Destiny character screen redesign
A wireframe exercise in UX
Abstract
I dislike the cursor system Bungie implemented in Destiny.
In my personal opinion, it is not suitable for the current standard gamepad configuration. The joysticks don’t provide the same range of motion as a mouse. They do not possess the same fine accuracy needed to select small, specific items or the speed to go across larger distances, which makes navigating many of these screens a lot slower.
As such, I want to explore using a more traditional console interface that makes better use of the buttons to navigate through, with an emphasis on quickly accessing important menus and information.
Introduction
I will specifically focus on the character screen of Destiny to make it a more targeted study, and because that’s the screen which requires speedy accessibility the most.
Having watched “Destiny's Tenacious Design and Interface. 2016” GDC talk, I understand a lot of the decisions and reasoning behind them. They highlight accessibility and aesthetics, while putting efficiency on a lower scale of priority due to aesthetics making up for a fair bit of functionality.
Also, the fact that the cursor started as a UI-wide requirement due to the director (according to the GDC talk) while I’m not addressing the director myself will obviously have an effect on my design and its relation with the rest of the game’s UI. Because of this I hope to highlight this as an exercise in UI and UX practice on my perusal side as opposed to a serious professional consideration and improvement on the original version of the UI, which I still respect.
They also have an amount of playtesting that I don’t have access to, and to which a lot of design decisions are backed up by, so my individual research and opinions won’t really hold the same weight.
Regardless, I will attempt to make a point for an improved design based on efficiency with the gamepad in mind.
I consider the gamepad and mouse and keyboard configurations to have very different UX principles. Bungie successfully married a lot of it in Destiny 1 despite it being a console exclusive title. It paid off as they developed a very commercially successful UI system which carried over to Destiny 2 and had a very easy time translating over to the PC version of the title, and also influenced designs in many console RPGs released thereafter such as the Assassin's Creed franchise or No Man’s Sky (2016).
But in my case I have found myself frustrated at the speed at which one can access the different aspects of the character screen in the console version. While I understand the decisions made, focused on making the most out of the cursor while supporting both accessibility and aesthetics, I personally lean a bit more into the accessibility and efficiency spectrum, and as such I hope to change the priority of the original designs to improving efficiency.
Body
My UI lacks the context and homogeneity that the official one has. As It was mentioned in Destiny's Tenacious Design and Interface (GDC. 2016), the entire concept of the cursor came from making an interesting “directory” screen, and from there the creative director imposed the restriction on the UI team to design all of the UI to be used with that cursor.
They mitigated some of the drawbacks of the cursor design by doing some nifty tricks, such as calculation in expanding menus that can tell if you want to go into the menu or up and down the categories.
Admittedly, part of what makes the current UI slower and more frustrating to negotiate with is an engineering and performance issue. While on higher end PCs it’s less of an issue, on less powerful platforms such as the PS4 and Xbox One generation of consoles (or even PS3/Xbox 360 for the original Destiny (2014)) and lesser PCs many of the UI elements take a while to load.
So my variations proposed here would be made assuming these are mitigated or even fixed, mostly ignoring the performance and assuming it’s at its best. At the same time though, if input is registered while graphics and other such frivolities are being loaded, having the tactile response of the controller’s buttons and some muscle memory would allow experienced players to navigate to where they want to even before much has loaded, partially mitigating the biggest limiting factor at the moment.
To do all of this I decided to keep a lot of the already existing designs as they’ve managed to have a very nice both functional and aesthetically pleasing display in their overall UI. So I will be modifying the inputs and a bit of the display while still staying faithful to the original vision.
Execution
The first step here was to divide the Weapons and Armour categories up, making them accessible by opposite inputs right from the bat.
I ended up going for opening the character screen in a very similar fashion to what it is now, but instead of having to move the cursor around, the user would either press to the left or right of the D-pad, selecting Weapons or Armour respectively.
This would then play an animation moving the elements to the side in order to focus on the selected category.
Bibliography
- GDC. 2016. Destiny's Tenacious Design and Interface. [Online]. [Accessed 30/11/21]. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pxlxYKLIwc
- Destiny. 2014. Bungie. Activision
- Destiny 2. 2017. Bungie. Activision
- IMS. 2018. Thinking spatially: inventory systems. [Online]. [Accessed 30/11/21] Available at: https://ims.improbable.io/insights/thinking-spatially-inventory-systems
- Design Doc. 2019. Inventory UX Design - How Zelda, Resident Evil, and Doom Make Great Game Menu UX. [Online]. [Accessed 30/11/21]. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_3BUU9ZmNo
- Vogel, J. 2011. My Two Gaming Pet Peeves For the Day. [Online]. [Accessed 30/11/21]. Available from: http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2011/12/my-two-gaming-pet-peeves-for-day.html
- Glibtiger15. 2021. Destiny 2 - Character screen. [Online]. [Accessed 30/11/21] Available from: https://steamlists.com/destiny-2-character-screen/
- Oliveri, S. 2020. UI of Destiny 2: The Character Screen. [Online]. [Accessed 1/12/21] Available from: https://medium.com/@saoliveri95/ui-of-destiny-2-the-character-screen-3463f8fc0e3a
- Klaverweide, R. 2019. Destiny 2 UI x Visual Design. [Online]. [Accessed 22/2/22] Available from: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/YaOeX6