It’s time for an update on the upcoming Mobile UI changes!
Mobile UI Survey Results
We’ve been reviewing your feedback on our Mobile UI proposal back in May and using the data we gathered from our survey to inform our next steps! If you haven't seen the first blog yet, we recommend you to take a quick read of that before reading on as it will contain some information about what we're aiming to achieve with the proposal.
As mentioned previously, changes to UI affect every type of player, from mobile-only adventurers to old-timers interested in cross-platform play – so we’re really grateful to everyone who told us their thoughts. Here’s a summary of the results:
- We received feedback from all kinds of players. 36% of respondents primarily play on desktop and occasionally on mobile; 24% of respondents play both desktop and mobile equally; 18%primarily play OSRS on mobile and will occasionally use the desktop version, and 18% exclusively play OSRS on mobile.
- Most respondents understood the changes (68% definitely and 27% mostly).
- Most respondents ‘definitely’ agreed that the mobile UI needs to be updated (77%) in order to bring more client features to mobile.
- Most respondents felt our proposal is ‘definitely’ an improvement to the existing UI (69%), with 16% ‘probably’ agreeing.
- Most respondents think our proposal would create more space on the screen (61% ‘definitely’ and 27% ‘probably’).
- The art style was a bit more varied. Approximately 55% of players like it, 20% are neutral about it, and 22% don't like the art style at all. The main feedback was that players missed the rounded edges of the stones.
These results have been rounded to their nearest percentage.
From the survey results, it seems that the majority of you feel our proposal is along the right lines – that’s great!
With that in mind, we're proceeding with the changes while addressing the major pieces of feedback we saw.
Our revised changes will cover the following points of feedback:
- Prayer switches and spells being on the same side of the screen overloads one thumb for PvM/PvP activities. This could make these activities more difficult than before.
- In our original proposal, we removed single-tap mode. However, feedback highlighted that it was useful for many activities in-game, such as Thieving, Banking, ZMI, blackjacking, Construction and more. Therefore, it should stay.
- Switching between chats is a common frustration for mobile players and the original proposal failed to address this.
New Mobile UI Changes
Single Tap Mode
A short and sweet change to kick things off – we recognise that Single Tap Mode is useful for a range of activities on mobile and will therefore be keeping it after all. Hooray!
Dropdown Menu Changes
Next up – to better suit the PvP and PvM playstyle you described to us, we’re replacing the Controls’ dropdown with a list of customisable Hotkeys. This means you’ll be able to move Prayer switches and Spells wherever you need them to be, without overloading one side of the screen.
The Hotkey widget contains five buttons, each of which can be assigned to one of several functions:
- Single-tap mode
- Tap-to-drop mode
- Opening a side panel (e.g., Prayers, Spellbook - similar to F-keys on desktop)
- Highlight mode
This also gives us space to add more features to mobile in the future, which could include:
- Ground item names toggle
- Metronome toggle
This customisability should prove useful to advanced players by letting them set up useful shortcuts for whatever activity they are doing. It will also help us make new features on mobile more accessible, and help newer players understand the different options available.
We also think the addition of side panel buttons to the Hotkey panel will alleviate concerns around high-level gameplay, particularly concerning Prayer switches and similar actions. By selecting the Prayer panel hotkey on the left, which opens the panel on the right, sequential actions will now alternate between both thumbs, making fast switches more comfortable
This also means that left-handed players will be able to tailor their hotkeys to better suit their needs. We considered a mirrored UI for left-handed players, but decided against it, because the configuration of side panels, hotkeys and game worlds means that you'll be using both hands equally.
Chat Changes
It’s clear that most of you expected more chat changes in the first iteration of the blog. Your feedback has indicated that this is a key part of the mobile experience, and we’re pleased to say we’ll be focussing on it more in future.
Here’s the list of changes we’d like to make:
- Hide Chat filters inside a Chat Filter dropdown, which should be easier to use than the scrollable list.
- Include a Chat toggle to keep things nice and tidy.
- Replace the speech-mark button with a more obvious dedicated keyboard button, which should make it harder to open the keyboard by accident.
Pressing the 'Chat filters' toggle will make the familiar buttons appear at the top of the chat (please note that this is a mock-up version and the stones may be changed for consistency):
As a final change, you'll notice that the logout button has now moved to the top left of the screen instead of the bottom left. This was a result of the changes to chat and we think this looked neater.
Mobile UI Changes Summary
To summarise the full mobile UI changes:
- The side panels have been relocated to the right-hand side in two columns.
- The Chat is being reworked following player feedback.
- The minimised Minimap has been rearranged to resemble the order of elements on the standard Minimap.
- The Popout panel has moved to the bottom-left and has three states.
- A new hotkeys dropdown with several widgets is being added.
FAQ
When is Mobile Portrait Mode coming?
Most of our interfaces – like the Bank - are in a landscape format, so we couldn't implement a portrait mode without extensive redesigns. We're not taking it off the plate completely, but it’s not our current focus.
Can these changes be toggled back to the existing mobile UI?
We’re adding new mobile client features on a regular basis, and having to modify them for previous versions of the UI would be time-consuming and costly – so the answer is no. However, our goal is to ensure that certain elements of the new UI are customisable, to put control back in your hands and give our players the best experience possible.
Why did the buttons go from rounded to square?
The stones from the existing UI were changed to be squarer because when rounded stones are stacked together, it can create holes between them that can be disorienting to play with.
What are the next steps?
After going through your feedback, we’d like to proceed with these changes posthaste. The sooner these changes are made, the sooner our enhanced client team can start enhancing the client!
We also want to give our art team plenty of time to perfect the visuals of the stones – remember, the images in this blog are only mockups!
We’ll be keeping you updated on all our progress via the Gielinor Gazette.
You can also get involved in the discussion on the Old School RuneScape Discord, the r/2007scape subreddit, or the official RuneScape forums.
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