Well, UX depends greatly in the kind of game you are making. I consider the term "RPG" as a super genre (super class). In it you have WRPG's, JRPG's, Action RPG's dungeon cralwers, MMO's, etc. Depending on the the game, the concept of party and it's associated mechanics will change.<p>You also have to keep in mind that in some games a good UX may not be desired. While I believe an RPG's UX should be good (messing around with menus and inventory shouldn't be a chore), see the classic Resident Evil games.<p>One of the goals of the games is to evoke an atmosphere of uncertainty, fear and powerlessness. See how the health indicator is not a concrete value (75% life, for example) but an approximation (yellow life. You may know yellow means it's in [30-70]%, but you don't know the exact value.) This helps achieve the desired emotion while being, according to the traditional UI principles, a bad UI. It's not transparent enough for the user.<p>I consider the game's controls to be part of the UI. It's by using the controller and how the character moves the you interact with the game. MAny people dislike the RE's "tank-controls"[1], but I find it was a conscious and deliberate choice by the game designers to adopt this type of control. It's harder to control the character but help in achieving the desired emotions.<p>So, to answer you question... I don't know. But it's harder to evaluate game's UX's because it can't be evaluated in the same way we evaluate traditional UX's. Sometimes, in games, it's good to have bad UX's.<p>[1] <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TankControls" rel="nofollow">http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TankControls</a>
Knights of the Old Republic was fantastic in terms of party management screens. The inventory screen was rough, so some way to collapse into item categories would have been appreciated.<p>Skyrim isn't bad, I still don't quite like the weapons screens though. Something about them all being in a list bothers me. In a way I see why they did that, but I'm so used to going to a screen similar to KOTOR or dragon-age that doing it the KOTOR or DAO way just feels more natural.<p>I'm a console gamer so in my opinion the biggest problem is having controls mapped for your character, and also having to do in-game hud menu navigation, AND having some way to command party-members, though voice control can resolve some of the command pain.
hmm thats a good question. In most games like that the interface is awful.<p>This is not an rpg but 'frozen synapse' and 'frozen endzone' are actually good examples of a UI for controlling multiple guys acting simulataneously.<p>Also I remember dungeon siege having a pretty basic interface but also being quite functional (with 8 people in you party!)<p>The 'eye of the beholder' / 'might and magic' / 'legend of grimrock' way of doing things is effective but it basically turns your 4 characters into one big one