#Rec Room’s Watch UI Lacks… a lot of things. - A Tired Rant

26 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

sleek tulip
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(Typed on Mobile)

The Watch UI has gone through a lot of changes, and with it came a lot of inconsistencies and issues. I won’t go through allat but instead talk about what he have now (and from 2020 for some reason).

Home

The first thing you see when opening your watch. After you wait a few seconds for your device to catch up reloading all of the images and text, you’re met with… too many things at once.

Instead of the classic 4x3 grid of buttons with a simple purple holographic style, you get slapped with maybe 20 different things to press, some lag on any interaction, and a blinding white and orange background.

Let’s go through these buttons, yea?

At the top you get a row of buttons with all the main stuff like Play, People, etc. I have no problem with that at all. In the main body of the watch you have the rooms, and at the bottom we have… you see the problem, right?

WHY, are the least important things at the top, with their own COLORED ICONS, but all of the important everyday things at the bottom with plain filled white icons?

Shouldn’t This Room, Notifications, and maybe People be there? What is so important about Events and Clubs to the point that they needed their own row?

Now, I’m not a professional UI designer or anything, but why are there three different text colors, and three different icon styles? Personally, that just confuses me.

I think we could just turn that bottom orange row into more of a horizontal slider and put all the top icons down there. Maybe even let us customize our Home Screen? Like, why can’t I have Create be first? Or, why can’t I just re-arrange the rows or something and have Recent Subscribed Activity at the top instead of what I’ve already played?

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Notifications

Keeping this one short, why the hell is everything separated? Here is a list for every tab for notifications:

  • Activities (whatever this is)
  • Club Invites
  • Event Invites
  • Friend Requests
  • Friend Introductions (who uses this)
  • ACCEPTED Friend Requests (why would I need this)
  • Friend Is Online (I’m already audibly and visually alerted in my view)
  • Official Announcements

That is EIGHT different tabs to navigate through. WHY DO WE NEED THIS MANY?

This Room (Settings)

To be clear, I’m talking about the settings part.

Why, why in the fuck… does me pressing Permissions or Roles… show me old UI after 2 years. And WHY.. AM I STILL ABLE TO PHYSICALLY GRAB MENUS WITH BIG ASS HANDLES?

Seriously, you know UGC makes up Rec Room, so why is this part so outdated? You literally added something new to that menu with Maker Pen Restrictions and yet the UI is still from 2018 or something.

There are at least 4 menus that still haven’t been updated. It doesn’t make sense.

Scrollbars

These deserve their own little section in this rant because half of the time they aren’t even functional and are purely PNGs. Why is it that the scrollbars I enable that disable the internals have a 50% chance to be rendered unusable. I’m just sitting there looking stupid trying to slide my finger to drag this stupid scrollbar.

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Chat

The Party Chat shouldn’t be there if I’m NOT IN A PARTY. (Fun fact, clicking it shows two different screens that tell you the same thing, one with a button and icon and the other with simple text)

Sometimes chats simply show no preview message so you have to click on it to see.

Photos show up as links if deleted? Why not show a placeholder or something the link is useless.

Sending a room or photo is HUGE and takes up at least 60% of the chat. This can be compressed into a small long message (horizontal).

There are two icons, both having different styling and colors near the text box.

People

Here we go again with these tabs.

Instead of your favorites being at the top like their expected to be, instead they’re separated into a TAB.

The profiles seem very cluttered. I don’t care much about their level for it to be squeezed in there. You also don’t need the “Online/Offline” text because there is a literal indicator telling me if they are or not. Oh, and by the way there are TWO of them. Both on the side and bottom of their profile pictures.

For some reason, you can sort by Online or Level. You don’t need to sort by online because they’re already at the top and should always be at the top of the list. Level is just weird.

The subscriptions tab is both bad and.. bad.

The search bar and the “sort” drop-down are obviously crammed. For me on Xbox, the Sort Drop-down is being cut off by a lot and (again) has different styling with a black outline.

When clicking it is has no sound, but instead fades in a small drop-down with simple OUT OF THEME buttons.

The list of subscriptions is weird and I’ll just leave it there.

End

That’s all I feel like typing on this horrible keyboard, but Rec Room, please for the love of god improve your UI. And add a dark mode toggle.

…and optimize it. Thanks.

-Nitr0h

young girder
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All imma say is that them moving the home button to the left side of the screen was evil

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And this watch lags like hell

sleek tulip
young girder
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True it seems like they don’t have playtesters 🤔

sleek tulip
regal estuary
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Oh they do, they just don't use them

sleek tulip
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Ok, I see why the performance is bad. They don’t even have enough or any leads. 😭

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sleek tulip
regal estuary
sleek tulip
regal estuary
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Why do beta testing when you can just do split tests

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Rec Room logic

sleek tulip
sleek tulip
proud karma
dim solar
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That’s the part that gets me the most. If it really is necessary to change the UI why not at least keep the layouts the same instead of giving us this cluttered mess of a watch menu. The new player experience must be hell

young girder
balmy abyss
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I don’t care what anyone says this guy is spitting pure and utter facts

sleek tulip
regal estuary
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I love how with the ui, you can see the name of a private room someone is creating when it's supposed to be hidden RRegg

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sleek tulip
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Such security

young girder