Feedback on the UI/UX

Hello

There are dissatisfactions with the UI's animation speed or artstyle but I'd like to briefly expand on what I consider to be the bigger problem which relates to the menus and buttons and their relevance, relateness and repetition. I'm sure most of you have noticed these but it might be helpful to compile all the problems noticed and give constructive feedback.

For those who want a quick tl;dr take a look here and for the way i see the relations check out this quick doodle

I'll do my best to describe them verbally and feel free to comment with anything i missed or described inaccurately.

• CANCEL and RETURN buttons look exactly like buttons which describe menus themselves and they're inserted in such a way they appear to give the impression of another game type or option menu. at the same time X exists which performs the same function on the modal menus.

• MULTIPLAYER options exist in a modal and below the player options on the main menu. SINGLEPLAYER options exist in a modal and via LEARN TO PLAY. if concentrating all play-options in modals was the idea, having others appear elsewhere in the main menu defeats that purpose.

• MODS options exist in the PROFILE menu and in the settings gear menu

• both MODDING options are quite hidden and relate more to EDITORS than where they're located

• the SETTINGS gear menu has OPTIONS along with credits, history and mods which aren't as related

• PROFILE options exist in the multiplayer lobby panels (clans, leaderboards) which relate to the ones in the main menu's profile modal featuring player search, mutes, bans, stats. they all describe community/social views and options

• LOAD GAME button exists in the LEARN TO PLAY menu as well as the SINGLE PLAYER menu and it also features REPLAY viewing but not MP saves

• ADDITIONAL RESOURCES from the LEARN TO PLAY menu might as well be next to NEWS or clicking the logo of the main menu since it accesses the webside directly (not a specific learn to play subsection)

• RESTORE GAME option exists within MULTIPLAYER modal as well as the panes accessed through the FIND CUSTOM GAME button

• the FIND CUSTOM GAME button opens the LOBBY BROWSER (unranked) but RANKED button opens RANKED menu

• HOST GAME button from the MP modal and CREATE LOBBY button from the LOBBY BROWSER do the same thing

• ART OF WAR buttons only light up slightly instead of clearly using complementary colors to show which button's selected

• in OPTIONS menu clicking between panels works smoothly except for the HOTKEYS panel which briefly turns the screen black when clicking on. Other menus like the multiplayer panels have the same issue.

• for a newcomer LEARN TO PLAY may be straight but WILLIAM WALLACE means nothing and deprives them of viewing the european map

• HISTORICAL BATTLES can only be found by clicking the africa map, despite the icon opening a new map which features splinters of the entire world. it could've been a WORLD entry

Obviously there's a lot more work left to improve the overall structure such as wireframes and sequence diagrams as well as the performance problems, art and animation type & speed but hopefully the devs will come through as they have for the great work done so far!