The BF2042 Comm Rose - Why EA, why...
The Com Rose is an essential feature in the Battlefield Series and used to enable/support the great collaborative squad and team work that puts Battlefield in a special category above its direct FPS game competitors.
It should allow a player to quickly send frequently used helpful pre-set messages to other players much faster than other means of communications. Also helpful for players who don't have headsets with microphones to still engage in the teamwork. And we have seen through past BF history how the Comm Rose developed from game to game, but still kept its main purpose well supported by design and ease of use.
Until the large, clunky, grainy, lowres version hit us in BF2042.
Taking up a sizeable part of the entire screen.
The contrasting color icon is the same for all the comm options, all appearing the same.
Text in blurred and small unreadable size on same color background.
The whole graphic is made using semi-transparent background.
All in poor green tinted color scheme and when opened up in a more lit scenery with background lightning, it is totally unreadable.
Why EA, why???
3+ years in the making and this is what we get?
Did you even try it out for yourself, just in a few minutes of gameplay perhaps?
Who in their right mind found this was great???
Some now post comforting messages and saying, oh yeah, its just us on PCs that are used to have a great UI and now EA Dev team are limited because we need now to have a deplorable poor user interface to accommodate for the poor consoles and their horrid low screens/resolutions.
That is all utterly nonsense.
Dont let EA game designers smear such lazy low quality job onto us.
Here is what we had on PS4 in the old PS4, 7+ years ago (center of screen only):
And all the way back in BF2 (full screenshot):
So absolute 'no', EA.
The BF2042 Comm Rose is not good enough.
Far from it.
KISS is still king when it comes to communication and related design features.
Nobody cares about or need those misplaced call-out icons.
So hereby just a proposal of a simple yet efficient way of enabling the same functionality, keeping your army fatigue color scheme:
I am certain just a few minutes with feedback from the community could give you plenty of more and even greater ideas on how to make a better Comm Rose.
Because we are at the near rock bottom with the current BF2042 Comm Rose and anything else would be better!
@DJ_Englishman wrote:Adjustable in-game settings to alter its opacity, size, position and colour to suit most of us? I think the 2042 commorose design is to compliment the 2042 weapon attachment 'plus.' I think NatO & team did a good job with them this year. ❤️
I was pleased to see in the clip how smoothly it seemed to function, whereas the BF1 iteration was always glitchy and sticky for me. BFV's worked well, but this 2042 one appears to have many more sub-icons than just goto A/B/C which will be more useful and suits me. Personally, I'd drop the words entirely and have a tiny icon-only commorose without DoF! (Newcomers could quickly learn the icons from what it dumps in the chat feed.) I guess you cannot please everyone@CyberDyme 🍺
Given cross-platform VOIP seems to be a problem at launch, I expect the commorose will be invaluable this year whatever form it takes!
Hi @DJ_Englishman ,
I personally like info graphics for intl software development, as if done well, it obliterates the needs for localizing all your UI elements to make the software successful in other places of this world.
But why make the screen blurred?
Why make the text blurred and so small its hardly readable?
Why make the color choices blend-in-blend of the same?
Why not make meaningful icons then as the infographics instead of this nonsense EA graphical designers have filled up our vital screen property with?
Only the parachute icon makes any sense here.
And ok, we could learn to live with whatever they chose here to symbolize 'change order' command...
Maybe you can tell me what it is?
EDIT:
Slightly better image quality direct from EA's own Beta Feedback video:
Suggest you look at the video, as it provides better quality vs quality of HD graphic when uploading to this website here...
