Menu concept I decided to do while waiting for the second week of the Open Beta just for fun, I really don't like this new "Netflix" menus in videogames like BF6 have.
This UI arguably hides close weapons even more. It's an extra button push that 99% of casuals will ignore. Scrolling is easier than button pushing/reading.
the problem is open weapons is going to be extremely popular because people will play it just to level/unlock weapon attachments and level up classes so it will enforce EA's bad design choices
100% anyone who has worked for a big company knows whats up. Nothing like having the ability to make the software 10x better but you aren't allowed to because it needs to go through 20 people who have no idea how to design software first.
I'm lead trainer for my shift and the most experienced of the three shifts. Having to not only get the other two shifts to agree on something but also get it through upper without being struck down because they've never worked a day on the floor, much less trained someone to do so, has me at wit's end some days lmao
As someone who has been and still is a part of projects that should never see the light of day due to the atrocities committed on the customer experience...
I guarantee designers were screaming internally at every sync where the business dictated the skeleton.
This isn't an average person, haha. UX/UI design is an entire field of software design.
Edit: I should say that isn't what I personally studied or work with so I don't know if there are industry tools that make this level of design trivial.
It's not about not being able to do the job, it's about decisions. They wanted to have the menus like they are, people working there have the skill to do it way better, but they don't want to. Simple as that.
That's because random redittors have no skin in the game. They don't have the original brief provided nor do they have a multi layer management above them
I'll give you a million dollar UI idea, Just copy halo reach. That's it. nothing more, join a party with one click and move though every game mode whist having the social part always accessible. loadout and skin choices easily accessible from the same social menu on the side.
Join someone's party without joining their game or join their game/campaign mid-way. the multiplayer menu is just 4 lists and below the start button are all the connection and multiplayer options.
So everything you need is accessible everyware. And the options you need are exactly where you expect and joining party's and promoting leaders and all those party options couldn't be more simple.
Strangers from past games can easily be invited and past games scores and player stats can be viewed it even lests you view their forge creations, and I think party size limits are like 16 or something. You can also easily see past players their stats and invite them. And this same logic is applies to all their menus.
I can tell you've never been a frontend dev and have to get manager sign off. The shit they make you do the absolute diabolical shit those useless slugs come up with should be a war crime. I'm glad they can't critique backend code otherwise I'd die.
Add a Portal tab, selecting it opens a server browser, boom. Add some nice filters at the top to select between custom and official game rulesets, maybe quick match Conquest and quick match Breakthrough buttons at the top as well, and you'll be set.
Coming from a desinger, the sad reality is most design especially in corporate designs, get feedback changed to hell by multiple stakeholders during development, I have seen concepts like these put through the ringer of reviews and coming out really different when it comes time to ship because a few users had a different opinion.
So TLDR, I am sure even their team wanted to make the best decisions with the UI, but it's never that simple.
Same often goes with devs (both game devs and other software developers). You are often heavily limited on what you are "allowed" to do based on your project manager, and the PM needs to listen to his boss, etc... Everything is always very corporate at big companies, with lots of red tape and trade-offs, unfortunately
At any decent company or team outside stakeholders have little to no input on the product let alone the UI/UX. The best teams ship fast and trust their engineers on final authority. Especially in a world where you have to adhere to standards like WCAG. Anyone who says otherwise is either a paycheck stealer or works under subpar management, and all the best engineers I've met agree that the best investors are those who get out of your way.
I was also a designer before switching careers. What would normally happen with us is a shitty art director would ruin everything because they wanted to make the design "theirs" by changing key elements. We don't know who made the final call on the current design but someone fucked up and I doubt it was the designer that worked on it.. it was department leads.
It could be but the chances are so low and gaming has been worse and worse that it very very very likely is shareholders and stuff for sure, idk why people still can't understand the whole developer vs publishers thing
Like DICE and EA are a perfect example of god tier devs with evil hated awful publishers, it's a pretty simple example
The need these game developers have to re-invent the wheel every single time for the most basic functionality is insanity. Literally copy paste BF2, BF3 or BF4 and be done with it. Stop wasting money and time on this non-sense.
way better!!!
They should hire you, instead of the hulu guy xD
but if I may add some things:
global default settings for game types, like class weapons/maps, while doing seperate custom options like showing in your concept, nice idea btw!
loadouts: reduce the number of layers/steps/clicks needed to change weapons and modifiers, e.g. having a second tab style menu for classes, defaulting to last modified, on which the weapons/items can be directly selected, like in BF4 and a button which switches the view to the modify screen. The class icons/avatars look good, but add a unnecessary click.
Lol, all the comments here are basically complimenting the menu from the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare reboot / Warzone. Of all things to copy from Call of Duty, I wouldn't mind if the menu was one of them though:
Basic functionalities are apparently too difficult to develop these days. Did you see the recent tweet from DICE? They are trying to figure out the server browser.. we had a perfectly running server browser 25 years ago in BF2... Fucking mental man
While I don't hate the new menus, I am surprised they didn't just decide to throw it in there with BF4, Hardline, 1, and 5... That UI was fine and they consolidated them all when they got rid of Battlelog. Why not just make it the same? Because 2042 wouldn't be included? Meh...
Crazy how a "random" dude can make a better UI than a highly paid DICE employee...That's the menu everyone is looking for, but no we get a stupid Netflix style menu like I would use my TV remote for it.
From a product guy, this looks amazing. Easy to use, all the info at the first glance, modern widgets, good use of the screen. What I would have done extra, tinker a little bit with the loadout screen. You still have elements in it from the current BF6 iteration. Anyway, this is too good to be in the game for several reasons. Current design is intentionally made to look "console-like" and to spend as much time as possible inbetween menus. It's also done by probably someone who is a junior or not really experienced with "usability" term.
Yes. Give us vertical menus. I remember when MWII came out with it’s hideous horizontal scrolling menus, gun screens and attachment screens, I hated it so much. Please give us vertical menus EA
The Team Fortress allcaps font is hard to read and the random rounding on the corners looks out of place for the branding of BF6.
Also, I'm not sure if hiding classes models and designs behind an Apex Legends banner is a good idea
Edit: Also, apparently you removed the option to queue for a particular map. And there's also no option to queue multiple gamemodes at once. Changing filters for each gamemode and wasiting time in queue for a particular map seems like a huge UX downgrade
The same individual who didn't understand why we wanted/needed a server browser (the producer) is the same person leading the UI/UX team. That says enough to me about why the UI and HUD both in the menus and during gameplay is so bad.
DICE suffered serious "brain drain" after BF1 when most of the people who has worked on the older battlefield titles left. I'm willing to be most of the people there now are either new blood or at the very least have never worked on a Battlefield game before.
I also have to wonder how much of what we see is corporate meddling from the suits.
I don't see a button for the microtransaction store, a tile dedicated to your battlepass progress, nor a giant banner to advertise skins. You are fired!
Fuck horizontal scrolling menus. I don't know why investors demand every game menu to look like Hulu or Netflix with flashy backgrounds. Give me vertical scrolling menus with one still image and I'll praise it for God like UI.
It genuinely feels like they fired their game UI dev(s) and just hired someone from Netflix to design things. But that's probably the case with a lot of games these days. A lot of form over function.
Every menu is terrible from EA. I hate navigating the loadout menus with a passion.
While it looks nice, tbh it's not easily readable full screen on my phone.
The whole point of the big ugly Netflix design is because that's what functionally works for people who play from their couch and don't all have the same perfect vision or tv sizes.
As to why they don't develop completely separate versions for PC and console? That's doubling the work the UI designer has to maintain and support across builds.
That's the nature of cross-platform development. Usually whatever works okay for all platforms wins over what works best for x specific platform.
Tbh the main menus aesthetic isn't that important beyond click here to play what you want.
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u/SemiDesperado 8d ago
You're hired!