We need to be SPECIFIC about our UI complaints
I've seen a lot of remarks like "new ui sucks change it back" and believe me, I get it, but we need to articulate our thoughts a little better so that the devs don't have any excuses if they ever make changes. I'm starting this thread so people can post their LEGITIMATE and SPECIFIC complaints about the new UI. I don't want to see any "Me no like. Devs bad." stuff on here, nor anything about everything else that got yote to hell in this latest patch. I should probably mention that I play on PS4 on a 32-inch tv, so my experience may be different from people on other setups. It would be helpful to have perspective from other setups posted here. I'll start:
EVERYTHING IS TOO SMALL
What is this, a UI for ants? The survivor status icons and names, penalty, bonus, and status indicators, scoring icons, generator counter, bleed out and hook timers, onscreen text, and the indicator that shows which Hex Perk you are afflicted by are all very small. I have the scaling at 100%. It was difficult for me to even find these icons and indicators my first few games as both survivor and killer.
EVERYTHING IS PLACED POORLY
The old UI was excellent for discerning information. Most of the important stuff (survivor status, gen counter, killer power information, who the obsession was) was grouped together in the bottom left hand corner, out of the way but still easily accessible. One quick look and you had everything you needed. Now you have to look all around the screen and try to piece together the information as quickly as possible while breaking sight with the middle of the screen (the important part). I especially dislike the vertical placement of survivor icons. I know they did it so players' names would fit better, but I have found it very difficult to check on their status quickly and have to spend a few more seconds looking at the top left corner to find info. This is a serious hindrance during chases as killer! Sometimes you need to know real quick which survivor to target, as well as hooked or dying status. Horizontal placement was more in line with UIs from other games and felt more natural overall.
IT'S UGLY AS SIN
The exhaustion indicator being red-on-red is hard to see. The in-game text is a strange font, it's a little bit blurry and seems squished together, and I already mentioned how small it is. It also blends in to the background pretty well and sometimes can't be seen against certain similarly colored walls. This applies to the survivor icons overall as well. The survivor icons have a very cheap feel to them, and the injured and obsession indicators are kind of easy to miss. The hook indicator is bad as well. The notches are too close together and, again, too small. It should also start at three and then tick down so you can see how many times the survivor can be hooked, rather than the times they have been hooked. Maybe have a circle around their icons that loses one third every time they are hooked, or something similar that won't interfere with other indicators like falling asleep or reverse bear traps. Or just no indicator at all, I mean who really needs that anyway? The skill checks being a filled in black circle is weird too, I liked it more when it was a little bit transparent. The other status indicators seemed to be more transparent in the past as well, and I thought it fit the feel of the game a little better than solid black circles. The whole thing honestly looks like it was outsourced to a Taiwanese shovelware developer on the cheap. It really lacks any sort of personality and I have seen some great photoshops of what it should look like on this forum that I would really like to see replace the current UI.
I think the weirdest thing about this new UI is that even though it is scattered all over the screen, it still feels cluttered. Maybe hectic is a better word. I've found it difficult to use and have mostly been playing blind because of it. I will say that the one good thing about this is that the perk wheel, killer power, and survivor items icons have all been enlarged. Good changes, keep those. This is my first month back after not playing for a whole year, and it looks like a picked a bad time to return. But that's a whole other post, if anyone would want to read something like that. I'd like to close by inviting anyone else who has COSTRUCTIVE additions to add to step up and comment those thoughts here. I have seen some posts about people getting headaches and eye strain while playing, and while I have not experienced that, I would like to see some details about those phenomena, such as how long you can play before it happens, if it happens with both killer and survivor, how quickly do the symptoms go away when you've stopped playing?
Thank you for your time and try to keep this civil and analytical so there is no reason to close or remove this thread.
Comments
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People have been specific during the PTB already. There have ben literal essays on why the layout, the graphics and what elements a focus was put on don't work.
And all we get now is a
'we cannot change the layout and graphics of the new UI without undoing months of work'
Well, if that IS the case the UI and its system are badly designed and oughta be binned anyway.
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My biggest complaint is while playing survivor (PC) and trying to look at the middle of my screen, off in the distance to keep an eye out for any incoming killer, my eyes are being pulled and attracted to 2 opposite corners of my screen. Eyes are naturally attracted to light, having bright icons in 2 separate and opposing corners is incredibly irritating and straining.
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Idk, I mostly think the power should be in the top left, survivors in bottom left, status effects should be left center, hook states and score event log on right center, gens/objectives bottom center and perks bottom right. I think the real issue is the location of specific things, rather than that it's spread out.
The most common things to look at (from killer perspective) are:
1) survivors: Most important info, bottom left is the easiest spot for eyes to flick to
2) generators: you usually know the gen count but need to check on occasion, bottom center was a good spot
3) status effects: very important but less common, keeping it to the left lets you quick check and also catches your eye when a new one pops up
4) perks: need to be checked occasionally to see tokens and timers. Bottom right lets it be easy to find but out of the way
5) score events and hook states: really rarely needed info, keeping out of the way to the right is fine
6) power: you almost never need to look at your power if you know it well, top left works for me.
This may be debatable, there may be a bigger set up. They simply need to prioritize the most commonly looked at info towards the bottom left, and put less needed info towards the right and top left.
Otherwise, I like the look and I don't feel text is too small.
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I'll try my best to be constructive in my feedback.
-The information is too scattered.
We have survivors in the top left corner, gens at the top of the screen, and the awkward placement of the information of chase, hooking, unhooking almost overlaps with status's of exposed, exhausted, or haste. which is very frustrating for me.
-The Character Icon's/Character status feel... cheap.
I know that this is to make names easier to read and for us to know who's who, but the issue I have is that the injured status. It makes it hard to see the survivor (which was the point of the new Character icons, no?)
-The Mobile HUD/UI is now better...
I played dbd mobile for a while because I didn't have a proper laptop/pc to use for dbd. The mobile hud is better now, because its close tot he old one. The survivors are in the top left of the corner (horizontal) the gens directly under, perks in top right and any killer powers are in the bottom right. this isnt perfect, but its better information placing. Dbd mobile hud doesn't feel like a mobile hud/ui. normal dbd now feels like a mobile hud/ui. take a moment to process that.
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All the need to do is bring the player icons back down to the bottom left of the screen, shrink the item icon and put it over the perk icons.
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the problem is that it looks like its a mobile game. dosent even look remotely creepy. just terrible
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- Move the survivor icons from upper left to bottom left.
- Decrease the size of the item / power
- Put the Item / Power next to the survivors, on the right side of the survivor icons
- Decreases the size of the perk icons
- Move the gen count from top to middle bottom.
- For Survivor, make white marks showing how many times a person has been hooked to a different color with more contrast and visibility. Red for example, green or orange.
Problem Solved.
Everyone is happy.
All information is where it needs to be.
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Here's a very specific complaint: When I'm playing Ghostface and try to stalk someone, I have to look all the way up at the top left corner of my screen to see the progress. This means that I have to either choose between looking at the actual game or looking at the UI, especially when trying to 99 survivors.
The old UI had the portraits much closer to the periphery of my vision.
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The survivor info being vertical instead of horizontal decreases readability and makes it harder to see what's going on in the match at a glance.
Player names are the least important information in the HUD. Having them stick out into the FOV is awful. Having them along the bottom was perfect, they were out of the way. Making the HUD smaller makes the names unreadable but still has them sticking out into the FOV.
The survivor status bars are much more difficult to read, now. They used to be centered under the survivor's name and icon, which gave players a point of reference for where the middle was. Now, the bars are smaller and harder to read. They also don't blink anymore to show that the time is paused when a killer is carrying someone to a hook.
Scaling the HUD should not effect progress bars or skill check sizes. I can't actually make the HUD smaller as a survivor because of the skill check shrinkage.
Having the survivor info far away from the skill check area is bad design. The survivor health status info should be easy to read and within peripheral view of the progress bar and skill checks.
We do not need the game giving instructions like "Stop the survivors from escaping!" DbD needs a better, updated tutorial.
On a giant screen TV (which is what a lot of console players are using) the spread out HUD becomes even worse.
This is all stuff I've posted before. There may be more I'm forgetting. I've done nothing but give very explicit descriptions of what's wrong with the HUD ever since it was first shown, so it's all been posted before... somewhere around here. A lot of us have been giving specific, detailed feedback.
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I don't own Ghostface so that never crossed my mind. He's got to be an absolute nightmare to play as right now.
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I hadn't even noticed that the timer bars don't glow anymore. That's a good point! I can barely see the bars myself so unhooking people too early or too late has been a real problem for me since this released.
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For the last bit, all of the colours that you suggested are actually terrible for my eyesight as I am colour blind lool
Its best to keep it white
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I should probably mention that this was more aimed at people who just say they hate it but don't explain more than that. I haven't been active on the forums until a few day ago so if you did make a specific post about this before then I definitely missed it. Sucks that they didn't listen to the feedback that you guys made an effort to provide to them. I can only hope that they're listening now!
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You want specifics sure: all the information I need is spread all over the place when it should be located in only 1-2 areas MAX. I don't like looking all over the place for information, I like it consolidated in one, easy to notice spot. Killer players tend to keep their eyes lower on their screen and the critical information we need should be located in an area lower on the screen not on the top. Simple fact is this UI sucks because of where they put the various information you need to access. They shouldn't of tried to reinvent the wheel, the old UI was nearly perfect, I really have no idea why they wanted to change something that was perfect (then again they did nerf POP which was basically the gold staple of a balanced perk so who knows.)
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Of everything they added, the only thing I like so far is the tally markers for hook stage clarification. I agree it's far too spread out, information is all over the screen. Every other game I've played has all the information located in a couple places, at most.
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Everything is just scattered all over the place with this new UI. What we had with the old UI was something good, you got all your information on the bottom left screen. Which makes everyone question, why change the old UI when it's not broken or anything? I know they plan on adding more stuff soon, but seriously how much more do the people need scattered all over their screens!?
If the devs are pushing towards something like this, then you're really gonna be driving unhappy customers away.
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We were. We said This is bad, this is why, here are VISUAL EXAMPLES OF WHAT IS BETTER.
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With the old UI u could see (as survivor) the bleedout bar pause when the sslug was getting healed or pickup, they removed it, for some stupid ass unknown reason. I want it back, I loved it and it was really useful
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This is just as bad. Objectively based game design.
Information shouldn’t be spread out. Just changing what information is where isn’t going to help.
Besides putting the power/item in the top left would be ugly af. And a lot of players need to keep an eye on their resource and/or number of uses.
Sorry but your idea is not a step in the right direction.
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Anyway, me and many others have been very specific about what the issues are. BHVR just hasn’t, or isn’t admitting, to actually reading what the problems are.
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Alright man, well I think the ui is fine. The info spread is a good thing.
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once again
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