Character menu UI Constructive Feedback with visual aids
A lot has been said about the new changes to the UI. I have read from Mandy that apparently the biggest reason for these changes were technical limitations and that the old system had to go. In light of that I don't think were going to see the changes get reverted like most people are asking.
While in my opinion it must surely be possible to re-skin the new system to just look like the old one - and I don't quite understand why thats not possible - if it really isnt possible, then I wanted to give some very clear and concise feedback on the worst issues with the new system. Alongside some very rough ideas I had to help brainstorm what a better version might look like.
Point 1: Character sorting
Characters have been sorted by release date for years, most people want it to stay that way. By default the newest character is at the top, and the following ones are sorted by release date. This shouldnt be the case, but what makes it worse is that when you choose how you want to sort the characters, your choice is not remembered, and you will have to change the sorting again each time you open the list. At the very least there should be persistence to what you chose.
Point 2: Needless icons
We don't need "!" and checkmark icons on every character portrait. The white corners are enough to tell us what character we have selected, if the fact that the character is stood on the right and it's name is displayed above at the top of the screen wasnt already enough. I'm not sure what the point of the "!" above the portraits is for, it's not intuitive at all, or explained anywhere in the menu, but I can make a big brained assumption that its to signify new cosmetics.. we don't need this displayed on each character. A better solution would be to display the "!" above the button that takes you to the store, whenever a character that has new cosmetics available is fully selected, or just not at all.
^^ None of the highlighted icons are necessary.
Point 3: Changing cosmetics
The most important problem about how cosmetics are now changed is how hard it is to find the items you currently have equipped. Before we could see the headpiece, chestpiece or body and third piece we had equipped next to eachother. Now, we can only see one at a time, and if there are enough options for one slot, you cant even easily see where they are. Similarly, changing charms is now much harder, before it was easy to build up muscle memory as to where they are but now even when you click one in the tiny menu we now have, the list does not move to where the charm you just clicked is.
^^ List does not scroll to where the charm is that I just clicked. (Unintuitive)
Secondly, the spaces that were used to put icons could have been more efficiently used. Heres some very rough ideas; the screenshots speak for themselves.
^^ Green arrows, again, are not neccessary, a number, of a tally, would be more useful
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the space used to show the currently equipped charms covers the search bar! Very silly, and unintuitive. The placement of this menu looks like an afterthought also.
^^ Covering the search bar
Point 4: Character information
The placement of certain information doesn't make sense to me. For example, a character's perks and power if its a killer are hidden behind a button, on a screen where other characters are displayed alongside them, but they're nowhere to be found on the loudout menu for that character, or the bio of that character. Please see the images below.
^^ And this also does not need to be on this menu, the "All killers" menu.
^^ Here is a slightly redesigned version of the "Bio" screen. A characters perks and power, if they have one, should always be in the bio, that is where it makes the most sense for them to be, and to be described. I would also like to see the return of the two buttons that let you cycle through the characters while remaining on the Bio screen, so you can quickly go through them, read their power, perks and other info all in one place.
^^ Here is the redesign explained. I don't think its necessary to have the "show mori" button on this screen. It looks out of place, and the space could be used more efficiently to explain what the Speed, Terror Radius and Height icons mean without requiring the player to "mouse over" them for a tooltip.
Additionally, the headers for bio, customisations and character selection could be placed better, to use the space more efficiently and include more important info like a character's perks and power, without using a section behind a button.
A couple of rough ideas below, notice the addition of a characters perks below their name, and icons for characters, cosmetics and bio below that:
What I have shown above is what should happen when you click the "bio" button.
Point 5: Smaller criticisms and QoL changes requests
Killers powers, when they have enough information, do not display correctly on screen. They should scale better than this and theres no reason they cant be wider and easier to read.
There are now no icons to show where a killers perks and power and addons are going to appear, though hidden. Now, unlike before, there is just a blank image, it looks showhorned in and unfinished, and is objectively less informative and polished than what we had before.
Player banners are misaligned with the seperation lines in the scoreboard screen:
Changing the order of these buttons to this would make more sense to me, as the tutorial would be used less than the "custom game" option so it should be at the bottom.
Rift covering the post-game chat:
Please, if anyone thinks something glaringly important has been missed, let me know so we can discuss it and perhaps post some ideas in this thread.😎
Comments
-
Can we also please have the direct to customisation button and the NEXT and PREVIOUS buttons back?
13 -
Great post op! Summarizes my issues with the new UI with visual aids I was too lazy to do XD
8 -
Commenting this to boost an incredible post. Really just super well done.
6 -
Sadly, BHVR won't even glance at this post. Their designer is probably a manager who doesn't care about feedback and only cares about implementing their own changes and forcing people to look at the store. They've already said that "somehow they can't go back to the old design," which tells you everything you need to know.
5 -
This is an amazing post. I originally made one about this as well, lots of our feedback being similar but you hit topics I did not even think of and put in the effort to make really informative pictures. Really nicely done!
5 -
I don't think this kind of pessimism is helpful and its certainly not going to motivate the devs to listen to people more if they're met with it in spades. They listened to feedback on the UI since the PTB, and made some minor changes, granted they didnt go far enough but they listened. Mandy also gave us transparent insight onto why it was changed to begin with, we cannot discourage that kind of transparancy which we have asked for for so long by being unconstructive with our feedback.
1 -
One complaint I would also add is the fact that, when going into Customizations, it automatically takes you to the head piece rather than a full outfit. Ruins the flow of going through and just does not feel right.
Personally, I wish they moved Bio and Customization to be their own buttons on the left (like how it kinda used to be with the addition of Bio), but if we must have this version I hope it gets better in the future.5 -
They kept this ugly HUD for encourage ppl to go on the store and buy something. That's all.
4 -
It's just to encourage ppl to go on the store, that's the reason why they kept this ugly HUD
2 -
This is so well said. I am so annoyed with the new character menu UI, as I think it worked well for the store page, but definitely not for the lobby. I own only 4 other characters beside the main base characters, so the fact I need to SCROLL down, past all the characters I do not own, just to select Yui? That does not make sense to me at all. And it is small changes like this that just gets me annoyed before I can even play an equally more annoying match lol. The cosmetic list is just as bad, it was much more convenient to see all the cosmetics at once, than to- again- scroll for them. And imagine if you owned all the cosmetics for a character? That'd be such a pain.
The Killer's perks and add ons being covered by absolutely nothing and not having even the outlines for such things, is pretty dang cheap imo as well. When I first saw that I legit thought it was a visual glitch, because seriously, what was the reason for changing it? The Killers powers covering the entire screen is also a completely avoidable thing if it were to open up just a separate page. The perks in general being hidden behind a button confused me the first time and it took me a long while until I figured out how to view the perks.
And the rift page covering the EGC has ALWAYS bothered me!! It does not allow me to chat immediately until the page goes away on its own, which by then, everyone has left the EGC. As someone who likes to say GG every single time, this is annoying.
Again, these small changes really do make a difference to one's gaming experience and in my opinion, this QOL update kinda flopped majorly. They changed completely unreasonable things. The character/customization list irritates me the most and I don't think I'll ever get over it lmao.
5 -
Voting up
Hopefully we see something come of this soon
1 -
the pace of the BHVRs work indicates that any meaningful changes will take place in about six months or later
1 -
Point 3 is a HUGE one for me. Not being able to see what cosmetics I have selected for my loadout preset at a quick glance is simply unacceptable.
I shouldn't have to scroll through dozens of items, just to find what I actually have equipped before even considering changing anything.
BHVR MUST address this is they want people to actually use their UI.
4 -
I agree with (I think genuinely) literally everything in this post and it saves me from writing up my own post but I have extra comments.
- Firstly one positive - the new UI feels a lot faster which is understandable as the new store also runs a lot more smoothly.
- My other general thoughts are that the new UI is more cluttered, confusing and as a result smaller.
Customizations and Bio should be buttons in the left bar like they used to.
- The current design adds an unnecessary click.
- It feels weird going up to the Character selection menu (which is meant to be more general) to then go back down to customisation of the character I already have selected. I liked that in the previous design, the first button selected the character and every other left bar button related to the specific character selected.
This would allow you to remove the subheadings (All Killers, Customizations, Bio) and remove the Play Mori button (which could show in Customisations and/or Store).
- The menu would feel less cluttered and give more vertical/horizontal space.
- The character select menu could also be larger.
With a larger Characters menu, scrolling should also be fixed to scroll by a row or full page (4x3 grid) so you never see half rows.
- This makes it look tidier and scrolling through the characters would be faster and easier.
In the character select menu, the green tick and exclamation mark is clutter that should be removed:
- Green tick - I know who I have selected with the massive name and the white border animation + sound is sufficient feedback to make selection feel satisfying.
- Exclamation marks - I know this encourages viewing the store but I'm pretty much already at the point of ignoring it so it achieves nothing whilst also cluttering the menu.
- Side note to replace this - you should instead take simple statistics on most played killers/survivors (literally just # games played in past 3 months?) for each player to receive personalised popups when a new cosmetic is released in store. For example, I might be shown an Oni skin but someone else would be shown a Deathslinger skin.
I also miss being able to instantly switch to the next and previous characters.
Customizations - cosmetic item tiles in each section (e.g. Outfit, Mask, Body, Weapon, Charm) should be smaller to allow more items to be shown at once. Being able to see all three equipped cosmetic items similar to the previous design would also be helpful but that's a low concern for me. As previously discussed, removing the subheadings would allow more space for this.
- The menu is larger so it should show more items in one page. If I want to see the details of the item I can just equip it.
- This is particularly obvious with the Charms menu, which as OP describes is not good.
General UI - stop making everything smaller when you have unused space. In the endgame results screen this includes symbols for prestige, offerings, addons. In game this includes the player names.
- On low resolutions/small monitors, it's harder to see what's on the screen.
- I also personally don't like the look of unused space.
6 -
One additional pet peeve.
There is more than enough space next to the character portrait on the BIO page, why the hell is the infobox for basic stats pushed so far to the right that it reads "Terror R…"?
Who designed this and who signed off on this? If this were a UI Design class, I'd fail that person for inadequacy and sloppiness.
1 -
That image is a mockup I made, in the actual version it would have the full words. Currently on the live version there are no words to describe what the icons mean at all, you have to mouse over them to get a tooltip telling you what they are.
0 -
Thanks everyone for the support on the thread
2 -
Great additions, thanks for taking the time to write those up 🤘
1 -
you put more thought on this than BHVR did
5 -
Ah, I see.
0 -
Seriously. Let's just hope BHVR will take the time to actually read this and fix this new horrible UI.
3 -
Thank you OP for articulating clearly everything we've all been thinking in a very detailed way.
One more really important thing that wasn't mentioned but needs to be brought back are the hot keys. You used to be able to navigate the character selection and customization screens so easily using your controller buttons or whatever the equivalent was on mouse & keyboard. LB and RB to quickly go through cosmetic pages. This was especially useful when going through the dozens of pages worth of charms. There were also hot keys to quickly go to the next or previous character without having to go back to the character list. It was intuitive, quick, and effortless. Now everything takes so much time, so many clicks, so much scrolling. It's especially laborious on console/controller.
On the new design you've added hot keys (LT/ RT on controller) to move through the 3 tabs; All Survivors, Customization and Bio. Isn't this a bit of a waste of those buttons? Wouldn't it make more sense that these hot keys were used to move through the outfit, head, torso, bottoms, and charm sections?
Side note, I still don't understand why the customization page starts on head pieces now instead of full outfits? What's the logic behind this?
Another thing I must mention. Randomly making the bloodpoint bonus text red now instead of white making it blend into the background. Just why? It used to be very clear and now just causes eye strain, plus it looks pixelated on top of that. The text for usernames has also become very small everywhere now for some reason. It seems the devs are really not aware of how constant design choices like this and making maps extremely dark as another example hinder your visually impaired players.
3 -
Excellent, thanks!
3
