I don't have anything to show you right now, but have spoken with people that have been doing user research in this area.
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I hate this trend of UIs that use a free floating cursor on console
- Thread starter flyinj
- Start date
I don't have anything to show you right now, but have spoken with people that have been doing user research in this area.
So glad this thread was made. This drives me crazy way more than it should. It's not awful if implemented well, but that's such a minority of titles compared to how many do this sort of thing. Glad to see so many others here are on the same page. Hoping devs take note.
OP
OP
It's not that it doesn't feel "console-like"
It's that it is a sluggish garbage interface that sucks to use.
There's nothing "for the better" about it.
Would love to see the data of that research, cause a lot of research that gameDevs get is just really dumb. I remember on Ori we got a bunch of User Research feedback from people that wrote into their little dataSheets that they never played on a console or held a controller in their hands before. Well, duh, of course things like that might feel better to them than to people that are well versed with controllers.
You can't just trust data. There's a lot to gamefeel that you'll never get from user research. You have to KNOW what feels right and what doesn't. Look at the data here - the overwhelming majority voted for "I HATE them."
I personally couldn't agree more with the OP, this stuff just FEELS terrible. It's a PC User Interface that's IDEAL with a Mouse, but fairly cumbersome with a controller. It's sort of the easy way out for designers... "Hey guys, we have this really complex interface that'd work well on a PC with a mouse, but it'd be a pain in the ass to streamline it all so that it's also perfect if people play with a controller, what do we do?" "No problem, just implement a CURSOR! Job's done, who's in for Pizza?" -> There's a REASON why RTS games suck on consoles and it's this.
Also, this:
...makes me wonder if you're one of those folks who just generally feel that PC controls are better than controllers. Usually people with that attitude just try to shoehorn PC stuff into console games, cause 'the PC is doing it better anyway.' - But that really just means that you didn't want to do your job. If you ship your game on PC and console, the goal is to make sure that the UI works perfectly towards the strengths of both platforms instead of creating this awkward imbalance. Clunky UI can easily ruin an otherwise great game - So I'd approach this subject with a little more caution.
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I first saw this in Destiny, and most recently have been annoyed by it in Miles Morales tonight.
OP
OP
I really wanted to outright say that last part, but I was afraid it would be construed as "lazy devs"
But it really does feel like all signs point to "it's just easier to slap a cursor on the screen than to pay someone to make a good UI"
I fucking hate it with a passion. It's part of the reason why I dropped AC Odyssey. I usually like inventory management but the console cursor made it make it painful.
Miles Morales doesn't have it though?
On a console controller, touchpad and gyro act much like a mouse.
Yeah, its funny because in the PS3/360 era we had complaints that devs were forcing PC players to use console UIs that work poorly with a mouse/kb. This gen the trend has been to mimic a mouse cursor that works poorly with a controller.
I'm playing Demon's Souls right now, and the way you can pop the menu open and absolutely fly through everything you need to do as fast as you can hammer out the buttons feels so great. Imagine having to navigate it with a virtual cursor and then having to HOLD the button until the wheel fills up to confirm every choice, lol.
Well, I'm a dev and I think this shit is lazy. Remember how shitty MP3 players were before the iPod came around? User Interface matters a great deal. Of course you can just try to shoehorn whatever stupid thing apparently works on some other platform, but good design means that you ensure that the hardware and the UI works hand in hand. Slapping a Cursor into games that people play with controllers is just sloppy and never resulted in great game feel.
Kind of shocked by how many people that don't like it, I've always found it to be pretty good in Destiny and have been happy to see more games adopt it. It feels quicker to navigate through because I can just move straight to the item I want rather than cycling through a load of items to get there.
Yeah it does. In the menus. When you go to the suits tab where you can select between suits, mods. I'm not sure if it's anywhere else. It's possible you can navigate that screen with the d-pad, I thought I had done it once but other times when I tried it didn't work and I used the cursor. You can use it on the skills page too. I think from looking on youtube I'm realizing it's optional and you can use the d-pad instead.
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Playing the demo for Immortals was what put me off a purchase I was considering for ACO (same development team and reputed to have similar UIs/controls), and you just made me feel like I dodged a bullet.
The menus in Destiny are atrocious, so many tabs and slide-overs in multiple menus. I always open the wrong one by mistake (Back vs Start, or whatever you call those buttons).
Equipment screens with big square tiles, cursor on consoles, and holding a button to select all seem to have originated from Destiny. Idk if they were the first, but they seemed to have popularized these things. A lot of UIs seem to mimic Destiny lately.
At least on the PS4/5, all the games which have cursors needs to move with gyro controls (like how you move the cursor on Dreams).
The regular map? It's the only thing that is fine in Genshin. Everything else is clearly designed for mouse/touch controls and barely functions on a pad.
I just started up they game to make sure I'm not crazy and it turns out we're both right/wrong. The game has both. The d-pad navigates through menus like normal and it turns into a cursor when you move the stick. Weird but ok.
I was beginning to suspect that. Guess I have myself to blame, for using the stick. There were a few times I tried to do it with the d-pad and it wasn't doing what I wanted, guess I was doing something wrong.
I don't think it's a one-size-fits-all response but it can work extremely well for some games imo. I can understand the accessibility aspect as well, though we know from easy mode discussions the general forum isn't necessarily focused there - which is fair when the question is levelled directly at people instead of posed in that sense.
Destinys works really well because they designed it on a console for a console. the speed of it, the way it slows down when you go over an item. - The velocity it picks up the further you move make it feel better.
A lot of games just implement it to have a flat velocity curve so its the same speed everywhere - which is far too slow.
GT Sport also does this. You can navigate with the D-pad and then move around more with the cursor if you touch the stick.
A lot of games just implement it to have a flat velocity curve so its the same speed everywhere - which is far too slow.
GT Sport also does this. You can navigate with the D-pad and then move around more with the cursor if you touch the stick.
Would you consider the Destiny/2 UI sloppy, lazy and having poor game feel due to their use of a cursor?
For the Ubi games, it is because they want to have a single UI no matter what controls you are using. Swap to a mouse/keyboard and the only thing that changes are the button icons.
It's really good when implemented well like in Destiny where the UI design fits the cursor style and is well thought out. The very first time I saw it I went "wtf? why?". But after using it for a while I realised why, it feels really really natural and not having a cursor based UI in Destiny would actually slow down the inventory a lot.
The problem with it in other games is that they don't commit to it entirely, the UI design is still designed as if it was a traditional UI but with a cursor put in, like some of them want to do cursor based UI but also wants to implement sub menus and other things. The bounding box of the UI elements also do not feel as accurate in most games as they do in Destiny.
The problem with it in other games is that they don't commit to it entirely, the UI design is still designed as if it was a traditional UI but with a cursor put in, like some of them want to do cursor based UI but also wants to implement sub menus and other things. The bounding box of the UI elements also do not feel as accurate in most games as they do in Destiny.
I've not had to deal with this often, but it's never been a good experience. Seems pretty obvious that most console controllers weren't really designed for free cursors, just as using a mouse to emulate a pen for digital art is also pretty obviously not ideal. It's a bit of a different story with the Wii Remote, and probably the Steam controller too.
Yes I hate this and it's just baffling
why is it a thing in the first place?
Why is everyone copying it?
why is it a thing in the first place?
Why is everyone copying it?
I love this system for the fact that:
1. You can place things freely on the screen in a non-linear fashion. A bad example of non-linear and d-pad is the diamond shaped skill tree in DA: Inquisition.
2. You can highlight things more intuitively in order to read more about them (great for stat explanations in RPG's)
3. You can place the cursor wherever you want before the screen loads.
4. Using soft motions to steer the joystick is more comfortable than rapidly pressing the d-pad.
All this being said though, there are good and bad implementations. Lots of games could do without a cursor but there are also lots of games that would be better if they had it as a featyre. Overall I prefer it if it's well implemented and I don't think it's cumbersome at all to move a cursor with a joystick instead of pressing the d-pad.
1. You can place things freely on the screen in a non-linear fashion. A bad example of non-linear and d-pad is the diamond shaped skill tree in DA: Inquisition.
2. You can highlight things more intuitively in order to read more about them (great for stat explanations in RPG's)
3. You can place the cursor wherever you want before the screen loads.
4. Using soft motions to steer the joystick is more comfortable than rapidly pressing the d-pad.
All this being said though, there are good and bad implementations. Lots of games could do without a cursor but there are also lots of games that would be better if they had it as a featyre. Overall I prefer it if it's well implemented and I don't think it's cumbersome at all to move a cursor with a joystick instead of pressing the d-pad.
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I want to see that research as this cursor style UI is anything but intuitive or comfortable to use on a controller stick.
I think the cursor works ok for the new AC games. It seems weird in the menu screen, but it comes to its right when you are actually managing your inventory, swapping gear etc.