Cursor vs Tradition Console Navigation (Destiny)

by General Vagueness , The Vault of Sass, Thursday, August 21, 2014, 20:35 (3547 days ago) @ Kermit
edited by General Vagueness, Thursday, August 21, 2014, 20:41

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