David Candland, OG Bungie UI guy extraordinaire, was a speaker at the Game UX Summit in Toronto.

Gamesindustry.biz was there and made this report. Nothing big, but I figured ya'll might be interested all the same.

Even if you don't really have a care about this, I think there is a very interesting paragraph worth consideration for those of you still blind raiding (though this example is for the Vault of Glass), which I have quoted below.

Smith wanted players to go in with no preconceived notions about what to do, but figure out the mechanics of the raid through clues, context, and affordances, coordinating with each other to accomplish the goals. When there's a failure in the experience and the fire team dies, there would be hints and clues in the stats displayed during the post-game carnage report. Candland said the act of discovery for players became nearly as rewarding an experience in the Vault of Glass raid as the loot they would receive for successfully completing it. It's a bit counter-intuitive for a UI designer to celebrate the team not needing him to create a UI, but Candland said there are lots of occasions where developers can achieve their goals without new elements.

Dave is my favorite UI guy ever.

...in my team's on-going blind raiding experience.

I only wish there was somewhere on bungie's site where we could see all those kinds of stats, including the medals from pvp. That was something I wanted in D1 too. I really miss that from Halo.

Thanks for the post!

And thank you for including sorting options in the vault, Otto. It's much better. :)