General feedback on the new patches

[GoodOl'Ben]

Came back for a bit to see how the game's going. Loving it! There's so much new stuff to experiment with and explore.

Felt like I needed to jot down some of my discoveries just to see what others are thinking. I'll try to keep this short and sweet.

Maps

New map updates are good. Nice focus on adding new avenues of attack and introducing verticality by giving all classes access to areas previously only reachable by select few.

• Deathstar in particular felt better great to play on the attacking team
• Corellia is superb! So many fun places to play in

Next map I would revisit is Smuggler. The only thing it requires is making the datapad room impossible to camp with 5 droidekas. Decreasing the room depth back to its old proportions is all you need, this way it's easy obliterate with explosives. Camps in that room go against what the map is all about.

Keep up the good work! I'm sure I've missed some changes as I haven't had the benefit of playing all maps yet.


Gameplay

I was fairly suspicious of this coming in. It's in a slightly different direction than I would've gone. One thing we clearly were in agreement with was FP drains. Shots pack a punch and it's not possible for jedi/sith to just hang back. They need to make choices. So far I've had the feeling that there might be very little sith/jedi can do at times when they run out of FP except die. Considering how fast it happens, it's a bit tricky. Perhaps explore lowering FP costs for some abilities? Looking at you Speed. Or a maybe slightly faster FP regen in certain situations? Perhaps even something like killing someone granting a brief regen buff?

There are some curiosities too. I feel like Jedi/Sith are knocked down for shorter than they used to. I'm talking 200-400ms, but it's there and noticeable. Perhaps reduce it for other classes too if you're going this direction? Push and Pull could knockdown for shorter for example? Which in turn could warrant reducing FP costs.

Lightning seems to have knockback, which is mad oppressive. The counterplay used to be to flank to the sides up close, but it's not possible when you're being pushed back. Lightning is already strong in its utility, adding this has really made it way too strong.

• Secondary nerf is great, introduced variety through reduction, just buff the damage a bit to reward direct hits
• Mandalorian rocket nerf is whatever, didn't seem to affect my Mando play, managed to stop a few rockets from firing, but they seemed like misses anyway
• Pulse grenade AOE nerf seems unnoticeable in regular mode, didn't see how it affects launcher pulses yet
• Lightning knockback is awful
• Knockback in tandem with high FP drains really increases the skill requirements for Jedi/Sith. Good players are still amazing though.
• The Westars/Clone pistols having center focus is whatever, after a while I reverted back to using the original way since it's easier to fire straight that way, the jumpy double crosshairs is confusing. Disabled it in the options, but it always seems to revert back at launch.
• Wookiee point changes are whatever, didn't notice how they changed things
• ARCs getting Dex 2 for free is annoying as someone who hates how it works. I used to play Dex 0/1 and having to do those slow high jumps instead of the short ones is annoying and killed me all the time. Give Dex 1 for free and make Dex 2 cost like 1-2 points or something.

I focused overall on things that caught my attention in some way, but overall the gameplay was great fun. I was enjoying myself a lot.


UI update

This is sadly a part where I think the mark has been missed by quite a bit. The improved user flow is there, it's fast to use when you get accustomed to it but... There is a big BUT. Keyword I would have is visual hierarchy. I had a hard time distinguishing where the buttons are. You need to indicate buttons to the user much better. I had a hard time finding the buttons even after repeated uses. The choice of using flat design combined with a monochrome color palette really limits your options as a UX designer. Either don't adhere to flat design as hard or introduce more colors.

Some elements are oversized and take up too much space. Most noticeably the team scores and timer. It's a combination of the choice of fonts, sizes, colors and positioning. The element is too big, the text is too thick and the team colors are too flamboyant and eye-catching. It's almost competing for my focus with the gameplay.

In terms of function, I already have the TAB button to check what's the score. Funnily enough there is one thing I always keep hammering TAB for during gameplay and it's not that. I use TAB to check how many enemies are alive and who are they. Perhaps the number of players alive would be better indicated there instead. This might also help mitigate the problem of teams getting out of balance from time to time by increasing player awareness of the team balance.

I often found myself fumbling around the settings trying to find everything. With there being so many tabs to navigate, I kept losing my focus. Things that have more options, I wouldn't have 2 tabs, eg "Crosshair Options 1" and "Crosshair Options 2", instead I would add some kind of subtabs to navigate within that context.

What I do like, however, is the customization! Being able to decide the colors, opacity and everything of most elements was a big save, considering how heavy everything felt with the default settings. My biggest gripe here was that I was not able to lower the opacity of the top right minimap. Having it absolute black and white really makes it a dominant and eye-catching element. However I'm not supposed to be looking there so often. It's there when I need it, but it's not that important.

The team overlay improvements were a good idea. It still takes up quite a bit of space. Do you think it could be possible to reduce the size even more?

• Faster flow when learned
• Weak visual hierarchy
• Great customization
• Too large elements

Legends

It's cool to see that it is a popular mode. It's not quite like I originally envisioned it when I started it, but amazing nonetheless. Frenz has added his unique bombastic flair to it by going far more over the top with the characters. You can feel the passion that's gone into it. I think that has lent itself to something unique and fun that was previously only available in UMad to the people who went out of their way to download that mod.

I would still like to throw out the classic design quote cliché

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

So in that vain, I think many characters are a bit too strong in all the things. A good example of this is Palpatine. He 1-shots everyone with his crazy AP modifiers and has all the Force Powers and all the stances and everything. What's his weakness?

This in turn reduces the fun in choosing between characters. You're not considering trade-offs, you're not considering the map, you're not considering team composition or character synergy. Characters could be reduced to having one super strong aspect. Perhaps one way to begin balancing would be to assign a point value to every ability and have a point quota.

What I do love is how actively the mode has been patched and it feels like the community has made it their own. Frenz has surrounded himself with people that help him in and out of the team to push the mode further and that's exactly what I wanted to see when programming it on top of the easily customized FA templates. I have a feeling that Legends will offer players a way to mod the game in the future if there ever was a catastrophic event where all source code was lost.

Models

A lot has been added! So many characters to play as and it's almost stretching my knowledge of the lore at times. There's certainly something for everyone. At times it feels like there are characters that I don't think are worth the bandwidth, but then again I'm seeing people play as them so what do I know?

I had a talk with Unguided about this already, but some models seem to share silhouettes and key features and are in different teams. Especially had this happen with a lot of the models that were from base. Some bountyhunters look like they could be elitetroopers or some rebel soldiers looked like they could be imp commanders. This led to me shooting teammates a lot more than they deserve.


Overall

Heaps of improvements and changes have really refreshed the game. It's hard to believe how far we have come since 2003. The team has done an excellent job pushing the mod forward. It feels like the game has upgraded itself to the 2020s nicely. I can't wait to see 2030!

I'll try to keep this short and sweet.

Nicely done.

 

[Duckshark]

So you reduced visual noise by adding more visual noise? I specifically put that behind an I Icon to avoid information and visual overload, and only popup when people actually wanted more information by hovering over the i. This change doesn't make any sense.

Reducing the size of the "i" and circle would reduce clutter without adding visual clutter. It's sorta big right now.

Don't make them go to the wiki, or the library (which is currently a pain to maintain) to access it. This is literally one of the biggest complaints in Warframe right now, that you have to go to the wiki or codex to get any information rather than it just being right there for you.

pain to maintain

On a serious note, optimizing the UI is fine and good but I think the in-game HUD needs the work more, the class special counter in the bottom right is tiny and never read, the bars are kinda annoying to read especially when there are 3 or even 4 bars on your lower right, and the numbers for each bar are again small and hard to read. I've also heard it takes up significant hardware performance to render every bar tick so I think HUD fixes are more beneficial.

 

[MaceMadunusus]

Reducing the size of the "i" and circle would reduce clutter without adding visual clutter. It's sorta big right now.

Yeah, maybe inverting the colors to make it less intense is on the table as well. I made that icon pretty quickly.

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

Small feedback:

Like:
- Save & Delete button resizing
- General hover for ability info
- Okay renaming

Dislike:
- Timer text not centered
- Row hover for point buy menu

Suggestions:
- Highlight the point buy circle instead of the whole row, this would make a whole lot more sense
- Moving the timer below the minimap
- Remove "Filename:" why would the user care its a file?
- Character stats are very bad at explaining what they stand for. They make sense to me because I have played the game for a while but to a new player it would mean jack shit. Maybe some color will help? (Health = red, armor = green, ammo = yellow, sprint = what the fuck is this even?)
- Any way to reduce the team overlay? I have it disabled because there is way too much information on there. Games usually solve this by not displaying large text but displaying a bar with a small text inside of it
View attachment 6314

Yeah, the timer text isn't centered, I am trying to maintain original intent as much as possible. I believe the reasoning for the spacing is to accommodate for 4 character timers. I'll check if text can be aligned to the center of the rect. The timer position to me is fine. It's an okay place for it and I see many games using a similar placement. Reducing font-weight there did wonders with taking away attention from it.

I'm not entirely sold on row hover style either. It does feels okay in action. The picture doesn't quite sell it. I noted that I can't affect the bulbs directly since they are done programmatically and that clicking on the text will also assign points. As such, I figured that since the entire area is the active region, it'd be best to highlight the entire thing. In that sense highlighting just the point bubbles is misdirection of actual functionality.

Character stats are a bit of a jumble, agreed. I could look into something to make them easier to discern.

As for the team overlay, I believe drawing bars might not be possible as it currently stands. I could explore a little. There might be a way to make uninteractable sliders. However, the challenge here becomes the variable nature of max healths and armors across characters. Programming would be required to properly do this.

After a few hours people know what is what

I moved this up here just to kind of consolidate the theme for my replies. It really brings up the core of the issue. Ideally you want to cater to newcomers and help them get to the fun part ASAP. The less friction you have before playing, the better it is for a newbie. Considering how many people drop off modern games despite amazing on-boarding, I'd wager MB2 has an even larger drop rate.

You cant put the class stats below the points menu, because we plan on adding many abilities to various classes.

Jedi/Sith still have a moderate buffer there as it stands. With proper element sizing, it could be a non-issue. Admittedly, I'm still exploring general element positioning and the common stats could be displayed somewhere else nicer. I'll get back on this when I explore layouts more.

So you reduced visual noise by adding more visual noise? I specifically put that behind an I Icon to avoid information and visual overload

Unsolicited noise vs solicited noise. The hover indicator helps hint causation to the user, and since it only appears upon hover, it doesn't hurt readability at neutral, which is when noise needs to be at a minimum. I do agree that it's still very noisy with so much data displayed. Hence the discussion of reducing icon sizes and perhaps switching to a bar graph display for most. The "i" icon is a nice concept when used in moderation. However, when you intend to add this for almost every ability, you end up with a lot of "i" icons. I think that's where the design begins to kind of drop off. An info icon is good in a webform for a few select fields, but here it feels like redundancy if we can show the same info on a more general hover. This is how many game UIs handle these types of cases.

However, criticism here conflicts with previous changes you made about information overload. People requested this was put in. So I did it.

Solicited vs unsolicited. Displaying information is okay when it is presented when relevant, as you've done with it only being present with the "i" hover. The main issue with them right now is the density and relevance in relation to display frequency. Perhaps there is a better middleground solution out there, where top level information is displayed on hover and detail level information is shown on prompt.

People requested this was put in. So I did it. Don't make them go to the wiki, or the library (which is currently a pain to maintain) to access it. This is literally one of the biggest complaints in Warframe right now, that you have to go to the wiki or codex to get any information rather than it just being right there for you.

Can't the library benefit from this automatic data update mechanic? If the library has a maintenance issue, perhaps there could be a procedural solution in place? Eg. store references for texts/images/videos somewhere and maintain a single template for everything. These types of bigger complaints, as the Warframe one, tend to be from the hardcore userbase. The advanced user definitely needs to be catered to, but in terms of newcomers, it will be more helpful to keep the information flow crisp. If your design goal is more targeted towards the existing playerbase, rather than future players, then this it is fine as is. Existing players will take the time to learn. Admittedly invested new players will also take the time to learn, that's how we all got here as well. However, with a heavy dose of friction in the way.

My design concerns are especially directed towards the new user experience, not the power user. I've showed the MB2 joining UX to a few outsiders and there's a lot of confusion on what's going on. Try this out on an outsider with a prompt: "Join the game and describe to me what you're trying as you go through the process" and then be silent and non-responsive. Watch them struggle. Much of it stems from very simple things like the lack of instructional texts like "Join a team" or "Choose your class". The other one is getting overwhelmed after selecting class.

The new user won't have much benefit in knowing what is the running bullet spread float value set to for the Clone Rifle. They will just want to see how much damage it does relative to other guns in the game and how fast it can dish it out. This is why a bar is often the preferred method of information display. It's more work, but that's just how it goes. UX is all about working on the lowest level of experience first and working your way up. This is why I'm suggesting an alternate location for the deeper info. One option could be to provide a way to keep the information panel open and allowing the user to interact with the elements there and providing in-depth and more descriptive information in hovers of the simplified info card.

If you have suggestions for better icons to explain things then by my guest. I had to rush a lot of this and had 0 ideas. However, in the context of the C and downwards arrows, look that theyre a sub category of a bigger category. C and F being in the lightsaber, C being close drain, F being far drain. Downwards arrow within the ammo category being ammo drain per shot.

I can go through the icons and see what I can do. I would still argue that ammo drain per shot is not something people need to pull up every single day. That's probably the main problem I have with the high amount of information on offer. This is not something people need to check every single time they are in the class menu. This ought to be something I can quickly check up on in the library or some other place designed for the power user. Do weapons have customized FP drains per range now? Perhaps this type of information could be left "silent". Eg. informing the user somewhere of the global FP drain multipliers for close/far, then simply presenting the base FP drain for the weapon. This would allow the user to then infer the details in their head with multiplication.

Is there a way to differentiate each level's select so we can have actual descriptions for each new level and what the added ability or perk is? Having small captions at the bottom is not enough room for this

That's kinda what I was thinking by suggesting that the hover cards would contain brief text descriptions instead of trying to fit it in the more "function" infering tooltip at the bottom. Also as Mace said, currently possible to display different information based on level.

It is not suffice enough. I did it that way intentionally.

Yeah, tried this. The lines or something similar is needed to imply relation. One thing I'm thinking is displaying them with a lower opacity instead of completely hiding them. Unsure if it can be done without code though.

Not enough room. Notice on ones with room, like grenades and stuff, I added a lot more info on those.

This kind of also highlights the challenge. More pressing information like what you're getting from the upgrades is hidden in favor of more nuanced power user information.

Was in initial versions of the UI. Removed for several reasons: It took up space in model area and people complained about having to scroll more for models.

I am sure the power user can be accomodated here with better flow design.

Also takes up space for future abilities/additions, especially on already space limited classes. I had some issues as well with text centering if the text had to change dynamically in some sections.

I'm sure with good element sizing/positioning, font-size and font-weight choices these can be mitigated. Titles can also be left-aligned, centering is secondary. See the SWBF2 reference I posted. Left-align works as long as your core user base reads from left-to-right. Center-focused is great too, but not always necessary.

Also I'm noticing an on-going trend with a future focus. While planning for the future is great, I think the basic user will be very confused with things like "UNKNOWN UNKNOWN UNKNOWN UNKNOWN UNKNOWN UNKNOWN UNKNOWN UNKNOWN UNKNOWN" displayed. Considering the majority of this stuff is defined in "code", storing it into a code version control system might be nice. It would allow you to maintain branches smoothly and leave out unfinished segments from production more easily. This is what I've been doing for my project. I can share the GitHub later this week for those who are interested.

 

[MaceMadunusus]

I moved this up here just to kind of consolidate the theme for my replies. It really brings up the core of the issue. Ideally you want to cater to newcomers and help them get to the fun part ASAP. The less friction you have before playing, the better it is for a newbie. Considering how many people drop off modern games despite amazing on-boarding, I'd wager MB2 has an even larger drop rate.

If you're concerned about drop off rate, I would focus on making the community better, and the gameplay. As they are 98% of the problem, not the UI which has a tutorial specifically dedicated to it, and teaches people what each section is and how to use it.

Perhaps there is a better middleground solution out there, where top level information is displayed on hover and detail level information is shown on prompt.

This would be fine, except that I don't want to maintain 2x the menus for this. Especially once people like frenzy start getting off their butt and making the other variations of the UI. I don't even support the classic menus right now because it takes too much time that I don't have. They're so behind in features.

These types of bigger complaints, as the Warframe one, tend to be from the hardcore userbase. The advanced user definitely needs to be catered to, but in terms of newcomers,

Please don't tell me you just tried to tell me which parts of the community need this information with warframe. Please tell me you didn't just do that, while also making an assumption, an assumption that is wrong... because it is one of the biggest complaints from the new users of the game that they NEED that information to even function and its not even easily available in the game. Please tell me you were not ignorant enough to just do that to try and fail to make a point. It isn't like I have sat down and ate with one of the UX designers for that game, or were friends with the in-game moderators who dealt with complaints or had to help people out for like 4 hours a day just sitting in relays helping newbies, or that right now its my second most played game behind JKA where I have helped countless newbs even get a small leg up in the game. Nope.

My design concerns are especially directed towards the new user experience, not the power user. I've showed the MB2 joining UX to a few outsiders and there's a lot of confusion on what's going on. Try this out on an outsider with a prompt: "Join the game and describe to me what you're trying as you go through the process" and then be silent and non-responsive. Watch them struggle. Much of it stems from very simple things like the lack of instructional texts like "Join a team" or "Choose your class". The other one is getting overwhelmed after selecting class.

This is why I made a tutorial for people when onboarding, so we could take out extraneous stuff they can learn quickly without taking up space. If you show people the UI in a vacuum without that, it isn't going to be the same and is a bad way to make your case. Especially if you show them the entire UI after you have selected team/class. When those are isolated when you first click them. Of course its confusing when you intentionally skip steps to prove a point.

Can't the library benefit from this automatic data update mechanic? If the library has a maintenance issue, perhaps there could be a procedural solution in place? Eg. store references for texts/images/videos somewhere and maintain a single template for everything.

As it is currently setup, no it cannot benefit from this automatic data mechanic because of the way the menu is setup. The automatic data filling cannot parse through paragraphs of text to find the right thing it needs to replace, it only parses through basically just the first word to see which one needs to be used. So the entire library would need to be redone from scratch and I do not have the time to do that. I also cannot code something that complicated in JKA. If it was UE4 sure I could do that in blueprint pretty fast, but not here. But also even though I tried to standardize a lot of things for the automatic filling of data, MBII still has a fuckload of exceptions to the rule that would make creating a procedural system not worth the effort imo. Especially if we want it easily maintainable in the future. Shouldn't need a master programmer to follow through all the exceptions in order to add something, where as the way pipex and I did it, its much easier to add things into the list.

Also I'm noticing an on-going trend with a future focus. While planning for the future is great, I think the basic user will be very confused with things like "UNKNOWN UNKNOWN UNKNOWN UNKNOWN UNKNOWN UNKNOWN UNKNOWN UNKNOWN UNKNOWN" displayed. Considering the majority of this stuff is defined in "code", storing it into a code version control system might be nice. It would allow you to maintain branches smoothly and leave out unfinished segments from production more easily. This is what I've been doing for my project. I can share the GitHub later this week for those who are interested.

If you want to come maintain this shit, then be my guest. But if you're going to be a douche who thinks they're better than everyone else saying this condescending shit then please leave. Its already been an extremely stressful headache dealing with this shit. I've already been waiting for years for programmers to get this stuff done, to the point where I had to start doing some of it myself, after pipex helped me setup some of the initial stuff. Your request would literally take years, because the way the code works, you don't do one weapon at a time, you do sections at a time. So like youll go through the damages in the same area of code, FP drain in the same area of code. etc. Which would make things stupidly complicated to deal with when we don't have a build master to help specifically organize all of this. I'm not going to waste my time doing that when people should have just got off their asses and made code more readable/maintainable from the start.

Here is the public git where things are maintained: GitHub - MBII/TextAssets: Tracking of text-only asset changes in the Movie Battles II mod. Have at it.

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

As they are 98% of the problem, not the UI which has a tutorial specifically dedicated to it, and teaches people what each section is and how to use it.

Ah, I forgot about this being a thing. That does definitely help a lot.

This would be fine, except that I don't want to maintain 2x the menus for this.

Fair.

Please tell me you didn't just do that, while also making an assumption, an assumption that is wrong...

Pretty much did, with a caveat of "tend". Now having check what the game is about... Warframe seems like an action RPG? Twiddling with ever-changing numbers is very relevant as part of the fun is exploring all the weapons you earn in the game. For that genre these numbers ought to be front and center, in that regard you are right.

MB2 and its other shooter contemporaries don't directly translate to that same idea. You don't have more than 2-4 guns per class with a few different upgrades to them. This is the base amount of information needed.

CS:GO is close to what we have right now, but they've managed to deliver the information in layers. Notably key stats are displayed in relative bars and numbers. They also just elect to use text to describe things rather than using icons, which I think might be helpful.

Having looked at these and now looking back at what we have right now... I'd leave out the highly detailed accuracy, FP drains, ammo drains and clip size. Accuracy could be simplified to a bar and specific properties could be described in one line of text. Eg. "Accurate while stationary and walking". FP drains could be just a single bar as well. The rule of distance/states affecting FP drains could be informed in some other way. Clip size could perhaps be left out and if the in-game HUD is updated, the clip size could be there.

Especially if you show them the entire UI after you have selected team/class. When those are isolated when you first click them. Of course its confusing when you intentionally skip steps to prove a point.

As I said, I tested it out by having the ESC menu open. The only step missing is playing through the tutorial. People were able to choose team and class, but then a mountain of info pops up.

This is why I made a tutorial

It's definitely helpful. It still does not mean that a UX designer should be off the hook. UX can get you to a situation that a tutorial is just a cherry on top.

So the entire library would need to be redone from scratch

You've already done much of the legwork with these hover cards. The library pages could be not much more than that and it'd already be a well of knowledge. Though, the more I think about it, the less I feel the need to know the spread float value of ARC M5 when I'm jumping. I've survived this far without remembering that.

But if you're going to be a douche who thinks they're better than everyone else saying this condescending shit then please leave.

Having unfinished stuff lying around in production gave me a vibe that it would've been a lot of work to take out because things were still solely maintained in SVN or some such. To me it seemed like there might not be Git utilized for PK3-based assets. I'm sorry if my ignorance sounds condescending.

And I really don't think I'm better than anyone. I'm trying to be constructive here by providing critique. Heck, I even took your advise and began to practice what I'm preaching by working on this.

All I've tried to do here is talk about the subject at hand and try to get excited about working on this, but your insulting and confrontational attitude is making it very difficult. Please, just relax. Critique of MB2 is not a critique of you. Even if you like to do that to others...

Okay, that was critique of you.

 

[Duckshark]

I see people talk about why the library doesn't get updated, meanwhile me updating all the damage values and class builds/skills from 1.4.X to 1.8 like -_-.

What I have to say is, using multiple icons per ability/weapon for less/more detailed stats could help a lot. A primary tab that simply gives an accuracy icon (maybe X for never accurate, standing for standing accuracy, walking for walking accuracy, and running for pistols/M5 level 2?), a damage value, and a ROF bar? And then a second, smaller tab could contain FP drain values, ammo drain per shot and clip size, bullet speed, and other info? By separating the basic/auxiliary info you reduce visual clutter, still give a reasonable amount of info for the newbies, then let advanced users click/hover on smaller, advanced info icons for their FAQ needs.

Regardless if you have a problem with the library @ me on discord or message me here and I'll do my best to test/update it to the most current value. Excepting the saber system (which is about to change soon with the open beta), everything should be set.

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

I've been thinking about the accuracy part more. I think the most logical way to indicate that could actually be during gameplay. This is already done for the EE3. Similar logic could be applied to other weapons as well, where the player movement state affects the size of the crosshair. That's how many games handle this.

If I'm not completely off, accuracy was all based on a state called steady shot and a float called fSlop. Perhaps that could be used as a foundation for scaling the spread in real-time?

 

[Bully]

I've been thinking about the accuracy part more. I think the most logical way to indicate that could actually be during gameplay. This is already done for the EE3. Similar logic could be applied to other weapons as well, where the player movement state affects the size of the crosshair. That's how many games handle this.

If I'm not completely off, accuracy was all based on a state called steady shot and a float called fSlop. Perhaps that could be used as a foundation for scaling the spread in real-time?

If something like this gets added just make sure to make the dynamic crosshair toggleable because I will lose my mind otherwise lol. This does sound like a good idea for organically telling new players why their bullets are flying off target

 

[MaceMadunusus]

I've been thinking about the accuracy part more. I think the most logical way to indicate that could actually be during gameplay. This is already done for the EE3. Similar logic could be applied to other weapons as well, where the player movement state affects the size of the crosshair. That's how many games handle this.

If I'm not completely off, accuracy was all based on a state called steady shot and a float called fSlop. Perhaps that could be used as a foundation for scaling the spread in real-time?

This is already in part of the plans for the hud, but the bottom player status (health, armor, etc) are coming before it. It requires us changing how we handle crosshair switching in the UI/settings/backend and stuff as well as making entirely new crosshair gfx. So its later on the list. However we plan on/ would like to add more weapons to various classes and comparing their accuracy when choosing in the point menu is a very valid comparison.

 

[joulupaska]

Came back for a bit to see how the game's going. Loving it! There's so much new stuff to experiment with and explore.

Felt like I needed to jot down some of my discoveries just to see what others are thinking. I'll try to keep this short and sweet.

Maps

New map updates are good. Nice focus on adding new avenues of attack and introducing verticality by giving all classes access to areas previously only reachable by select few.

• Deathstar in particular felt better great to play on the attacking team
• Corellia is superb! So many fun places to play in

Next map I would revisit is Smuggler. The only thing it requires is making the datapad room impossible to camp with 5 droidekas. Decreasing the room depth back to its old proportions is all you need, this way it's easy obliterate with explosives. Camps in that room go against what the map is all about.

Keep up the good work! I'm sure I've missed some changes as I haven't had the benefit of playing all maps yet.


Gameplay

I was fairly suspicious of this coming in. It's in a slightly different direction than I would've gone. One thing we clearly were in agreement with was FP drains. Shots pack a punch and it's not possible for jedi/sith to just hang back. They need to make choices. So far I've had the feeling that there might be very little sith/jedi can do at times when they run out of FP except die. Considering how fast it happens, it's a bit tricky. Perhaps explore lowering FP costs for some abilities? Looking at you Speed. Or a maybe slightly faster FP regen in certain situations? Perhaps even something like killing someone granting a brief regen buff?

There are some curiosities too. I feel like Jedi/Sith are knocked down for shorter than they used to. I'm talking 200-400ms, but it's there and noticeable. Perhaps reduce it for other classes too if you're going this direction? Push and Pull could knockdown for shorter for example? Which in turn could warrant reducing FP costs.

Lightning seems to have knockback, which is mad oppressive. The counterplay used to be to flank to the sides up close, but it's not possible when you're being pushed back. Lightning is already strong in its utility, adding this has really made it way too strong.

• Secondary nerf is great, introduced variety through reduction, just buff the damage a bit to reward direct hits
• Mandalorian rocket nerf is whatever, didn't seem to affect my Mando play, managed to stop a few rockets from firing, but they seemed like misses anyway
• Pulse grenade AOE nerf seems unnoticeable in regular mode, didn't see how it affects launcher pulses yet
• Lightning knockback is awful
• Knockback in tandem with high FP drains really increases the skill requirements for Jedi/Sith. Good players are still amazing though.
• The Westars/Clone pistols having center focus is whatever, after a while I reverted back to using the original way since it's easier to fire straight that way, the jumpy double crosshairs is confusing. Disabled it in the options, but it always seems to revert back at launch.
• Wookiee point changes are whatever, didn't notice how they changed things
• ARCs getting Dex 2 for free is annoying as someone who hates how it works. I used to play Dex 0/1 and having to do those slow high jumps instead of the short ones is annoying and killed me all the time. Give Dex 1 for free and make Dex 2 cost like 1-2 points or something.

I focused overall on things that caught my attention in some way, but overall the gameplay was great fun. I was enjoying myself a lot.


UI update

This is sadly a part where I think the mark has been missed by quite a bit. The improved user flow is there, it's fast to use when you get accustomed to it but... There is a big BUT. Keyword I would have is visual hierarchy. I had a hard time distinguishing where the buttons are. You need to indicate buttons to the user much better. I had a hard time finding the buttons even after repeated uses. The choice of using flat design combined with a monochrome color palette really limits your options as a UX designer. Either don't adhere to flat design as hard or introduce more colors.

Some elements are oversized and take up too much space. Most noticeably the team scores and timer. It's a combination of the choice of fonts, sizes, colors and positioning. The element is too big, the text is too thick and the team colors are too flamboyant and eye-catching. It's almost competing for my focus with the gameplay.

In terms of function, I already have the TAB button to check what's the score. Funnily enough there is one thing I always keep hammering TAB for during gameplay and it's not that. I use TAB to check how many enemies are alive and who are they. Perhaps the number of players alive would be better indicated there instead. This might also help mitigate the problem of teams getting out of balance from time to time by increasing player awareness of the team balance.

I often found myself fumbling around the settings trying to find everything. With there being so many tabs to navigate, I kept losing my focus. Things that have more options, I wouldn't have 2 tabs, eg "Crosshair Options 1" and "Crosshair Options 2", instead I would add some kind of subtabs to navigate within that context.

What I do like, however, is the customization! Being able to decide the colors, opacity and everything of most elements was a big save, considering how heavy everything felt with the default settings. My biggest gripe here was that I was not able to lower the opacity of the top right minimap. Having it absolute black and white really makes it a dominant and eye-catching element. However I'm not supposed to be looking there so often. It's there when I need it, but it's not that important.

The team overlay improvements were a good idea. It still takes up quite a bit of space. Do you think it could be possible to reduce the size even more?

• Faster flow when learned
• Weak visual hierarchy
• Great customization
• Too large elements

Legends

It's cool to see that it is a popular mode. It's not quite like I originally envisioned it when I started it, but amazing nonetheless. Frenz has added his unique bombastic flair to it by going far more over the top with the characters. You can feel the passion that's gone into it. I think that has lent itself to something unique and fun that was previously only available in UMad to the people who went out of their way to download that mod.

I would still like to throw out the classic design quote cliché

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

So in that vain, I think many characters are a bit too strong in all the things. A good example of this is Palpatine. He 1-shots everyone with his crazy AP modifiers and has all the Force Powers and all the stances and everything. What's his weakness?

This in turn reduces the fun in choosing between characters. You're not considering trade-offs, you're not considering the map, you're not considering team composition or character synergy. Characters could be reduced to having one super strong aspect. Perhaps one way to begin balancing would be to assign a point value to every ability and have a point quota.

What I do love is how actively the mode has been patched and it feels like the community has made it their own. Frenz has surrounded himself with people that help him in and out of the team to push the mode further and that's exactly what I wanted to see when programming it on top of the easily customized FA templates. I have a feeling that Legends will offer players a way to mod the game in the future if there ever was a catastrophic event where all source code was lost.

Models

A lot has been added! So many characters to play as and it's almost stretching my knowledge of the lore at times. There's certainly something for everyone. At times it feels like there are characters that I don't think are worth the bandwidth, but then again I'm seeing people play as them so what do I know?

I had a talk with Unguided about this already, but some models seem to share silhouettes and key features and are in different teams. Especially had this happen with a lot of the models that were from base. Some bountyhunters look like they could be elitetroopers or some rebel soldiers looked like they could be imp commanders. This led to me shooting teammates a lot more than they deserve.


Overall

Heaps of improvements and changes have really refreshed the game. It's hard to believe how far we have come since 2003. The team has done an excellent job pushing the mod forward. It feels like the game has upgraded itself to the 2020s nicely. I can't wait to see 2030!


Nicely done..

I can't help but agree it's such a great job from the mb2 team honestly rebs are so OP they should just get nerfed. Prime example of how to balance a game. GJ from the devs !

 

[qwerty]

nice try ben but talking to the current devs is a literal waste of time as evidence by the autistic screeching, sad cuz ben was pretty much the only team lead under which the game actually improved fairly consistently anyway rip mb2

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

I can't help but agree it's such a great job from the mb2 team honestly rebs are so OP they should just get nerfed. Prime example of how to balance a game. GJ from the devs !

Wanna elaborate? My sarcasm detector is out of whack, so I'm not sure what exactly you're trying to say. Do you mean imps have been nerfed too much or that rebs are too weak?

In terms of reb strength, I think there are good steps being taken to make them more enjoyable to play.

• Quickthrow is once more a fairly viable build for Hero
• ARCs can access more stuff thanks to the adjusted points
• Wookiees have more builds accessible thanks to the adjusted points
• Several maps have been adjusted to provide more paths to encourage more mobile gameplay and reduce camping from imps

Gradual babysteps for sure, but to me these have been fairly exciting. Very thoughtful changes, with clear pre-meditation.

ben was pretty much the only team lead under which the game actually improved fairly consistently anyway rip mb2

I'd disagree with this. Under my helm there was a fair bit of creative stagnation due to overconservatism. Several hated features came into being much due to my active lobbying eg. stagger. Some very one-dimensional features like Wookiee Fury have my DNA in them too. A lot of things done, when looking back, feel a bit iffy. A lot of bandaids and adhoc additions. I also remember that some of my feedback may have ruined Mustafar. Plasma's first draft was much cooler. It focused on protecting the Trade Federation leaders in the boardroom. I wanted a panel to hack...

In terms of gameplay, Hex was a powerhouse injection of cool ideas and a good eye for what constitutes fun. Some of his best ideas are still brewing and being worked on from what I've noticed.

Defiant and Spag have done an excellent job steering the ship. The latest patch is evident of this. Great additions and thoughtful work. Especially the secondary nade change really gets me going for how multi-dimensional it is. Same goes for how controlled and deliberate the releases are nowadays. I've always been lacking in organizational skills and adherence to project scopes. The type of professionalism Defiant and Spag have been able to inject into the project is bar none.

 

[Hessu]

I can't help but agree it's such a great job from the mb2 team honestly rebs are so OP they should just get nerfed. Prime example of how to balance a game. GJ from the devs !

Legend, seen you on mb2 credits

 

[Lee]

Who cameup with the brilliant idea of putting the play and spec keys right ontop of eachother with instant input? Its hilarious how if I hold my mousekey for even a little bit or use a mouse with higher response times It sends me to spec. Or have a mouse that double clicks...which all mice start to do on occasion at some point. And to top it off the anti-spec abuse features you guys added make it so you can't easily fix the situation you have to wait.....maybe until a whole rounds goes by. Like playing on EW and just going spec cause the last enemy is afk or timewasting and u want to just start the new round cause u and 25 others are stuck waiting....ya its gonna not let u rejoin till next next round. Its just brilliant! And the lovely ui doesn't readily let you kno if ur spec or not, nor does it even let u kno what friggin class u really are gonna spawn as! And then u say 'check the preview' and then i said....i did...and then u say 'check the tab preview as well' and then i say....i did. I like how diagnosing the problem as an actual problem also takes multiple lines of discussion! Can we give the person who designed all this a medal? I just want to give them a medal. A big huge medal.

 

[Deleted member 7686]

This is why I made a tutorial for people when onboarding, so we could take out extraneous stuff they can learn quickly without taking up space. If you show people the UI in a vacuum without that, it isn't going to be the same and is a bad way to make your case. Especially if you show them the entire UI after you have selected team/class. When those are isolated when you first click them. Of course its confusing when you intentionally skip steps to prove a point.

Needing A tutorial just to use a UI means the UI isn't efficient and intuitive. The point of a UI is that its intuitive and easy to use.

Just to take the picture from earlier, what do we REALLY need to see at this point of the UI?
Class selector
Class Points Selector/Weapons/Abilities
The Okay Button and back button
Saber customizer and Stats

You could have the models separated from this screen similar to how custom models are already separated. Have a button that hides/shows them.

For someone unfamiliar with how MB2 Class selection works they're gonna sit there staring at all these different models cause they're more visually appealing then a bunch of translucent/gray buttons. (Not to mention in BF2, which is what most people are gonna be familiar with when it comes to multiplayer star wars games, different characters like maul, Sidious, grievous, have different abilities so its not a stretch to assume in this game it'd be the same.)

Obviously visual stacking has already been talked about, but visual clutter is a pretty big issue IMO. Just by taking the models away you could fix this massively. Since the models aren't all bland grey blobs they stick out, just looking for 3 seconds you can see like 7 maul models, asaaj obviously stands out, savage opress does as well. They all have bright colors which again, is distracting. Then to the left of these you have the class selector, which is just a bunch of grey icons on grey backgrounds with white numbers.

My suggestions would be
1) Each screen in the UI should be focused on what actions the user is currently taking. You don't show graphics settings in the class selector ALREADY for this reason so I know that this isn't a foreign concept.
2) Reduce clutter
3) This one might be a personal preference but a bunch of gray/black buttons is just boring. Nothing stands out (which leads to bright colors like maul standing out) and the main buttons like OKAY, and team/class selection buttons kind of just disappear. Especially on dark maps like deathstar. So more color please! Red/Yellow would help massively on the important parts.
4) The points selector by nature is gonna be too much for new players, there's so many things to read/consider that I would want to do everything I can to help them focus on what needs to be focused on. Maybe faint lines between universal force powers, team based force powers, saber stances, and defenses, or something along these lines, just so they will easily be able to tell whats what.

But this UI certainly looks better than the old one and is a step in the right direction, I'd just like it to get even better.

 

[MaceMadunusus]

I am starting to wonder if you guys have played other video games like MMOs like WoW, GW2, or MOBAs like DOTA or LoL, because the visual clutter and shit in those menus are 500x worse than ours. You can't see shit on whats happening on MMO huds and those are designed by pro $100k a year plus UX/UI designers. You don't even get a tutorial on how to use them in most cases. It just throws you in.

The MB2 Class Selection screen is setup this way for a reason, because the model has literally been the third step in the process for the entirety of Jedi Academy's existence. Team -> Class -> Model/Siege Character. And some of the backend used to be based on it working that way, though a lot of that has been removed. But secondly, I don't want to add more UI show/hide conditions to deal with, especially when there are click through problems, and layering problems with the UI. You see it in the problem lee mentioned where things will sometimes click through and hit another button. Stuff like that was a massive problem when making the UI as modular as it was, that it would click through to elements below it or refusal to click other elements that stacked on eachother. But either way, the models and stuff are staying where it is for the default UI. If you want to make your own versions without it, be my guest.

My suggestions would be
1) Each screen in the UI should be focused on what actions the user is currently taking. You don't show graphics settings in the class selector ALREADY for this reason so I know that this isn't a foreign concept.

That's literally what it already does, it only shows elements once people click on certain things. However because every persons process is different, we cannot have all pathways. Like the selection process is team -> Class -> Model -> Points/Templates -> go for most people. However some people don't care about model so they can skip straight to templates or points. Some people don't need points at all and just need templates and model. Templates currently don't support selecting your model and hilt, so people with jedi/sith may just need Model -> Template -> Hilts and no point menu. You can't optimize for everyone, so we optimize for the most common Team -> Class -> Model -> Points/Template -> Okay route. The UI Is working as intended. If you hide everything as separate screens, you mess with the class config keybind, not allowing people to more easily change things mid round (and have to go back to hitting escape -> play -> etc to do certain things) which is a less efficient and more annoying and confusing pathway. We put everything on this one screen because of that reason and now confusing it was.

2) Reduce clutter

There isn't much clutter, especially compared to a lot of other games out there that have way more visual overload developed by pro UX designers. Things like the timer and stuff appearing behind the menu is a bug and will be fixed. Model icons will be changed a bit so they are more simple icons to match the simplicity of the rest of the UI which will reduce clutter.

3) This one might be a personal preference but a bunch of gray/black buttons is just boring. Nothing stands out (which leads to bright colors like maul standing out) and the main buttons like OKAY, and team/class selection buttons kind of just disappear. Especially on dark maps like deathstar. So more color please! Red/Yellow would help massively on the important parts.

Problem is right now we have the UI color preset selection system, but it isn't hooked up to be able to do certain buttons like that yet because we ran out of cvar space in configs, which is resulting in the config resets you see. This might be solved next release, but we can't really do color setups on those buttons yet without causing clashes. Also those buttons were designed by a pro UX/UI designer. The tutorial has highlights for some of these buttons but they're completely separate layers and things.

4) The points selector by nature is gonna be too much for new players, there's so many things to read/consider that I would want to do everything I can to help them focus on what needs to be focused on. Maybe faint lines between universal force powers, team based force powers, saber stances, and defenses, or something along these lines, just so they will easily be able to tell whats what.

I don't see how this is really going to solve anything especially when things are already split up in to clear groupings? I mean I can make the groupings more clear, but I don't see how its going to help that much as you still need to learn everything outside of the menu, the menu isn't going to be able to tell you shit about what each grouping is for. Especially when some things in different groupings are semi-reliant on one another.

I don't think I will continue with the main UI any more though, as it causes me too much stress to deal with the garbage ass system that takes months to do anything meaningful when I can do everything in UE4 in a week. When 4 people abandoned the project and I had to pick it up and actually finish it instead of things I actually wanted to work on.

 

[Deleted member 7686]

I am starting to wonder if you guys have played other video games like MMOs like WoW, GW2, or MOBAs like DOTA or LoL, because the visual clutter and shit in those menus are 500x worse than ours. You can't see shit on whats happening on MMO huds and those are designed by pro $100k a year plus UX/UI designers. You don't even get a tutorial on how to use them in most cases. It just throws you in.

Ive played over 3000 hours of LoL and the UI there is very easy. Button with q on it is activated by pressing q. As far as shop goes they have recommended items and ways to narrow down the things you have to worry about by being able to hide aspects of it. As well as things like abilities on cooldown are darkened and have timers to let you know when they come back up, mana is a simple blue bar with a number. hp is green cause its important and its a bar with a number.

League of Legends is the second most popular game in the world. To insinuate that you know what you're doing more than a multi billion dollar company thats only purpose is to make their game accessible and easy to play so they can make money is very vain.

Look at the Shop UI and HUD. They have categories in the shop so you dont have to stare at a list of every item in the game. Things you can buy are lit up. Important things are easier to see than non important things, for example this is the start of the game so not only are the starter items at the top of the screen, but the ones the player is able to purchase are lit up. All the boots are tucked away into one drop down menu so you dont have to stare at them everytime you use the shop, same thing with consumables and items in your inventory. Cognitive Overload is a very real thing with UIs, the less the better.

The HUD is next up, for now im just looking at the bar on the bottom, cause scoreboard is toggleable by pressing tab and isnt required for this part of the game(like the HUD and class selector UI is.) OK Stats first, those are on the left and are yellow numbers on a blue background, very easy to see. Any stat not enhanced has a grey number. The Icons are easy to understand and have different colors based on what they do. Your health and mana are easily read by a simple bar with a color. The abilities are colorful and easy to see. When on cooldown they are darker cause you dont need to see it, with a timer on when its up. The HUD only tells you what you need to know.

I know hud in league doesnt exactly transfer 100% to MB2 class selector but theres some things there that are universal. Shit is different colors so its easy to see what you need. Important things are big and different colors than the background.

Or for the most popular game in the world, take minecraft

everything is very easy to see cause they let you hide shit you dont need. Tools is a category, there are multiple pages for unsorted items, blocks is one, consumables is one. The inventory separates your hotbar from the rest, the crafting book button is green instead of grey cause they want you to interact with it. The crafting grid is easily labeled, separated, and obvious. Hell the most cluttered part of it is the crafting helper but you can hide that to just have the inventory.

Basically Less is invariably more in terms of UIs.

I think one thing to remember is that you've spent a long time with this UI, not only making it, but thinking about how it works and using it too, while pretty much no one else has. Just because YOU know how the UI works doesn't mean it's intuitive, which you know cause you have a tutorial for it. Im just trying to give feedback cause its really close to being incredibly easy to navigate for new players. It's not like I have a problem with the UI i've played MB2 for like 6 years now, I just want it to be easier for new people.

 

[MaceMadunusus]

League of Legends is the second most popular game in the world. To insinuate that you know what you're doing more than a multi billion dollar company thats only purpose is to make their game accessible and easy to play so they can make money is very vain.

You literally posted a thumbnail of my guess is a youtube video explaining the HUD to people because it can be hard to figure out initially. HOLY SHIT THE DENSITY.

Some of the same feedback given earlier applies to the league hud and buy menu. What the fuck do all those icons mean, they don't tell me shit. Apparently all of those random ass icons with no colors on the shop menu aren't bad, but my icons for the character stats and weapon stats are bad. Contradictory information. Apparently using icons for tabs is bad in MB2 but not in league, contradictory information.

This is why its frustrating to deal with people on UI/UX shit because shit contradicts itself every 2 seconds from UX people.

Just because YOU know how the UI works doesn't mean it's intuitive,

Just because YOU have played 3000 hours of league does not mean the UI is intuitive. Its not. I don't play league and I don't know what its telling me outside of: I cant afford this item in the shop menu. The Items top left look like common consumables, but would I know that not having played dota? Fuck no. What the fuck is the left middle grouping. What the fuck do each of the icons mean? Damage types, defense types, character types, what? I need a fucking tutorial for that shit.

 

[Deleted member 7686]

You literally posted a thumbnail of my guess is a youtube video explaining the HUD to people because it can be hard to figure out initially. HOLY SHIT THE DENSITY.

Some of the same feedback given earlier applies to the league hud and buy menu. What the fuck do all those icons mean, they don't tell me shit. Apparently all of those random ass icons with no colors on the shop menu aren't bad, but my icons for the character stats and weapon stats are bad. Contradictory information. Apparently using icons for tabs is bad in MB2 but not in league, contradictory information.

This is why its frustrating to deal with people on UI/UX shit because shit contradicts itself every 2 seconds from UX people.




Just because YOU have played 3000 hours of league does not mean the UI is intuitive. Its not. I don't play league and I don't know what its telling me outside of: I cant afford this item in the shop menu. The Items top left look like common consumables, but would I know that not having played dota? Fuck no. What the fuck is the left middle grouping. What the fuck do each of the icons mean? Damage types, defense types, character types, what? I need a fucking tutorial for that shit.

I never said Icons are bad in league or mb2. I said your icons are the same fucking color as the background and everything else on the UI. Also to use the league Shop UI You NEED to know what the items do, what your character needs, what your enemies do, how that interacts with each other, what types of stats you need, so basically, the UI is not the problem in league, the inherit complexity of a MOBA is. In mb2 what new players NEED to do is to be able to spawn in clearly and easily. League has guides cause its a complicated, hard game. Spawning in your character in MB2 Should not be.

And just face it. You aren't being a better dev then riot games or warframe or wow or any popular game. You may respond more cause your game is a passion project but that doesnt mean youre better. Snarky rude replies are worse than no replies. I've read other threads like this one where people try to give feedback and you always get frustrated and start slinging insults like a fuckin child.

Some of the same feedback given earlier applies to the league hud and buy menu. What the fuck do all those icons mean, they don't tell me shit. Apparently all of those random ass icons with no colors on the shop menu aren't bad, but my icons for the character stats and weapon stats are bad. Contradictory information. Apparently using icons for tabs is bad in MB2 but not in league, contradictory information.

yeah they arent. You need to be able to see items in league of legends. What you can buy, what leads into what, how much they cost, what stats they give. the easiest way to do that is buy having clickable icons that reveal hidden information (that would otherwise CLUTTER the screen)

also, why the fuck is the UI translucent? why let background information of whatever map clutter your 'flawless' UI? What the hell?

inb4: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/671393221129273390/880603555235524648/motivate.gif

 

[MaceMadunusus]

also, why the fuck is the UI translucent? why let background information of whatever map clutter your 'flawless' UI? What the hell?

I don't fucking know, ask for the professional UX designer that designed it in the first place that I just copy pasted his settings to, that abandoned it and forced me to finish it.. You know more than him apparently. Also you can make it not transparent in settings.

so basically, the UI is not the problem in league, the inherit complexity of a MOBA is.

Whatever you need to justify your logical failures. You just said knowledge/experience negates the problem with the UI, the same applies here.