Feedback for UI & Animation

The new UI could be good if not so spread out. Here is a picture of how it would look fantastic in my opinion...

Onto the animations. It made me feel physically sick. When you get downed the camera swings around very quick to the default position. After 5 games i had a headache and by 4 hours i my headache got significantly worse like throbbing, i had a stomachache and when i came off my pc to go lay down to try help had to run to the bathroom cause i felt like puking. Also, when turning quick when looping it causes an awful blur from either animations or optimisations, this made my motion sickness bad.

I do get motion sickness really bad but i have never had it on another game apart from when i tried a VR Headset once. I asked other people and they also get motion sickness. I am legit begging for it to be changed at this point otherwise me and others will be turned away, we do not want to feel sick from a game.

ANIMATIONS:

First of all the old animations were completely fine. They weren't the most modern or realistic but they looked good and fitted the fast paced gameplay.

Therefor changing the animations shouöd result in better looking, more realistic or modern animations. And that is not the case. The new animations look completely unnatural and robotic. Idle standing animation is like a marionette hanging on strings. The running animations are stiff and don't fit the speed at all. It is difficult to add realistic animations to a game where you are able to move unrealistically fast. Also the transition animations may be a good idea, but the won't work in this game where you can change directions instantly. In Red dead Redemption 2 for example where they have really realistic animations they also included inertia to the movements so that you can't turn unrealistically.

The injured running animations are also really stiff and are almost not distinguishable from the full life animations. So have have to look in the top right corner to see if this person is injured.

And of course the new hitbox issues probably caused by the new animations are absolutely unacceptable. The animations contributed almost no improvements but on the other hamd caused a lot of new issues and should therefor be reverted until they are in a way better state.

I mean the look as clumsy as the beta animations. Like wraith running without any body movement.

For what it's worth:

The new UI gives me a headache, and I mean literally. I play on PC and having to look all around the screen now, plus having to strain to see things like the hook/sickness/head trap timers, etc. leaves me feeling physically uncomfortable after a short while of playing.

This is compounded by the new animations/camera movement. I feel motion sick now after playing survivor for a bit. The lurching movement side-to-side, the unnatural upright snap of their posture and the camera lurch and flop when downed are all particularly jarring.

And more of just an opinion: the UI makes it look like a mobile game and the animations completely ruined the sense of survivors being scared in a horror setting. Having UI information all over the screen seems completely counterintuitive to what I'd imagine you want to do as a UI designer, i.e. having one area the player can glance at for important info, i.e. like the old UI! The survivors now move and stand like chad robots. I don't understand why either were changed, when the old UI and animations worked well and there's a huge laundry list of things in this game that do need changing!

(Taken from a comment I left on another discussion (by user Burger) in the "4.5.0 PTB FEEDBACK" forum about the UI and animation changes):

UI

Starting with the HUD, all the information is scattered and unintuitively-placed on the screen. There was nothing wrong with the HUD as it was before- it actually was much easier and quicker to follow with each element's placement and design, especially since it was all neatly tucked to the lower portion of the screen. I would say the only good things added here were the tick marks for the amount of hooks a survivor has been on and the portraits of the survivors each player is running. It's good information to have, for sure. Honestly though, even that looks strange with how the portraits are literally just pictures of the survivors. It's not in-style at all, and definitely makes the game feel more generic. It takes away from the game's personality. If the portraits were drawn in the style of the rest of the icons in the game (such as with the Adept icons), they would fit and look MUCH better.

The status bar of hooked survivors is ridiculously small, too. I had to squint to see how long a survivor had left on a hook in first and second phase/how much longer a "Broken" status had left before entering a dying state, which is not only annoying but detrimental to gameplay, especially with its new placement in the upper left-hand side of the screen, far from the other HUD elements. I don't know if the devs considered this but it actually overlaps with the Discord overlay of calls, so if you're in a call with others, their names will cover the new placement of the survivors' information, whereas it didn't interrupt any HUD elements before.

Ironically enough, I think the changes were made so that the HUD would appear less intrusive, but since it's harder to see and scattered around the screen now, it actually draws attention to itself, making it more intrusive.

ANIMATIONS

As for the animations, they definitely feel unpolished. Although I appreciate the gender neutrality of the some of the new animations (which I'm assuming was done mostly to take away possible advantages of playing female survivors over male due to feeling and handling, but just in general making animations non-gender specific is nice and more realistic), the animations feel jarring, sluggish, and unwieldy. It's cool to see an actual animation for getting up from a dying state, but other than that specific animation, the updates to the other animations feel just unnecessary and rushed. They aren't smooth at all like how the previous animations were, and they give the feeling of being weighed-down, clunky, forced, and slow, so moving feels much more difficult. How movement is perceived is just as important as how it actually operates. Also the static standing animation is very...unnerving, with how still they are. They almost appear confrontational (even lowkey pissed off?), instead of cautious. With all of these new animations, playing survivor just feels way less smooth and satisfying, even unenjoyable, especially for veteran players.

(EDIT: I wanted to add here- the implemented animation that distinguishes a recovering survivor from a survivor laying at rest while in a dying state is a good idea, for both killers' and survivors' information. Something to this effect should be kept.)

MAP CHANGES

I mostly want to discuss the Disturbed Ward and Chapel changes. I know recently the devs have been trying to move map aesthetic more in the direction of "realism" (I think?), but the changes they made to these maps make them look just...INCREDIBLY bland and sparse. Especially the Chapel version of the map. The chapel looked so nice before, it was still decrepit and clearly destroyed/incinerated, but it looked so cool. It was creepy eye candy I would find myself pausing to admire time and time again whenever I was sent there. The outside parts of the map didn't look like an empty wasteland, but a dark and ominous forest. And there was still color in the environment- these planned (now implemented) changes completely wipe the color out of the map and put a wash of desaturation and overexposure over it, making it all very one-note across the entire arena. It's honestly depressing. That was one of my favorite maps because of the visual aesthetic.

The same could be said about the carnival part of the map. It had an eerie, colorful whimsy to it, especially among the darkness of the forest surrounding it and the burnt building looming in the distance. The contrast was fantastic and it was always fun to run through and explore. It felt like its own little world, uncanny in its juxtaposition with the dark, ominous trees around it and contained in a single spot. Now it feels barren, scattered, and lifeless. It's not creepy anymore, just bland, and it simply blends right in to the rest of the map.

These changes only take away from the personality and aesthetic of the game and add nothing in return except a blandness that can be found in other, more generic games with far less aesthetic memorability and uniqueness.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS

Pretty much every single change made honestly felt...unnecessary? And definitely unwanted. Especially in the face of so many other changes/fixes players have been asking for. Time, effort, expenses, and resources could've been put into figuring out and implementing those actually-desired changes, instead of reworking things that honestly didn't need and weren't asked to be redone. The best that came out of this that was actually helpful and wanted (by my understanding) were the hook counters and the portraits of players' survivors, which I and many others have already commented our opinions and suggestions on.

Honestly, I implore the devs to revert these changes to the previous build and ruminate upon the feedback longer before making any decisions about what to implement and where and how. It's very sad to see what happened with the maps, but by far the most damaging changes at the moment (even beyond the HUD rework) have to be the animations. They definitely seem like a downgrade from the fluidity and playability of the previous set. I think reverting these changes and choosing to spend a lot more time polishing reworks while listening to the community and having transparency about the process will go a long way in the success of future updates, as well as increasing trust and strengthening relations with the player base and community.

Ok, probably a long post - I hope someone cares to read it. (TL; DR at the end)

First of all, I want to say that I am REALLY disappointed from the Devs. Usually I am very supportive, but this time, I cannot really bring myself to saying something positive.

Almost all of the time Devs receive backlash for their decisions and I was always happy that they pushed it through. Because most of the times, those were balance discussions and it is quite clear that the side which will get the Nerf will be against it while the side which will not be nerfed will not care/be supportive and vice-versa.

But the new HUD is not a Balance-thing - 90% of the community were against it. And I opened a thread a few weeks ago:

https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/221189/we-will-be-addressing-colorblindness-concerns-with-the-new-hud-by-the-mid-chapter-release/p1

, where I already said how disappointed I am.

Because, lets face it: The Devs changed something NOBODY asked for, opened a PTB to get Feedback for it, 90% said that it is bad and the Devs STILL push it to live. This is like a big middle finger, a big ######### you from the Devs. If you dont care for our feedback, dont ask for it. I spent some time discussing in Threads about the new HUD, so did others. If you dont care for that, dont waste anybodys time if you just want to go thorugh with that anyway.

Now, to the HUD:

It looks horrible. Really. I want to point out that after the first game, I already had a light headache. This stayed for the whole evening and after a few games I also noticed that I was straining my eyes. I have 5500 hours in DBD this NEVER happened before. It did also not happen in ANY other game I played, whether I needed to focus on something, whether I needed to have good reactions or whether many things are going on or with flashy lights.

So it is quite impressive that you managed to give me an uncomfortable feeling with the new HUD, this is something new for me.

Now, to the HUD itself:

It is too spread out. Many people have said this. This causes the eyestrain. I only played Survivor yesterday evening, but I can imagine it will be even worse as Killer. It is hard to notice players getting injured, so I dont have that many information what is going on. Usually, when someone gets injured, I know that someone else is in a chase, but now it is harder to get this information.

If you want to make the HUD smaller, it becomes really hard to read on the top left, but if you keep it at 100% (what I need to do to get at least some information from the top left), the Perks on the bottom right are really big.

Something unique: Leave-Button when spectating is on the top left (!!!). Who thought about this? I have never seen a "Leave"-Button on the top left - I mean, it does not bother me that much, but whenever I saw a Leave-BUtton it is either on the bottom or on the center with all other Buttons, but why on the Top Left? My friend thought it got removed, because he was not able to find it, because nobody would look at the top left for it.

Also, it just looks like a mobilegame. Really, did you want it to look that bad? What was the plan? There are mobile games which look less like a mobile game than DBD currently. So this goes totally against the wish to make DBD look more realistic and scary, what you want to do with the Map Reworks.

But the worst thing, as I said, is how spread out it is. You either dont look at it or get a headache. And I only have a 24 inch-monitor, someone with a bigger monitor or simply on console with a TV will have even more trouble. It looks like it was designed to work for the Switch while in Handheld-Mode.

Was this done all by the UI-Team? If yes, maybe those people should consider something else.

Was this decided by someone who does not specialize on UI and the UI-Team just did the execution? If that is the case, let people who know about it do it and dont decide something for others.

I cannot really imagine that anyone of the Dev-Team said that "Woah, this looks great! People will love it!". And I dont want to be mean on purpose, but I cannot really put it more nice, because anyone who has some experience in Onlinegames knows that this HUD is bad. You dont even need to know anything about DBD to know that it is bad.

Then there is this:

Of course you can go back! Nobody does delete previous patches, I am pretty sure that you would be able to go back to 4.4.2 with another Patch and implement other changes (aside from UI and Animations) like the Clown-Buff, Perk-Changes and so on. You just have to WANT it, and please dont be stubborn about it.

Now to animations:

Like I said in a post a few weeks ago, most of them look good. I like the walking animations (both injured and healthy), I like the animations when picking up and getting picked up.

But the running animations (and this is what you are doing most of the time) dont look good. The healthy animation looks okish, just like they are going for a little jog, no fear or that they are even in a hurry, so you want to have more of that. The people are running for their lives. The injured animation while running just looks bad.

Also the idle animation is just creepy. The nodding animation is comically bad.

Overall, I dont think that many people would have a problem with those animations be trashed and a return to the old animations. But with the animations I at least have some hope to get used to them.

EDIT: Also to add: Some Hits just connect from distances which are horrible. You cannot even try for a Pallet Stun because you will get hit, most of the time without an option to throw the Pallet. This is probably caused by the changes to movement.

But my main point is the HUD. I can see myself spending less time in DBD. I am not saying that I will uninstall, I love this game, it is a lot of fun. But if I get sick because of playing it, I cannot enjoy it as much as I wPould want to.

So please, revert the HUD and the animations. At the very least, the HUD should be reverted. You cannot have any plans which justify such a bad design.

Points for improvement:

Like I said, the best thing would be to revert the HUD. If you dont want to do that, at least put the information on the same place as before. Everything in the bottom left was GREAT. You only had to look at one portion of the screen. And this is easily done with the features you have added. There is no problem at all.

When it comes to animations, those should feel more like the Survivors are actually scared and want to run for their lives. Not for a little bit of fitness. Idle animations straight up are ok, but not just standing there in a creepy way. Maybe add some animations which show that they are uncomfortable, looking left and right, maybe touching their arms like they are freezing, biting their nails. If the Survivors stand, they should feel uncomfortable, because they dont know what to do or where the Killer might be.

TL;DR:

Biggest problem HUD-->Too spread out, causes headache and eyestrain, not as informative as old HUD (AKA overall huge step back)

Biggest problem animations-->Not natural, not "horror-like", sometimes comically bad, especially idle animation and injured running

Biggest problem communication-->Devs change something nobody asked for, put it in PTB, ask for Feedback, 90% dont like it, Devs go still through with it.

Also: Devs said that there is no "going back"-->Very sure they can revert it, nobody deletes old Patches.

The UI is too spread out, making it harder to pay attention to all the information that's on the screen.

Make it more compact, or atleast make everything closer to each other.

Animations are stiff. Robotic. awkward.

They don't have feeling anymore.

The New UI:

1. For my taste, the UI's information is too spread out. You need to look everywhere. This can be very taxing on the eyes, especially on a large TV or monitor. Scaling doesn't help much. Solution: Important information in one corner/on one side of the screen.
2. Some information you need very often is on a part of the screen where you don't look much and vice versa. Best example are Survivor health states vs Item/Power icon. Another would be how many gens are left. Solution: Switching the position of these widgets would be beneficial.
3. The Exhaustion timer is still a red circle on a red circle. It's hard to see even for normal sighted people. Solution: Use only a red circle or a red circle on a white circle. The same goes for Borrowed Time, Haste etc effects (yellow on yellow).
4. The character icons don't fit the style of DBD. The UI was very simplistic and all the perk icons, items etc are in monochrome white. So it would be better to use the adept portraits which fit the style better.
5. The UI doesn't support custom icon anymore, which is really sad. Me and many others like to use a different style of icons. I can understand that there might be problems with the scaling but why don't leave it be? I don't care if my icons are a bit pixel-ish due to scaling. I could adjust that in a few hours of work. And it would be my choice to use this. Solution: Tell us how to change the icons ourselves, we will find out the rest. Or give us the opportunity to share our work in a BHVR workshop where we can up/download different custom icons and auto install them. This way consoles could get these too and it is much easier for us artists. It would also make it possible to change icons you couldn't change before (f.e. Offerings in the offering screen).

My idea:

Explaination:

I used the stuff I liked from the new UI and placed it how I would like to. I tried to keep the core elements of the old UI while also using the new ideas.

• Survivors' status should stay in the left corner. It is easy to see and doesn't require a lot eye movement. Why a vertical health bar? I really don't know. You could also implement a 50% bar for hook states, so we could see more easily when a teammate goes into 2nd phase.
• I left the item/power icon in the actual size, but it could be a bit smaller for my taste. I just positioned it a bit further up then now.
• BP events pop up on the left side like they did before (old UI).
• Any challenge or daily pops up at the top left corner when completed or if you did an action for that challenge. f.e. I have the Co-op daily and repair a gen with one other person. After the gen is finished, the progression bar pops up and tells me how much co-op I still need or if I'm done.
• Knowing how many Gens are left to do is really important! As killer it tells you what strategy might get necessary (f.e. slugging) to win the match. As a survivor it tells you something about gen locations (3gen f.e.), believe me or not. It also tells me if i need to power through a gen or not. I feel teh positioning at the top is too much outside of your FOV. Half of the time I don't know how many gens are left. This is why I moved it to the bottom. It is still out of the way, but easy to see. Instructions can be still on the top. If all gens are done switch the gen icon with the exit icon and if you are the last person add the hatch.
• Perks and buffs/debuffs from perks are where they should be.
• Status effects are on the right side like before. Status effect events, like being cursed, Sloppy Butcher etc were moved from the score events on the left side (old UI) to sort it a bit and give more space (what the new UI does).

Animations:

What I like:

• Crouch Flashlight. Good vs Hag.
• Crouching down when healing a downed person.
• The recovering animation feedback.
• The dying state moving animation. (I'm just sad that I can't do donuts on the ground anymore :C)
• Staying quite still while being injured and crouching. (Your character doesn't wobble the whole time)
• The dying state Hatch animation.
• The walking animation. I like how there are different animations for male and female characters.
• The "getting downed" animation with the camera movement.
• When you are healed up from dying state.
• The new nodding. Now I can headbang with Jeff all the time :D

What I don't like:

• The stiff upright idle animation. Sorry to say that but the characters look like they got a stick in their butt or if they are tied to a plank. This is a horror game. No frightened person stands that upright. I know it would be too much, but why doesn't get every survivor an own animation. You could try to use the lobby animation for that. It would fit the character and you do these anyways.
• The crouching feels slow. I could "insta crouch" before. Now it takes half a second until the charater is in crouching position. This can cost you a lot, since you can only react as fast as you can. I know it is more realistic, but it IS game altering. At lest tbagging looks as stupid as it is now.
• The injured running animation almost looks like the ancient running animation. It just doesn't look good. Everytime I see it, I think the survivor runs on hot coals or knives. Or high heels.

This update has put me off buying cosmetics and the rift until something has been changed.

The human eye naturally reads from left to right and vice versa so it was easy to read the old UI in the corner of my eye without having to glance around every part of the screen for information. Having it all spread out gives me tunnel vision and then it can be difficult to see hook counters and hook progress. It's also difficult to move from each corner, especially with perks like sprint burst and spine chill where you have to look at them to see if there working means my attention is constantly diverted to different parts.

The new survivor animations are not the best. I love the new dying state animation, it has a lot of weight and I really like that. I even got a laugh from the new hatch animation. But the stiff postures and injured running animation look less polished and even less realistic. They don't look injured, they look like they need the bathroom. Its now even harder to dodge and turn to avoid attacks.

Dont get me started on the hitboxes, they are broken and it seems so unfair at times when I'm getting hit from around a corner or through a dropped pallet.

I welcome change and was excited to test the UI out since im an xbox player and couldn't go on the PTB but its not as fun and has lost its charm that got me so interested in DBD.

To move forward and not just be negative, they should keep the new icons or change them to the adept icons and move everything back into the corner. The blood point scores can stay in their updated space but everything should move back.