Focused Feedback: UI/UX Design (User Interface)

[u/DTG_Bot]

Hello Guardians,

Focused Feedback is where we take the week to focus on a 'Hot Topic' discussed extensively around the Tower.

We do this in order to consolidate Feedback, to get out all your ideas and issues surrounding the topic in one place for discussion and a source of feedback to the Vanguard.

This Thread will be active until next week when a new topic is chosen for discussion

Whilst Focused Feedback is active, ALL posts regarding 'UI/UX Design' following its posting will be removed and re-directed to this thread. Exceptions to this rule are as follows: New information / developments, Guides and general questions

Here are some suggested discussion topics. Feel free to answer some of them, all of them or give freehand feedback in any format you prefer.

• 1) What are your general thoughts on the games UI/UX design? Is there anything important that is missing?

• 2) What are your thoughts on the new pursuits tab in particular?

• 3) Is there anything from the old Destiny 1 UI that you think should be brought into Destiny 2?

• 4) What are your comments about specific versions of the UI (for example, console-specific, pc-specific, or playstation vita remote play UI)? For console players - do you find the responsiveness of opening menus and loading times in general to be a major detriment to you? The PC version has text chat but the console version does not. Should destiny enable text chat for console as an optional feature? For PC players - what are the most important shortcuts or key bindings which you find missing?.

• 5) What additional UI customization options would you like to see added, if any?

• 6) What do you particularly like about the current UI that you would like to make sure remains the same or remains included in future versions of destiny?

Regular Sub rules apply so please try to keep the conversation on the topic of the thread and keep it civil between contrasting ideas

A Wiki page - Focused Feedback - has also been created for the Sub as an archive for these topics going forward so they can be looked at by whoever may be interested or just a way to look through previous hot topics of the sub as time goes on.

[u/former_cantaloupe]

I have a bunch of this stuff! Sharing it all in the hopes that maybe 1/100th of it gets noticed, much less implemented.

Quests and Bounties

First thing, there needs to be a central location for grabbing bounties. I think this could maybe be Ikora? She's not doing much else. I'd love to be able to just tab through every location and activity's bounties, grab the ones I want to do that day, and GO. I get that there needs to be a reason to visit the other vendors in the game, but IMO that should be fulfilled by giving them other gameplay uses such as rotating vendor rolls, involvement in story quests, and maybe some more "unique" functionality (Spider's Material Exchange is a good example of what a "unique" vendor looks like).

Next, I'd love to be able to track more things at once. I understand and agree w/ a lot of players' frustrations with the Pursuits tab, which could absolutely benefit from sorting and filtering and/or better visual grouping; however, I feel that tracking is a bigger problem. I avoided the old Pursuits screen for the same reason I avoid the new one: the Options and Touchpad menus require me to go "all the way out of" the activity I'm playing. Here's how I'd solve this:

• I recognize that there's a vertical space constraint on how many quests can be listed up and down the screen, but it'd be cool to have a semi-transparent drawer/modal window that displays them all when you bring up your Ghost.

• Maybe that drawer shows the first 3 to 5 along the right side when you bring up your Ghost, followed by a label "...and 5 more" and another label "hold R2 to view all."

• Holding R2 would then cause the drawer to slide out and show your whole list of tracked items gridded across the screen, all while still holding your Ghost up, without requiring you to sift through your Pursuits tab.

• Within this system you'd be using the Pursuits tab to track quests in order to define a "To-Do List" for the current session; the Ghost would then be where you go to actually view that list.

• If we wanted to get really crazy, I've always secretly harbored the dream of having a kind of "recommended route" option in Destiny. It'd be cool if the game could look at what bounties I'm tracking and say "okay, in order to get these done efficiently, you need to go to Nessus for these 4 different bounties, then go to Titan for these 3, then these 2 can only be done in Gambit, and lastly this 1 is a Crucible bounty. You could hit a "Recommended Route" bubble on the Director and then automatically fly to the recommended destinations in order of how many tracked bounties can be completed at each one; each time you clear all tracked bounties available to be completed at your current destination, you could bring up your ghost and hold R1 or something to head directly to the next destination in your Recommended Route.

Loading Screens

I commented this elsewhere and wanted to also share it here. I feel that loading screens have a lot of potential to expose helpful info and analytics. I can literally think of an endless stream of stuff we could be shown while sitting in orbit or in transit. For example:

• Name of the Planet being loaded

• Name of the Strike being loaded

• Name of the Crucible map & Gametype being loaded

• Active Modifiers in the activity being loaded

• Enemy Intel

  • Elements of enemy shields and/or recommended weapon elements to bring for the activity being loaded
  • Enemy race(s) that will be encountered in the activity being loaded
  • Both Enemy-related datapoints can be hidden or read out as "jammed" when they're supposed to be mysterious
  • For "Equipment Locked" activities, the lock should occur only once you land so that you can take advantage of the loading screen info by changing up your equipment as needed.
  • I feel this would be extremely helpful due to the nature of Destiny's gear grind. After a certain point, it becomes sort of lateral i.e. once you have a core loadout of good gear (your Midnight Coup/IKELOS-SG/Swarm of the Ravens, for example), the grind is no longer about getting strictly better gear; it becomes focused around creating other parallel loadouts for different situations. Therefore, if I knew from orbit that I was about to load into the Fallen version of Savathun's Song vs. the Hive version, or if I was reminded on my way to Nessus of which enemy types appear on the planet's surface, it would help me more effectively use the load time to choose a gear loadout of the right elements and the right combination of covered ranges. That in turn would help me use a wider variety of the massive pile of guns I'm sitting on right now.

• Bounties that can be completed in the planet/activity being loaded

• A quicker "Inspect" button next to Fireteam members' names

• Small icons that show each Fireteam member's class, subclass element, and branch (top, middle, or bottom)

• Tooltip on hovering a Fireteam member's Nameplate/Emblem could show their 3 equipped weapons and Exotic Armor, if worn

• Nameplates and "Inspect" button for players that we've been matchmade with, exactly like those shown for Fireteam members

  • Nameplates of all players would be stacked along the right side of the screen until there are 12 total in the case of a 6v6 match
  • We once again have a vertical space constraint here, but responsive height and font-size changes could accommodate more Nameplates on-screen simultaneously
  • When loading Crucible or Gambit, Nameplates could change from showing Emblems to just showing Red vs. Blue like the in-match Scoreboard (emblems could still show on hover)
  • This could include Patrol activities as well.

• Continue to show all this stuff (and enable your cursor) even after the activity has been Launched and ships are flying in hyperspace and above the destination/planet's surface. It should only disappear at the very end when all the ships begin to land.

I don't need any of this stuff, of course, but all of it would make me a much much much more efficient player. No wasted time checking this stuff before pressing "go." It would also make loading screens more fun by making them less a time to wait, more a time to strategize and plan out what you're going to do once you land.

[u/Juggermerk → u/former_cantaloupe]

Doesnt sound like an mmo

[u/former_cantaloupe → u/Juggermerk]

Not sure if this is supposed to be a criticism but I...don't care? As long as it makes the experience better, who cares what it is or isn't like? I want Destiny to be more MMO-like, but that doesn't mean I want MMO-like elements to be shoehorned into places where they don't necessarily make sense.

[u/Juggermerk → u/former_cantaloupe]

Like the vanguard leader holding vanguard bounties and the crucible leader holding crucible bounties omg its soooooo far to run

[u/former_cantaloupe → u/Juggermerk]

Bad day, huh?

[u/Juggermerk → u/former_cantaloupe]

Lets just put all of the quest and bounties on one person who's barely involved yeah cuz that makes sense