Many people have talked about the in game menus but I wanted to talk about the outlines (i hope this counts as UI feedback lol). I dont like them, they feel too thick and distracting in many situations. To the point where sometimes all i see are 4 red blobs running across my screen. Really defeats the purpose of getting rid of RvB if i cant see other spartans armor anyway. I would suggest to look into the way Valorant highlights enemies or maybe just think of a different, better system. I also hate the fact that the outlines, shield glow and my reticle are all the same color. Sometimes it makes it really hard to aim at specific parts of the body and recognizing how much health enemies have left. If outlines are here to stay I would at least like to have an option to set the colors of shields and outlines separately.
Hello, here are my thoughts about the UI and the Battle Pass.
First of all the UI feels really intuituve, it is pretty fluid and never encountered a problem with it, however I think it needs some rework. I liked it but scrolling so far just for one piece of armor is really long (for the flight it wasn’t a problem, but in the final game where there will be a ton of armor it will be long, I think).
For the Battle Pass, using Halo MCC as a base is really, really good. I absolutely love the MCC Battle Pass system, because when a season start, it stay there forever, and I remembered that in one of the developper videos, you (343) said it will be like Halo MCC. But the Battle Pass menu isn’t as intuitive as Halo MCC, it feel like a pain just to see the challenges.
Overall I absolutely love the UI and the Battle Pass, thanks 343 !
In the customization menu, occasionally the armor preview would not display changes on the player model
Things that I noticed:
- Images sometimes don’t load properly in the customization and battle pass menus. I noticed that the utility options do not appear at all in the menu or on the spartan model.
- Sometimes I had difficulty equipping armor pieces. For example, I was unable to change my shoulder pieces, as closing out of the customization menu or choosing another armor piece to customize set it back to default. I also noticed that if you select a prosthetic arm and then switch back, the prosthetic hand sometimes still remains.
- The spartan model often does not appear on the matchmaking screen and the player nametag often flashes in and out.
- The customization menu feels very awkward to use. I think it would work better if options were arranged into columns instead of one straight row.
- The first time I chose my A.I., I selected FRET, but was still equipped with BUTLR.
- When FRET speaks during a match, the subtitles say his name is Pyramid. I don’t know if this extends to the other A.I.'s as well.
- The screen sometimes glitches and flashes while scrolling through the weapon drills menu. I don’t think I noticed it anywhere else.
- This one is minor, but I found myself missing being able to see how many individual shots I had left. I feel that that communicates better to the player how many rounds they have left than just the number.
Can we get more refined control over the stick controls?
- Response curves either presets or along a scale. - Extra Pitch and Yaw at an Outer threshold so we can create Dual Zone setups for those that prefer that. - The ability to put Acceleration down to 0 ( I am assuming acceleration is the ramp up from input to speed? ) - Even higher sensitivities.
Please let us customize the color our crosshair turns independently from the friend and foe system, same with the radar enemies. Or make the enemy shields yellow instead of attached to the color, I struggled to tell if the enemies had their shields broken and I didn’t want to get my crosshair nor the radar enemies yellow. To clarify, I want to be able to see the shields, crosshair, kills and radar independently from the friend or foe system to help with clarity issues I’ve been having. Also, please change the Sniper crosshair to be more like Halo 3’s, this one is kinda confusing to use and really big, maybe even let you customize the crosshair itself. As for the battlepass, It is my understanding that in the final product we will be having EXP every match, in the preview we only got it through challenges and I hope it doesn’t stay tha way, considering you also tend to run out of challenges. Images take lots of time to load, mostly the battle pass’. Another issue, the spartan prosthetics don’t load in the menu if you want to take them out. I also found my preferences being constantly turned to default every time I booted up the game, this did get much better later on the preview though.
Thanks a lot, I had tons of fun with the preview and I’m looking forward to the release.
I’d be great if we could gain XP for the battlepass from just playing game. Only getting XP from challenges is way too limited and makes the challenges more of a check list I have to finish each day instead of an optional way to help level up the battlepass. The idea to make the battlepass permanent was an amazing idea but forcing us to complete challanges as the only way to level it up is a big step backwards.
UI
UI has been fine for me however there are some changes I’d like to see, such as the ability to change the colour of our HUD elements and I also feel if a player has two grenade types in their inventory, they should be able to see both of them at the same time, instead of having to swap to be able to see what your other grenades are.
Battlepass
The Battlepass is fine so far but the items that we were given weren’t that great in my opinion, yes the final item was worth the grind, but the in-between items need to have more variety in order to incentivize us to want to progress to a certain BP level to get that item that stands out from the countless visors for example.
Challenges
Challenges I did not like very much, at least the last ones we we’re given seemed a bit unreasonable, 100xp to play any matches, that’s but whether it was play 1 match or play 4 matches, the reward was still 100xp and that seems like its way too grindy and frankly, doesn’t really make much sense. The challenge swap tokens for the weekly Challenges were a nice addition though. [EDIT] I hope match XP and Medal bonuses will be in the final game, it would feel broken without it
Store
The glimpse of the store we got was fine, but there wasn’t enough information here for me to form a proper opinion on it.
Overall, I really liked the look of the UI (menus), especially the backgrounds with slow pans across weapons/wehicles etc. I played a couple of games on PC, but because of poor performance (~40 fps in 1440p on Ryzen 3600 / GTX 2070S / 32 gb RAM / SSD) I switched to Xbox Series X, where performance felt like solid 60 most of the time. That being said, the menus on PC were very buggy (stretched battlepas rewards icons, missing artwork, options not saving, prosthetics not updating etc.); the menus behaved similarly on Xbox (minus the stretching). All in all, here are some things to consider imo:
- First of all, please let players roam the menus when matchmaking is looking for a game, that includes customisation, maybe checking the campaign menus, browsing theatre etc. With a button for quick cancelling/activating matchmaking again. - It was not intuitive to get to the consumables menu, maybe put a shortcut to it not only in the battlepass submenu. Some players didn’t even know it existed. - Pressing Y to start matchmaking after a game didn’t always work. - There was no way (that I’m aware of) to mute players in game; I had to create a party as a workaround. - Minor bugs like the the stretched battlepas/customisation icons; missing rewards artwork; prosthetics not updating and others that may people pointed out already. - I would make the madals a little bigger and maybe push them to the left above the killfeed. - Maybe add a subtle visual cue to the top bar as to when the shields will start recharging after taking some damage. - Add a triangle with a service tag above teammates’ head instead of a dot. There is also sometimes a dot really close to the enemy’s head (from pinging maybe?), I would change it to a triangle and put a little more space between it and the head. - Radar’s range seems too small and there is no distinction between enemy players being above or below you. - X on fallen teammates is too small. - Secondary weapon icon and grenades/equipment icons are also too small. Moreover I would get rid of the square blue background for grenades and equipment icons. - The three dots for loading need to go :)That being said, I love this game already… Keep up the good work guys!
There seems to be many different ways of getting to the battlepass and challenge menus which isn’t necessary. Maybe just have one button mapped to brining up the battle pass and one mapped to bring up the challenges, rather than 2 buttons which bring up a menu to chose between both.
Have Y just bring up a list of challenges and have X bring up the battlepass
Main menu
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The UI doesn’t feel intuitive to navigate. I found myself getting lost and confused trying to find what I wanted too often. - Screen space is not well optimised in the customisation menus. Having a single row of cosmetic items to travel through is slow and tedious to work through, there should be at least three rows or columns. - On controller, ‘A’ should be to equip an item and ‘X’ should be to see the lore. This is a weird design choice that goes against muscle memory where ‘A’ is always used to select an option. - We could only rotate our Spartan in some menus but not others like the prosthetics and body type menu. We should be able to rotate in all menus and also have the ability to zoom in and out like in older Halo games to make it easier to customise our armour. - I hope there will be female voices in the final game and some more noticably female body types similar to how it was done in Reach. The ones present are almost indistinguishable from one another. - AI voices should be previewable in the menu.HUD
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Normal running and walking, not just sprinting, needs to be visible on the radar. This has been a staple of Halo for a long time and is a big negative in my opinion. With how close walking and sprinting match each other in speed it makes the changes almost pointless when you can move everywhere at nearly maximum speed without detection. It’s far too easy to follow someone and back-smack them without them ever knowing you were there. It’s very unenjoyable in PvP. Crouching should be the only way to hide your radar movement which provides a drawback in the form of slower movement like it has always been. - The old style ammo counter should make a return. It’s easier to see at a glance how much you have left before needing to reload. Not a huge issue, but it would be nice.Challenges and battle pass
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I think the battle pass itself is fine, but challenges should not be the only way to earn EXP to progress. Enabling EXP gains from completing matches or performance such as medals in addition to challenges would make levelling up more enjoyable and engaging.
I like the fact you could turn off HUD, would be nice to get different layout options. I’d want all the info in the radar corner so I can take in time, grenades, equipment, score and peek my radar all at once.
I thought the store could’ve been a little clearer (sometimes the writing was difficult to read).
The UI was mostly well thought out, it was easy to navigate and for the most part was clear to use. I do think that thr battle pass should have its own tab on the menu as occasionally I wasn’t sure how to navigate to it to check my progression and such.
Overall I enjoyed the experience of navigating the menus and it worked well.
I didn’t enjoy the fact that I wasn’t able to customize my Spartan on the fly in the matching menu before hitting play. Having to back out almost completely kinda breaks the flow for me. Store was alright. I’m curious to see how matchmaking menu will look with a larger selection of game modes.
Feedback - UI Ingame.
- Equipment Info - Hard to see and hear, of visual and sound que when picking up equipment.
- Ammo counter - Hard to see and hear, of visual and sound que when picking up ammo to weapon.
- Accessibility - Visual enemy UI color setting - Allow player to turn off color or separate from the enemy outline colour. Making it show standard shield shield like older halo games.
- Accessibility - Allow to toggle On and Off for each HUD UI elements, example. Shieldbar, weapon display UI, ammo counter, motion tracker, etc. etc.
- UI/Accesibility - Allow player to change the waypoint above fireteam, teamates and enemy player. Example service tag number, Square, triangle, symbol etc. etc.
- UI - Vertical and horizontal display margin, not supporting higher setting. reticle disappearing after higher setting.
- UI - Fireteam not appearing the desire color when change ingame.
- UI - UI scaling setting (I may have miss it under the flight setting.)
- Scoreboard - No access to mute or show player info/gamercard. (it is in, or I may have miss it?)
- Scoreboard - No access to move down or up in the scoreboard. (it is in, or I may have miss it?)
- Scoreboard - Show color of your fireteam with in the scoreboard.
- Scoreboard - Show stack/Party of player that play together. (it is in, or I may have miss it?)
Radar/Motion tracker.
- Motion tracker - When an enemy player is walking, that player should appear for a blink second only on your motion tracker.
- Motion tracker - Change the range from 20 to 25 meter.
- Motion tracker - Allow you to see how far someone is above/below you.
Feedback Customize - Armor hall and Weapon bench.
- Armor hall - Menu feel crowded, hard to navigate throught each armor and color. Need improvment.
- Armor hall - Need improvment of easy navigate throught each suit. piece, etc. etc.
- Weapon bench - Need improvement of easy navigate throught each color. etc. etc.
Feedback - Body AI
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AI - A voice preview for each AI.
Feedback - Battle pass -
Ingame menu - Challange tracker ingame, when you press start, like MCC.
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Ingame menu - XP bar and Season status, when you press start.
Other misc UI/Ingame UI/Menu feedback
- Smart link/ADS - Each weapon should have it’s own unique style of smart link/ADS like Halo 5. - Player identity - Spartan stance customize like Halo 5. - Accessibility - Allow player to toggle On and Off. Healthbar (opinion/suggestion PVE/Firefight only) - Accessibility - Allow player to toggle On and Off. Damage number. (opinion/suggestion PVE/Firefight only) - Loading screen - add a loading bar/ UNSC symbol. with the three dots.
I think having an option to change the shield colour separate from the enemy outline colour would be cool, and also having more challenging challenges, like a separate list with harder stuff to do and that you cant swap out. maybe they could give more xp?
the ability to equip skins and armours without having to go into another menu would be nice. so just double clicking on them or clicking a button to equip and leaving the more in depth menu for just info instead of being use to equip.
When scrolling through armor pieces and different colors. Please make the menu also go verticaly, it is really annoying having to scroll all the way to the right sometimes. More vertically scrollable menus in addition to horizontally
The post-game scoreboard and stats is hard to find and navigate through. There is also no stat for longest killstreak, that would be a nice addition to stats. It would be nice to be able to see everything directly after pressing the post-game report button, instead of having to go back and forth, the halo 5 post-game report was very nice in comparison. there you saw everything, and you could easily scroll through all the stats.
It is to hard to find the bonus XP consumable and activate it, also it would be a nice addition to see the bonus XP timer at the home screen. So i do not have to go in to the battle pass everytime to see how long my bonus XP is up.
I do not know if this counts as a UI problem. But please make it so that you can fast switch grenades by tapping the left D-pad button, instead of having to hold it and then press another button for the corresponding grenade. Being able to just tap the “switch grenade button” on both Xbox and PC would help the flow of switching grenades.
And lastly please give a 1 free reroll of challenges, so you do not get stuck with a challenge you do not want. If you have not bought a reroll consumable.
And give XP for completing games.
you have to click 3 buttons to equip something, very annoying
I feel like this idea can improve accessibility and help the game.
I think it would be cool if there is an option for the HUD to inherit the team color. The HUD along with the shields, ammo counter, and radar take up a natural blue color and tends to match up with the default color of you and your allies. Now that armor color isn’t being overridden with team color, changing the HUD colors can make it easier to feel what your current team color is. I can see this mainly being useful in gamemodes like multi-team, however I think it can be nice to be able to have the option to change the HUD color.
There are other games that have this function like Team Fortress 2 that have a HUD that changes color based on team. It’s a cool way to tell at a glance what team you are playing on.