About the Unknown's UI -- Skip to Important Part if you do not want to read much
Preface of the cause: Dracula
Let me preface this by saying Dead by Daylight's creative and artistic decisions is the best part of the game; whether it is art style or how information is shown to the player. When Dracula came out, I was a bit disappointed with the route his Power Icons took. Some were simply unnecessary for what was needed; take flame pillar. There is a whole extra icon that simply does nothing! At least with Wolf Pounce or Teleport their was only one additional icon; but here there is three. It's kind of like if Nemesis had a second power icon to show you need to press the button to whip; it is not needed (as it is shown in the bottom center of the screen).
With Dracula it was fine, but it seems like this idea seeped its way into older killers. Positives from this I will say do involve the fact there is more art and that it is more comparably; but I cannot help but admire Unknown's approach to UI.
Unknown's UI:
Unknown was sleek, taking advantage of the sides of the screen and utilizing it for additional information; that being when a Hallucination was about to spawn. This alone was proper visual feedback with a visual timer. Next we have teleporting cool down, while you could not see a timer you could still visually clearly see when you could teleport based on if hallucinations were up or down.
The most important part about this was eye placement; staying somewhat at the center barely needing to look down to the corner; really only for shooting UVX shots.
My Issues;
Now in the 8.3.0 PTB everything, and I mean EVERYTHING is in the bottom left. Is it nice to have that info? Sure, but what really bugs me is how lazy this might lead future killers. My biggest issues being the UVX shot button itself; same issue I have with Dracula.
Why have a second power icon to just say "press M1 to fire" when this is not an issue for say Deathslinger or Nemesis.
An additional issue I have is with the Hallucination power charge being there; tokens are nice but the charge happens way too fast for it to be worth it. Might be a weird comparison but Demogorgon has it's tokens shown for portals yet can still shred, or how Skull Merchant has tokens for drones yet when she pulls out her radar it changes the power icon to match.
THE IMPORTANT PART;
While I have been negative about this, I am not advocating to remove it. Well, kinda. I'd like the limit to only be one additional power icon for clarity on certain things; for ALL killers. In this case, it could be Unknown's teleport timer combined with the tokens of Hallucinations in the trial would be perfect as one power icon shows UVX while the other Hallucinations.
Overall; I'm not exactly happy for this changes and worry that this is a bad precedent for future killers. I hope less is more and simplicity is key sticks with future UI design.
Comments
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Having timers for hallucinations and teleports is very good, as it’s a lot more information that what we have now. And having an icon that announces when a shot is fully charged, is fine.
The part that’s not fine is how super thin the progress timers actually are. The actual timers are super thin borders around the UI boxes, which is difficult to see at quick glances. The actual timers should be way thicker, so they are easier to see.
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Because the timers are so small they can either;
- Change the visual look of these smaller timers to be a "fill bar" within the entire mini power icon itself or
- Keep it to 1 mini power icon for quick glances,
- (In this case, Teleport timer is more important down there as Hallucination timer is on the side of the screen, though not exact still there)
- Tokens would be applied to the "Teleport" power icon simplified to be relating to Hallucinations with the main power being obviously UVX.
Don't get me wrong, more information is always great. My issue is how that information is presented; in an almost lazy manor via mini power icons instead of something more unique like the side bar.
For instance; on The Knight this seems like a perfect way to add more info on each guard cooldown. But may I suggest a more creative solution; on The Knight's wrist we see the icon of the Guard selected. Instead of just one it could be all 3 with the selected one being much larger then the other two. Meanwhile, their cool down is indicative by it filling up as well as if it is glowing.
I may be passionate in this opinion of artistic information but please let me know your thoughts (or whoever else may be reading this!)1 -
If BHVR wanted to have truly amazing UI design, they would give us the option to have the number timers on the boxes, since that's how other games allow the timers to be displayed.
But at the very least, in DBD the actual timers (the borders on the UI boxes), really should be twice as thick as they currently are. Remember that some people are playing this game on a console, and they are sitting on a couch, with the TV across the room. They still need to be able to see the timers.
And UI design shows that because the timers are similar functions, they should be grouped together (like they currently are), instead of splashed around in different parts of the screen, so the player can easily find all the timers in the same place. And Unknown's side bar timer, doesn't function well as an overall timer, because it doesn't even do anything before the cooldown timer actually reaches zero. The side bar timer is still good to keep in the game, because it does function as a "last second warning" timer.
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I feel like the new multi-icon power HUD doesnt look good.
Just my opinion tho.
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Does this not support part of my points more? A lot of players are further away from their screen, making these tiny icons harder to see (especially for timer bar) so instead a fill bar (bottom of the box to the top) might be more ideal and would separate the large icon with the smaller ones. Adding thickness would either make the power box even smaller (making art harder to see and understand what it does) or make the power feel crowded (yucky).
Having more icons in turn makes it harder to overall quickly understand what is going on. More info is great, but portraying it is even better. Combining a lot of the icons and decreasing it to only 1 icon would be ideal.
To mention the point about locational info, so far everything has been in the lower left side of the screen. Whether it is the side icons (Dredge's nightfall) or Guard selection (Knight's wrist or simply power icon) most Killer power info is down there. The Unknown's side bar is also part of this area, and while it is not exact it is still useful either way. Ideally they would make the side bar a little more accurate but so far…The multi-icon power stuff is a bit too much, but if they want to continue this we should at least push for maximum of 1 mini power icon. There are other ways to show information.
As for the visual number timer… honestly that could be nice, though for learning the killer and admiring the art these numbers may get in the way ESPECIALLY for killers like Knight or even Clown (though the Gas effect makes up for it)0 -
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I absolutely agree, though for Dracula I can at least understand that route (but wish there was a better way of doing it…. I mean, look one killer before!)
Essentially I am not 100% opposed for multi-power icons but I wish they were reserved with it; only using it when necessary. There are redundancies with it already and it has only been used on two killers; Unknown's projectile and Dracula's fire pillar icon for pressing the M1 button…
I hope they work on more unique visual indications (like Unknown's side bar but more informative)
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No. Fill bar progress is difficult to estimate at a quick glace, because these indicators tend to just be a solid bar with zero breakpoint indicators (i.e. 25%, 50%, 75%).
A clock indicator, like we have now, is far better, because the square icon shape makes it extremely easy to break the indicator into 8 parts (N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW), which makes it extremely quick to estimate important breakpoints like 25%, 50%, and 75%.
The best idea would be to have the option for the entire UI box to fill up like a clock, instead of just the border.
And there absolutely should be completely separate indicators for teleporting and hallucination dropping, because they are on completely separate timers.
Edit: Also, we should remember that clock progress indicators move a distance of pi * diameter, but fill bars only move the distance of diameter. This means a fill bar needs to be a bit more than 3 times the length of a clock progress indicator, in order for the progress indicators to move at the same speed. And for long timers, like Unknown’s hallucination timer, you want the progress to be filling at a decent speed, or it might give the illusion that it would take “forever” for the next hallucination to spawn. This means the clock indicators are more efficient at displaying the progress of long timers, compared to fill bars.
Post edited by Coffeecrashing on0 -
Okay I will agree on clock idea, I was thinking about that but wondered if it is too similar to how perks and some (like one) add-on has it as.
From a personal standpoint, as my take is that there should be one mini power icon maximum, having two timers (one for teleport and one for hallucination drop) is nice but too messy and looks ugly when compared with how other killers are. My main point however is they should show these timers through other means.
Is it as accurate? Maybe not, but with how fast the bar fills with hallucination dropping (hitting a survivor adds 10 seconds) I feel like it would be fine to change how the side bar works. With that in mind, combing teleport timer with hallucination token count in my opinion would be the cleanest outcome.0 -
The hallucination timer is way way more important than the teleport timer, because the hallucination timer can move at different speeds and can jump ahead in progress. Meanwhile, the teleport timer is literally just a 25 second timer that's always 25 seconds every time.
If BHVR wanted to clean up the UI boxes, they could just remove the 2nd box from the left (the UVX charge timer box), and throw the UVX charge timer on the 1st box on the left. We don't need 4 boxes for 3 timers.
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That would be the most idea; number one thing that really made me question what they were thinking was why make 2 UVX boxes… I just felt that was really unnecessary. With all this chatting in mind, I am willing to increase my maximum from 1 extra to 2 extra mini-power icons. With that, and a thicker bar, both of us would be happier
Does not change my point with how I want them to experiment and try other ways to show information and not rely on multiple power icons0
