The cursor UI has real problems

The cursor in the beta... first off, it doesn't make sense. I really can't fathom why they'd have this be the only method of selection across the board for a console game, especially one that wasn't designed first and foremost for the PC, let alone apparently not designed for the PC at all-- but I can live with nonsensical. The problem is that the cursor is slippery and slidey. Having it be less slippery would be good, and the ability to adjust it would be better, but what I'd like better than that is just a regular console-game selection method.
It's hard to understand how a version of this that works this badly made it through testing even just to be in the beta. I don't want to overstate my frustration with it, it's serviceable most of the time, but I don't want to downplay it either, it's really a pretty significant frustration. It seemed to get a little better but I think I hit the wall for how convenient it can be for me and that wall is not comfortable place. Fixing this, by making the cursor slower, or better yet making its speed adjustable, or better still giving us a more normal console selection system, is probably too much to ask this close to release, but maybe it can be day-one patch or an early patch or come with an expansion or just be in Destiny 2.
What do you guys think? Are my thumbs just too loose or something?

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It is probably the best cursor I have used before on any console game. That said . . . it is still a cursor on a console game. I don't get it at all. It looks cool to have the items on the screen move toward your cursor movement, but it is still sub par to a regular selection method.

Maybe they want the transition to PC to be as seamless as possible?

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Maybe they want the transition to PC to be as seamless as possible?

That's my guess... 10 year plan and all that. :)

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I happen to know the UI guy at Bungie and I asked him about the choice. Personally, I like it a lot once I got used to it.

I'm paraphrasing here, but the gist was...

"We made the decision because of the amount of navigation required on the weapon and skill trees. In testing, it was impractical and frustrating to use the D-pad or joystick to move one spot at a time up/down or left/right. It is far more efficient to traverse the area with a cursor."

That makes sense to me especially given how painful I find using the on-screen keyboard. (I'm speaking towards the Xbox experience...no idea how it is on the PS consoles). Some areas I don't think it is necessarily better, but overall I feel like the system works well.

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That makes sense to me especially given how painful I find using the on-screen keyboard. (I'm speaking towards the Xbox experience...no idea how it is on the PS consoles).

The PS3 on-screen keyboard is absolutely abysmal. I don't think I've ever seen a slower or more awkward method of eletronically making words. I think it's possible to use a USB or bluetooth keyboard on that platform though.

PS4, I have no idea. It can't possibly be as bad as the PS3, given how much everyone who has a PS4 seems to like it.

Xbox 360 is good, though the way the UI's gotten laggy as time has gone on has impeded it a bit. I bought a chatpad long ago and that works very well. 360 can also use USB keyboards.

XBone is pretty similar to 360, though it seems to me like it takes more effort to get special characters and such. Might just be that I haven't gotten used to it yet. XBone also supports USB keyboards.

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The PS3 on-screen keyboard is absolutely abysmal. I don't think I've ever seen a slower or more awkward method of eletronically making words. I think it's possible to use a USB or bluetooth keyboard on that platform though.

I remember the OoBE for the PS3 being one of the worst ever. You need to sign up for a PlayStation account to use it online, which entails entering an email address. And the @ symbol was hidden behind a sub-keyboard. Every single person who bought a PS3 (and connected it to the internet) would have to do this and they still never thought to put it on the main keyboard.

PS4, I have no idea. It can't possibly be as bad as the PS3, given how much everyone who has a PS4 seems to like it.

Definitely an improvement - you can use the touchpad to move a cursor around to individual letters (a little finicky but occasionally useful).

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works very well most of the time, and it's gotten better for the Xbone.

Sony has a similar app that allows touchscreen typing for the PS4, but it's not as slick.

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Wouldn't use anything else at this stage, very handy.

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You're right. I keep forgetting to use that!

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PS4, I have no idea. It can't possibly be as bad as the PS3, given how much everyone who has a PS4 seems to like it.

Definitely an improvement - you can use the touch-pad to move a cursor around to individual letters (a little finicky but occasionally useful).

Click in right thumb-stick (I think) and wave the controller around (dexterously). It's been the quickest method of text input I've used on a console (aside from a keyboard peripheral)

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Click in right thumb-stick (I think) and wave the controller around (dexterously). It's been the quickest method of text input I've used on a console (aside from a keyboard peripheral)

I didn't even know you could do that! I'll have to give it a go.

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It's radial where each selectable petal has 4 symbols/letters. Each of the symbols are entered by use of the ABXY buttons. Caps Lock and secondary symbols can be accessed by holding down the triggers.

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It's radial where each selectable petal has 4 symbols/letters. Each of the symbols are entered by use of the ABXY buttons. Caps Lock and secondary symbols can be accessed by holding down the triggers.

That sounds interesting. Taking advantage of Fitt's Law again for this one, just like the radial inventory menu in Diablo III.

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I should've checked after I posted, or right before, that's some timing.

I happen to know the UI guy at Bungie and I asked him about the choice. Personally, I like it a lot once I got used to it.

I'm paraphrasing here, but the gist was...

"We made the decision because of the amount of navigation required on the weapon and skill trees. In testing, it was impractical and frustrating to use the D-pad or joystick to move one spot at a time up/down or left/right. It is far more efficient to traverse the area with a cursor."

That makes sense to me especially given how painful I find using the on-screen keyboard. (I'm speaking towards the Xbox experience...no idea how it is on the PS consoles). Some areas I don't think it is necessarily better, but overall I feel like the system works well.

I'm glad it makes sense to you because it makes no sense to me.

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I was struck with the oddness of having a cursor at first, but there are great reasons why, most of which are discussed here:

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I was struck with the oddness of having a cursor at first, but there are great reasons why, most of which are discussed here:

It seems like the main reason he talks about is to negate the need to press up/down/left/right repeatedly to get to each inventory slot, but this is something that Diablo III also had to handle for the console versions, and their approach (I think) works even better:

[image]

A radial menu! So you push in the direction of the slot you want to interact with to highlight it, then press a button to select. Once you're ‘inside’ a given inventory slot it's more traditional d-pad navigation, but that's okay: it's modal.

One of the biggest issues I encountered with the cursor navigation is that it's too easy to accidentally ‘leave’ the modal context of a given inventory slot whilst moving between them, at which point in order to go back to browsing between items you have to return to the inventory slot itself. It's particularly easy to do this if you have two or more rows of items for a given slot; you open the slot and start diagonally moving off towards the second or third row, but in so doing you leave the hotspot of the slot before reaching the destination, and so it closes.

To avoid this you have to actually move the cursor horizontally first, then vertically, which feels a bit unintuitive. They could probably have solved this problem relatively easily with a timer once you leave the area of each slot, giving you time to hit the second row before the expanded items collapse again.

On the flip side, the map is something that I imagine would be a whole lot more difficult to implement with a traditional d-pad UI, and I think here more than anywhere else the cursor shines — I doubt it'd be possible to do this better any other way.

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I don't know... radial menus always seem overly finikey... especially if you're trying to interact with analog sticks... Between that and Destiny's much less finikey cursor I'd go with the cursor.

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I don't know... radial menus always seem overly finikey... especially if you're trying to interact with analog sticks...

‘Finicky’ sounds like a perfect description of moving a cursor with an analog stick. The advantage of the radial menu is it can make use of Fitt's Law — you can keep pushing in a direction and you won't ‘overshoot’ the target, because the only thing that matters is the direction you're pointing. A cursor needs to hit a target area and then stop, which makes it substantially more finicky (or to use a technical term: difficult!).

Edit: MLF can't cope with URLs with single quotes in, so here's the Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts's_law

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I don't know... radial menus always seem overly finikey... especially if you're trying to interact with analog sticks...

‘Finicky’ sounds like a perfect description of moving a cursor with an analog stick. The advantage of the radial menu is it can make use of Fitt's Law — you can keep pushing in a direction and you won't ‘overshoot’ the target, because the only thing that matters is the direction you're pointing. A cursor needs to hit a target area and then stop, which makes it substantially more finicky (or to use a technical term: difficult!).

Eh. Depends on the radial menu. Sure you can't overshoot on an outward inward axis, but selecting upper middle left vs upper upper middle left vs upper upper upper middle left has certainly been a problem with some radial menus in the past. There was some game I once played that made me use a radial menu as a keyboard! That was not fun. At all. In fact it was completely terrible.

Destiny's pointer was speed limited and much easier to control than some radial menus I've used.

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I'm coming into Destiny after wasting a year on Defiance. They utilize a primary radial menu, and it's just terrible. Almost impossible to target the 'pie slice' you want, and the frustration of it has put me off to radial menus in general. To be fair, it's the only one I've ever experienced. Maybe it's just bad coding or whatever (which wouldn't be a surprise).

I really liked the cursor, but would like an option to adjust the sensitivity / speed.

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Maybe it's just bad coding or whatever (which wouldn't be a surprise).

From what little I saw of Defiance (which was, admittedly, right at launch) that is a distinct possibility. :)

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One of the biggest issues I encountered with the cursor navigation is that it's too easy to accidentally ‘leave’ the modal context of a given inventory slot whilst moving between them, at which point in order to go back to browsing between items you have to return to the inventory slot itself. It's particularly easy to do this if you have two or more rows of items for a given slot; you open the slot and start diagonally moving off towards the second or third row, but in so doing you leave the hotspot of the slot before reaching the destination, and so it closes.

To avoid this you have to actually move the cursor horizontally first, then vertically, which feels a bit unintuitive. They could probably have solved this problem relatively easily with a timer once you leave the area of each slot, giving you time to hit the second row before the expanded items collapse again.

I know, right? That is so annoying and it negates a lot of the "flow" and "smoothness" of the cursor UI because you can't just move it from A to B like a mouse cursor.

On the flip side, the map is something that I imagine would be a whole lot more difficult to implement with a traditional d-pad UI, and I think here more than anywhere else the cursor shines — I doubt it'd be possible to do this better any other way.

You know, if they just had it for the map, I would like it. It makes complete sense and is more enjoyable than stepping through locations one at a time. That's no reason to make it rule the UI though.

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One of the biggest issues I encountered with the cursor navigation is that it's too easy to accidentally ‘leave’ the modal context of a given inventory slot whilst moving between them, at which point in order to go back to browsing between items you have to return to the inventory slot itself. It's particularly easy to do this if you have two or more rows of items for a given slot; you open the slot and start diagonally moving off towards the second or third row, but in so doing you leave the hotspot of the slot before reaching the destination, and so it closes.

To avoid this you have to actually move the cursor horizontally first, then vertically, which feels a bit unintuitive. They could probably have solved this problem relatively easily with a timer once you leave the area of each slot, giving you time to hit the second row before the expanded items collapse again.

We've been calling that the Amazon problem.
http://bjk5.com/post/44698559168/breaking-down-amazons-mega-dropdown

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Great article; that neatly summarises the problem.

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Honestly, I actually quite like the cursor method.

I would find it incredibly annoying to have to constantly press *down, down, down, right, X, right, X, "oh wait mistake", O, left, X* or whatever to select something like a piece of gear.

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I was just about to post that same video. Glad I read a few posts first. Dave Candland himself tweeted a link to that video and said the reasons they gave for the cursor paradigm are accurate, so it can pretty much be taken as "canon," I think. I feel that the tooltips are helpful, and I accept the UI for that reason, even though it seemed weird at first.

As for Vagueness' concern about the precise mechanics of moving the pointer... I was fine with it on the PS3 I was using during the beta, but this is definitely a YMMV situation. The default sensitivity and speed might not be ideal for everyone. Maybe it'll be adjustable, or even if it's not a setting on its own, it might be affected by the stick sensitivity settings.

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I was just about to post that same video. Glad I read a few posts first. Dave Candland himself tweeted a link to that video and said the reasons they gave for the cursor paradigm are accurate, so it can pretty much be taken as "canon," I think. I feel that the tooltips are helpful, and I accept the UI for that reason, even though it seemed weird at first.

As for Vagueness' concern about the precise mechanics of moving the pointer... I was fine with it on the PS3 I was using during the beta, but this is definitely a YMMV situation. The default sensitivity and speed might not be ideal for everyone. Maybe it'll be adjustable, or even if it's not a setting on its own, it might be affected by the stick sensitivity settings.

I'm glad I didn't watch the video until after I read this, otherwise I would've said "This is exactly what I was talking about, why did you point me to some random guy talking about it?", because I assumed it would be an interview.

OK, having watched it, what is he talking about? He says it gets monotonous pressing buttons to get to stuff and then he says using the cursor is one fluid movement-- I don't see how that wouldn't be more monotonous. His point about tooltips makes no sense, they pop up every time you have selection on something, why wouldn't it work with the usual navigation?

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OK, having watched it, what is he talking about? He says it gets monotonous pressing buttons to get to stuff and then he says using the cursor is one fluid movement-- I don't see how that wouldn't be more monotonous. His point about tooltips makes no sense, they pop up every time you have selection on something, why wouldn't it work with the usual navigation?

Because they would either have to clutter the screen with the text permanently being there for things like attributes (Strength for example), or make the cursor stop on them just to show you the tooltip.

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OK, having watched it, what is he talking about? He says it gets monotonous pressing buttons to get to stuff and then he says using the cursor is one fluid movement-- I don't see how that wouldn't be more monotonous. His point about tooltips makes no sense, they pop up every time you have selection on something, why wouldn't it work with the usual navigation?

Because they would either have to clutter the screen with the text permanently being there for things like attributes (Strength for example), or make the cursor stop on them just to show you the tooltip.

So?

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Because they would either have to clutter the screen with the text permanently being there for things like attributes (Strength for example), or make the cursor stop on them just to show you the tooltip.

So?

Because both are VERY bad UI design. We've gotten used to the first one in a lot of games, but that doesn't mean it's a good UI decision. The second one is probably about the worst UI design you can have in a system that has a selection go from element to element. The idea behind console design going between elements is that if you can select it you can hit A and expect something to happen. Having it so all it does is show you a tooltip is a wasteful action along the way and confuses users.

The real issue I think with what you feel about the UI and what others feel is that you feel having to move the cursor to an element and hit A is more work than having to hit down, down, down, right right, right, A. While many of the rest of us obviously feel the opposite.

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Because they would either have to clutter the screen with the text permanently being there for things like attributes (Strength for example), or make the cursor stop on them just to show you the tooltip.

So?

Because both are VERY bad UI design. We've gotten used to the first one in a lot of games, but that doesn't mean it's a good UI decision. The second one is probably about the worst UI design you can have in a system that has a selection go from element to element. The idea behind console design going between elements is that if you can select it you can hit A and expect something to happen. Having it so all it does is show you a tooltip is a wasteful action along the way and confuses users.

Why not just have the player press X to bring up the description, or have it pop up on a delay, or have some area of the screen designated for descriptions? Those don't fix the problem of having stats as selectable items that could get in the way unless you add that text to other things, but they address the other points.

The real issue I think with what you feel about the UI and what others feel is that you feel having to move the cursor to an element and hit A is more work than having to hit down, down, down, right right, right, A. While many of the rest of us obviously feel the opposite.

It's not the work involved, it's the time taken (as I've said). If you know where you're going and the system is designed well (or even just designed OK) it's faster to just press a few directions; you can see this in PCs, even, with people that prefer to use keyboard navigation (and don't like programs that don't support it).

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It's not the work involved, it's the time taken (as I've said). If you know where you're going and the system is designed well (or even just designed OK) it's faster to just press a few directions; you can see this in PCs, even, with people that prefer to use keyboard navigation (and don't like programs that don't support it).

Right, but keyboard navigation is always a secondary control method, because it's not as user friendly. The thing about Destiny's UI is it's incredibly easy to use and understand, which is the main goal with UI design.

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It's not the work involved, it's the time taken (as I've said). If you know where you're going and the system is designed well (or even just designed OK) it's faster to just press a few directions; you can see this in PCs, even, with people that prefer to use keyboard navigation (and don't like programs that don't support it).

Right, but keyboard navigation is always a secondary control method, because it's not as user friendly. The thing about Destiny's UI is it's incredibly easy to use and understand, which is the main goal with UI design.

I don't buy that, because using a cursor isn't the standard or default way of doing this in a console game, and using a stick or d-pad to select things in a game goes back before mice were common.

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What do you guys think? Are my thumbs just too loose or something?

Am I the only one who actually likes the cursor? I've always hated having to scroll through a list of items, so having the cursor there to let me select the option I want without having to go through all the others first was kind of liberating for me.

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What do you guys think? Are my thumbs just too loose or something?

Am I the only one who actually likes the cursor? I've always hated having to scroll through a list of items, so having the cursor there to let me select the option I want without having to go through all the others first was kind of liberating for me.

I'm a fan of the thing. It feels really natural to me.

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Am I the only one who actually likes the cursor?

I didn't hate it, but I did find it problematic in places. I'm pretty sure the problems could be tightened up, though. In the places where it works well, it really does work well.

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Am I the only one who actually likes the cursor?

I didn't hate it, but I did find it problematic in places.

Such as? Genuinely curious. I think the only place I found it occasionally annoying was hovering over gear and getting those thumbnail popups when I didn't necessarily want one. Aside from that, though, it was a good experience for me.

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Such as? Genuinely curious. I think the only place I found it occasionally annoying was hovering over gear and getting those thumbnail popups when I didn't necessarily want one. Aside from that, though, it was a good experience for me.

I talked a bit about it here.

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I liked it too. An option to change the speed would be nice.

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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. It allows for more fluid movement between navigation items in the menu especially when the cursor is pretty large and each button's target area (like weapon selection, for example). They had a lot of options in the character menu that getting from Point A to Point B is easier using a cursor than navigating through several different items before getting to Point B.

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.

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.

This video might give you a good idea on the reasoning behind some of the UI decisions that were made.

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Already posted it above. Welcome to the forum, BTW. :)

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You beat me to the punch! Damn my wordiness!

And thanks!

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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.

With this I have seen (anecdotally of course) that the majority of people love the UI, including the cursor. I have seen a few articles praising it, many people saying after using it for a few minutes they love, and a few people saying they don't care for it. With the propensity the Internet has for complaining about things more than praising them this suggests to me that the vast majority of people prefer it. Of course as I stated, this is all anecdotal.

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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.

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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.

Well firstly, again, it would rarely be 10+ times, and secondly, it's more about the time spent than the amount of times you push on something, don't you think? The cursor system makes going between things slower, and it's worse the farther apart they are, especially if they're not in the same column (left or right), because you have to cross a bunch of empty space* to get the next item. Getting to and from your "gear" is also slow because you have to position the cursor in one specific area, press a button, and then move it to what you actually want, instead of continuing to move it more or less in a straight line.
You know, some of this would be improved if they didn't separate out "gear", and a lot of this would be improved if they separated it out more, to its own screen or page in the start screen, so you could go to and from it with the shoulder buttons. It would help the cursor navigation because you wouldn't have to go as far or use the obnoxious change page button to get to and from "gear", and it would definitely make navigation directionally (press up to go up one item etc.) more efficient, the worst-case scenario then would be 9 presses for the items page and 8 for the gear page.
As for the video, if what I said doesn't really address or relate to it, to be direct, I didn't watch it, because I very rarely watch Internet videos over 5 minutes, and especially not 10 minutes or more, if I don't already know that they're going to be interesting. (It's too easy for me to spend a big chunk of my day doing that and then regret it.)

* as far as UI, it has a thing with a redundant pop-up that tells you about your level and it has icons and numbers for your intellect, strength, and discipline with pop-ups that explain them, which all take up 15% of the horizontal space, if that

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It's the first four minutes, GV. It's a concise explanation of why the cursor approach works well for this game, and does directly relate to what you've said. If you don't have time to pay attention to what I've posted, that's fine. I'll stop replying.

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It's the first four minutes, GV. It's a concise explanation of why the cursor approach works well for this game, and does directly relate to what you've said. If you don't have time to pay attention to what I've posted, that's fine. I'll stop replying.

I have time for your posts, I was only talking about the video. A lot of people approach stuff the same way, I've seen tons of people say "Why didn't you just make it an article? I don't want to watch this" (about informative videos in general). I thought I shouldn't have said anything.... Anyway, to be frank, I don't care what their reasoning is, this is slower and it's not as... enjoyable doesn't seem like the right word, it's a menu, but yeah, it's not as enjoyable. If you or anyone can show me it's not slower I'll eat my words and try to suck it up as far as it bothering me.

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Anyway, to be frank, I don't care what their reasoning is, this is slower and it's not as... enjoyable doesn't seem like the right word, it's a menu, but yeah, it's not as enjoyable.

If you or anyone can show me it's not slower I'll eat my words and try to suck it up as far as it bothering me.

The hell? You contradicted yourself from one sentence to the next... Wow. Just wow.

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Anyway, to be frank, I don't care what their reasoning is, this is slower and it's not as... enjoyable doesn't seem like the right word, it's a menu, but yeah, it's not as enjoyable.

If you or anyone can show me it's not slower I'll eat my words and try to suck it up as far as it bothering me.

The hell? You contradicted yourself from one sentence to the next... Wow. Just wow.

I don't get it. What's the contradiction between those sentences? I'm not necessarily arguing for or against either of you, I just don't understand what you're saying.

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I don't care what their reasoning is...

vs.

If you or anyone can show me...

All while refusing to watch a video that the person he was talking to said addressed his points.

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I don't care what their reasoning is...

vs.

If you or anyone can show me...

All while refusing to watch a video that the person he was talking to said addressed his points.

Ah. I wandered right past that point. I was thinking you were reading the words "is slower" in one sentence, then "it's not slower" in the next, and just missing the context. Carry on.

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I don't care what their reasoning is...

vs.

If you or anyone can show me...

All while refusing to watch a video that the person he was talking to said addressed his points.

That's addressing my points, not proving a fact about usefulness, and as I said above, I would be all for watching a video that disproved my stance, which, really, wouldn't that be obvious from me inviting something that would prove me wrong? I mean that's obviously how it would happen.

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Anyway, to be frank, I don't care what their reasoning is, this is slower and it's not as... enjoyable doesn't seem like the right word, it's a menu, but yeah, it's not as enjoyable.

If you or anyone can show me it's not slower I'll eat my words and try to suck it up as far as it bothering me.

The hell? You contradicted yourself from one sentence to the next... Wow. Just wow.

No I didn't, I said it's slower, and then I said if it's not slower... I don't know how to explain this. You must have seen people say things like this before. I believe it would be slower than any competently designed traditional navigation scheme. I accept the possibility I'm wrong, and welcome proof of such (though I don't expect it).

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If you or anyone can show me it's not slower I'll eat my words and try to suck it up as far as it bothering me.

You've made it a challenge for me to SHOW you anything what with video being verboten and all.

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If you or anyone can show me it's not slower I'll eat my words and try to suck it up as far as it bothering me.

You've made it a challenge for me to SHOW you anything what with video being verboten and all.

Firstly, that would be a video I know is interesting. Secondly, I'll watch the dang video now, OK?

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Firstly, that would be a video I know is interesting. Secondly, I'll watch the dang video now, OK?

Watch the video — only the first few minutes really relate to the cursor UI and the inventory. A lot of the rest of it talks about iconography and overall aesthetics. Then near the end he talks about the map.

The more I think about it, the less I think the cursor UI is an inherently bad decision, but I do think it could be improved to solve some of the issues with inventory slot contexts that I talked about before. The thing is, these issues would affect a mouse-based interface just as much, and we have to tackle these kind of things in web interfaces too.

Here's some (simplified) JavaScript from a project I've been working on recently that does the same basic thing:

[image]

Basically, as soon as the mouse leaves the target element it triggers an event that starts a 1 second (1,000ms) timer — once that timer runs down, it executes the module.dismiss() function and hides the sub-navigation. But, if at any point during that 1,000ms the user mouses over the target element again it clears the timer, keeping the sub-navigation open. The net effect is you have a 1 second window in which to get back inside the sub-nav before it closes. Something like this would make a big difference to the inventory slots, I think — although naturally you'd need to tweak the timings to make sure it ‘felt’ right.

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About that picture, I didn't look at it, because I very rarely look at pictures on the internet if I don't already know that they're going to be interesting.

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About that picture, I didn't look at it, because I very rarely look at pictures on the internet if I don't already know that they're going to be interesting.

Here's an examination of why I don't care for watching random videos. Knowing something is a video beforehand doesn't take away from the other points raised by this insightful journalism.

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Language aside, this is true. Tech and game websites are getting bad about this. That said, when people around here tell you a video was good or did a good job representing their point you should probably consider watching it without all the complaining if you intend to keep debating an issue with them. You came off pretty jerk-like this time. :(

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About that picture, I didn't look at it, because I very rarely look at pictures on the internet if I don't already know that they're going to be interesting.

Here's an examination of why I don't care for watching random videos. Knowing something is a video beforehand doesn't take away from the other points raised by this insightful journalism.

I have absolutely nothing to contribute other than pointing out the irony of you linking to a random video in your post to explain why you don't care for watching random videos. I just thought I'd let you know how funny that is to me. :P

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About that picture, I didn't look at it, because I very rarely look at pictures on the internet if I don't already know that they're going to be interesting.

Here's an examination of why I don't care for watching random videos. Knowing something is a video beforehand doesn't take away from the other points raised by this insightful journalism.

I have absolutely nothing to contribute other than pointing out the irony of you linking to a random video in your post to explain why you don't care for watching random videos. I just thought I'd let you know how funny that is to me. :P

That's the joke of having it be a video and me linking it here, yes. (Also it's barely over a minute long, gets right to the point, and doesn't have any extraneous stuff or repeat itself too much-- which is not to say the video people keep talking about and linking to has those problems that much.)

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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.

...which is exactly the case with the 'go to destination' launch screen. It's one of those things where a particular solution can work very well in some contexts but not so well in others. I don't think it would have killed them to have 'press A to launch' on that particular screen.

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I agree that it's floaty, but it might just be floaty in comparison to a mouse, and there isn't much to be done about that. One thing that I really like about it is that many times, I could not see the whole screen on my old TV, in menus. This happens in a lot of games, as everything is just made with wider aspect ratios in mind. This is annoyingly prevalent in Destiny, but because the screen scrolls with the cursor, I don't have to worry about things getting cut off at the edges. [I haven't played this on a widescreen, so I don't actually know how it would compare].

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I agree that it's floaty, but it might just be floaty in comparison to a mouse, and there isn't much to be done about that. One thing that I really like about it is that many times, I could not see the whole screen on my old TV, in menus. This happens in a lot of games, as everything is just made with wider aspect ratios in mind. This is annoyingly prevalent in Destiny, but because the screen scrolls with the cursor, I don't have to worry about things getting cut off at the edges. [I haven't played this on a widescreen, so I don't actually know how it would compare].

Yeah, part of why we do the counter-scrolling so we didn't have to adjust our designs to fit in 4:3 TVs as drastically. 4:3 still makes up a part of our audience, and we were well aware of the restrictions, but could get away with wider designs in some instances because of the scrolling.

The cursor does feel faster in the horizontal direction in 4:3 than in 16:9 because we have to scroll the screen further in order to fit it all. This results in the cursor feeling a bit more "floaty" in 4:3.

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I agree that it's floaty, but it might just be floaty in comparison to a mouse, and there isn't much to be done about that. One thing that I really like about it is that many times, I could not see the whole screen on my old TV, in menus. This happens in a lot of games, as everything is just made with wider aspect ratios in mind. This is annoyingly prevalent in Destiny, but because the screen scrolls with the cursor, I don't have to worry about things getting cut off at the edges. [I haven't played this on a widescreen, so I don't actually know how it would compare].

Yeah, part of why we do the counter-scrolling so we didn't have to adjust our designs to fit in 4:3 TVs as drastically. 4:3 still makes up a part of our audience, and we were well aware of the restrictions, but could get away with wider designs in some instances because of the scrolling.

The cursor does feel faster in the horizontal direction in 4:3 than in 16:9 because we have to scroll the screen further in order to fit it all. This results in the cursor feeling a bit more "floaty" in 4:3.

Thank you for the insight, I appreciate it. So... is that floatiness fixable? If it is, could you try to fix it, please? or maybe make it adjustable?

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This is my feeling as well. I bet they tried motion sensing integration, but it's not polished enough yet. I would love if they kept at it and tried to make it happen.

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Zero.

I thought it was fine.

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Maybe it saw you coming and crossed the street?

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Maybe it saw you coming and crossed the street?

Let's hope the investment system does the same.

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Zero.

I thought it was fine.

I find that hard to believe with the thing in the item screen where if you move the cursor over a little too far or cut a corner it moves your selection to a different item class.

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Believe it Naruto.

From my own Beta review, I quote myself:

"I absolutely love the whole "hover" selection with the thumbstick to select what screens or icons I want to go to. I like how seamless everything feels."

I don't understand how you were finding such a hard time with the hover UI, or somehow clicking on the wrong things.

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Believe it Naruto.

From my own Beta review, I quote myself:

"I absolutely love the whole "hover" selection with the thumbstick to select what screens or icons I want to go to. I like how seamless everything feels."

I don't understand how you were finding such a hard time with the hover UI, or somehow clicking on the wrong things.

I remember some initial fumbling during character creation, but I feel like most of that could be attributed to the learning curve. Pretty sure by the time I hit character three I wasn't having any problems on that screen.

Inventory was never an issue. Maybe you were just carrying too much crap Vagueness. I never saw a reason to carry more than three alternates for any given slot, if that much. Anything more was usually engrams that could be ignored, or garbage that was swiftly dismantled.

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Inventory was never an issue. Maybe you were just carrying too much crap Vagueness. I never saw a reason to carry more than three alternates for any given slot, if that much. Anything more was usually engrams that could be ignored, or garbage that was swiftly dismantled.

I'm sure he wasn't the only one (I usually had 5-6 primaries in my inventory at any time, since I was experimenting with different weapon types in Crucible), but in any case if what we've heard about how harder content is going to work (specific damage types for certain enemies) is true, then more and more players are going to find themselves carrying lots of guns, and swapping between them often, via what is a somewhat clumsy interface.

We've talked about it before, but I think the solution is to provide us with loadouts and an easy way of switching between them in combat. That's the biggest place where a cursor UI falls down: use under time pressure. Some players won't struggle, but I'm sure others will. How exactly you could do this is a tricky question, as the Destiny control scheme is already pretty packed. Maybe some other button combination within the inventory could let you quickly toggle between two or three loadouts? Just spitballing here.

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Inventory was never an issue. Maybe you were just carrying too much crap Vagueness. I never saw a reason to carry more than three alternates for any given slot, if that much. Anything more was usually engrams that could be ignored, or garbage that was swiftly dismantled.

I'm sure he wasn't the only one (I usually had 5-6 primaries in my inventory at any time, since I was experimenting with different weapon types in Crucible), but in any case if what we've heard about how harder content is going to work (specific damage types for certain enemies) is true, then more and more players are going to find themselves carrying lots of guns, and swapping between them often, via what is a somewhat clumsy interface.

We've talked about it before, but I think the solution is to provide us with loadouts and an easy way of switching between them in combat. That's the biggest place where a cursor UI falls down: use under time pressure. Some players won't struggle, but I'm sure others will. How exactly you could do this is a tricky question, as the Destiny control scheme is already pretty packed. Maybe some other button combination within the inventory could let you quickly toggle between two or three loadouts? Just spitballing here.

If you were only using those primaries in the Crucible, why were you carrying them around all the time? You had a perfectly good vault in the Tower to keep them in. And why, with how obnoxiously fast you die, would you take them all in with you at once? You'd spend one life just swapping guns (I'm sure I'm exaggerating, but I couldn't stand more than two matches before I gave up. Maybe this is false.)

And you shouldn't be carrying around an entire armory just so you have the right damage type either. You're making it sound like you'll want to carry an Auto Rifle in all damage flavors, a Pulse Rifle in all flavors, a Scout Rifle in all flavors, etc. That's madness. Just take three primaries, one of each damage type. Four if for some reason kinetic is better than anything else. At most that's nine (twelve if you have to have kinetic) guns on your person at any given time, three per slot, with the rest being loot drops. Anything beyond that is in the Tower. Oh, and then there's, you know, the other two people on your Fireteam. You know, those guys who are hopefully speced and equipped to fill the gaps the others cannot.

I'm not seeing any need for loadouts. It's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist and only adds a complication. But hey, maybe my cumulative months playing Borderlands has prepared and taught me how to handle this stuff. I see Destiny's inventory and weapon system as nothing more than twists on very familiar mechanics.

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If you were only using those primaries in the Crucible, why were you carrying them around all the time? You had a perfectly good vault in the Tower to keep them in.

The vault is an extremely inconvenient place to put a weapon that you might want to swap to mid-activity. If you were running Crucible you have to go to orbit, then to the tower, then back to orbit, then back to Crucible. Same process for missions or Strikes or whatever. It seems to make far more sense to keep weapons you may want to switch between on your person; the vault seems far more of a tool for sharing items between characters.

And why, with how obnoxiously fast you die, would you take them all in with you at once? You'd spend one life just swapping gun …

I found I could usually swap gun after dying without having to die again, but in any case - if the price of switching to a more appropriate tool is one life, I think that's probably the better choice.

And you shouldn't be carrying around an entire armory just so you have the right damage type either. You're making it sound like you'll want to carry an Auto Rifle in all damage flavors, a Pulse Rifle in all flavors, a Scout Rifle in all flavors, etc.

I can't imagine you'd need to carry as many weapons as that, but you only need four weapons for it to drop onto a second row, at which point the problem I described occurs. So; assuming you're averse to stashing weapons in the vault (which I am) it's quite feasible you might carry around both PvE and PvP weapons of more than one type simultaneously; throw in different damage types and four or more weapons in a given category seems likely, if not inevitable.

I'm not seeing any need for loadouts. It's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist and only adds a complication.

You're right: adding a feature like loadouts would lead to more complication in the UI, but that doesn't make them unnecessary. I'd say that having a simple mechanism for switching between two or more sets of gear in a single action will probably be very helpful once players start specialising their equipment more.

Considering that you can only equip one exotic weapon and one exotic armour item at a time, I have to imagine that people will quickly establish sets they want to use in PvP and different sets for PvE, since it's unlikely that one size will fit all. Based on that, I think loadouts are an inevitability.

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The vault is an extremely inconvenient place to put a weapon that you might want to swap to mid-activity. If you were running Crucible you have to go to orbit, then to the tower, then back to orbit, then back to Crucible. Same process for missions or Strikes or whatever.

And? Why is this even an issue? If you're swapping activities, you're returning to orbit anyway. Might as well make a pitstop to gear up appropriately and ditch everything you won't be needing. Is it perhaps inconvenient? Sure. I'll give you that. But it isn't the enormous pain in the ass people keep making it out to be.

If it's something you foresee wanting in the middle of a Strike, or a Raid, obviously take it with you. One should travel light, not entirely barren.

It seems to make far more sense to keep weapons you may want to switch between on your person; the vault seems far more of a tool for sharing items between characters.

Swap between for one activity? Sure. For multiple activities? That's silly. Far more a tool for sharing items between characters? Uh, that's obviously it's purpose, but nothing is stopping you from using it's bountiful storage space as a dumping ground for all your loot. In fact, I'd argue that's EXACTLY how you should use it, because then all your characters have access to the same gear all the time. There's zero reason to horde and keep everything on you unless you're literally so allergic to waiting that you break out into hives and go into anaphylactic shock.

I can't imagine you'd need to carry as many weapons as that, but you only need four weapons for it to drop onto a second row, at which point the problem I described occurs. So; assuming you're averse to stashing weapons in the vault (which I am) it's quite feasible you might carry around both PvE and PvP weapons of more than one type simultaneously; throw in different damage types and four or more weapons in a given category seems likely, if not inevitable.

Yeah, you only need four weapons for it to drop down to the next row, but in my experience with the game, you never had to swap guns so often that it became an issue. Even during the Strike, when you really had to swap weapons, I only did it three times. Fusion Rifle to Sniper Rifle at the Devil Walker, back to Fusion Rifle once it was defeated, Scout Rifle to Auto Rifle before assaulting Sepkis.

Of course, you've just explained why it was a problem for you (averse to using the vault), so I'd argue this is not the game's problem, it's YOUR problem. You're managing your inventory in a way that's obviously less than optimal, perhaps even in a way they didn't intended you to.

You're right: adding a feature like loadouts would lead to more complication in the UI, but that doesn't make them unnecessary. I'd say that having a simple mechanism for switching between two or more sets of gear in a single action will probably be very helpful once players start specialising their equipment more.

Considering that you can only equip one exotic weapon and one exotic armour item at a time, I have to imagine that people will quickly establish sets they want to use in PvP and different sets for PvE, since it's unlikely that one size will fit all. Based on that, I think loadouts are an inevitability.

I see how it could be helpful. I still think it's unnecessary. Embrace the vault, learn to love spending a minute swapping gear before engaging your next activity. Again, this is a process playing Borderlands for ungodly amounts of time has probably accustomed me to. It isn't unusual for my group to fire up the game and spend half an hour in Sanctuary flipping between our Inventory, the Gold Chest (delivers guaranteed Very Rare loot at the expense of one developer granted key), the Vault, and the Secret Stash (for swapping weapons between characters) before we're ready to go. I maintain the inventory interface is not a problem. If it is a problem, it's probably because you've made it one.

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And? Why is this even an issue? If you're swapping activities, you're returning to orbit anyway. Might as well make a pitstop to gear up appropriately and ditch everything you won't be needing.

I think maybe you've misunderstood me - I'm talking about changing weapons within the same activity; even Crucible varies in whether you'd be better off with a shorter-range AR vs a mid-range scout rifle. But even if you are changing activity, you're talking about an additional visit to the tower instead of (say) Crucible -> Orbit -> Strike.

Is it perhaps inconvenient? Sure. I'll give you that. But it isn't the enormous pain in the ass people keep making it out to be.

So you concede that it's inconvenient but don't think people would seek to make it less inconvenient? I don't know about you, but I'd rather have to deal with UI foibles than have to make a 3 minute round trip to the tower and back just to change guns. But at the same time this doesn't mean that UX shouldn't be polished, and that is ultimately why GV started this thread – because the the cursor UI isn't always

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We've talked about it before, but I think the solution is to provide us with loadouts and an easy way of switching between them in combat. That's the biggest place where a cursor UI falls down: use under time pressure. Some players won't struggle, but I'm sure others will. How exactly you could do this is a tricky question, as the Destiny control scheme is already pretty packed. Maybe some other button combination within the inventory could let you quickly toggle between two or three loadouts? Just spitballing here.

While I never had too much of a issue with the system I like your idea. What if on the death screen you could easily access say three custom loadouts. But if you want to change you weapons while your still alive you have to "take the risk/time" to go into the menu?

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That's more or less how it works in Reach and Halo 4, right? I'd approve of that.

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Believe it Naruto.

From my own Beta review, I quote myself:

"I absolutely love the whole "hover" selection with the thumbstick to select what screens or icons I want to go to. I like how seamless everything feels."

I don't understand how you were finding such a hard time with the hover UI, or somehow clicking on the wrong things.

I remember some initial fumbling during character creation, but I feel like most of that could be attributed to the learning curve. Pretty sure by the time I hit character three I wasn't having any problems on that screen.

Inventory was never an issue. Maybe you were just carrying too much crap Vagueness. I never saw a reason to carry more than three alternates for any given slot, if that much. Anything more was usually engrams that could be ignored, or garbage that was swiftly dismantled.

I also tried to keep it to three alternates, and as long as you have more than one item of a given class or type and you need to move to, from, or across the area for that type of item, the problems I mentioned pop up.

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Believe it Naruto.

From my own Beta review, I quote myself:

"I absolutely love the whole "hover" selection with the thumbstick to select what screens or icons I want to go to. I like how seamless everything feels."

I don't understand how you were finding such a hard time with the hover UI, or somehow clicking on the wrong things.

I didn't "click on" or fully select the wrong things that much, but I came close, so I had to keep moving the cursor back around to what I actually wanted. As for why, part of it was lack of familiarity and intuition in using it, which I was able to deal with as I said way back in the first post. Part of it is that thumbsticks are ill-suited to cursors. Part of it is that trying to cut corners selects or pre-selects or brings up whatever you were on for a split second, which is bad when item you hovered on for a moment was a main item or representative item because it opens a little sub-page (and I already said why making the last thing stay open longer isn't that much of a help, it'll take longer to intentionally select things and the interface is already too slow). Part of it is that frustration with it lead to distraction and missing items I wanted to select. Frustration also made me try to find mental and physical shortcuts which also lead to missing items more.
Did you have to hover on the selected item of an item type to get other items of that type? I can't remember any more; I think you did have to, and that bothered me too, because it's another thing, and a bigger thing, in the way of just moving the cursor from A to B and pressing a button.
To be honest, I'm a lot more frustrated talking about it and having to explain why it was frustrating than I was most of the time using it, which seems like a bad sign to me. It seems like one of those things that's easy and feels right, or is hard and/or feels wrong, and for me it mildly hard and it felt wrong. I don't think anyone was complaining about the regular system, which shows up in console games all over the place, including the Halo games.

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I don't think anyone was complaining about the regular system, which shows up in console games all over the place, including the Halo games.

Since Steam Big Picture's implementation, I cannot complain enough about the current implementation of on-screen keyboards for the consoles. But I concede my opinion might be a bit rare.

EDIT: Here's a pic that displays the system I'm talking about.

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I don't think anyone was complaining about the regular system, which shows up in console games all over the place, including the Halo games.

Since Steam Big Picture's implementation, I cannot complain enough about the current implementation of on-screen keyboards for the consoles. But I concede my opinion might be a bit rare.

EDIT: Here's a pic that displays the system I'm talking about.

I can't argue with you, on screen keyboards suck. But I look at that image and... Yeah... No thanks. I makes me think of T9, and then I throw up in my mouth. The Xbox QWERTY keyboard isn't exactly stellar, but it doesn't have me twiddling a thumbstick and then playing QTEs with my controller to type.

Full disclosure, I also don't "get" the swipe/gesture based keyboards everyone seems to rave about on Android (and I think one is on iOS now?). Those feel like an awful abomination. Perhaps, in both cases, it's just simply that there's a learning curve. If that's it, I counter that I already know how to type, I don't want or need to learn a new method. I'm old school I guess. I like QWERTY, I don't need gestures, I don't like auto correct, and I don't like auto complete. Hunting and pecking on a console sucks, but at least it feels familiar.

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But that line of thinking hampers progress. How can you strive to develop a better navigational tool if most people have that mindset?

Bungie tried something slightly unconventional, but not revolutionary at all, to be honest. GV, for one, didn't like it due to lack of speed and slight proneness of time-delaying error. I'm merely proposing a system that allies the fluidity of thumbstick directional navigation with speed and precision.

Sure, it might suck. I'm all for testing it out first. But if the tester never even gives it a chance on grounds that "they already know the last system well and the new one has a learning curve", it will obviously never be good enough.

I'm sure there are a few people out there that never use computers/type-writers to write essays because writing down by hand has a smaller learning curve. ;)

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But that line of thinking hampers progress. How can you strive to develop a better navigational tool if most people have that mindset?

Bungie tried something slightly unconventional, but not revolutionary at all, to be honest. GV, for one, didn't like it due to lack of speed and slight proneness of time-delaying error. I'm merely proposing a system that allies the fluidity of thumbstick directional navigation with speed and precision.

Sure, it might suck. I'm all for testing it out first. But if the tester never even gives it a chance on grounds that "they already know the last system well and the new one has a learning curve", it will obviously never be good enough.

I'm sure there are a few people out there that never use computers/type-writers to write essays because writing down by hand has a smaller learning curve. ;)

You're not wrong, it's silly and it's a stupid reason to stall progress. Nevertheless, I can't offer up much more than, "I prefer to stick to what I know." As a species we've been typing in largely the same way for nearly a century and a half. That's one hell of an obstacle to overcome when introducing a new method. I think earlier, somewhere, someone mentioned using Smartglass as opposed to the console keyboard, and honestly, I think it's more likely we'll see a larger shift in that direction (using an auxiliary device as a keyboard) than it is we'll see a shift in onscreen keyboards themselves. That's not to say I don't welcome attempts to change the status quo. I just can't promise I'll look at it without cringing and edging closer to QWERTY.

(Earlier I mentioned the fact it looked like T9 up-turned my stomach, irony is, I used to be ridiculously fast at T9, and often I could compose without looking at the phone. I find it's rather like commercial free radio though, or SD to HD, once you've switched to the better option, you never go back. Better in this case is going from T9 to QWERTY.)

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To be honest, I'm a lot more frustrated talking about it and having to explain why it was frustrating than I was most of the time using it, which seems like a bad sign to me. It seems like one of those things that's easy and feels right, or is hard and/or feels wrong, and for me it mildly hard and it felt wrong. I don't think anyone was complaining about the regular system, which shows up in console games all over the place, including the Halo games.

I feel ya. I don't know if the plan is maybe to release a PC version down the line, or if they just felt that this would be easier considering the type of game and gear and whatnot. I also agree with you in that I don't think it would be that large of a problem without the whole cursor design, but I also haven't tried it in this game since it doesn't exist. Maybe they're trying something new. It's probably not going to feel right or be easy to use for everyone, and it may take time to get used to it. Maybe you'll never get used to it, especially if Destiny is the only game doing it. It's a tough call and there's no easy solution. I don't see them going back away from the cursors, though. Well, at least not in this iteration of Destiny.

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Zero.

I thought it was fine.

I find that hard to believe with the thing in the item screen where if you move the cursor over a little too far or cut a corner it moves your selection to a different item class.

If I remember correctly, you play on a CRT, right? Perhaps the reason you had issues is due to your display... others may not share the same issues that you saw because they have larger screens, better resolution, etc.

I didn't have any issues with the interface either and quite liked it.

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Zero.

I thought it was fine.

I find that hard to believe with the thing in the item screen where if you move the cursor over a little too far or cut a corner it moves your selection to a different item class.

If I remember correctly, you play on a CRT, right? Perhaps the reason you had issues is due to your display... others may not share the same issues that you saw because they have larger screens, better resolution, etc.

I didn't have any issues with the interface either and quite liked it.

Agdtinman came in and said the screen scrolls differently in 4:3 and makes the cursor feel floatier, which I'm sure is part of it, but then LCDs have a slightly longer response time than CRTs, and I imagine that wouldn't help my problem of being slightly off.
That reminds me, one of my problems with the cursor UI is pretty personal but not unique. I have obsessive-compulsive tendencies, so I would often position the cursor just so on an item before I actually selected it, and that added time and frustration, and of course it's a problem that doesn't exist with the usual console navigation. I do do this in PC interfaces sometimes, but it's significantly faster and less fidgety to position a mouse cursor in a precise point or line or area than it is to position Destiny's cursor precisely. That's more my problem than the game's problem, but it's hard to ignore those urges completely even with medication, and I'm not the only that has them.

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That reminds me, one of my problems with the cursor UI is pretty personal but not unique. I have obsessive-compulsive tendencies, so I would often position the cursor just so on an item before I actually selected it

Ah, yes, that would greatly increase one's frustration, I guess. Took me maybe half an hour to realize I could selects things much earlier than I originally though (position-wise).

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(separate post because I realized a separate thing going on)
I think part of the problem is probably the cursor itself-- it's a circle, and the area that affects things seems to be a small area in the middle of the circle, and that's not as easy to envision and see as the pointer or arrow cursors that have been standard on PCs for 20 to 30 years. I know a few times I thought (or felt) that putting part of the circle on an item would work and the game reminded me it didn't work by not doing anything. Maybe if they change the shape or even just added crosshairs or something it would feel better.

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The circle is far too big compared to its affect-range. Just reducing its visual radius would fix that aspect for me, though.

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The circle is far too big compared to its affect-range. Just reducing its visual radius would fix that aspect for me, though.

Going down this line of thought (as I was initially, and occasionally afterwards, perplexed by the shape) the problem isn't that it's circular. The problem is that it's a hollow circle. I'm sure a lot of people, myself included, see that hollow cursor and without thinking, attempt to encircle the square box. The reality was you didn't necessarily have to. If the cursor was a filled circle, I'm not sure that train of subconscious thought would persist as now you're covering the item. Cover enough of the box with the circle and you'd probably feel more confident about your selection and the feedback would be stronger.

I'm not UI expert though, so it's entirely possible I'm just talking out of my ass.

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3954 views

The circle is far too big compared to its affect-range. Just reducing its visual radius would fix that aspect for me, though.

Risky business when it has to be visible enough on TVs at sofa range…

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- No text -

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(separate post because I realized a separate thing going on)
I think part of the problem is probably the cursor itself-- it's a circle, and the area that affects things seems to be a small area in the middle of the circle, and that's not as easy to envision and see as the pointer or arrow cursors that have been standard on PCs for 20 to 30 years. I know a few times I thought (or felt) that putting part of the circle on an item would work and the game reminded me it didn't work by not doing anything. Maybe if they change the shape or even just added crosshairs or something it would feel better.

If there's only 1 thing under the cursor circle, anywhere under the circle, it should select that item. If there are multiple things under the cursor, it reverts to the one closest to, or under, the center point of the circle.

Currently there is a bug where certain instances always revert to just selecting the item with the center point instead of the whole circle, even if it's only 1 item under the cursor.

I did a bunch of research into cursor navigation. Maybe I'll write up an article someday summarizing it. There's lots of cool solutions. We know there's some weird edge-cases, but I'm pretty happy with where it ended up, and super glad we took a chance doing something a little different.

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I did a bunch of research into cursor navigation. Maybe I'll write up an article someday summarizing it. There's lots of cool solutions. We know there's some weird edge-cases, but I'm pretty happy with where it ended up, and super glad we took a chance doing something a little different.

Please do that! I'd love to read it and I'm sure many other people would!

Speaking of which, it would be sweet of the web team to create a webpage for Bungie publications like they did with the old Halo B.net site.

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4041 views

(separate post because I realized a separate thing going on)
I think part of the problem is probably the cursor itself-- it's a circle, and the area that affects things seems to be a small area in the middle of the circle, and that's not as easy to envision and see as the pointer or arrow cursors that have been standard on PCs for 20 to 30 years. I know a few times I thought (or felt) that putting part of the circle on an item would work and the game reminded me it didn't work by not doing anything. Maybe if they change the shape or even just added crosshairs or something it would feel better.

If there's only 1 thing under the cursor circle, anywhere under the circle, it should select that item. If there are multiple things under the cursor, it reverts to the one closest to, or under, the center point of the circle.

I had no idea it worked that way...

Currently there is a bug where certain instances always revert to just selecting the item with the center point instead of the whole circle, even if it's only 1 item under the cursor.

...and that might be why.
I could've sworn whatever you would select if you pressed A or whatever button, i.e. what you're hovering on, is a little bigger than items of the same class, like if you're hovering on the selected primary weapon icon it's a little bigger than the selected helmet icon, did that not happen? Doing that or something like that would help too, if you didn't already... and now I'm realizing you must have thought of that already....

I did a bunch of research into cursor navigation. Maybe I'll write up an article someday summarizing it. There's lots of cool solutions. We know there's some weird edge-cases, but I'm pretty happy with where it ended up, and super glad we took a chance doing something a little different.

I guess that's that then.

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Zero.

I thought it was fine.

I should print this out and frame it for my desk. :)

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Zero.

I thought it was fine.

I should print this out and frame it for my desk. :)

You could whip that out when you need a raise.

"I deserve more money. Even Cody Miller had nothing bad to say about my work!"

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4035 views

Zero.

I thought it was fine.

I should print this out and frame it for my desk. :)

You could whip that out when you need a raise.

"I deserve more money. Even Cody Miller had nothing bad to say about my work!"

Isn't that pretty much equivalent to "Cody Miller says I'm better than God!"?

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