Good Design, Bad Design Vol. 7 - The Best and Worst of Graphic and UI Design in Games ~ Design Doc
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ต.ค. 2019
- Learn a lot! Sign up for 2 free months of Skillshare Premium: skl.sh/designdoc3 . Thanks to Skillshare for sponsoring this video.
Good Design, Bad Design Vol. 7 is here, with another group of video games with great and terrible graphic design. Learn about conveyance, affordances, good looking UI improvements in a series that could use some more, and how Queen Latifah should be the narrator for more things. And there are JoJos.
This episode contains:
Sayonara Wild Hearts
Rayman
Celeste
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven
Monster Hunter: World (Vanilla)
Patreon: / designdoc
Twitter: / warbot400
#monsterhunterworld #jojo #celeste - เกม
Quick notes about the MHW Segment.
1. This is covering just the vanilla game, not the Iceborne expansion. Though we mention the improved hub.
2. I didn't clarify that there are item boxes and quest boards (or the Handler) near every facility. I wasn't explicit about this because it didn't change the argument since the game spawns you near the trade yard every time you return to Astera. So if you want to eat at the canteen you'll have to walk through the trade yard for it. You can take a quest from the handler after eating of course but you're still walking across the hub before starting the next hunt unless you're fine with skipping the buffs you get from the canteen.
Design Doc yes, that doesn’t change much about what is wrong about it, but what most vet players tend on doing is selecting the gathering hub to spawn because everything other than resource and investigation collecting (and you got 50 of those and 5 quests between resource collecting) could be found there. At least in base game.
Just pointing out for information
I guess this video was made before iceborne.
In base MHW, you are spawned right by the quest board and item box. You can easily accept a quest, move oner to the botanical box, then climb the stairs over to the canteen while you are loading.
Iceborne and seliana closes the distance between these hotspots as well.
I'd like to address the issues you brought up in the Monster Hunter bit.
1. Every single problem with how big Astera is, and how empty the Gathering Hub is, is fixed x1000 with Seliana. The new Gathering Hub is especially wonderful, having all but the unnecessary research turn-in and Tail raiders, which you only need to see once every like 6 hunts or so. Additionally, they even went back to the Research Base and added more to it, including a convenient item chest and Palico station etc,so you can't even complain about that one lol.
It just doesn't seem really fair to criticize MHW as a whole when it's already been fixed with the expansion. That IS the game now. Opting to not get it/play it is just being disingenuous to yourself and your viewers.
2. It's not a problem to run upstairs if you do it in the right order. When you pick your quest, it'll take a bit to load, so during that time you can go grab your meal. You have wait for it to load regardless, so you might as well fill that time with running over to the lift and eating. Which, if you're just grabbing the Chef's Choice for Max HP anyway, and hitting Start to skip the animation, it takes 5 seconds.
Other random points:
- You can sort your investigations to a specific monster species, putting the ones you don't want first to the top of the list and keeping you from having to scroll pages to find it. You can also now "delete all unregistered investigations" with a single button. Also the number of Investigations you can hold was nearly doubled from 250 to 400, and you can now select up to 75.
- The crafting wishlist has 6 PAGES of 6 slots now.
- Item loadouts now ask if you want to override your Radial menu or not, letting you keep your Radial settings and just swap items around. You can also edit the Radial menus and item bars of individual loadouts without having to leave the item loadout screen.
- Crafting consumables takes like 30 seconds once every 50 hunts tops. If you keep running out of Mega Pots, maybe you should be growing more Herbs and Honey. :p Besides that, this is why they made item loadouts, so you can refill with one button.
And lastly, you end the video by saying, "Tweaking the menus, UI, and mechanics to be cleaner and friendlier to newcomers Can still retain all the complexity and depth that series fans know and love."
Frankly, I would like some concrete examples of how you think it could be further 'streamlined' without removing ANY of the information or capabilities. Because as a lifelong fan, this IS the streamlined/simplified version of the game. The older ones were WAY worse and more convoluted and arbitrary in its design! This IS the Hand-holdy MH. I'm struggling to conjure what you could possibly mean to streamline it any further without actually REMOVING menus or information or mechanics. Maybe in your next video? :p
@@Vtubears I'm guessing that you didn't watch the video before making this comment, considering that he mentions that this problem is mitigated in the expansion in the section of the video related to this.
20:21 for reference.
For me, diegetic menus work best when they're optional - Yes, you can walk from the shop to shop in Splatoon 2's hub, or you can use L/R to swap between shops after accessing the first shop from the pause menu. Depends on your mood that day. And you can (as I usually did back when I was playing) mix and match, going to the first shop by walking and then L/Ring between them. That gives the best of both worlds - the immersion of diegetic menus for shopping, the convenience of, well, actual, honest to god, menus.
I know an even better way to make it diegetic; simply have a servant character do all that for you! Just talk to the servant, and you'll get access to all the menus/shops you want. In-game, this can be explained by giving your servant a to-do list lol.
If that's a little too convenient, then maybe make the servant only able to do the simpler, more tedious tasks, so you are still required to visit the actual locations once in a while for more specialised tasks.
An optional menu, that lets me access all the facilities in MH, would be a dream.
I've wanted this for years now, ever since I replayed Fire Emblem 9 a while ago.
Reydriel monster hunter: generations actually kind-of does this. Like World, it has a bunch of different side activities, the equivalent of tail raiders, gardening, and several other things that weren’t in world. Each has there own diagetic location, often on different screens with load times. However, most of them can also be accessed from your housekeeper cat. Just as importantly, your housekeeper is present in the games equivalent of the gathering hub, so you almost never have to leave the multiplayer area while questing with friends.
I say kind-of because there are some features that inexplicably were not added to the housekeeper list, so you still sometimes have to leave the hub, but it’s actually a much smoother design than just about any other MH from a playability standpoint.
@@isaic16 That sounds great!
Phantasy Star Online 2 also suffers this problem. The only saving grace is the hub area is packed with social interactions that it breaks the stress a bit.
15:20 probably because japanese need less 'letter' to make a sentence
This is where the localisation team needs to do their job and just ditch those long sentences lol.
Not that the moves being named after quotes in the first place is a good idea even in the original Japanese version. Or, if they want to do that in a more acceptable manner, just don't display move names in the HUD, and only have them in the movelist menu...
"何をやったってしくじるもんなのさ、ゲス野郎はな" is still hella long to be slotted in a menu like this. The localisation team aren't the ones that added a function for text scrolling.
@@ExeloMinish Yeah, I acknowledged that the original devs were the main ones at fault for such a stupid thing lol.
Not entirely true, but Japanese speakers like to use a lot of short forms and abbreviations in informal situations just like in other cultures. As a combination of logographic (kanji) and syllabic (kana) writing systems, the space saved for making a complete Japanese sentence isn't that much compared to alphabetic writing systems. You also need to take the extra kanas needed to make grammatic declension (for past tense, passive voice, negation, etc.) into account. The true space-saver writing system in modern day is Chinese which employs complete logographic writing system and without grammatical declension.
@@ifurkend At the cost of having to memorise about a couple thousand of those logographs lol
"Think of games like Rock Band. [...] Players get tunnel vision when focusing on their track of notes. It's very common for a player to not see what's going on in the background at all." So much so that the currently existing fanbase plays on Clone Hero, whose "background" is solid black for almost every song.
I do play a lot of a rhyme game name OSU
And every map do have a background art or worst a video and well 99% of the player juste dim it to be pitch dark
Ps big respect to all player that can play with a video in the background
LUL OSU
But seriously who plays with BGA on
that freaking scout's a spy
The talk about affordances and convayence like in Rayman is why playtesting is so important. It isn't as simple as playing the game yourself, but also having other people try it blindly and see if they have trouble. The Rayman devs didn't see a problem with the invisible triggers because they put them in and knew where they were. The Eyes of Heaven devs didn't need to wait for move names to scroll by because they named/translated the moves themselves and mapped the buttons.
Or maybe both developers did and they just left it in. You never know that.
I played the original Rayman on the GBA Version, I remember constantly of those triggers being show as an spark
*"Dio has this move called 'There's no escape', who knows what that does"*
*_Me: He throws knives_*
*"Turns out it's a knife throwing move"*
_JoJo has either ruined me, or made me better_
No, it has allowed us to ascend
Dio only does 3 things, throws knives, stops time and sucks blood
@@thisperson345 and crush Jotaro with a fucking Roadroller
As I have no knowledge of JOJO, The first thing that I imagined with this name was some sort of spell that traps/roots the enemy, but why would I play a JOJO game if I'm not a fan of it? I don't know which one is more correct.
@@HenrykeSchorr the latter
"I love JoJo"
And also your MHW character is literally called "Joey Jojo". That's like, 1.5x the usual amount of "Jo".
Amazing. As if i didn't like this channel enough already.
Why do you watch it then lol
@@akioja1112 what
The video, idk why i didnt say it
Potato Potato
I think you misread his comment cuz
I mean, Joey JoJo Jr. is a Simpsons reference
I'll admit, the Monster Hunter part being in both got a chuckle out of me - and I'm someone who's been with the series since Tri. Though while I agree with most of it... I'll admit that there's a *lot* of satisfaction in the prep-work and planning out a good build, and I'll be sad if that gets simplified. (Note: Simplified does not necessarily mean made easier - the complexity is nice, not knowing how the complexity works is not.)
I personally like the prep work before a hunt, or even having to do small gathering scouts before hunts just to get some rare items to make strong healing/support items. It kinda makes you feel like a true tribal hunter, prepping for this awesome, monumental hunt days in advance, honing their skills and pulling all the stops to ensure the hunt goes smoothly and both they and their party come out victorious. I wonder if that was what they were going for when they made the menus and hubs they way are: to kinda convey the disadvantageous inconvenience of a somewhat primitive society where not everything is at your arm's reach
@@thehermit8618 The preparation before each hunts is one of the thing that I really like in the older MH games since you can't just restock things in the middle of the hunts and you were really short on inventory slots, and on top of that you would end up going against monsters that were weak against different elements and damage types. I really dislike that they made it possible to restock as much as you want as long as you got those items in your item box and change equipment in the middle of the hunt. They basically made preparations before a hunt be way less important by allowing people to restock and change equipment in the middle of the hunts.
@@shiningdramon1 Agree. They pretty much destroyed the prep game of MH in World. I understand what they were going for somewhat, but I think there's a middle ground that would let people course-correct while still keeping them thinking about what they're doing and about the hunt as a whole. For instance, your tent is tent-sized. It could reasonably hold one change of armour and another pouch-worth of items. But my entire bottomless box? Too much.
@@shiningdramon1 I imagine that has been the case but I'm surprised there isn't a veteran option for those who enjoy that part of the game. Also I think it would been cool if they gave extra money and a few more rewards for not using mantles, restocking, etc. For expeditions it makes sense but for missions seems too gimmicky. I always thought using special items penalized me and took away rewards so I never used them lol obviously I know better now but I thought it was a bit of bummer that it didn't. I'm definitely not a fan of going on gathering quests and I tend to always forget to bring potions, whetstones, traps, etc.. MHW having your whole box available inside of quest is a saving grace for me.. Since so many times my friend had to cancel quest because I didn't bring anything or don't have any room for gathering, forgetting pixaxes... Just too much preparation and I personally don't like it but I understand some do.. I think penalizing is a good way of rewards those who do come prepared.
@@janinmarquez-medina6265 In Iceborne, they're changing the temporal mantle so that while it does have a longer active duration, each time it is used, it loses 20 seconds of the active duration. In a way, I can see this being pretty interesting of an idea, where mantles are helpful, but they're like any other tool and can wear down over time during a mission since missions are temporary anyway.
I've been with the series since 2ndG (United for you English speakers) on the PSP and honestly, Tri was where I felt the game started to do a lot more a lot better. The thing with Tri's hub is that it wasn't too big nor too small, with only the garden being separate and honestly, I think that's why I couldn't really get into using it a lot (I did, but 9/10, I'd just say "fuck it" and just let it be on its own). To that extent, I will give World praise for just putting it in the tradeyard.
From an engine standpoint, the reason the workshop is in its own area is due to the effects inside. Seriously, I'm rocking an RTX2080 with 2k displays and that place is where my FPS goes from a silky smooth 144hz to 100, so I get why it wasn't also in the tradeyard, but the walk from one side to the other just to access the stairs OR elevator system is just a royal pain in the ass, and I'm calling the game out on it. Part of it is because some missions do not let you pick where to return, which I now do appreciate the Gathering Hub more for being the good, old Tri Hub size (yes, I have to use the elevator system to access the workshop, but at least I can get to it in under a second).
So, a solution that can keep everyone happy? Well, the people at the HQ create bounties, right? How about one for an extra elevator system that puts you at the tradeyard's entrance as part of your HR graduation? An alternative entrance that you can choose to use or not, just like the damage numbers. Don't want it? Just don't complete the bounty or just don't pick it. Want it? Well now you can have Gathering Hub speed of access from point A to point B. You aren't sacrificing the need to do prep work, or simplifying things too greatly either: it's just another point you can choose to land at or a point where you can access the elevator system.
"Bizzare"
Good design: design doc using puns to example conveyance so i know when to laugh
Wow. Sayonara Wild Hearts looks incredible.
I loved it, but then again, I've loved anything that Simogo has put out since ever so I might be biased.
It's the best game I've played in years, and I play a lot of games. Very simple but everything feels perfect and I smiled the whole time.
the visual looks incredible but i hate the Font score on the top left.
it's looks like a game that's stylish but lack substance to me though.
Looks like an overly neon mess with no actual gameplay to me.
My favorite example of Celeste's teaching is the moving block in Chapter 4. You can press up and down while standing on a block to change its direction. Until you learn this, you can't access the main path, and instead need to go through side paths.
One of the side paths puts you on a block moving left. When you ride on it you come across a low ceiling that you need to duck under, so you do that by holding down, and in response the block moves down. The game teaches you an entirely new mechanic by having the player use an old, commonly-used and intuitive mechanic, and I think that's really neat.
just by looking at the thumbnail i knew you were finally talking about the jojo game.
oh how waited for this day to come.
Silver Rathalos is a Jojo villain ?! 😱😱😱
@@DiavoloGrenadine uhhh... No, it was the Japanese sound effects
@@randominternetuser5872 No waaay..
I guess I liked the feel of the bad parts of old MH UI because it adds to the grungy, grindy and manual feel of the whole premise. You go out to collect stones, you read books to find information on the monster you want to hunt, you run around town to get prepared. But I’m probably just weird lol.
4:39 I think you’re conflating Affordances and Signifiers. Affordances allow and action while Signifiers telegraph an option. For example: an invisible hole in a wall affords a player to walk through it but does a bad job signaling to a player that they can walk through it. Norman clarifies this in an updated version of The Design of Everyday Things.
one of the many things I love about monster hunter is that it doesn't use boss health bars but instead relies on visual clues on how much hp the monster has left. broken parts, scratches, even the animations! they can get exhausted or start to limp when they try to escape. I just love that
You don't actually need to delete your older investigations. Once you reach the 250 limit it will auto override your oldest one. Also, while i understand some issues like the radical menu nonsense once a game starts to have plenty mechanics you will have menus on menus on menus. It's easy to say "look at how this platformer teaches you all these things very easily" but a full on rpg will need menus to make it all doable.
Ah of course! It’s so simple-to delete the annoying clutter, i simply need to ignore it and let it take up valuable menu space!
That's not a solution. It actually creates more problems for people saving investigations for later. I love the entire MH franchise, flaws and all, but the crappy investigation system is one of the few things I agree are just bad.
A platformer is the simplest and easiest to grasp usually. Even when there's more moves than jump and attack, they're all still easy to learn
@@ekki1993 MHW's version is pretty streamlined and lowkey actually, to the point that new players likely won't know what they are and ignore them. The system for world's major flaw is the RNG, I would say, but they shower you with so many investigations that you're bound to have some relevant ones. You just mark the ones you want to keep, and they'll never get deleted. It also cycles out the oldest investigations first, so as you rank up, useless low rank investigations get deleted so you don't need to look at them.
me: :(
design doc: releases another good design bad design
me: :D
also me
also me
Legit, my week has been trash lol
So it's true that JoJo fans who play CyberConnect games like Eyes of Heaven and All Star Battle says that those games are great at recreating manga's art style, aesthetic, characters move sets/voice acting and fanservices but they have lots of gameplay issues, balancing and questionable design choices... Guess the only perfect JoJo fighting game would be Capcom's Heritage for the Future.
Well it's one thing to be well designed game and another to do good fan service. They don't have to be exclusive of each other the developers just fucked it up by focusing to much on eye candy rather than actual mechanics
Heritage for the future is pretty unbalanced itself dude. Just look at Hol Horse.
@@raveelemental4928 COUGH COUGH PET SHOP COUGH COUGH
All STar Battle only real Fault is unlocking characters and roughly 70's stage are bad for frame rate issue. otherwise its a competent 3D fighter
Arena fighters unfortunately seem to be a dump for mediocre games for people to bank off anime licenses off of.
While I can't say anything of the more general combat mechanics, I think EoH was pretty concise with character-specific abilities and skills. The fact that selecting a skill in the menu brings up a text box explicitly stating every thing the move can do + misc. capabilities is, while not intuitive, should at least be... sub-satisfactory (and God forbid a move's description cross-references another move on a different character because of the quote names). But my biggest criticism is that the game (plus All Star Battle) just doesn't want to tutorialize anything. As someone that put the movesets on the JoJo Wiki to try and help people understand what the game and characters can offer, it took me two weeks of playing to figure out what the magenta and green flashes by the character icons were:
Flash Cancels and Flash Bursts, activated with L1+R1. If you have an understanding of fighting games, you can immediately grasp what they do based off the names plus a single demonstration alone, but good luck knowing how to input them when going in blind.
On the other hand, I'm surprised you didn't bring up the mistranslations potentially affecting the gameplay experience and learning process. Look up Pet Shop or THE WORLD Diego's skills (yes I'm advertising the wiki); them and a few other characters have ability names that are inconsistent with EX variants (which certainly doesn't help with the quote names), or if you look up Weather Report or Funny Valentine's movesets, the desc. will straight up have false and misleading information in the text, saying that X move does Y when it actually can't, or stating something that implies that X move does Y when it actually does Z. This is definitely a case where the translators did/could not game-test to verify that their translations were correct.
I'm sure you would have mentioned Pet Shop if you saw that abomination's ability list.
So I see that JoJo’s history of bad/inconsistent localization bleeds into the games even. Man, at this point I feel like the western fandom is just cursed with this forever.
me yesterday: plot twist is that the jojo game will be in a bad game design segment
actual video: jojo is in bad game design
10:48 That also adds an emotional element with a cliff hanger: it looks the character is about to die (NOOO!), something unexpected happened (WTF?!) and the character is saved (Phew...).
It's a story telling technique mixed with gameplay.
Criticizes Monster Hunter
MH Community: So you have chosen death.
MH have been lost for me a long long time my last one is MH3 on PSP
until it came back with multiplatform MHW , I'm so glad Capcom decide to bring it back to console and to PC.
Nah we agree with him
"Monster hunter's UI sucks."
"Yes we know."
You mean the "MHW Community"
Judging from the amount of data in the wiki sites for past series, mostly gathered by hand, it boils down what Mr. Golem said: "Yes we know."
Cuz why wouldn't you open up a spreadsheet if you are trying to get better? And why would you need to know the difference between 44 and 45 if you just want to enjoy screwing around with your friends?
I love monster hunter, but the sheer amount of chores you have to do in that game...even in world wears me down so much. Like I can't count the amount of times I readied up for a tough quest for 25 minutes only to find out I forgot to eat and/or reproduce nutrients or reequip the right doohicky for my stupid cat or get the spanish guy to grow some mushrooms I need to craft some stuff i'm running out of or clear out my investigations or replenish my whetfish scale +'s for the f i s h m e t a...like...a lot of times I have a few more quests in me--but turn it off cuz I can't stand to look at any more menus. I'd definitely appreciate if some of that could be streamlined in some way.
1:43 "...my Cohesive Style Leaderboard:"
*shows Mario Party 8*
*and gungnir*
Cohesive does not mean good for everybody, it just means consistent.
The whole bottom row is a joke. Look at the others.
@@lamptrent Shh, don't spoil it!
I'm more surprised you're looking at Mario Party 8 and not Sonic Chronicles
"In previous games you had to blindly wonder"
. . .
*Paintballs!*
You can only use those after finding the Monster first. Unless I’m forgetting something.
Also after grinding for materials long enough in old games you didn't even need paintballs, you knew the terrain and monster behavior by heart/killed it before it could even change areas.
Its true MH wasn't always this accessible to newcomers and i had a hard time adjusting to all, but some of this new QoL choices just make players rely too much on them, to the point even the easier hunts in older games become frustratingly difficult to players who started out with World.
What's the point of making a new game more accesible to newcomers if they are incapable of transitioning to older games?
@@thehermit8618 I can definitely believe that the older games wouldn't necessarily be accessible to players who started with MHW.
However, to be fair, when making a new entry in the series accessible to new players, I don't think the priority is to get them to play the older games. Instead, Capcom would probably want to focus on the current game and any subsequent entries.
@@DesignDoc Prints can only be found in areas monsters roam in, similar logic applies.
Difference is paintballs are consumables the player needs to use and bring along. Otherwise have extremely similar functions.
@It Just Works Still a good idea on those brief timer hunts if playing in groups. Keeps everyone focused. Especially for zone-healing. Which use to be a thing in older games.
I think you should be saying psychoserum instead.
The monster hunter bit,
FYI, you don't need to delete the investigations one by one, they'll just get replaced if you already hit max. So, the oldest ones you haven't registered will be auto deleted.
While that is good, it doesn't fix the problem of you wanting to keep some of your oldest investigations which could get deleted if you're not watching.
@@warkiller Here's the thing, If it got deleted because of Max number count, it just means you never cared about that investigation at all.
And it's not like Investigations are rare, the game floods you with it, you just need to register the one you think it's worthwhile. If you want a specific kind of investigation, but most of it is already deleted, then hunt some optional quests, while picking up tracks, or just bypass the whole thing by searching SoS flares for that specific investigation.
If you want something of an improvement, it's better to just not have "usage limit" at all for investigations, make it like Guild Quests back in MH4U.
You can delete all the investigations you don’t want at one just choose the ones you need then delete the non selected
Why even do it this way AT ALL? We don't need to excuse bad design because of fan boy apologists cognitive dissonance that their precious perfect game isn't perfect.
Honestly, MHW's menus, aspects of the UI design (especially when compared to older games), and the whole of Astera could have been their own entire video.
There's a laundry list of things that could be analyzed and improved upon.
While the weapon tree in World allows me to see everything in 1 page, which is nice in itself. I can swear when it comes to crafting and upgrading, the operation feels faster in previous titles.
Oh, weapon preview in previous titles are done with a model viewer on the same UI.
To preview a weapon in World you need to "cancel" the weapon tree tab (which take up the whole left half the screen) and go back to the first tab to open up UI space for your hunter so you can see the weapon sheathed on their back. Then you can go back to see your weapon tree tab to check out other weapons.
Fortunately iceborne,Seliana and it’s gathering hub helped most of the issues here
@@lchngh It was faster in older games because the menus weren't so huge and tedious to traverse. Honestly weapon building AND upgrading should all be one menu and it should just be the weapon tree with pop-up images on the right-side to show you what it looks like with relevant stats. As it is now, you can see the entire weapon tree in both the crafting and upgrading menu but you can only perform the task that corresponds to the way you entered the weapon tree menu. If I chose "Craft Weapon" then I cannot upgrade, even though you see upgrades in the weapon tree. Also you can only upgrade for the weapon which you've selected before getting to the weapon tree.
The way it SHOULD be is that I go to an option called "Craft Weapons". Then the weapon tree pops up. The game highlights ANY weapon that I can either create or upgrade towards while also fading out ones I cannot. And if I can upgrade a weapon multiple times I should be able to just skip to that upgrade immediately. If I have multiple copies of a weapon then I should be able to select which one I want to send down that upgrade path (for example a level 2 bone sword and a level 3 bone sword -- the game should let me choose which one I want going straight to level 5). If I select a weapon I should see the image and ALL relevant stats and slots all on one page. And if another page is needed, fine just let me tab over to that page on the right-hand side. But the point is that this should all exist together in one menu.
It did improve in Iceborne
A tiensie detail you got wrong though
at 21:00: you don't have to delete investigations, once it's full it starts to auto-delete the oldes non-registered quest. you only need to get rid of registered quest if you choose too many.
Ps: on a personal note, I think the system they have is pretty good. You get so many investigations that it would be very overwhelming to keep track of them all. So you can pick the ones you like and then use them (at the quest board) until they run out. You can also easily find the investigation you want using filters cutting down on search time.
While I was playing Eyes of Heaven I would always have to take a solid 5-10 minutes in the menu to memorize what the moves do whenever I played a new character, and even then I would have to periodically check again
I always liked the tribal/glyphic menu designs throughout the Monster Hunter series, and I especially liked being able to utilize the Wii U & 3DS's touchscreen features as an extension to my hunting experience...
But holy hell, is World and the Radial Menu a whole new valley of *nightmares*
For the past few weeks I actually got to go and get to know and practice at a company that makes websites for companies and I’ve been doing a lot of UX and UI stuff, and I just wanted to to thank you for making this series because in there I’ve realized how much I’ve learned so much from it and the knowledge has been really useful. If it weren’t for these videos I’d have 0 knowledge about what I’m doing and it wouldn’t be nearly as enjoyable
When talking about Celeste you should have mentioned that this style of teaching is a core mechanic of all metroidvania style games. Not just Celeste.
I like no damage numbers on Monhun, the blood splash on hit and hitstop when hitting body parts told me everything I needed. It was less gamey and required you to observe and respond, even if for the most part smacking something in the face IS the go to place for damage.
I have to agree, when they added the skull on the minimap in MHW when something is near-death I felt like it flew in the face of what they've worked so hard to portray for years.
Not dissing people who use it but people going "How tf am I supposed to know when to capture it??" when there are lots of tells... It hurts the soul.
It's just a flat game concept applied to many monsters, rather than using skills on armor and your awareness of the monster to gauge information. Noting how much easier it is to stagger longer into the fight as it's health drops was pivotal, I like the actual hunting part of MonHun.
If you're bad at capturing monsters in previous titles, there's an armor skill that tells you when you can capture. Without it, as well, you can just bring dung bombs to force it to leave the area to watch for a limp when you think it's getting close if you need the extra help of finding when to capture.
Yes, the older games don't explicitly tell you much about anything, but you can learn a lot through observation.
I gotta be honest: The lack of damage indicators and such was a pain in my arse, and why I never stuck with Monster Hunter Tri. I just lost interest in Tri after the 10 hours of tutorial. Monster Hunter World streamlined a LOT, and let me get into FEELING like I'm hunting the monsters much faster, instead of feeling like I'm learning an entire new system of how to understand how to gather and such before even hunting.
Now... granted, I would have needed a starter guide for MHW had I not played Tri, but my point stands: Some of the stuff that made monster hunter more realistic and immersive is also a major barrier to new players.
That being said... I think World has a good balance right now, and all that needs added is more monsters, more maps, and further refinement of the gameplay/everything.
@@dorjjodvo1992 learn to calculate EFR. Even with damage numbers you need to do this to truly compare builds if you want to make a super optimized build.
Jinjinx and Tuna can teach you everything you need to know if you wnat that knowledge.
That Jojo game is so caught up in anime specifics that it forgot how to communicate to a real person!
...JUST LIKE ALL ANIME FANS AMIRITE?!
Yes yes yes yes
*YES*
Wait a sec...
@@Igneeka Lol
Despite some of the weird design choices of JoJo Eyes of Heaven, I love the game. All Star Battle is good but I prefer the gameplay of Eyes of Heaven. I would love if they made a game in the same gameplay style but learned from their mistakes like the lack of local multiplayer lol
Yeah the lack of local multiplayer is so stupid. My girlfriend got me the game and she can't even play it with me; we have to take turns at best which is very stupid in a fighting game
You could do a whole episode on how awful the menus in MHW are.
Thank god for Pat teaching Woolie how the menus work for like an hour...
@@dorjjodvo1992 Unless you play on PC and you still have to wait MONTHS to get Iceborne.
@@dorjjodvo1992 People who keep saying "Iceborne fixed it" are just dumb. The expansion is $40 on top of the base game and it's pretty much a completely different game.
And I don't think Iceborne actually "fixed" the menu problem. After playing GU everything in World feels so clunky, the quest selection have this weird zoom-in motion before you can select a quest, which really adds up when you're abandoning/failing a lot of quests and just want to take another one quickly, the item pouch alone takes 9 DIFFERENT BUTTONS TO NAVIGATE (19:01), failing and abandoning quests does not allow you to go back to the gathering hub but kicks you straight to the main town, so you still have to load back to the gathering hub, the first option after finishing a hunt push you back into expedition mode, waste like a minute every time you forget to select it. I can go on and on but you get the idea.
And before you say "it's just some minor problems yall being too petty" remember that we the players are the ones that have to deal with these problems, which should not exists in the first place if the developers actually want to, they just decided to not do it.
Saito someone is spoiled lol
@@devilalastor3320 How am I spoiler when I paid for the game lol
To be fair to monster hunter, it tells you that affinity gives you critical hits, which deal more damage. Then the player should be able to assume negative affinity gives you negative crits, which are weaker than normal.
Not everything needs to be explained, isnt that the point you made with celeste?
The situation with Rayman makes me wonder if games of that time period were specifically made more complicated as part of a deal to sell more strategy guides. Not too unlike games of the arcade era being designed to be very punishing to get more quarters. Either that, or they were trying to maximize play time by requiring back tracking. I’ve recently been playing Banjo Kazooie for the first time, and even as an adult I find it very difficult, not even to find secrets, but just to find how to get to the next level.
Your point on affordances really stuck out to me as someone who loves finding secrets from even the smallest hints. I think Pokemon greatly improved on its hidden item affordances over time, as even without the Itemfinder it's not hard to find quite a few hidden items just based on suspiciously placed gaps or rocks.
So Sayonara is basically Californication's music video actually made into a game.
That's pretty neat.
Another good design doc, although you did make a couple errors in the second MHW part.
-You don't have to spring clean your investigations, the game will automatically delete the oldest ones you haven't touched when you get new ones
-there is more than one item box and quest board in the main astera hub, there's actually 3 of each. One pair in the canteen, one next to the smith, and the one you mentioned
-additionally, you don't *have* to use the canteen because you can just eat at camp whenever you get into a mission since the game will (almost) always dump you in camp at the start of a quest and the food is right there, which is significantly more time efficient than using the canteen. Even when the game doesn't dump you at camp, you can just fast travel to a camp immediately to eat
In base MHW, you are spawned right by the quest board and item box. You can easily accept a quest, move oner to the botanical box, then climb the stairs over to the canteen while you are loading.
Iceborne and seliana closes the distance between these hotspots as well.
Investigation quest in MHW discards the oldest quest when a new one arrives so you don't really have to do what you did
Ummm I agree MHW does have some insane design choices on menus but the quest board and item box is in more places in astera then just the research center. A pair is at the canteen and forge respectively. The wishlist for craftling is, ( i think) 6 pages of 6. Not alot still but enough to have what your looking for in the ready.
I also had issues with the radial menu so I get that. But when talking about investigations I had more issues making the one I want appear show up in the first place since what will make a certain mission appear is about as well communicated as how to how the menus are.
Though with sorting the investigations it lets get pretty detail as to what you sort for, often just sorting by what your hunting to be first makes it easy to find whatever you need. Unless you have like 10+ missions of the same hunt but that your issue I would think at that point.
I do agree all and all though that MHW has some really messed up menu to navigate. The fact the forge is so offset compared to a majority of other thing in Astera, tail raiders being stuck behind a load screen making feel unimportant, gathering hub feeling half baked while also being the only place to go to to do the arena challenges which you need to do for specific weapons and armour. Way to make can be condense, moved, or streamlined to be easier on the player in-between hunts. But I just wanted to point out where in your some basic misleading can create an idea something is worse then what it is.
Wait, there are more pages!?
Welp, goes to show even several hundred hours into the game I'm learning new things. Thank you!
@@uknownhero2764 no problem. I had a full page set to just armour while another two pages for insect glaive and switch axes.
Bad Design in MHW: The Foodie Handler
Good Design in MHW Iceborn: The Serious Handler
If I could swap them, I'd do that in a second. Both for character design reasons and personality reasons.
@@Thalanox i will too and tear away the guildmarm costume
Imagine being so wrong.
I'm not gonna lie, I love JoJo EOH
But I had to look up so many things about how some characters work. Biggest sinner goes to Alternate Universe Diego.
He doesn't do anything that any other character does, he can't dash, his "Heavy attack" is 5 light attacks, his dash button is a heavy attack, instead of a take down attack he shoots his revolver, 2 of his abilities are called: 'This trial will be "Subjugation and Certain Death"' where he throws a can of petrol and the follow up ability is: 'This is where the fun begins...' which is throwing a ton of matches.
I love playing him but holy shit this isn't explained anywhere.
"This is where the fun begins" is one of his most popular quotes but i agree
From my time in game courses I can say that UI was always a highly underappreciated aspect of game design, and the most amazing well done interfaces may never get proper attention or even be noticed because they are so intuitive you never think about it. But a poor UI WILL be noticed and WILL become a conscious part of aspects that give a negative view on the game.
Yep. The only game I recall right now having consistent praise for its UI is Persona 5. I have not played the game, but it sure does look amazing.
I see Rathalos and Menacing, so I'm sold
"But Rayman dooooeeeesssssss have affordances for the secrets"
Yeah, a single white pixel that acts as the trigger. At least, on the PSX version it exists. Real smooth on that one, Ubisoft.
You always think the previous volume is the final one until a new one comes.
It felt like you made the point of bringing up deleting investigations as something to fill more time on the video considering that you are making it more complicated than it actually is.
Talk to resource center->investigation->Hover over investigation you want to delete->press triangle and voila it is gone, you don't have to sort it until you have deleted the ones you don't want.
You also have the fact that there is a button that deletes all unselected investigations that deletes all the investigations you don't select to want to do.
Could also mention that while the layout of Astera is big, they tried to alleviate that by having three hunting boards and chests put at key locations, and things not close to them are close to a lift that can take you to those places.
I saw a menacing thumbnail and decided to watch it. Exactly the type of video I was looking for honestly
For the record, as of a free update, your wishlist is now massive and you can access the investigation menu from your menu at any time in the hub you can hold more investigations and sort through/delete them far more easily.
The menu itself is still trash though, it needs to be way easier to find what you want.
Maybe add in a filter so you only get given investigations with certain slots or something.
You can also eat on a quest so I don't know why the canteens location is an issue. The game spawns you next to an item box, a quest counter, the shop and the botanical research center: everything you need to start a new quest. If you go to the smithy to do some crafting, then once you're done, you're once again, next to a quest counter and an item box to start a new quest.
Remember: It's Monster Hunter, not Monster Fighter.
i'm really glad i wasn't the only one to notice that crazybus has top-notch ui design, on par with its gameplay, its music, its storytelling, its thematic depth. that game is a true gem, thanks design doc for paying respect
"The game doesnt explain how negativ affinity works"
There is a thing called training room.
Monster hunter is about preparing for a hunt AND hunting the monster. With wold/iceborne the preparing is negletable because you can change your armor or item load out even mid hunt.
You dont really need to get good if you can spam poitons.
Look at wow and you see what happens if everything gets easier. Everything is a solo experience now. Same thing for World and Iceborne. With the SOS flair noone has communicate.
I don't think Pokemon is bad at affordances so much as it is inconsistent. There's been a lot of times where I was able to intuit that a discolored patch of ground or a rock at a dead end would hold an item, but just as often they _don't_. It feels like a coin flip every time I check something that looks suspect.
Though there are still those completely random spots like you pointed out in the video (although I'd argue that Cut tree is a variant of the "rock at a dead end" one if you approach it from the other side). I guess you could argue that's what the Itemfinder is for.
I really love these videos. I'm going to do a bit of game design myself in the next 2 months, so I'm excited to see your new volume. Keep up the great work!
I love your vid! Especially the good design bad design series, it really makes me learn a lot more about design in general! And about the vids, could you please add the game name (captions) which play in the screen? I really want to look at more reference honestly but i don't know a lot about the game displayed on your screen... Anyway, thank you DesignDoc for existing!
I'll mention at least, Monster Hunter World, with loadouts, it now asks if you want to change the radial menu, as of a patch, which was implemented before I started playing it
A great video! Just kinda felt like, when you already mentioned how Iceborne fixed the de-centralized facilities issue, you could've also mentioned that Iceborne... at least kinda fixed the later issues you named :3 (as I say, kinda. At least it now tells you that your radial menu is also being saved in a set, and also gives you the option to not do that).
And, while the investigation menu still is kinda tedious, it's at least more centralized now and you can sort your investigations by a ton of factors, while also doubling the amount of space you have for registered ones as well as stored ones.
How abut take a look at Ar Tonelico Qoga for some awful designs in comparison to Ar Tonelico: Melodies of Metafalica design.
Just an idea about comparing the design of two games in the series and see how one has a bad design while the other game has good design, especially if one is a sequel to another. Something that kinda interesting to think about, and I hope you consider it. Thanks for your work and sharing your expertise in design towels appreciate design even more.
I'd love that too
FYI: you don't have to delete Investigation Quests, if you're full, it just replaces the oldest one you didn't add to your quest list
rayman origins/legends does the affordances thing pretty well i feel. it just hides some subareas and sometimes other neat stuff behind a foreground that disappears once you get close. theyre super easy to find but it feels nice
i only had to look up where a subarea/cage is for either of these(which ive both 100%ed) a grand total of once!
good video! one thing, though, is that an affordance refers to what something can do, or what it "affords". That's different from how visible something is, which relates to how obvious (or not) its affordances are. ex, a false wall in Hollow Knight can afford being walked through, and we can tell because it's irregularities make that visible.
tbh I'm not bothered by the preparation routines in MHW, even if sometimes they take as much time as the hunting itself or even more, creating a build, optimizing your loadouts, purchasing items, choosing the best meal buffs available adds a layer of strategy that I enjoy. That said I agree that menu navigation can be improved, look at the clunky decoration menus, even with the sorting options sometimes it feels like it takes much longer to find what you're looking for than necessary, however I can't see how they can streamline much of the information in them since there's A LOT of stuff that needs to be in there. Maybe adding tabs for each jewel category would help smooth things a bit
I wouldn't want to be subject to epilepsy and have to get anywhere near sayonara wild hearts.
To be honest, if I saw that Jojo game footage with no context and saw the attack names, I would genuinely believe it was put through a mod that put text through Google Translate.
Thing is this when the game says to prepare it means it I think all the time it takes preparing can be considered as a way to take a breather and see what you can do plus simply put I don't care I still love it and it's still fun
What isn't talked about in the MH:W section that I thought would be is what you would do to fix some of the things. Like, the crafting... How would you streamline? You pick the item, you craft, done. Do we do to potions what was done with Whetstones and make the faster version craftable?
I've never played Rayman, but from what I saw in the video, the triggers seemed to play in curious dead ends, and when you left, something had changed. That's actually pretty clever, and I would say it was well implemented. It would have encouraged level exploration.
One for your cohesive style leaderboard: Dishonored 2
One detail that I never enjoy in MH is how unintuitive damage values are. You have a weapon with, say 500+ attack, yet you end up doing ~80 damage per hit. Then you add in the Attack Boost skill and the displayed +21 turns into +30 (or whatever) for no discernible reason. _And then_ you do some research and find out that the "Attack Power" value is a complete lie and that the game is _really_ using a hidden "True Attack" value that is determined mainly by the weapon's rarity. And that's to say nothing of other hidden numbers like Motion Values and Hit Zone Values.
12:53 I just got to part 2 of Jojo last night!~
First time I've seen a video of yours. Even when you seem off tangent, you put everything back in a logical sequence. And the design is pretty great too.
I learned something, and got some game reccomndations I would probably never hear of casually looking through a typical underrated games list
Subbed
Not gonna lie you had me in the first half with MH
The second half isn't as bad as he makes it sound either, and some of those issues are already being fixed with the release of Iceborne, like the location of the vendors/stuff in the hub in Iceborne vs MHW. Also... you never need more than a dozen or so Investigations at one time, and they just overflow/push out older ones.
Most everything you want to check is either in a line, or has a fast travel point next to it too. I LOVE crafting all the myriad ingredients and parts, and autocrafting can be set if you are gathering and want to craft instantly in the field. And... I THINK there's a way to save Hotkeys/radial menu settings. Gotta check there.
@@hariman7727 There is a warning that says changing item loadouts will change your radial menu and will ask if you want to do that or keep the menu.
@@uknownhero2764 that must be more recent, as I haven't played recently. I'm taking a nice big break before iceborne.
Half the between quest issues he has "just wanting to hunt" the beautiful creatures can be solved by saving gear loadouts and item loadouts, they take time time to set up comfortably if you make one for each unique monster on top of around half the weapons in the game...personal preference aside, the loadouts options ( had them before Iceborne even, just got more loadout save slots now) cut down on the time between hunts. I don't remember if the gear loadouts were explained, I know the item loadouts were a bit.
Iceborne is fantastic. Just saying.
Well i was expecting the bad desing part tho, coz it did have some of it. Tho most of it is fixed in iceborne, one thing do seem very annoying and not fixed: the investigation. Deleting investigation puts on the first page is a point, and scrolling through many investigation on the quest board to find one you want to choose is tedious too. I hope that they put up sort button for investigation on quest board
That monster hunter radial menu had me so confused for so long. lol I felt like I was going crazy thinking I didn't save it right or maybe didn't even change it in the first place.
Don't get me wrong, not a monster Hunter fanboy, but I need you to know there is an item box and a quest board in 3 locations in astera. One on the ground floor, one by the smithy and one in the canteen. And you can go on a quest when you are ready out from the menue, takes two button presses
this isn't specifically about UI, but one of the games that i do runs on, hot lava, has one of the best ways to teach you the core mechanics imo. it has an image on a whiteboard with a wall of text explaining what you need to do, but the image conveys it perfectly. also, because it is an object in the world you can just ignore it and run right past, but if you want to know how it works, you can take some time to properly study it.
Using the slinger to pop the mega barrels instead of your switch axe overhead slam hurts my soul
Iceborne might have add more page to the wishlist, but afaict, it still doesn't have a reorganize feature. So if you clean up the first few items in your wishlist with many left to do, there is no way to remove the empty entries.
Two games I hope are covered here eventually (but not expecting as they are kinda niche) are Hellsinker and Revolver 360 Re:Actor.
Hellsinker for it's kinda cluttered UI for all of the info it is trying to make available to the player, while Revolver more for how it communicates necessary information for it's unique view shifting gameplay.
Anyone else get a heart attack at 4:06 when he said bad design and Super Metroid was screen?
Alright, unpopular opinion here, but if we're going to talk about Celeste's good design this seems like a good time to mention a problem I don't see anyone talking about-the inconsistent style of that game.
The gameplay has beautiful pixel art, but the speech bubbles use clean, animated line drawings and a smooth font. Both look nice on their own, but those styles really don't fit well together. Add on top of that the level select is a 3D render of a mountain, and the overall presentation comes off a little mismatched.
There's also a disconnect between the gameplay and story. Again, both are good on their own, but they don't feel like they belong together. The story feels very grounded, with a girl dealing with real issues of depression and anxiety, characters coming from the mystical land of Seatle, and so on. There are ghosts and such, but the narrative comes across fairly grounded. Once the gameplay starts, it's completely different; you can dash in the air, your hair changes color, there are spikes and death traps everywhere... there's no effort at tying the story and the gameplay together. It's like when a cutscene shows you hesitate to kill someone, when up until that point the game has had you slaughter dozens. There's a disconnect that I really felt when playing Celeste, and I haven't seen anyone else talk about it.
This is just my opinion, and I'm not bashing the game; it just surprises me this aspect is never brought up in discussion.
You did talk about monster hunter like there was only one quest board, there is another by the smithy with an item box and the Handler who functions the exact same and is by the canteen, sure it does take a while to get ready for a quest but it feels good at times and helps to make each hunt matter instead of just another monster that you have to fight. Then there are the many menus of monster hunter and yeah when I first played world I ignored most things because I didn’t know what they meant and had to learn overtime or by my brother who was also playing, they would definitely benefit from making those better to read.
As a Minecraft (Java) builder and resource pack designer, I am always looking for the best ways to communicate something to the user. And these fascinating videos help me decide!
---
All of the GUIs in my pack were originally transparent, but I later changed them to match the default MC textures better.
---
I hate it when people overuse signs on Multiplayer servers. They are not always the best method for in-game communication, and too many of these complex tile entities in an area will lower everyone's framerates.
===================
I suggest you one day talk about or mention/feature "CrossCode" in a video. This Action-Adventure RPG became my favorite game in recent years. The game teaches itself in great detail, but it also respects the player's intelligence.
I love this series! Never stop doing it!
For me I like tutorials that give you an area to try out what they want to convey but it shouldn't be a game of simon says where you have to mimic button presses perfectly.
The Gathering Hub in base World isn't "Half Usable" lmao. You have a canteen, shop, Item Box, the Quest and Arena girls for quests. The lift can take you right to the Workshop and everything on the first floor. It isn't great, but it is far from bad. And Iceborne fixes everything through the Seliana Gathering Hub.
For the wishlist, you shouldn't need more than 6 slots. That can be a weapon and a full armor set, 6 is a lot for what you'd be doing at any given time.
Seems like the people on the bad design front could have used that Skillshare class.
Monster Hunter World's hub could take some pointers from Splatoon. In the Splatoon games inkopolis is the hub for all modes, but you dont have to use it if you don't want to, every single mode can still be accessed through a quick select menu rather than walking to it physically
You make really solid content dude. You deserve my subs. Also, is your good design /bad design tone a send up to the Animaniacs mime skit?
Actually yes
Pokémon has an affordance for secret items, it's called the dowsing machine or itemfinder
I really loved the way Rayman did secrets. They were something that you had to explore to find, and since you probably have to replay the levels multiple times to save all the electoons anyway it feels more intuitive. There are plenty of early levels where you have to come back after getting a new power, and the invisible sound triggers are used constantly in every level, so trying to figure out what changed is a natural part of the game.
By the way, I was confused by that at first too and it doesn't excuse it but: In mhw with the investigations, when you get to the max, the newer one just deletes the oldest. You don't need to delete them (in fact there is absolutely no reason to delete them, I'm not sure why it's an option...)
I wouldn't say there's no reason. I'd rather have it prioritize investigations of small monsters before overwriting the others. Still shouldn't have to select them to put them on the quest board. They should just be on the quest board and maybe give the options to save specific investigations from getting overwritten.
10:27 no its different because the bird just tells you what button to press. this is essential information, and there's really no wordless way of communicating it. everything else about the climb, dash, jumping, and level mechanics is taught through level design
19:27 This actually sounds a lot like the hub area of Phantom Dust (a real-time action game that wraps a Magic: the Gathering card battle system on the original Xbox) . Every time you beat a level, you had to walk through multiple loading screens to get to the shop, check out the new stock of cards/skills, walk all the way back to the quest area (the "Battle Terminal") and then, more often than you'd like, there wouldn't be any open quests. You'd then have to go marching all over the hub map talking to each of the NPCs until one of them suddenly has a quest for you (and who it is changes every time). What's even worse is that some of the characters change where they hang out, so you don't always even find the right person right off the bat. The only time the game is fun is when you are actively battling or deck building (which it is *great* with), but there is so much other meaningless busywork to slog through that it really pollutes the gameplay experience.
I know that you were only covering the base game of MHW but you should know that they did fix some of these issues in IceBorne. For example, they increased the amount you can put on your wishlist.
Speaking on the moves from eyes of heaven, having the ex moves be red text was also confusing. I noticed the buttons for special moves turned red during cool down and then I noticed the ex moves had red text. It made me wonder if i had to meet certain conditions before I could use it but figured I'll just try it and see what happens. Pretty sure I was playing young Joseph at the time (cause best JoJo), and I didn't see any animation that indicated a move was happening. So I never really used them again for the short time I played. And even then, some of thenon ex moves didn't convey what was happening so I was still extemely confused. Hopefully a new JoJo game will come out that makes sense even if you've never seen JoJo.
This is my favorite series on your channel!
I'm going to school for computer science to get experience to work at a game studio, and your video series is extremely useful for aspiring devs who want insight on design.