Ok, rants about the UX (which is different from UI) from a professional UX Designer as well as some things I really like. I'll also have a few suggestions sprinkled in here too.
Rants
There are changes that can be made to improve the UX without making complete overhauls. Most screens are tolerable. The navigation on some pages are extremely painful. Eg: Click a button which opens a popup, inside that you click a button that opens another popup...so now to get back to your game and regular play, you have two popups to open, we should be utilizing tabbed viewing in a lot of cases (like the Wrestler screen), instead of a popup for each of the link/buttons.
That may be a bigger overhaul, but arranging buttons so it isn't a massive wall on the company screen would be great.
Also, I'd LOVE the ability to control font colors in some way (maybe a config file that lets you change the hex value or something). That would allow Skin Creators greater control of things. I hate how the button colors are limited because you have to account for white and red text.
Also, minor UX complaint, why do we use RED text at the top for when something was done successfully when its also used to indicate something is unable to be used or deletes stuff? That and inconstant font sizes (or lack of hierarchy in fonts) really bugs the crap out of this UX Designer.
Likes
THERE IS A LOT TO LIKE HERE TOO! A lot of the new features are amazing. I love being able to talk to the workers. That was a wish list item for me. The only thing I think is missing that I'd like is if they could either approach you, or you could ask them, about workers they'd like to work with (maybe an added feature in the future) either as opponents or partners.
I really like the concept of not assigning pushes to a worker. I think it being more fluid in how you use someone is much more realistic. It really makes things more fluid. I'll have guys that have been on a roll and earn their way into the main event scene, at least on a temporary scale, and like how they are perceived too play into it. There's a lot of potential story-telling to go on there.
Basically all of the stuff that gives the workers more personality is an improvement. I think, especially with social media in recent years, we've seen a lot of the people in the wrestling industries personalities. Guys like Seth Rollins are well respected in the locker room but has shown he's got a bit of a ego on him and is a "company guy." Guys like David Star are showing they really care about the industry and making sure fellow workers are treated well. So anything that gets us closer to the workers being people playing the role of a character helps with the immersion.
Also the bottom quick bar is great. I wish I had a way to navigate to those sections without going arrow for arrow (I click one too many times and I have to literally move across the screen to get to the back arrow, sorry, small UX complaint). But I like having the highly used features being available from almost any screen and the customization info screen is the best.
I think we are going to discover a lot of features we really love once we can get past the confusing interface. I think some good stuff is buried here that we will love.
I was happy to have a new area included. India is going to be great. It would be really cool to let us customize areas. maybe we can't add areas but adjusting names and rules for those locations would be awesome for some fantasy-based Mods. Imagine a mod set in Westeros of Game of Thrones, or set in Final Fantasy 7's world or even one that takes place on Mars or with the planets being colonized?
Closing
As I said. I have a few User Flow improvement suggestions I'd like to see made without a complete overhaul. If anyone from GDS are interested, I'd and I know a few other UX Designers in the community would happily talk with you. Even if it were to come after release as a "revamped" that's even optional. I'd do it without any compensation, I just want to make sure one of my favorite games is better!
GREAT JOB OVERALL! However this is a great example of how important User Experience is to a software. I'm actually going to save this and compile a case around it when teaching new designers (or selling clients on the importance of UX).