4 years ago

Worst User Interface design, in terms of usability, ever made in a game

Definition of Usability

Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The word "usability" also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process.

Usability is defined by 5 quality components:

Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?

BF 2042 menus and ingame UI doesnt even comply any of those points, seriously and trying to be constructive, it isn't easy to accomplys basic things, you have to guess or try to find where is everything, leanrnability is awful. It isn't efficient at all because changing things is clunky (plus system in game while in combat) and slow. Also once leanrnt is very easy to forget how to do it because it's counterintuitive, also subject to errors while operating the UI (again plsu system while in combat or doing the customization). And we are not going to talk about satisfaction, I cannot guess who could test the UI whithout lossing completely his mind and patience, worst user experience I have had ever.

Was it so difficult to desing something like these mockups that anonymous users in reddit did in hours and 4 companies couldn't make in three years?

-Menu mockup

-Weapon customization mockup

-Options menu mockup

-Ingame UI mockup

-Scoreboard mockup

PLEASE EA / DICE

discussion

19 Replies

Kekkset
4 years ago
BF2042 game design and UI design is one of the worst I have ever seen in 40 years of gaming. Yes even old atari arcades are better.
I'm so disappointed that I have no words to express how much this game has gone down.
It really looks like it's been made by a chinese company, and yet, it's supposed to be the biggest effort in production from DICE.
It doesn't matter how many people you put at work, it matters that who is deciding shouldn't be a complete idiot.
ShevermiN
4 years ago
Yeah it took me 4 days to find the plus system edit screen, can't find it again ??? Can't find out how many kills I need for next unlock ??? Join a portal server, can we see what settings the server is set to while in game ?? I can't.
It really is beyond me why this can't be worked out, how out of touch with the real world are the dev's when they think this is an intuitive system ???
It makes me hate the game.... I can't stand playing your game DICE it makes me hate gaming, well done team I'm here spamming the forums instead of playing the game because I'm so angry that I don't want to play your game..
teq9er
4 years ago
Totally agree... something as simple as customizing your weapons has me clicking the wrong button. The select gun and customize gun on one screen is left and right mouse button respectively. On another screen it's the reverse so it trips me up when I'm trying to switch things up in the heat of battle.
l8008l
4 years ago
@-OSP-Harkon_ES Nice work on the mockups! So much easier to grasp what's going on. I am so confused with the current UI. It's not intuitive at all.
NiCeDiCe90
4 years ago
We had good UIs in previous games. I don't understand why everything has to be different everytime. Why does DICE need to reinvent the wheel every game?
It's the same with vehicle physics and stuff. I can understand rebalancing and trying new things. But why would you destroy working Features just for the sake of "not doing the same again".
I know I know. Gaming Communitys are rude af and blame you if you just copy paste like CoD does. But in the end we just want a working and fun experience and not what ever 2042 is...
CyberDyme
4 years ago
@NiCeDiCe90 wrote:
...
I know I know. Gaming Communitys are rude af and blame you if you just copy paste like CoD does. But in the end we just want a working and fun experience and not what ever 2042 is...
Agree with most of what you mentioned in first section!
Here for the last section, actually the BF2042 game design, including the Specialists, Hazard Zone, menus, etc.... all appear to be a poor ripoff of COD.
That is what substantial parts of what BF2042 is.
JediMastaWyn
4 years ago
Head scratching how it made it past play testing?
-OSP-Harkon_ES
4 years ago
They aren't mine but from anonymous reddit users, but they had more ability and usability knowledge than 4 full companies
-OSP-Harkon_ES
4 years ago
Basically they did'nt contract test users to do UI testing and give feedback about it
CyberDyme
4 years ago
@-OSP-Harkon_ES wrote:
They aren't mine but from anonymous reddit users, but they had more ability and usability knowledge than 4 full companies
Credit where credit is due: It was actually a user named ibbidibbidoo on Reddit who was so cool to combine all into graphical representations of all our posted shared needs and wants for what is broken or missing in BF2042. Also the Scoreboard, where he captured exactly what I also personally want.
It is also mindboggling that we (the collective users) can make such game design in just a few hours and not something the big EA team could figure out over 3 years. Instead we now have aka for the 'Scoreboard' totally time wasting and meaningless showcases of individual players after each round, with endless row of flash screens one after the next being shown to us, but no total scoreboard and no visibility to how we and our squad mates/friends did in the same game we just played together...
So EA/DICE, here is how to do it:
So instead of multiple flipping screen splashes at end of game round, here we have all we need. All summarized onto one single page. So this can also be used as the same we need, while in the active gameplay!
Player name, ranking in gameplay, soldier rank, kills, assists, revives, deaths, XP score and ping!
And scrollable down to the last of the 128 players on the server. Just as we also had in previous BF games with 64 players on.
Nothing fancy, we don't need meaningless fluff.
On right hand side, we have the summarized personal scoring we just made so far ourselves in the game. Also with ribbons and what achievements we may have completed. Last but not least as well, the number of players on the server, ideally with the number of real humans on board...
So EA, coders back to the keyboard and get this done properly.
Thank you very much!