Oh boy. It’s sad that each month this post gets longer.
- Font inconsistency
You have a great font for headers, but the body text looks boring. The most generic font does not fit the game or the rest of the interface. It’s literally everywhere:
And don’t get me started on those terrible key prompts straight from consoles. It just doesn’t match anything. Pick one style and stick to it, or you end up with a mess like this:
The level next to my nickname is in styled font. Main tabs and headers also use this font. So does the 2/6 loadout counter.
But everything else: nickname, ingame money, secondary tabs, some hint about loadouts and gear descriptions - it all uses some generic font.
- Alignment inconsistency
Take a look at this:
Can you see it? When Gear is selected, the secondary tabs (Loadouts and Packs) are right below it. This is great! That’s how it should be!
Let’s click on Career:
Perfect! It moved right below the selected tab. Let’s forgive the not-so-centered alignment and how it uses the basic font.
The only thing left is to click on Marketplace:
Aweso—wait, what? For the love of Orendi, what happened here?
- Ordering inconsistency
The order of loot packs in Marketplace is different than when buying them directly from Gear menu.
This is Gear:
The ordering is perfect, which is made even more critical due to the fact that you can’t change it. I’d move the Eldrid pack to the bottom row, but it’s still great.
Now, the same menu in Marketplace:
It’s still an improvement over pre-Alani-patch version (which was a total mess), but the default ordering should be by type, not alphabetical. Now the two don’t match, and rarity-based packs are mixed with faction-based ones.
- Tiny buttons on high resolution screens
The buttons at the bottom of the screen look like an afterthought. Like “Okay, we need a button to apply changes! Allan, put there a text in the first sans-serif font you find and let’s call it a day.”
Take a look how it appears on a 2560x1440 monitor:
This screams for a large “OKAY BOSS” button the size of the brigher orange part.
Here’s a mockup in glorious MS Paint:
It’s hard to notice, but I also got rid of the [O] and [P] button hints at the top. I’m playing on W/A/S/D and using mouse, I can’t reach O/P comfortably, so why would I even need that?
Also, note that the avatar is displayed twice for some reason: at the top left corner and above the popup.
- Drag and drop in Gear menu
Drag and drop works when you try to drop something into loadout, but it doesn’t work the other way.
Basically, all of the Gear menu seems to favor controller input, with the mouse added as an afterthought. Please get someone unfamiliar with the game and observe how they’re trying to accomplish simple tasks with a mouse - it’s a great way to get raw user experience for improvements.
- Endgame screens displayed way too long
Ooh, you won. You like it, don’t you? Here. Look at it. LOOK AT IT.
The “Victory! Final score: xyz” text lingers for at least 10 seconds for no apparent reason. It’s totally not needed to see it for more than two seconds. I can’t speed it up or make it go away by clicking - I’m forced to stare at it for all of its duration. It’s probably loading something in the background, but why does it take so long?
- Confusing colors in Gear descriptions
I got a rare gear! Let’s take a look at its stats:
Wait, what could “Second Shield” mean? I don’t remember anything in the game calling “Overshield” a “Second Shield”.
Hmm… Maybe this could fix the confusion?
By the way, please don’t use abbreviations in descriptions if you’re not 100% sure the player knows what they mean. I have never played MOBAs and was not familiar with the term “CC”, so I had to minimize the game and search for it. There’s lots of space to fit “Crowd Control” there, so I don’t see why it isn’t written in full.
8. Missing icon for expanding chat history - fixed!
Hooray, the annoying pink rectangle was fixed in Alani update in May.
- Low quality minimap frame
I have set textures quality to very high, yet some parts of the interface are pixel fest.
Compare the selected part of the frame to the relatively hi-res texture on the gun’s display. The difference is clear.
I believe this is just the regular minimap frame being upscaled, but you could just include a separate file for the larger version and use it instead.
- Narrow name of leftmost pedestal’s player
This is how a character’s name is displayed on pedestals 2, 3, 4 and 5:
And this is pedestal 1:
It is visibly narrower. Same applies to player’s name (but I cut them out of screenshots).
- Results showing incorrect score
My team won 100-50 by surrender, but the results tab shows 100-100.
I have only seen this 2 or 3 times. But again, I’m not playing too often, so it could still be present.
- Unnecessary wait for the map vote timer
You have 10 players. If four of them vote on map 1, and three of them say “no preference”, then the remaining three cannot change the result of the vote.
So, why doesn’t the timer end at that point? We’re all forced to wait 30 seconds, even though we can’t change our vote and the result is already decided.
It makes even less sense when 6 out of 10 players voted on one map, yet it still won’t proceed:
I made a separate thread on how to improve the voting system.
- Keybinding inconsistency (and another ordering inconsistency)
I’m left-handed and I remapped the ultimate skill to Z, and F to jump. Let’s see how the interface reflects this.
Skills:
Looks good, Z is the ultimate after all. Note the order: Q-Z-E.
Gear:
Z is correct, but the order is different. Here it’s Q-E-Z.
(I stitched two images since I didn’t have a screenshot with all three prompts at once.)
Helix:
The order is the same as in Skills, but the game forgot I remapped ultimate to Z and it’s showing the default (F) instead. So I activate the mutation with my jump key, not the ultimate skill key.
So, two issues here:
- The order in Gear is different to Skills and Helix.
- In Helix, the interface is showing and reacting to default key binding (F) instead of actual one (Z).
- Ugly, misaligned keybind icons
Sorry, I can’t find a better word here. The key prompts are just ugly and don’t match anything else in the game. They’re not even aligned properly.
- Stretched font in Sort menus
As opposed to issue 10, where one name is narrower than the other four, the Sort popup displays text that is wider than normal.
Compare the sort types’ names with Select/Cancel text or the gear description at the bottom of this image. The Newest/Rarity/Type/Faction/etc. text is visibly wider than usual.
By the way, why is Type the only sort option that has a reversed version?
- Unclickable Characters sub-tab in Marketplace (fixed?)
I believe this was added in the Alani update. I unlocked her with a Hero Key, so I don’t even know what this section holds - clicking it has no effect for me.
Update: This tab is no longer visible to me after the June 2 hotfix. Will re-check once Pendles is released.
- Absurd minimap scaling + content outside its circle
This is related to issue 9 above, but I want to keep the list order untouched, so it goes into number 17.
The scale of minimap is different for each story mission.
Here’s the expanded minimap on The Algorithm:
Void’s Edge map is so big that its circle doesn’t fit on the screen:
Also take a look at the edges of the minimap circle. Not too smooth.
The Experiment, with The Map That Just Doesn’t Fit The Circle:
(See the part near Miko’s hand.)
The Sentinel looks good. It’s probably the only story mission with normal minimap scale.
It’s probably because there’s no distant, “hidden” part of the map for the final boss fight, like on Algorithm and Heliophage.
Finally, the MINImap of The Heliophage:
It could be about two times larger and it would still fit in the circle.
- Yet another color issue in Gear descriptions
Usually it’s just the number that’s colored differently (see first image in issue 7).
But for “after taking shield damage”, the whole text after the number is gray.
- Lag when scrolling rarity-ordered Gear
On my certainly not weak PC (i7-5930K, 980 Ti), I get massive lag when trying to scroll through my gear bank if it’s ordered by rarity.
See the video where I try to keep scrolling with the same speed on the differently sorted gear list:
There’s also the issue of the list jumping if you scroll before clicking to focus it. It’s not shown in the video above, since I believe everyone experienced it. It’s also not fixed since forever.
- Weird character rotation when using mouse
Yet another obvious 1:1 port from console controls.
If you hold the left mouse button and move it a single pixel to the side, then the character keeps spinning with constant speed into that direction. Even if you move the mouse to the other side, it’ll keep spinning the same way until you release the mouse button.
Here’s how it looks, with the mouse cursor barely moving:
This is how it works in the rest of the “rotating 3D object” world:
Note how the speed and distance covered by mouse cursor is connected to the angle the object rotated. In Battleborn, only the direction matters, with the speed being constant as long as the button is pressed.
- Unable to focus Loot Packs with the mouse
During the Lootpocalypse, I bought quite a lot of faction loot packs. I bought 5 (one for each faction), opened all 5, then bought another 5, and so on. All of that in Gear tab (not Marketplace).
After the second repetition of the above, I noticed that I can’t focus the last item on the list. This only affected the mouse cursor, as I was able to focus the item with keyboard arrows.
After yet another repetition of buying and opening 5 loot packs, I now couldn’t focus two last items.
I didn’t test it further, but it kinda seemed that it would continue to three last items if I kept buying and opening packs.
Summary
The devil is in the details.
These issues are not breaking the game. Most of them are not even going to be noticed by the majority. However, things like these scream “unfinished game” for me, even if they’re minor.
The interface has gone through some tweaks since the previous test I was able to try, but it’s still offputting. It’s not intuitive, it’s inconsistent in ordering and its use of fonts and button sizes, doesn’t fully support mouse features and instead focuses on console buttons, just remapped to some uncomfortable O/P or K/L keys, as hinted by ugly prompts.
We now know that these things are on the bottom of the priority list. Guess we’ll have to wait a few more months for Battleborn to be called “polished”, while some other games manage to get that at launch.
