#11/11 Tech Test: I have a lot of thoughts on the Visuals of the game

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wide linden
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I'll just jump straight into things.

Ignoring the blatant bug that removed the choice behind which items you picked and which evolutions you picked, which definitely dramatically decreased my enjoyment in the game and decreased the quality of games, there are some other things, mainly visual, that I wanted to bring up and discuss.

I'll split this into my 3 main gripes, some new, some old.

  1. Ability Icons
  2. UI
  3. Character models

Overall, I'm mainly just curious about why some of these things are changing in the way they are.

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Ability Icons:

I'll try to keep my thoughts short overall, but the summary of my critique for this is that the ability icons
looked very... indistinct. I think the light backgrounds on every single ability added to this, but I also think that a lot of abilities were just... not very good at identifying themselves compared to other abilities.
For example:

These are 4 different abilities from 4 different characters.
What are these abilities?
What do they do?
Which character has which ability?

I'm no visual designer. I certainly couldn't make better icons, but that doesn't mean I can't tell that these just... don't work.
A lot of them don't work, at least.
I generally liked most of the "dash" icons, though I still disliked the light backgrounds.
Again, I'm no visual expert, but I think I generally thought icons that included the character in them helped me discern what the ability actually did.
Is that the only thing that I'd like? I don't think so, but I think the light backgrounds and the presence of a lot of greys and creme tones also made readability pretty rough.

I know another post was made recently that talked about Ghost's icons and how somebody particularly disliked them, but I think it's important to note again that I think taking Ghost's icons and following a similar design path for every character, is not the right path imo.

image.png
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UI:

This is by far not the first post talking about the UI. I remember posts going back months and months and months talking about the UI.
I think now, above any other time in the alpha, the UI is incredibly important to work on and improve.

The abilities being on the side of the screen instead of the bottom center makes them far harder to read and makes it far more difficult to track cooldowns.
On top of that, with the icons being fairly nondescript for the most part (to put it generously), it becomes even harder to read and it makes tracking cooldowns even more difficult.

I genuinely wonder why the UI has been taken in this direction? It feels like all of the changes have been to actively make it harder for us, worse for us.
I am certain this is not the intention, so that is the source of my curiosity: What was the goal? I don't think the goal was met, whatever it was. Or if it was met, I think there have been unintended consequences on the way there.

I think there is a lot of frustration with the UI, and a lot of us Veterans have either just gotten used to it or just accepted that it won't get better. Because of that, I wanted to bring the subject up again, in hopes that some changes might be made.
I am no expert on making good UIs, but I know that this one doesn't work for me. It feels super spread out, it feels like the important information is not in the size/position that makes sense to me.
It just feels unintuitive for a UI. It feels like it is actively trying to make things harder for me.

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My abilities, one of the most important things on the UI, are small and in a corner.
My items and the icon to upgrade them, another very important thing on the UI, is small and in a corner.
My map is quite large, but I can't see much on my minimap anyway, so I'm just spam opening the full-size map whenever I get the chance.
The day/night cycle, which is possibly the most-important thing to keep track of, is small, mostly colorless, and in a corner under the map.

Also, with the addition of quests, I would expect to see my current quest listed somewhere on the UI so I can keep track of it, keep track of what reward I'll get, etc.
For the whole test today, I couldn't find that part of the UI, if it even exists.

It just adds up, piece by piece, to be a very difficult-to-read UI.
I hope time is spent improving on it.

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Character Models:

This will most likely be a hot-take, because I know some people who have mentioned that they like some of the new models, but for a long time now, almost since I started playtesting, I feel like the quality of the character models and the visual designs has decreased.
It started with some small stuff that I was willing to let go of, like Shiv losing her mask, multiple characters changing their pose, etc.

But recently, there have been much bigger changes:
Celeste's visual update
Ghost's visual update
Zeph's redesign
Joule's visual update
Shrike's visual update

I want to give credit to some good changes, like Hudson's redesign, Jin's redesign (with some caveats), and a lot of the Visual effects updates, which I think have, almost across the board, been a big improvement over their predecessors.

But there are so many examples at this point of changes where I saw them, immediately disliked them, tried to give them a chance, and haven't grown to like them more.

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With Celeste as an example, I think her old model was fairly mediocre, and the new one is still mediocre.
It was a set of visual changes that didn't make me like the character more, didn't make me like the character less. It was perfectly mediocre both ways.
Do I think Celeste needed to be updated? No, not really. In a game where characters are wearing sneakers and jeans, I thought wearing a kinda f-cked up cardigan was fine.
Now, she just solidifies herself as a mediocre design to me, and I don't expect her to be "improved" from this, so I've given up on her design.

With Zeph as an example, I think his old mdesign was better than his current one. He looked like this elf with a history that could be childlike but knew the world.
I'm never gonna forget showing the Supervive characters to my sibling, who is an artist, and how they immediately loved Zeph and aspired to have designs as good as his in their art.
But now, he looks like this petulent child who is just... annoying. I feel like so much depth was removed from his design in favor of making him look older and more realistic.
If it was just a higher-rez Zeph, I'd understand the change, but it isn't, and I just don't understand why.

With Joule as an example, I really loved her old look, but now she looks like she is trying really damn hard to be a model or something with all of the makeup and just...
I don't know Joule's lore entirely, but I thought she was this, like... spirit of Lightning, or sorcerer who had mastery over lightning, or something like that, but Joule nowadays looks like she came off the
runway and is now throwing lightning bolts.
My issue isn't that "she's prettier now", my issue is that she was already really pretty, but she didn't look like she was trying.
Now, she's "pretty", but it feels like her design was made to make her pretty, instead of looking at the character and having that personality shown through the design.

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And now, we get to Shrike. I had expected some really minimal changes when it was announced that Shrike was getting a visual update. I had noticed that the hair, in particular, differed from her portrait,
so I expected her to get that little braid, some higher resolution, and then that'd be that.
Why was her entire facial shape changed though? She looks so much more... gaunt, now. And she also has that almost unnaturally sharp bone structure that we saw added to Jin, Ghost, Celeste, Zeph...

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With these updates, I feel like a lot of the designs were good, and the feeling I got from the characters was this sense of an adventurous fantasy, but now it feels like in a game that's going for "neon-apocalypse",
we're getting a lot of supermodels in greys and blacks.

Again, overall, I understand that these changes were made to make the game feel more complete and finished, but I feel like the mark has been missed, and I don't know what can be done at this point about it, if anything, but I needed to get it off my chest that as the game strives to improve the visual quality of the game, I feel like it is missing the mark in some ways.

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11/11 Tech Test: I have a lot of thoughts on the Visuals of the game

void hound
wide linden
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Was that always up or did it disappear, cause I only ever saw it right after I picked up the quest or right before I completed it

void hound
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always up if the quest was active

wide linden
void hound
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just checked vod literally up for the 3m

wide linden
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I just about never saw that, still.

dry tapir
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I just wanna say I agree with every single thing you've said

wide linden
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Maybe I'm blind, but I think something that important should be in a better place than the top corner, out of the way

dry tapir
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Especially the ability icons. Can't tell what they do at all by looking at them

wide linden
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Which abilities do you think those are btw

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Just throw out a random guess

void hound
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i dont really look at ability icons but i could see why it would be a problem

wide linden
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I think it's a 1/2 problem. If the UI wasn't so hard to read, then the icons being bad wouldn't matter quite as much, I think. But because the UI isn't great, the icons being not-great is even worse.

Imagine looking at your bottom-left corner to see your cooldowns and you see just a bunch of icons that look nearly the same, with very few distinguishable features, if any.

dry tapir
broken gyro
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appreciate the feedback as always!

wide linden
# broken gyro clip would help validate

Yeah, I know. Unfortunately I wasn't able to record, because whenever I would load up OBS, my game would continuously freeze and stutter.

I'll see if any of my teammates had a similar issue, if they recorded.

broken gyro
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dang - still hear you on maybe it was too out of the way and hard to notice

void hound
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i liked where it was tbh

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i think its just preferance

wide linden
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Potentially the least useful footage ever

broken gyro
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lag on tape tho!

wide linden
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lag on tape!

teal path
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it is a little out of the way

tepid parcel
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can we get a bigger team color icon on the health bar

void hound
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where else would it move tho

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only thing that i dislike is that it goes over the fps thing

tepid parcel
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yeah honestly the fps thing can just go further left

void hound
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one thing i like is which teams died on top right

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and that u cant see what team colors dropped from ship

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those are good changes

wide linden
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yes.

teal path
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i mean my names are off so it wasnt that helpful for me

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but i can infer that being useful

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but it does let me know even if names are off that a team that we might've fought earlier is finished off

void hound
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very useful info

teal path
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i would just like team colors to be bigger again

wide linden
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I'm not as good of a messenger about the UI as a lot of previous feedback-givers, like Anion, but I'm gonna do my best.

I think the most important thing is the abilities, powers, consumables, and items being pretty small and out of the way, despite being some of the most important things on the UI. I have other gripes, but if the abilities/items part of the UI was positioned better, I'd be satisfied.

teal path
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i dont think this was mentioned but i think that the heart needs to be louder, especially when it starts because it gets muddied out by fight sounds

viral sentinel
rough citrus
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id prefer to shrink a lot of stuff just to have less stuff to have my eyes wander to personally thats not relevant. Would like ability bar bottom center tho

dry tapir
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Or any of them besides the second 💀

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My guesses:

  1. no idea, maybe gunner ult?
  2. ghost laser
  3. zeph grenade (looks like it sucks you into the middle)
  4. no idea
wide linden
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Pretty good guesses!

  1. Myth rmb
  2. Ghost laser
  3. Zeph Grenade
  4. Jin's Q1
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Here's another set, if y'all want to guess more:

image.png
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Also, why are Jin's abilities all pink/light blue, but he has no pink or light blue in his design

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(I want to be clear, btw, for any devs looking in here, that my point isn't that I think all of the abilities should be incredibly clear just by looking at them without any context, I just think it is a fun little game to play with the current icons, since a lot of them are not very clear, imo.)

rough citrus
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Might be a hot take, but i feel like icons are irrelevant after playing champs a few times, the only thing i'm looking at icons for is cd timer. If ive played the champ a bit i already know what every ability does, I know what ive got the keybind set to so i already know where i should look for that specific ability if i wanna look over numbers ect. I personally dont think they have to be all that specific other than new player experience clarity maybe.

minor jacinth
# rough citrus Might be a hot take, but i feel like icons are irrelevant after playing champs a...

I'm the same way, I looked at them and said of those are cool designs, and then it's all just placement and CDs. I will say if you're tryna read damage numbers after you will have no idea wtf any abilities are unless you play the hunter. I actually couldn't pick out any of the ability icons on the only hunter I played... In short, the design is cool, they aren't practical, but it doesn't really impact much for me.

teal path
minor jacinth
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In terms of style though I think the art really works well with everything they've been putting out

teal path
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If I’m being honest it seems like an art project without thoughts towards clarity, but they look cool

minor jacinth
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For sure

broken gyro
broken gyro
minor jacinth
broken gyro
teal path
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I think ghosts new e should show a outline for the person aiming it

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Also don’t like how the new myth e is harder to clarify between which team it’s on

wide linden
# broken gyro i want to understand this a little deeper. i dont follow why comparing icons acr...

I understand where you are coming from.

From my games, since I was trying out a lot of different characters for the first time, when I was looking down at my abilities for one reason or another, I found it difficult to tell what they did from their icons, and I relied far more on my experience of discussing the characters and taking note of where the icon was on the UI, not what it actually looked like.

At a glance, the clarity of the icons is poor atm, imo. I wanted to show an example of this, but I felt it was not quite suitable of an example to show, say, Kingpin's 4 abilities, because in our current circumstances, we can take more time to examine the icon and see the details. In the moment though, it might have just looked like a bunch of white, pink, and grey. Because of this, I thought that using different characters' abilities would be a better way to show that it is easy to confuse abilities between each other, and that at a glance, it can be very difficult to understand what an ability does from its icon.

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Ultimately, in my games, I relied heavily on feel and experience to get a guess on when my abilities were up, and I just never bothered looking at that part of the UI because it was so unhelpful.

broken gyro
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i appreciate you spelling that out! thank you Pensato ❤️

wide linden
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Any time, thank you for taking the time to read through my essays. Gn bubo!

broken gyro
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gn bud

merry hatch
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I mostly agree with the UI placement out of the bunch. I still think that current placement is a waaaay off, as the eyes don't seem to direct there to gather information and there's just so many travel to do

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Relevant yet somewhat connected info are side apart (abilities and inventory), and they take a whole lot of the corners of the screen where a threat could come and moving the mouse (camera) to unveil them might be more efforts than doing so with a middle bottom heavy ui

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Also, players instinctively are already fighting to have action happen vertically or at least diagonally to have more screen coverage, so giving up on the bottom center, a very neutral position for eye movement, and one that players instinctively avoid to have encounters... Is a suitable place imo

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But ye previous UI was a bit too charged to be there, but since you removed backpack slots and made the UI cooler looking, pretty sure there's a world

hardy iron
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I will add that although I think it's a minor thing in the scope of things to fix before/during OB, I was also not a big fan of the reworked ability icons. I think the move towards a unified theme went a bit too far, to the point where certain icons are basically paint splotches now. Having the icons be more similar within hunter kits is not a bad idea, but I'm not a fan of the universal white background.
I think League does this really well, if you look at Malphite or Zed ability icons for example. They share a common color theme (Zed's icons are generally red/grey, and Malphite's are generally orange/yellow - fitting with their respective identities) The backgrounds are also generally darker.
Just my two cents

frigid hornet
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Yeah I don't think ability icons is a thing that is very bad if isn't good by OB

by far, ingame HUD, Visual effects, and indicators for stealth, bosses, souls, vaults, rez beacons - Those are the most important

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And they're.. not very good right now

tired cipher
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I didnt read everything in here but i just want to say. I too feel like some of the more important parts of ui dont call enough attention. And i think a big reason for that is the currently quite minimal animations, that happen when for example i level up and a skill point is available.

visual scroll
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I agree with everything except character models, good post

rough citrus
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id rather my character portait be tiny as well as the weapon just be removed since its kinda irrelevant personally and just takes up space

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when in game

narrow stream
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The second one I would totally guess at brall's spin?

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He seems to own that shade of red

fiery apex
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Totally agree with ability Icons, I think they look very cool on paper, but imo they dont fit ingame.

frigid hornet
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I think brall slam/ult, firefox E, shrike.. RMB and Surely bishop lshift

merry hatch
lament finch
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I like shrike model a lot (that's all I'm here to say bye)

lament finch
scenic steeple
frigid hornet
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LOL EXACTLY

hot marten
hollow sierra
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Unfortunately visuals were a big step into the wrong direction across the board. From abilities (even on my main i had to often double check if a certain ability was already off CD because it was so confusing color wise and the icon itself), to the area of effect visibility of powers like the Nuke power to objectives on the map like bushes. I guess if you just roll em all back to the next fest playtest build, nothing would be missed.

minor jacinth
visual scroll
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One thing they got me confused is there’s almost like 2 types of trees?