UI Suggestion - Lobby Map and Difficulty Progress Indicator

[JustCoco]

At the moment the only way to find out which maps you have left to complete on a certain difficulty, is to check the achievement , but even that does not display all of them.

Now looking at the indicator for a player's rank, a simple idea came up, although not sure if it's easy to implement given the limit of the development tools.

When a player completes a campaign map, a small dot or any other indicator that comes to mind can be used to show his progress on that map.

A clearer way of understanding the idea is in the picture below. Each map will have 3 Dots (in my example) for each difficulty completed a dot will appear, with a maximum of 3, making it easier for everyone to understand which maps they have left to play and on which difficulty.

 

Can be anything from a dot, to a star to w/e would fit.

[Metagross31]

I like the general idea, but would prefer to go the other way around - somehow indicate the missing maps instead of the already completed ones. E.g. with an exclamation mark (!) On the missing difficulties when choosing the difficulty of the map or something.

[JustCoco]

Well it's self understandable, if you have only one "Dot" that means you need to play it on the next difficulty, it should be the easiest way to indicate the missing maps without too much of a fuss.

 

[Ladadoos]

I like the idea, personally the only thing I do not like is that you don't know what those dots mean unless someone tells you what it means or you happen to find the meaning of it.

[Sykole]

Brilliant idea. To make it easier to understand, those dots could also be next to the difficulty levels, so for instance the Expert button would have three dots next to it.

Or instead of having one to three dots, it could be one colored dot. Green for completing on Easy, Orange and Red, to signify difficulty. Doesn't take much to notice the pattern after finishing two or three maps.

[JustCoco]

Again the "Dots" were an example, take them as placeholders, i'll sketch up a new draft for an even easier UI feedback towards the player, although my idea will have further modifications.

[Ladadoos]

19 minutes ago, JustCoco said:

Again the "Dots" were an example, take them as placeholders, i'll sketch up a new draft for an even easier UI feedback towards the player, although my idea will have further modifications.

Looking forward to the proposal(s) 
The simpler and intuitive it is, the better. Even seemingly simple and obvious features are often overlooked by players, so don't underestimate how easy/hard it is for a player to notice and understand the meaning of it. Not saying you are, just talking from experience.

[JustCoco]

I used the "Stars" system for this example as a placeholder, alot of people encounter the difficulty system in games that is pointed out by stars , self-implying that the more stars the more difficult it is.

It is self explanatory that each map has 3 difficulties with this example, every colored star points out which difficulty you've done.

Now as a further approach to make it easier for players, the lobby could point out the difficulty accompanied by stars as seen in the below example:

 

As an alternate possibility, the difficulty mentioned followed by stars, to make it even easier for players to understand the stars in the global map.

Edited May 29, 2021 by JustCoco

[ManTitsHugeCrits]

Would love for this to be in the game, kind of hard to keep track on the once you have and haven't done at the moment!

[Ladadoos]

I would definitely not remove the difficulty names from the buttons: the approach to add the symbols next to the names sounds much more suitable and I think is a good solution.
Even though I think the initial proposal of using small dots is cleaner, stars likely convey the message better. That being said, I would make them much smaller and always at the same position, like image below.

In order to make the UI consistent with the achievements, I would make it such that the stars indicate the highest won difficulty and not all the difficulties played. As an example, if the left and middle star were yellow it would indicate that the highest difficulty won is advanced (and not that you won standard and advanced). 

The exact details of what difficulty you won could be added in the tooltip of the map icon. It's a big widget with little information. The first image is how it is now, the second how I could imagine it being.

 So this shows as  in the worldmap but when hovering over it, you would see that you actually only completed advanced.

Curious to hear what you think.

 

[LEBOVIN]

I like it a lot, one last issue I like to have resolved is: what do you do for Maps that do not have standard difficulty?

[JustCoco]

2 hours ago, Ladadoos said:

In order to make the UI consistent with the achievements, I would make it such that the stars indicate the highest won difficulty and not all the difficulties played. As an example, if the left and middle star were yellow it would indicate that the highest difficulty won is advanced (and not that you won standard and advanced). 

The exact details of what difficulty you won could be added in the tooltip of the map icon.

Indeed, to keep it consistent with the achievement, it is a good and clean idea for the stars to indicate the highest difficulty won filling the prior "grey" stars/markers up until the difficulty achieved. As for the widget, it's a cool addon to it.

Regarding the alignment of the stars being in a straight line and smaller, inputs a cleaner aspect and not bloated up, which is indeed the feedback that a player should get from the map/UI.

As i mentioned before, the dots were just a placeholder to describe the idea (which was put together in a rush).

While the dots are smaller/cleaner on the other hand the stars themselves appeal more to the players subconscious of encountering them in other games making it much easier to comprehend and know what they represent, especially when they are positioned above a map selection point. I mean i myself encountered stars as indicators to a mastery of a Map/chapter/level or what other terms different games use.

 

Overall from the picture you posted, everything seems clean/smooth (positioning, size) and at the same time very easy to understand what's going on on the screen when looking at it.

[Kapo]

What would be the most elegant solution is that once you have completed everything, all visual clutter is removed. no matter if you use a exclamation mark or question mark or stars or whatever, after everything is done in expert there should be no visual clutter (e.g. staring at all 3-stars forever).

[Ladadoos]

37 minutes ago, Kapo said:

What would be the most elegant solution is that once you have completed everything, all visual clutter is removed. no matter if you use a exclamation mark or question mark or stars or whatever, after everything is done in expert there should be no visual clutter (e.g. staring at all 3-stars forever).

The idea would be to add an option in-game to disable the stars on the worldmap.

As for certain maps not having standard, I would just not show that star. Another option would be to show a "stone" star, or something that indicates it is there but cannot be achieved. 

[Majora]

This looks super sweet!

[Xamos]

Amazing proposal! I really like the look of the 3 smaller stars in a line from ladadoos. 

While being at it, something new players also struggle with is finding out what maps they have to complete in order to unlock others. What would be awesome is, if it would show that information while hovering over a map you haven't unlocked yet. 

[JustCoco]

3 hours ago, Xamos said:

Amazing proposal! I really like the look of the 3 smaller stars in a line from ladadoos. 

While being at it, something new players also struggle with is finding out what maps they have to complete in order to unlock others. What would be awesome is, if it would show that information while hovering over a map you haven't unlocked yet. 

Isn't it like that atm?

[Ladadoos]

@JustCoco Thanks for the suggestion. We have added it to our list of new features, so you can hopefully expect to see it in the future 🙂

[JustCoco]

This sounds great, for every new player that will encounter this and make it easy for them to progress through their achievements.

Glad i could suggest smth useful