User Interface (UI) needs better flow, also more clarity
I love the game itself. I think it's a lot of fun to have this more tactical, team oritented battle royale.
However, I am a designer, and I am getting a bit frustrated by the UI design and flow:
- First, I join the game. I get to the black loading screen. Then a countdown of 5 seconds. Then anóther countdown of 5 seconds. Why not just remove one of these two?
- Ok, then I play the game, I enjoy playing the game a lot. But one small point here too: I sometimes try to close a popup screen with esc, but then I get taken to the menu, which obviously I didn't want. I think this flow can be improved and made more intuitive.
- Now, obviously I die. But now I have to wait out a really weird animation, showing me nothing really, during which I am screaming to my teammates where the enemy is. But meanwhile I didn't see that they are already dead because my screen was still dooing loopdieloop animations.
- After we all die, we go to this screen with match details, which is nice. But also for some reason I still need to listen to - remarkibly loud - gunfire going on. That's a bit unnecessary don't you think?
- Now, I personally do not care about the time survived, xp earned, apex packs gained etc, but I understand it should be visible. However, there is no clean, streamlined way to avoid it. Again, it is filled with unnecessary animations that I can't skip. And in addition, I have to click space, then find and click the ok button, then wait, then spam click again, then again have to click a button on a different location. I just think it would be really nice to add one extra button that said: "Play again" and you skip all the stats and go straight to the lobby (where btw you can actually still re-check some match details).
In Overwatch for example, you automatically join the queue for another game, you have to actively click on something to stop playing the game. In Apex you just get sent from one screen to another before you can finally click "ready" again. I just think that making these improvements would really help streamline the process of getting into another game.
Then on Clarity:
I think the game could use a lot more clarity. Like, how much HP does each hero have? Do tanks have more HP? Does gold armor mitigate more dmg, or does it just give an added layer of HP? I see how much dmg my bullet did, but I don't actually know how much hitpoints/armor hp they have so it's not super useful. How much damage do grenades do? What does an Arc star do? It's nice that I can select 101 skins, but why can't I find basic stats like the rate of fire and damage etc of each rifle in the loadout menu?
I know, I know, these are all minor things. But these were were only some of the issues I've found. I do believe that by streamlining all of these small hickups we will create a better experience for the players.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk. If the devs don't want to do this themselves; I'm looking for a job so I'd gladly help them out there 😉
