Although I appreciate that the build is 2 months old and the overall game is also a few months away from release. I do have issues with the UI/UX, specifically in the main menu, rather than in-game (match). Because this will be lengthy, due to how many menus there are, I will try to break it into categories to help the flow of the wall of text.
Settings
The Deadzone sliders aren’t very good due to us not being able to be in the game with a gun without some kind of pressure. The Fortnite visual indication in the menu of just how much deadline you need when moving the sticks is far and away the best one as it’s not open to interpretation unlike this where it purely relies on “feel”.
Field of View would be good to have a preview box to show players just what a difference it can make without needing to be in game. A picture would be enough.
Graphics Quality settings should say what each option actually does, so people can make informed choices. CAS Sharpening/Chromatic Aberration/Bloom/Parallax settings should come with an explanation of what these features are for those who aren’t as educated in technical terminology. That or another possible visual preview in the menu to give people a clearer understanding.
I do appreciate how many features and functionality switches there are. The font and layout is not fancy but it is legible and easy to navigate.
Control Panel
Patch notes should be available to read in game rather than launch the browser. The Edge browser is simply not as intuitive to read compared to text in the game itself. Even if it’s just a cliff notes version of the major changes with a link for those that want the whole thing.
The news tab is good all round if it keeps up to date as the game rolls on. It’s clear, precise and have hot links to either websites or parts of the game so people can just jump right to what they’re reading about.
Battle Pass
The font of the challenges can bleed with the background, I believe it’s a blurry warthog on the left side of the background. Those headlights can make the word directly onto of it difficult to read sometimes.
Although it makes sense for the consumables menu to be on the battle pass screen, the timer shouldn’t only exist there. Games like Modern Warfare/Warzone and Rogue Company also have timed XP boosters but they put the clock on the main menu screen where your lobby sits during the matchmaking process. This keeps you completely aware of just how much time you have remaining. When it’s buried in the battle pass menu, it can become forgotten. Rogue Company puts their boosts menu on the right stick click to bring it up on the main screen. Might be worth considering so people don’t have to click back into another screen to get access to them.
Having the Battle Pass screen be available by pressing Y then Battle Pass/Challenges makes seeing this content a extra click than necessary. Majority of games have this be it’s own menu tab with LB/RB so it’s on the same interface as the Play/Customise/Shop tabs. That would make accessing the content more simplistic.
The “buy battle pass” menu function remains on the bottom of the screen (press X to buy), despite owning it. It should disappear when it’s bought to help avoid confusion.
There doesn’t seem to be an indication of how many challenge swaps you have, unless I am missing it. To which, if I can’t see it, that’s part of the problem. If there’s a limited amount, it should say how many you have available on the challenge swap prompt.
Customisation
The armour kit interface is frankly a bit ugly. Definitely preferred the Halo Reach layout where it’s it’s a vertical menu with the spartan on the right rather than a row of boxes with no text labelling them. The icons on the boxes to indicate what they are are too small, not distinct enough and get blended into the cosmetics themselves pretty easily. Especially if you have a white or light coloured armour coating.
The menus - I’ll use armour coating for example - always default to the default filters. I don’t want to see what I don’t own, I only want to see what I can equip. if I set the ownership filter to “owned”, it should stay like that - for all the armour pieces.
When selecting an armour piece or weapon skin, A to inspect and X to equip is annoying and I’m sure majority of players will forget to press X when they first explore the menu options. The cosmetic already shows on the Spartan in real time, making the inspect option unnecessary except for the slight lore snippet. My suggestion would be to flip the buttons around. Let us equip on A and inspect on X, as they feels more standard when A is to activate or advance everything else in the menu.
Shop
This layout with the big block banners only works because the store is lacking content. There doesn’t seem to be an option to browse everything in the store on the store tab and things will become cluttered or lost when more content comes with this current layout. The big box banners should definitely be smaller as they aren’t utilising the screen space, they’re just big for the sake of it. They’re also not attractive with the plain backgrounds and generic fonts. Maybe just have one gun shown on the icon and you can see the rest of them by clicking inspect on the box, that would cut the size down by at least half. The text bleeding into cosmetics also happens on the “Enigma Helmet and Attachment” daily bundle, as the helmet is white and the text is white. I can’t read the word Enigma without squinting due to how bad the blending in is.
Match HUD
Having the weapon information in the bottom right is not inherently bad but not showing both grenade types or gadget types available to switch on the HUD can make it easy to forget that you have something you can switch too. Having the ammo count down in the corner does make it harder to keep track of due to how dull the colour of the HUD is compared to previous games. You also don’t know how many grenades you have for the one that’s not equipped.
Having the match score along the bottom middle is also not bad but it does make the bottom half of the screen very busy. Halo has always used the corners of the screen for information but this time the top corners are empty. Functionally, its by no means bad but it feels like it’s different for the sake of different. It wasn’t a problem to glance at the corner to see the score or ammo count.
The Friend/Foe system takes time to get used to. My first match, my armour was Blue and I ran into the other team who are all Blue. It took me a second to register that they’re not on my team. I’ve also shot at teammates more often in this test than I ever have in previous games because it’s also not as visible if they’re on your team or not. The icons over teammates heads are too small and subtle. The colour that drapes over friend/foes when you look at them is too subtle and sometimes doesn’t show unless you’re directly aiming at them. Visually it makes processing information on screen a bit more mentally taxing compared to previous games.
CoD always shows up instantly, it’s very visible, it never gets obscured by skins, colour, geography or the map. Infinite’s holographic looking 3D colour that goes over character models blends too well with armour coating colours, it is impacted by light on the map which can change the hue of the colour you selected and doesn’t always show up instantly; especially if they’re in your peripheral vision. It’s just a messier system right now.
If you got this far, thanks for your time.