Customization UI is too cluttered (similar problem with H5). Making the options horizontal unnecessarily increases the time a user must spend in these menus to find what they are looking for. Consider using a grid format instead? This Reddit thread provides a better example than what I can put into words: https://www.reddit.com/r/halo/comments/ov9p1l/i_really_dislike_infinites_ui_so_i_redesigned_a/ - Consider allowing players to customize their shield colours without affecting the outline over enemy units. Or at least, consider reverting the normal shield colour from blue back to gold. This is more of a nitpick, really, but it’s a little strange to ditch the classic shield color and have no way to restore it without making your enemies look like lemons.
Lack of ability to rotate Spartan outside of armor menu makes effectively viewing the three body types impossible. - Companion AI voice lines and personalities should be able to be previewed in the AI menu. Similar to how the Reach Firefight voices worked.
If possible, the option to pick our Spartan’s voice from the game itself rather than just the app would be nice. Also needs an option to preview.
The Customization Menu should not require backing out to the main menu to access. Maybe make it a separate tab like in Halo 5?
Grenade indicators from Halo 5 need to return. Sound alone isn’t always accurate.
Name Tags over a player’s head and Status Indicators need to return. The current system is too small and hard to see, and there’s no way to tell where a specific player is on the map.
I get this is a design choice, but the lack of Red vs Blue in matchmaking has lead to situations where it is almost impossible to tell friend from foe if an ally is using a blue shader. While right now it is not an issue due to the bots being uniform in colour, I imagine this is going to become much more of an issue when PvP matches have numerous shaders on the field. While I respect wanting to try something new, RvB worked for a reason and the new UI replacing it does not prevent confusion - particularly at range.
My experience with the Battle Pass took some time to get accustomed to. The preview of the Battle Pass was nice and access to other options from the Battle Pass was nice. I felt that I was backing in and out to find what I was looking for. I did have a hard time finding consumables (XP boost). The challenge swap is a cool addition but during the flight I stopped receiving challenges on the second day. I don’t if it was planned that way.
To be honest, there wasn’t much that I felt needed to be changed about the UI and Menus, but I do have a couple nitpicks.
• When I completed any challenge, it felt underwhelming, perhaps the daily challenges I would be fine with, but I personally can’t help but feel like the capstone and weekly challenges need to have a sound or more dramatic animation when completed to enhance the sense of accomplishment.
• It wasn’t much of a problem in the technical preview, but I worry that when the game launches with much more armour, vehicles, armour coatings, AI’s etc, navigating through the horizontal menu could be lengthy and annoying, even though there is a “favourite” system, people are going to be equipping new equipment constantly during launch, please consider using a different menu for customising armour, AI’s, weapon skins, armour coatings, perhaps even the battle pass if you intend to expand it,
Halo 5 had a very good menu for customising armour, helmets, assassinations etc, or consider a similar customisation menu as MCC.
(btw previewing upcoming weekly challenges is such a small yet incredibly useful feature)
Visually the UI looks nice in the menus, however, I found it to be clunky and hard to get to anything quickly. I had to go through to menu menus and buttons to send out a party invite to someone who was on the game. I would prefer a button on the menu to take you right to your friends who are also on the game or a visual lobby style system similar to MCC.
BATTLEPASS:
I am not a fan of the way that XP is being handled for the battlepass. Introducing a progression style system into the game that only progresses through challenges, daily or weekly, doesn’t really keep me stuck in the gameplay loop. I want to play the game just to play the game but I feel that once I have completed my daily challenges or weekly challenges and I have more to unlock in the battlepass I am missing out potential wasted XP. I love the challenge system but I really think that there needs to be a way to progress through the battlepass by being rewarded through in game XP rewards from playing completing matches.
Overall I am extremely happy with the direction that this game has taken. Thank you 343 and congratulations.
I’m sure this is stated somewhere but applying skins or colors to anything is quite a long process. I recommend that the battle pass should have its own progression tab at the top.
In the AI bot selection screen there should be an option to preview the AI voice which also shows off their personality. That will make it easier to choose the AI.
This builds menu feels redundant, it has too many layers to keep going through, and that makes it confusing sometimes.
Player HUD - It was better and more intuitive for ammo and grenade counters to stay on upper side of the screen.
There could be an option to turn off AI audio or Spartans audio or narrator
It was difficult to find the point “Activate XP Booster”. XP boosters didn’t really work either. I was wondering if in the full version it is only possible to collect XP if you have daily and weekly challenges. I hope that it is possible to collect XP by playing like with the MCC. A description for a challenge was not always clearly explained.
+Timer to correctly estimate when the new challenge is active. Challanges that you don’t want to do can be exchanged is definitely a plus point.
I noticed a lot of flickering when going in and out of menus. The battle pass worked fine, until I stopped receiving challenges. Couldn’t progress after that. Often times in the AI menu when I had BUTLR on it would stay a crimson red with no details on the AI itself. There was a chunk of time where my controller would not let me move right. In the same boat as most people, I would like to see more classic medals return or make them more apparent on screen. All I can think of at the moment.
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> - 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.
It might have been a placeholder. I was using CIRC, and it said her name was Sphere.
I play on ultrawide 3440x1440 in this preview and in Halo MCC. Please give option to put HUD centred option like in Halo MCC. I’ve found that while aesthetically, the radar looks better on the edge, its too far out of peripheral vision to notice enemy dots. Centred HUD option would be great, maybe it wasn’t in settings but I couldnt find the option. - Customisation display icons was squished. For example, the “cards” that display the helmet, chest, etc images are squished. - When viewing Spartan or vehicles (not selected but in the menu) the model was quite high and cut off by top of the screen. Once selected its centred on the screen which is good. - Would be great to add a button dedicated to customisation similar to the “Start Matchmaking” button that was present in the post game report. A persistent customisation button would be good. So dont have to search a playlist, wait for 3s to confirm its started, then backout to menus then right tab to customise. - In main menu the bottom right window (with news etc) blocks the view of the Spartan in the background, maybe would be better to centre the fireteam Spartans or reduce the window size.
Custom Controls setting lead to the joystick not able to move to the right. - Incredible amount of options, and I may have missed there being a choice to tone down the outlines on your allies specifically? - Battlepass Progression seemed to only move based off completing challenges rather than playing games…That’s incredibly harmful in my opinion by not simply following the footsteps of MCC where you can get lots of points for doing challenges while also getting passive points for just playing the game. - Customization sometimes won’t show a preview of the item I switch to. - Butlr AI appeared to be red shaded out after Day 2.
While this is a very minor change to the menus, something I would love to see return to Halo Infinite would be the iconic beep sound on the countdown to entering a match during (3,2,1,0…).
As well, not sure if this is a temporary loading screen, but I would love to see a loading screen with things such as maybe in game screenshots, art, tips.etc in exchange for the current black screen with white dots at the top left.
Another small change which would be cool to see would be to view the preview of battle pass items on our Spartan rather than the default Spartan (ex. when viewing a visor in the battle pass, show it on our spartan rather than the default spartan for the preview).
Other than that, loved the look of the main menu with our Spartan appearing there as well as the music and such.
Since using a TV to play the flight, I found that the main menu screen would be cut off at the very bottom. It made me confused, on which buttons opened up its side menus (chat, friends, settings, etc…). After the testing I found which was which, but it would be nice of them to add a border adjustment screen, so that items do not run over the edge of the screen.
The menus in general could use some adjustments:
Maybe make the Menu similar to MCC, but have some changes to make to game differentiate from its predecessor. When swapping menus it could also cause a flickering of white, between each transition. - I think maybe you should add, an adjustment for the score-board, as having it at the bottom, was tricky to get used to. - This ties into #2, maybe have a Legacy UI, which is more of a classic Halo UI, with guns in top right, grenades in top left, and score in bottom right.Other than those three main complaints, it is more smoothing out the UI and Menus, which is surprising; Because I thought I would see more wrong with the menus.
For the Challenges, there does need to be a numerous amount of available things for players to do for us to keep playing. It felt like once I ran out of available challenges to complete I could not be able to rank up on the Battle Pass in the Preview.
The UI is a bit cluttered, I would recommend making it easier to navigate using the bumpers on the controller to navigate to customize your spartan, available challenges and then to where you are at in the Battle Pass. It definitely felt like a chore to have to navigate into the challenges/battle pass page just to see where I am at. My recommendation would be to make it just one page per section that can be navigated by the press of a button or two and not have the player do through multiple pages to get to a simple thing like customizing and looking at challenges and progression.
Overall I thought the UI wasn’t in a bad place. I just have a few notes on the post game scoreboard:
K/D/A is in the correct order when you check the score in the game, but in post game it shows as K/A/D.
Indicator for " better than usual " should be adjusted for deaths to be " lower than usual " just a tiny thing but seems off.
Your personal stat screen is tight otherwise, though it seems like you could get more personal stats here rather than needing to go to the team scoreboard.
However the game stats, or scoreboard that shows all players, is ultra cluttered. The highlight indicator which shows which name you are resting on makes the stats difficult to read, and the stats aren’t in a logical order. This screen should be streamlined, and maybe let us click into more data if we want. Something more like the personal scoreboard but stacked and shrunk to see where you stand against your opponents and teammates would be better.
I hope challenges isn’t the only way to level up the battle pass because if it is their would be no point in grinding the game when it comes out. Which I plan on doing. UI I think is alright.
I think UI looks great so far.
The only criticism is more so personal taste rather than objective truth.
I feel that the score being bottom left by the radar would be a cool idea.
The loading screens are a little boring we definitely could use some more visual flare like Halo Reach’s Auntie dot.
And maybe allow colors and customization be equipped by A and not X and make X view Lore and stuff. Yet again just personal preference.
Other than that I think everything else looks fantastic and easy to navigate.
In game, the hud is basically perfect. However it would be great if we had the option to move and change parts of the hud individually. For example, being able to move the radar to wherever I want on my screen and change the size and opacity of it independently from everything else. Maybe I want to increase the size of prompts such as going to pick up a weapon. This might be a bit niche, but maybe even being able to change the colour of the hud would be a good idea! I would love to have a purple hud instead of blue. Maybe also having different designs we could choose from that would affect the shape of the health bar would be a very nice touch.
Weapons like the ravager and needler need to have a more pronounced visual effect on our screen. The needler for example causes you to explode when a certain amount of needles hits you. It be great if there was a visual, or even audio, effect of the needles building up to an explosion. Especially for new players who may have never experienced being shot at by a needler before.
In the menu, the selection at the top left of the screen is to generic, and hard to see, especially when parts of it was sitting in front of the bright sky in the menu. They should be a lot brighter, and the option that is selected should be brighter again the others. I would love for the menu to feel more “halo”. First of all make everything blue and look more like a screen you would see if you were in 2500. The friends tab at the bottom right is too clunky, and your emblem (as well as others in your fireteam) should sit in the top right of the screen like it (mostly) has been, unless it interferes with what’s being shown on screen, like for example customizing your spartan, where it should sit cleanly at the bottom right. The style shown in this concept video Halo Infinite Main Menu Concept Design - YouTube is much better and definitely feels more halo than what we were shown in the preview. Being able to choose what music plays on the menu like what is shown in the video would be a god send. I would probably end up leaving the game open instead of closing it when I need a break if that was added. Obviously the concept can be improved, but the it’s the style and colours that definitely makes it stand out and feel more unique, helping add to overall theme and make it stand out from other shooters.
I would also love player cards to return, like with what we had in halo reach, where clicking on a players emblem on the main menu or while matchmaking would bring out a pop-out of their spartan and stats.