New Hud Feedback

[EChondo]

I'm going to, hopefully, leave the best criticism I can.

 

Hey guys,

 

As most of you have seen the new HUD is out, there's several posts with feedback now and we are looking at them closely. A few recurrent things we are seeing:

 

1. Too small, particularly the minimap. -> We are already working on this

2. Minimap markers are not distinct enough. -> Also have a fix in the works

3. Abilities are in a new place. -> This is a big change but we want to give it a chance and not give up on it so soon, we want to have the combat (weapon and abilities) together, we realize everyone, us included, were used to look upper right, but after playing for a while we feel lower right with the support of the dots below the reticle really works.

4. I hate it, bring back the old HUD -> This is not really something we can or want to do, we want to look forward and make this the best HUD we can, so we will definitely seek out and listen for feedback to make it better.

 

 

We'll keep on monitoring all threads, this one in particular.

 

Pablo

 

1. The whole HUD is too small, not just the minimap. Please, PLEASE, put in a HUD scaler.

 

2. The markers, especially when playing survival, need distinct colour identification. Example, extraction is red, not yellow like the life support. Have different colours correspond to different things.

 

3. Sorry but I disagree. I don't scroll to use my powers, I use the dedicated 1, 2, 3, and 4 keys. I don't notice the dots below the reticule, so they aren't a bother right now, but if you increase them they will only distract me. Please give us the option to disable the dots. Also, I again disagree with the energy bar being away from my health and shields, but THANK YOU for the counter for abilities like invis and blessing! I was about to look for a counting program and tried to time it the best I could with my blessing. Now I don't have to deal with the hassle!

 

4. Great! I don't want the old HUD back as I can see a lot of potential with the new one already!

 

With this new HUD I can see it becoming a great thing, but I'm afraid of it being too closed down. I love options, just like the HUD movement being optional. Give me all the options possible! I would even argue for allowing me to change the different HUD elements to different colours, I would love to see light purple shields and pink health or green health and orange shields.

 

Thank you for the new HUD, I really do appreciate it, but please fix the size issue, I almost have to squint to see my energy in the bottom right and my life support percentage in the top left, and I'm playing at 1080p on a 24" monitor, my cousin is having serious issues with the HUD being to small on his 1080p 15.6" screen(laptop).

[Considering]

I would love to know what happened to this concept:

 

http://puu.sh/6MutM.jpg

 

Besides the team HP being where it is and that stupid white bar under the cross hair this HUD is far better than the one given to us. I simply do not understand what happened.

[angrykenji]

i'm having issues where objective markers are not shown on the minimap when it's far away. i'd also like to see a slight tint change for allies (grineer/corpus on invasion maps) and actual teammates.

 

personally i'm also having some difficulties with energy management. it's just a bit more hassle to see my overall energy and to see what skills i can currently use.

 

 

my suggestion is to move the energy/skills info back to the top right by your frame info, move your teammate info (when you press Z) underneath the minimap.

 

basically, sort of have it the way it was before. some of the current info is too small.

also, when you gain energy and you have enough for a skill, have the icon glow for a second or something, like in MMOs

 

edit1:

when showing teammate info, show what frame they're using. maybe instead of their custom avatar.

 

 

 

3. Sorry but I disagree. I don't scroll to use my powers, I use the dedicated 1, 2, 3, and 4 keys. I don't notice the dots below the reticule, so they aren't a bother right now, but if you increase them they will only distract me. Please give us the option to disable the dots. Also, I again disagree with the energy bar being away from my health and shields, but THANK YOU for the counter for abilities like invis and blessing! I was about to look for a counting program and tried to time it the best I could with my blessing. Now I don't have to deal with the hassle!

 

 

+1

 

Edited February 6, 2014 by angrykenji

[[DE]Pablo]

What's interesting is that the health and shield? Appear to drain away from the middle. Which seems odd to me. What if they were to drain towards the middle? So the smaller the bar appears from one side or the other gives you an idea of how much you have left?

 

We actually tried this and surprisingly it was harder to read, created a lot of visual noise on the right side since the base of the bar was no longer aligned to everything else.

[Redlove108]

I would love to know what happened to this concept:

 

http://puu.sh/6MutM.jpg

 

Besides the team HP being where it is and that stupid white bar under the cross hair this HUD is far better than the one given to us. I simply do not understand what happened.

 

 

That looks neat but also there's a lot of clutter with it. I'd rather have the current hud than this one. Though I do like the size of the team icons. The mini-map appears too big now.lol

[Redlove108]

We actually tried this and surprisingly it was harder to read, created a lot of visual noise on the right side since the base of the bar was no longer aligned to everything else.

 

 

I must say that you guys rock for actually taking the time to chat with us and discuss things. Thank you. :)

[Considering]

That looks neat but also there's a lot of clutter with it. I'd rather have the current hud than this one. Though I do like the size of the team icons. The mini-map appears too big now.lol

The mini map in the concept appears to be a zoomed in version of the mini map, it is the same size as the hotfixed mini map we got today but zoomed in which to me is better than just make the rectangle we have now longer.

[Bazools]

The only thing that can become a bit confusing for me, after i gotten used to the new HUD is the icon on the map since the extraction icon can be confused with a CO2  thingy, The color red used for signaling an enemy is the same as the map when in a enemy occupied artea of the tileset.

 

My suggestion besides fixing the points mentioned is to do the following:

 

1) make it that its possible to re-arrange the Hud elements

 

2) make it possible for player to resize the Hud

 

The new Hud is awesome and is a great improvement to the game... for me at least it's the best thing about U12, since i will only be able to play with Zephy in 6 days if i'm lucky! 

Edited February 6, 2014 by Bazools

[Hybridon]

Put the powers under the frames, Im foccusing on my frame and when I used a time ability, its tense to keep an eye, as you have to be killing stuff, and taking care on hsields, and then you have powers and timer on another place, its too much to keep lookin at.

[EChondo]

My suggestion besides fixing the points mentioned is to do the following:

 

1) make it that its possible to re-arrange the Hud elements

I knew I was forgetting something!

 

Again, from what I said above, DE please give us options. You probably like having abilities and energy bar at the bottom right and your shields, health and ally screen in the top right, but I don't and I bet a lot of other people don't either.

 

Please give us more options.

[Egg_Chen]

I really think you need to consider stripping this HUD down...

 

By removing the warframe name and rank you can make the health/shield bar bigger or more distinct without losing screen real estate.

Ditto for weapon name, we honestly know what we are using already!

 

You could streamline the HUD while making it easier to read quickly.

 

The crosshair, please god remove the noise around it.

I don't need dots for skills if you made them more visible in the bottom right.

 

I don't need the half circle underneath, and I certainly don't need the red X showing that I just shot something.

The fact that I aimed at something is the first clue, the pop up damage numbers is the second.

I really don't need to be told a third time I just shot something.

 

I like the design overall, scaling and transparency options would be nice, but mainly I just want the crosshair to be a crosshair.

[EChondo]

I really think you need to consider stripping this HUD down...

 

By removing the warframe name and rank you can make the health/shield bar bigger or more distinct without losing screen real estate.

Ditto for weapon name, we honestly know what we are using already!

 

You could streamline the HUD while making it easier to read quickly.

 

The crosshair, please god remove the noise around it.

I don't need dots for skills if you made them more visible in the bottom right.

 

I don't need the half circle underneath, and I certainly don't need the red X showing that I just shot something.

The fact that I aimed at something is the first clue, the pop up damage numbers is the second.

I really don't need to be told a third time I just shot something.

 

I like the design overall, scaling and transparency options would be nice, but mainly I just want the crosshair to be a crosshair.

I agree with most of what you said, I would like the dots and half circle removed, but I kind of like the red X, because it's a confirmation to me, from at least long distance shots, that I hit my enemy. 

 

How about different crosshair options?(I think DE might be getting tired of me saying options all the time hehe).

[LordLimberjackManslayer]

anychance of getting half circles around the xhair for shields and health :3

[aa3123]

- Abilities are in a new place. -> This is a big change but we want to give it a chance and not give up on it so soon, we want to have the combat (weapon and abilities) together, we realize everyone, us included, were used to look upper right, but after playing for a while we feel lower right with the support of the dots below the reticle really works.

 

Can you put health and shield there in some form as well.  My eyes are running between the bottom and upper edge of the screen repeatedly cause they are so far apart. 

[Not_Habris]

Biggest issue is the map markers.

 

I can't really determine what is what. In the heat of the moment they all look exactly the same, the symbols are too small to really discern what they are. I much preferred the old map where everything had its own unique icon. At the very least I would make the icons colour coded in order to know what they are.

 

At the very most I would suggest having them the way they were as it was easy to understand. At the moment the "extraction" marker in particular doesn't even stay visible, you have to manually bring up the main map just to get an idea of where it is. It really needs to be a permanent fixture when extraction is available, especially if you're in a tight spot and need to get out.

[Zareek]

Quite frankly, the only problem I have, is the colours of the healthbar / shieldbar. The colours are too...warm? Iunno. They don't fit in a space high tech game of space ninjas. The colours should be a little more metalic or future like, instead of looking like something from a disney game (to exaggerate a bit). The red and blue colours are just off.

 

Other than that, I love the new HUD, and I think they did a great job.

[Luckyo]

Problem with UI is its aim for simplified look without the actual functionality of simplified UI because of some bad/confusing choices that simply negate the benefits of having a simple UI over stylized one. Examples:

 

 

1.Placing shields and health on the same bar makes both unclear as to where one ends and other begins, especially when low on one or both, which is when you actually need to know exactly how much you have left without having to look at the numbers, as that fraction of second can be fatal.

2. New map and its icons. If you actually think about how most of us use minimap, it's for quick peripheral vision identification of important points of the room, like exit, enemies and where we need to go next. Right now, all of these are obfuscated by large smudgy hexagons covering the tiny minimap which is completely unusable for peripheral vision - you have to focus on it. I actually found myself using the full screen map today more times than in my entire warframe career. And I didn't even play all that many games - it's just that I actually needed it desperately to identify where I need to go, because minimap just didn't work!

 

At the same time they stylized things that should never be stylized if you're going for clarity. I'm talking about inertial movement of entire UI, which often ends up obfuscating elements you need to see even further. Movement of UI can work in some cases, but then you need to make UI fonts large and exceptionally readable and make sure that all key elements of UI remain on screen even in extreme movement scenarios. UI 2.0 fails on both accounts.

 

 

In general, update was really good, and new UI has good ideas, like displaying availability of skills directly under reticule with transparent color-coded dots. But its scuttled by atrocious implementation of many aspects of it. Fixes are needed.

 

I would ask for an option to switch to the old UI at least until you iron out the biggest problems out of the new one. If this is indeed impossible, well, I guess we as players are quite boned until the most glaring issues are fixed.

 

 

 

Long term improvement suggestions:

 

 

1. It would be great if you advanced the good parts of UI design, like the aforementioned placing of important features near the center of the screen, such as availability of skills. A good example of what you could do to advance it is to move shield/health and energy/sprint bars on curved bars around the center, similar to how games like firefall/star conflict and the commonly used WoW UI add-ons like iceHUD (http://www.curse.com...ons/wow/ice-hud).

 

2. Better scaling for UI elements. In higher resolutions, both bars and text need to be readable even with peripheral vision, as that is what we view those elements with most of the time. On PS4 where people play on TV sets, this is not as important due to view distance and portions of the screen that stay in viewer's focus being much larger.

 

3. Cleaner map implementation that focuses on important parts and removes the less important ones. For example, old minimap with better color coding would be vastly superior to current one. Current suffers from overlapping color coding of important elements (the aforementioned survival map problem where exit and life support pods are of same color), massively oversized pointers in relation to tiny map (makes navigation extremely difficult even when focusing on the minimap, to the point where user needs to use full screen map to figure out where to go because there are too many large hexagons on the map at the same time).

 

4. Better color coding of UI in general. Things like life support meters and sprint/energy bars are IMPORTANT. That is why on old UI, it was properly color coded. On new UI, a lot of important stuff is white/gray. If you have problems with red-green color blind users, you should consult any reasonable guide on how to change colors in separate color blind mode to suit them. These are plentiful and easily accessible.

 

5. UI Cutomizability. I suggest taking a look at firefall here for a good example. They allow all UI elements to be freely moved around the screen and resized with in-game menu. Fact is that many power users are used to being able to adjust UI to suit their individual needs. Enabling them to do this is going to be a very positive move.

 

 

Overall, I think you had a lot of right ideas, but they suffer from confusing imlementation. Also I can't shake the feeling that you were designing this with PS4 in mind rather than PC, as all the problems are distinctly PC-centric and are actually a proper way to design a console game UI intended to be played on TV. They are just completely wrong for a PC game intended to be played on a large monitor with user sitting close to it and that needs proper scaling.

Edited February 7, 2014 by Luckyo

[Redlove108]

I agree with most of what you said, I would like the dots and half circle removed, but I kind of like the red X, because it's a confirmation to me, from at least long distance shots, that I hit my enemy. 

 

How about different crosshair options?(I think DE might be getting tired of me saying options all the time hehe).

 

That half circle was always there.

 

 

Though I'm wondering how helpful/hurtful having health around that half circle would be. At least I'll know I'm at low health instantly but would it be too distracting hrm.

[Vitagen]

First, one small annoyance: the objective counter (the one that displays waves in Defense, terminals in Mobile Defense, etc.) has no space between the colon and the relevant number. For example, waves in Defense display as "Wave:#". I assume this is just a typo in some formatting string and can be easily fixed.

 

Now, some quick things I like:

- Being able to see my Sentinel's stats without flailing the camera about like a madman.

- Having team stats near my own.

- Affinity bars that don't vanish behind other indicators.

- The new style health bars seemed a little funky at first, but grew on me quickly.

 

And a few quick dislikes before the things requiring elaboration:

- Always seeing my Sentinel's stats. It's a wee cluttery. Maybe have them only show alongside team stats.

- The "drift" effect is cute, but pointless and annoying. It's distracting and occasionally sends relevant information (namely Energy) off-screen. Yeah, you can turn it off, but the option's easy to miss and I'm not sure who would want this feature in the first place.

- Map icons (but you guys already know about this one.)

 

Elaboration time!

 

The Dots

I think the dots are a good addition. It's nice to have my available Powers right on the cross-hair. That being said, I don't like having my current "selected" Power highlighted blue. As a PC player, I always cast using the hotkeys, and don't even have "Use Selected Power" or "Next/Previous Power" bound. Even so, it appears that my first Power is selected by default, and that pip stays blue the entire game. Maybe you could have it so none of the dots are highlighted as "selected" until the player hits "Use Selected Power" or "Next/Previous Power." If that makes things confusing for those who don't use the hotkeys, you could try not highlighting any dots for people who don't have "Use Selected Power" bound. Either tweak would remove a minor distraction for those of us who use the hotkeys without making any major changes to the game.

 

Powers Location

My rationale behind this is a little weird, and involves quite a bit of "armchair" design/psychology, so I apologize in advance if what I'm saying seems really stupid.

 

Generally, HUD elements are grouped logically based on what category of mechanic they belong to. Weapons indicators all go together, Health/Shield bars are right next to each other, etc. This categorizes information such that the player may quickly get a set of information relevant to a topic by glancing at a single portion of the screen. I also suspect that HUD organization can influence how the player mentally organizes game mechanics.

 

Powers are the primary distinction from one Warframe to the next, and I feel that tucking them under Weapons reduces our 'Frames to just another piece of gear. Mechanically, that's accurate, but that's never been what if feels like. I think the HUD should place more emphasis on Powers, my preference being for a big spot right in the bottom-middle. The awesome Warframe Powers are the game's primary draw (hell, the game's called "Warframe") and I think they deserve the courtesy of being treated as such on the HUD.

 

Aesthetic

This is by far the biggest problem I have with the new HUD. Don't get me wrong, it looks good, but it doesn't look very Warframe. It's all very generic and feels out of place in a game that otherwise has a lot of great visual style. I think it'd be a bit more fun with a slight Asiatic and/or sci-fi flair. I get that this will be hard since you've taken the "floating text with no background" route, but right now the HUD's overall look is rather dull.

[[DE]Pablo]

I would love to know what happened to this concept:

 

http://puu.sh/6MutM.jpg

 

Besides the team HP being where it is and that stupid white bar under the cross hair this HUD is far better than the one given to us. I simply do not understand what happened.

 

Well the biggest four changes from then to now are:

 

1) Shields are now blue

2) Energy and abilities are not in the middle or as big

3) Stamina bar is back on the corner

4) Your squad health is now near your health

 

All of these came about from feedback on the forums.

[Brosagi]

Why is my energy number, one of the most important things on the HUD, so tiny and all the way in the bottom right corner of the screen? Please tell me this was a mistake.

 

Also, enemy health bars have no contrast with the environment because they have no outline, and thus are very hard to see.

[Regar]

HUD scaling is definitely nice, but it shouldn't affect crossair and scopes, take a look at em, please

 

also, it will be ncie to have some sort of preview while editing the scaling

Edited February 6, 2014 by Regar

[Shifted]

 

I don't need the half circle underneath, and I certainly don't need the red X showing that I just shot something.

Call me a codkid, but I like the X.

[Psychosist]

The hud needs some more outlining, especially for health/shield bars. Energy and powers need to be more prominent. Sentinel stats should be hidden by default just like the Squad status. I also think the squad status should be simplified, as all the colors and texts and bars make it hard to judge my teammates' status at a glance. Just a red health bar would be fine for them, and no need for the Blue/Red color coding of the numbered stats. Squad stats should be placed on the left of the screen like HUD 1.0, as I would like the top right corner to be the "me" portion of the display.

 

Overall this HUD is too text and color reliant. Old HUD was simple and efficient, albeit uglier. This new HUD makes everything look kinda the same, with no real focus. Your eyes kinda have to go "everywhere" to take all the information.

 

Edit:

 

Also the new map markers suck. I like Hexagons, but trying multiple colors and designs on a single marker is unneeded. Just a solid, neon hexagon will do.

 

Green for allies, red for enemies, gold for objective, and white for waypoints.

 

Speaking of waypoints, the new waypoints are static and easily lost in the background and numbers. Make them ping/flash/glow/radiate/spin/idk to make them more noticeable, especially ingame. Static icons should only be on the minimap.

Edited February 6, 2014 by Psychosist

[Ashsflames]

- I hate it, bring back the old HUD -> This is not really something we can or want to do, we want to look forward and make this the best HUD we can, so we will definitely seek out and listen for feedback to make it better.

 

This is YOUR STUDIO'S GAME, why is this something you cannot do?  The new HUD is rife with problems, and I personally hate this entire bullS#&$ "minimalist" style that the team has decided to attempt.  Shoving vital information such as the energy bar and the powers available into the bottom corner in favour of a console-style crosshair indicator is not at all helpful for PC players like myself and the plurality of players.  Giving the sections no background makes the "minimalist" style blend in with the game in different ways on different tilesets, for example, the blue shields blending in with the Corpus bases' blue glow, and the green stamina bar blending in with Earth's green jungles.

 

The aesthetic of the old hud screamed Warframe and it was already pretty minimalist, with just three small boxes staying out of the way of the action, but being very easy to read at a glance.  The new "BARS FOR EVERYTHING" HUD just doesn't do that, and in fact detracts from the immersion of the game immensely by forcing players to spend more time figuring out their health/shields/energy/ammo, and less time on actually utilizing them.  I'm not even going to touch on the giant LEVEL UP display, quite possibly my biggest issue, as that should be obvious how completely immersion breaking and non-Warframe it seems, especially when compared to the previous orange indicator and glow on your gun when it improved.

 

I can appreciate what the team has tried here, but it just flat out does not work for Warframe.  It really feels like this is some other game's HUD modified and slapped on for the sake of trying something new, rather than actually making an improvement.  The few things I can say this new HUD does right is showing sentinel stats, and letting the player take screenshots.  That's about it.  I'm going to perhaps get a bit offensive here, but please consider putting in actual effort and allowing players to choose their HUD style, rather than being lazy and saying "Nope, you get what you get.  Tough luck."