A critical and detailed look at the new UI, and why it's poorly designed.
- This post has been posted to the main UI feedback thread. I'm not sure whether or not to simply delete the mass text in this one, but since I can't really delete the post itself, I might as well leave it to incase someone clicks on it.
I took a long break from DBD, only to come back and see the change to the UI. To say I was surprised at the change to what was generally considered an organized UI layout would be an understatement. Of course, at the time I saw it, it was still exclusive to the PTB.
Welp. It's here now.
So, let's take a look at it and break it down; why it fails to convey information in a consumable manner, how it ruins gameplay and how it is deterring to new and old players alike. I'm currently taking a Visual Design analysis course in college that focuses on how certain aspects of a UI, site layout, or applications are chosen and used, and I'd like to take a crack at this one. Just a heads up that this is going to be a looongggg post, so you might want to grab a drink or two.
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Overview
With as much talk as there is about this layout, I'm sure we've all seen it before. But, if you happen to have not, here it is:
What you're looking at is the new layout for gameplay, and what many would consider a visual disaster. As you can see, information is spread out and spaced throughout the screen, requiring you to divert your attention to various different corners of the screen and get a glimpse of the information, all the while sacrificing your ability to focus on the center of the screen- aka, where all of the vital game action is taking place.
But WHY is it a UI failure? And would it be considered as such in a game other than DbD?
If this was an RPG, then this UI would be far less atrocious. RPGs typically feature a layout quite similar to this one, as many often spread their information across the screen to better organize their multiple currencies, settings, options, and inventories.
The problem is that Dead by Daylight is not an RPG. It's a horror game, one where quick reaction time and important visual cues take up the majority of the gameplay and dictate how that particular session will run. What this UI does is scatter this information in a format that harms the players, as it takes away from the momentum and the precious seconds you have to make a decision. We shouldn't have to look in 4 different places to take in information that was previously available to us in 2, ESPECIALLY in a game where we're probably being chased and should be focusing our attention on the center of the screen to avoid being caught.
When it comes to designing a layout for a game, one needs to consider what the players will be doing during their gameplay session, and how to make information accessible and easily consumed. You WILL be running from the enemy in DbD, and you will be on a time crunch. Unless you're a Blendette waiting for the hatch, you don't have the luxury of taking your sweet, sweet time and glancing around every inch of your screen to just be informed about gameplay matters. You think quickly. You take in information. You make a decision. You commit. To be able to make those decisions, you need information that is just as quickly accessible; and the prior UI fulfilled this role by having everything neatly packed into two corners that do not obstruct the remainder of the screen and can easily be glanced at, even if the killer was right behind you. With one look, you knew everything- how many gens were done, the status of your fellow players, and your item charges.
It is this lack of awareness when it came to designing the UI that makes it a failure in the context of Dead by Daylight and its gameplay. This UI does everything in its power to be inconvenient to a player who is booking it and trying to look behind them to ensure their survival. Nearly every corner of the screen is obstructed in some way, detracting from important visual information and making it all the more difficult to think on the spot and make informed decisions.
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visual stimuli
When playing a game, it needs to be taken into consideration that there will be a lot of things going on at once, and this can be confusing for the unprepared. To balance this, many developers make their UI smaller or centralized, to ensure that it doesn't add to the confusion.
So what happens when the UI DOES contribute to this confusion, and actively becomes an obstacle to gameplay?
Well, you get visual disorientation or overstimulation.
As a survivor in Dead by Daylight, you need to be quick on your feet and actively avoiding danger. You cannot be doing this efficiently when you're distracted and making sloppy mistakes as a result of being hampered by a UI that is obstructing your vision. This applies to killers as well; one wrong move and you've lost the survivor you were chasing, or you've wasted precious time on a loop because you were distracted by the visual layout.
"But I'm not someone who's easily distracted!"
Perhaps you aren't; but when your heart is pounding and you're thinking of every possible way to escape, considering possible vaults, looking for palettes, etc., it's easy to get tripped up by information irrelevant to your circumstances. And one mistake is all you need to be on the hook.
Another thing I want to touch on is empty space.
When it comes to design, a very important principle that needs to be considered is the principle of "empty space", or a place to rest the eyes. This even applies to decorating a room, as having posters or portraits in every area can be visually distracting and cause headaches. In games, this principle is INCREDIBLY important, because granting the player space where they can expect less visual information and think more clearly allows for more informed decision making or simply escape the various things happening on the screen, should they so choose. Having too much clutter will absolutely give people a headache.
In the new UI, there is one singular space where a player can look too should their eyes need a small break, and that is the top right corner of the screen. Every other area is covered. What makes this worse is that the top right of the screen is often where players will look to peek corners and keep an eye out for the killer, or vice versa. While it's good that it isn't an obstructed place, it is developmentally a poor choice because the one area a player can go to rest their eyes is one of the highest areas of visual traffic in a chase.
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"MADE TO WORK AGAINST YOU"
One of the saving graces of getting into this game back when I first started playing was simply how easy it was to get all the information I needed in a match.
Needed to see how many gens were done? A quick glance and I knew immediately, along with also seeing how everyone else was doing. Effortless. Two pieces of incredibly relevant information sat side by side and even benefitted each other. If you happened to not be paying attention to the gens but got the notification a survivor was down, your glance to see who got the hit not only gave you the answer but now you also know how many gens are done and can plan accordingly. The same goes for the opposite as well.
But now, you need to look everywhere and go on a hunt just to find something that would have previously taken you a second.
Need to see who's down and out? Sure, just look at the top left corner of the screen, away from everything important, just to have to look down and scour through the names. And to be completely honest, the icons for the survivors were just fine- easy to take in and conveyed the message well. We honestly didn't need more visual information to take in, and maybe it's just me, but the mystery and fun of seeing who you were playing with was one of the smaller but just as impactful appeals.
The icons are distracting and do nothing but add more to an already cluttered screen. But then you have to look across the entire screen to see your perks. Previously, they were just fine, as they complimented the layout well. Now they're so far removed from everything else it's a hassle to check on them AND everything else.
So what am I getting at here?
Well, imagine you're a new player, and you just got into your first game. You're probably going to have a slower reaction time and might not make the best decisions, and you'll no doubt be taking information in at a slower pace. It's like driving a car for the first time.
But any new player is going to have one hell of a time trying to navigate this UI. With their already poor reaction time and lack of game awareness, the learning curve for them is going to be exponentially harder in a game that already infuriates many.
Just like that, a new player is deterred from the game.
Because who wants to learn a game that seems to be made to work against you?
Older players have decided to take the hit and leave as well, as the UI is nothing but a new and completely unnecessary obstacle to playing a game that already angers and frustrates its player base.
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CLAUSTROPHOBIA
We've taken a look at the UI as a whole and how it fails to convey relevant information in a game like DbD, but I want to take a glance at each change in particular and see how they work in conjunction with each other.
Firstly, the perk wheel.
The perk wheel remains where it has always been, in the bottom right corner of the screen. This is a good thing, as this most certainly did not need changing. So if the fact it remains in the same place is good, why do I still consider this another reason why the UI is bad?
While the placement was not originally bad, the failure of this UI design as a whole is amplified by the fact that since everything is now separated, information is no longer as easily accessible. I would consider the perk wheel a victim of these, rather than a perpetrator. As I said before, it is so far removed from everything else that it in and of itself becomes an obstacle, because it is now a hassle to look at simply because everything ELSE is a hassle to look at. However, since the perk wheel is not a bad design choice and remains the same, that is all I will say about it.
Next, let's look at the items.
Why are your item charges so isolated from everything else? Items are certainly important, but the simplicity of the icons and the strange placement of them make that entire corner feel imbalanced and awkward, especially since something more visually relevant could be taking up that space, such as the survivor layout. You shouldn't have to make the trip to the bottom corner of the screen just to look at one thing. The items fit perfectly in the old UI and didn't take up space, but were still easily viewable. Now they're just needlessly taking up more space and contributing to the problem.
The survivor line is horrendous.
I already spoke about the icons, but there is absolutely no reason they should have moved, and be put into a vertical format, no less. Vertical formats slow down the consumption of information in games like this, as they are obstacles to quick viewing due to their requirement to "scan" the information by looking down the row. In the previous horizontal layout, one need not look for long to gt the gist of the survivor status. The white icons were simple and easily blocked out, but conveyed information just fine. And since you were looking left and right anyway since all of the information was on the bottom, it was easy to take it all in. The way the new UI leads your eye around the screen may have been beneficial to an art piece, but to a video game? Absolutely not. The names of the survivors also sticking out and infiltrating the rest of the space is also a poor choice, though it is admittedly better than if they had gone with the vertical design and put the names below the icons. Again, all of which could have been avoided if a better design choice was made.
Lastly, generators.
Why exactly are they so isolated as well? What was the reason for moving the MAIN OBJECTIVE away from literally all other information? I will give it to the devs, the generator count is one of the easier things to look out for in this layout, but the distance between it and everything else is quite unnecessary and destroys all potential synergy in the UI layout.
The result of these strange and odd placements is a UI that surrounds the player in suffocatingly inaccessible information that creates a feeling of claustrophobia. You can't escape the clutter, but you can't use it efficiently either.
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PROPOSED CHANGES
I only want for this game to succeed, and while I doubt many will have gone through the trouble of reading this, if a dev happens to stumble upon this thread and read this, I want there to at least be a section of proposed changes, rather than a huge wall of text that is mostly complaints.
If the UI is to stay, at least move the generator section down into the bottom middle of the screen.
Doing this would help fix the strange feeling of distance between the primary objective and any other game information by at least making it easier to take in the perks, the gens, and the item all at once. Granted, it most certainly won't fix the clutter, however, it will at least make it easier to scan the bottom of the screen and will also open up some free space to the player and give them another place to rest their eyes.
Keep everything, but return to the old survivor layout.
Can you tell I feel strongly about this?
If you're so dead set on keeping the generators in the top and the item in the bottom corner, then at least return the survivor layout to a horizontal format. Hell, I don't care if you leave the icons. Just make them more accessible. You could then put the items on the top of the row, similar to the old layout, and boom! Suddenly information is WAY more accessible and the UI is not nearly as daunting.
Return to the original, or add a toggle option.
This UI feels like we're playing a mobile game. All it's missing are some ads and a thumbstick.
Very few people advocated for this change, and a wide majority are against this UI design. It certainly won't hurt if the design simply reverted to the original, or better yet- why not have a toggle option, where one could choose which one they preferred?
Both sides can be satisfied in that regard. Players who enjoy the original UI can toggle the "Legacy UI", and those who enjoy the newer layout can toggle the "Default UI". Money and time won't have been lost on designing a new UI, and it will no longer force older players away who do not wish to play with it.
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final thoughts
The new UI is certainly interesting, but nothing but detrimental to the game genre it was placed in. It discourages quick thinking, holds information literally above the player's head, and creates a box of inaccessibility from which the player cannot escape from.
I'm in shock at the design choices made and how they're meant to reflect the gameplay of the game, however, I also understand the difficulty of creating a game and a UI for that property. UI design is hard. Visual design is hard, and multiple things must be taken into consideration for a UI to work. I can only hope that moving forward, better decisions are made in regards to player accessibility.
If anyone wishes to contest any of the points I made, suggest their own changes, or simply state how they feel, please go ahead. I'd love to hear how everyone else is dealing with the UI and if any suggestions to this post are to be made. I'm also interested in hearing if anyone is actually a proponent for this change, and what they feel succeeds in this new design.
TDLR; The new design obstructs the game and makes information inaccessible and difficult to consume, resulting in disorientation, player dissatisfaction and vital gameplay mistakes. The UI is an obstacle to gameplay that harms the health of the game and was a completely unnecessary change.
Comments
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Thank you for this post. You are surely well read on the matter and said everything that I was thinking.
A point I want to follow up on-- isolation. Yes, everything is very isolated, but this problem is exacerbated on consoles, where the display method is usually much larger, requiring players to actively turn their heads to view the relevant information.
As for the items, while they can be game changing, they are not essential, and a large amount of players do not use items every game. As a result, this UI would leave a gaping hole at the bottom left part of the screen, where the majority of the UI used to be... which seems almost counterproductive.
Another thing I want to bring attention to-- the UI isn't even consistent. While having a way to identify each survivor is great, it fails to account for multiple players using the same survivor and also does not follow the design motif of 2D UI elements. Why aren't the survivor icons 2D and specific to each player's cosmetic?
At the very least, BHVR could give players the option to adjust the individual UI options.
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Please put this in the pinned post the mod has made regarding this dumpster fire 🔥 HUD. You put to words very well what the vast majority of us are thinking
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This is a well informed post and I'm sure everyone who shares your view would appreciate it if you posted it on the pinned post, to bring more attention to this topic!
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This. Hopefully if you put this there the devs will read it.
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Understood! I'll move it over there, then. Thanks for the heads up!
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Hey don't forget the emblem point. It shows up right upperside 🤣🤣
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