Cursor vs Tradition Console Navigation (Destiny)

by Kermit , Raleigh, NC, Thursday, August 21, 2014, 19:53 (3541 days ago) @ General Vagueness

I've been super conflicted on the idea. At first I hated the idea of having a cursor on a console, but after a while it felt pretty fluid and easier than trying to navigate menus through only navigating Up, Down, Left, & Right.

The thing is that it isn't. The worst-case scenario is going from one corner to the other in the items area of the start screen, which takes 11 presses of the stick or d-pad (12 if they insist on having separate sub-screens for "items" and "gear" or whatever they called them and requiring another press to go between them). Every other movement will take 10 presses or less, and most movements will take presses in the single digits.

Although it does become a bit more annoying in menu screens like the Orbit Menu when there are only a few buttons and they're spread out a bit further in between. It might have been interesting to have the current cursor navigation controlled by the thumbsticks while the D-Pad controlled more traditional console-style of selection. If that were possible, it would make things feel super fluid for users who know what they're doing.

That's annoying because it's almost obnoxious, a cursor is very superfluous for that. It's annoying in selecting items because it's finicky.

Bungie's UI team must have had a lot of explorations on how best to do the menu navigation. When it comes down to it, the trade off of using a cursor vs traditional console-style navigation must have been enough for them to choose cursor based navigation.

I think that this is a rare case of Bungie just making the wrong call. The thing is, a bunch of people here are supporting it; I don't know how well that represents the player-base. If most people like it, I'll have to live with it. I wish I could know so I could either try to accept it or feel more secure in continuing to fight it.

The scenario you describe where you click 10+ times--that's a bad user experience, especially when it has to be repeated over and over. Did you watch the video? To my mind, the first four minutes presents a very compelling case for the cursor. I can understand wishing it was easier to control. Otherwise, I don't understand what makes the reasons stated in the video nonsensical.