to their clickable area instead of visual size. The checkbox's label is not clickable, and there is no visual feedback when the checkbox gains mouseover.

2. Button and Text Width: I understand that most of the designs are made with one language in mind, so this issue may not be in a designer's instincts. But some languages, like German and Russian, often use more letters. So we have to be extra careful when using a long label like "Show Equipped Gear" because it may affect your layout.

3. Sheathe/Unsheathe Weapon: The old Transmog UI allows us to press Z to sheathe/unsheathe an actor, be it the Dressing Room or the Transmog Frame. But currently, pressing Z does nothing. Also, it would be nice to show a Toggle Sheathe button and display the hotkey on its label, because new players may not realize this trick.

4. Show Equipped Gear Button: This may be a me problem. When I click "Show Equipped Gear", the button stays in a pushed-down state (not very noticeable because of the glowing border). So I expect that if I click this button again, it should pop back, cancel "Show Equipped Gear", and restore my previously selected appearance.

5. Sets Context Menu: A small inconsistency between the Sets and Custom Sets context menu. "Open Appearances" and "View in Dressing Room" both close the Transmog UI and open another window, but the former's tooltip doesn't have "Exits Transmogrify."

Situation Management

The current procedure for setting situations is: Select an outfit, then choose its situations. However, you can assign multiple outfits to the same situation, but only one will function. So if you have a lot of situationally applied outfits, they can be hard to manage.

The more straightforward procedure, in my opinion, is to show all situations in a tab first, then select an outfit for each situation. On the top of the tab, you select an outfit as the base outfit, and all situations below use this base outfit unless the user overrides it with another one.

Performance

Rendering UI model widgets poses a huge impact on your graphics card. The FPS drop itself doesn't really matter; however, it could be a severe problem if the graphics crash bug on Retail made its way to Midnight. The bug is that if you're in a very populated area like the main city, your graphics card is already under stress, opening the Appearances Tab may crash the graphics and cause it to reload.

If this issue cannot be addressed from the backend, maybe something can be done to alleviate it on the Lua level. We can't really reduce the max load unless you're willing to reduce the number of models per page. We can, however, reduce the loading spikes. So instead of loading all models simultaneously, consider loading them one by one, triggered by a predetermined timer or OnModelLoaded. Ideally, use an adaptive loading interval based on the current frame rate.

Confusions Regarding Ignore Slot

I understand what “Ignore Slot” does. If I have an outfit A with no hidden appearances, and an outfit B where every slot is "ignored" except for the head slot, which is transmogrified to Hidden Helmet, I can switch between outfit A and B to toggle my helmet. I'm not sure if this is the intended usage, so I'd appreciate some clarification in the future.

Other Requests

1. "Equip Outfit" Macro: The API to activate outfit C_TransmogOutfitInfo.ChangeDisplayedOutfit is protected. It would be nice to have a macro to achieve the same thing, so addon devs and general players can use it creatively.

2. Add an Outfit Spell Flyout: The goal is to reduce the number of buttons that we need to put on action bars. Ideally, clicking the Outfit "Spell" button opens a flyout, where we can equip/unequip outfits. Similar to Mage Portals.

3. Export/Import Outfits from Transmog UI: It would be a huge QoL improvement if we could export/import outfits directly on the Transmog UI instead of the Dressing Room. Using a transmog slash command while the Transmog UI is open should set all available items as pending transmogs or prompt a window to create a new custom set.

Thank you for reading this.