Gaming Interface Redesign
Hunt: Showdown • 12 min read
Optimized for desktop, Last updated: 09 Nov 2021
1 Minute Summary
By design, Hunt Showdown can be a tough game. But its clunky, unintuitive menus can make the player experience difficult for the wrong reasons. As one of those players, I wanted to suggest actionable changes to Crytek in hopes that one day the community's issues will be addressed.
​
I polled the player base on Reddit to get a better understanding of the game's interface issues. In general, most players agreed the menus are good enough, but they can be slow, tedious, and painful—tons of room for improvement.
​
I focused my efforts on making the menus easier to learn and more efficient. Adobe XD is just a prototyping program, so advanced features like drag-and-drop actually playing the game is impossible, but please try out the prototype. I look forward to Crytek implementing some version of these changes soon!
Ai
Ps
Xd
2 months
Solo
Introduction
Hunt Showdown is one of the best games I’ve ever played. A dark, gritty shooter taking place in 1890's Lousianna, it boasts a strong visual identity and unique gameplay mechanics. With about 1,000 hours of playtime over the last couple of years, I would consider myself very familiar with its gameplay mechanics and interfaces.
While the time spent in the game has been enjoyable, it’s also exposed some of the games deepest menu design flaws. Instead of just complain about them, I want to offer possible solutions. I developed a high fidelity prototype with proposed changes that I believe would help improve player experience.
Note: For the best prototype experience, enter full screen mode in a desktop browser.
The Problem
The game's menus are overwhelming, hard to learn, and clunky.
This leads to a lot of wasted time doing tedious menu tasks and makes them especially unfriendly to new players. Other comparable games have menus that are far more intuitive and powerful.
The Challenge
Improve player experience while keeping the UI familiar to current players.
My goal is not to completely uproot the menu design. I believe that the foundation of the current menu design is actually quite impressive considering the game's complexity. Since no one likes to re-learn something they're already familiar with, I'd like to preserve the effective aspects while rethinking the areas that cause a poor experience.
The Solution
-
Understand problems via player opinions
-
Synthesize them into actionable design goals
-
Brainstorm ways to accomplish those goals
-
Test and iterate design changes
I focused on the menus that would make the greatest impact on player experience: Main Lobby, Hunter Modification, and Weapon Selection menus. Other screens need a redesign too, but are generally used less often.
​
Testing and iterating these changes is important but beyond the scope of this project because I don't work for Crytek.
Player Research
In order to understand player opinion, I conducted a survey where over 130 Reddit users responded with their opinions about various parts of the game and game menus. These player insights helped inform my design goals and changes.
"It works, but it's more clunky, slow, and tedious than it needs to be."
"Hunt’s menu are the ******* WORST"
"Nuke it from orbit and start over."
"Recruitment is messy & frustrating every time"
My interpretation of the entire survey:
Players generally agree that the menus allow them to complete tasks fairly well, but that the experience can be frustrating and time-consuming, especially compared to other games.
Design Goals
-
Streamline user flows
-
Improve information architecture
-
Implement quality of life features
Based on the survey results, these three main goals create a menu experience that is easier to learn, faster to accomplish tasks, and more fun to use.
Brainstorming
Sketching ideas allows me to quickly conceptualize and test ideas without spending a lot of development time. The following are some selected sketches of early design concepts.
Proposed Changes: General
1. Add drag-and-drop
Currently, players need a ridiculous amount of clicks to accomplish simple in-menu tasks. It currently takes 24 clicks to fully-equip a hunter from a blank slate. This does not include the clicks needed to remove the items first, clicks needed to buy the items, or clicks needed to swap the order in the loadout.
Ensure this system carries over to in-match menus as well.
2. Reorganize the navigation
Layering tabs upon more tabs isn’t just visually-cluttered, it’s difficult to learn. Instead, consolidate/rename navigation items, get rid of sub-tabs, create more screens, and create in-menu features to replace the navigation items. This might really help players learn the system faster and be less overwhelming at first.
Examples to follow.
Proposed Changes: Lobby
Between its stacked navigation and sub-navigation, useless and obstructive Contracts module, and general lack of hierarchy and intuitiveness, there's plenty to improve upon in the current lobby menu.
3. Add a separate Game Modes screen
Instead of cluttering the navigation with game mode sub-tabs, include a more visual game mode selection screen.
4. Add Custom Contracts
Some players dislike playing on certain maps and times of day enough to purposefully disconnect from the game before the match starts. This is problematic for everyone: for the player, they encounter match settings they dislike, spend time leaving, and then spend time loading up another match. It’s also hurtful to the players that decide to stay in the original match because the server now has less hunters. Everyone loses.
While Hunt doesn’t have the largest player base, giving players the option to set specific map and time of day preferences could improve satisfaction in a select group of patient players, even if queue times are affected. This would also let them personalize their loadouts for a specific situation, such as nights only. Alternatively, Random Contracts could offer an XP boost to incentivize players to join a truly random match.
5. Add a Gun Range
Players, especially new ones, should be able to test out every weapon and item in the game risk-free. This virtual gun range could include docile monsters and AI hunters along with damage numbers to help players understand how weapons work without having the pressure of a real match.
6. Add Private Matches
Being able to host community game events or play with custom rules could open up great opportunities for the Hunt community, including content creators.
7. Add a Challenges module
Currently, players have to navigate deeper into the menu in order to see their daily and weekly challenge progress. Having it immediately available should improve challenge participation and also give better progress feedback to players.
8. Add a Last Match module
Once again, players are forced into navigating the menu tabs to simply see the stats of the match they just played. Offering that information in the lobby would reduce clicks and perhaps increase player satisfaction post-match. A button to a detailed post-match summary would be available if desired.
9. Standardize game option visuals
Visual consistency can really help players learn the system faster. Currently the menus for Bounty Hunt lobbies and Quickplay lobbies could not be more different. As such, I believe the menu options for Bounty Hunt and Quickplay should be standardized visually into a more dynamic version.
​
In addition, menu options for different Bounty Hunt variations, like Solos, Duos, or Trios, should be consistent, but dynamic. This would give players only relevant options to their lobby selections and save a lot of screen space in the process.
10. Move player avatars and ready indicators
Moving player avatars and their corresponding readiness indicators onto the hunter they represent creates better mapping and allows teams to better understand who is ready and who is not at a glance, especially with random teammates.
11. Move Add Friend button
Moving player avatars and their corresponding readiness indicators onto the hunter they represent creates better mapping and allows teams to better understand who is ready and who is not at a glance, especially with random teammates.
Note: These changes would likely phase out the social media and news module that currently occupies the top right corner of the menu. While I have no player data to back this claim up, my hunch is that it’s rarely used, especially among regular players. I personally don’t think it adds much value but I understand if Crytek does, and would encourage them to poll their playerbase.
Proposed Changes: Hunters Menu
The current Hunters menu has a lot going on. It lacks hierarchy and many of the elements merge into one another. This creates confusing groupings and does not lend itself to being as intuitive or learnable as it could be. It also needlessly leaves out appropriate features that forces players to navigate deeper into the menus.
12. Utilize a four column layout
The current menu lacks a cohesive, clean structure; button placements create improper spacing and confusing groupings. I recommend a cleaner, 4 column grid structure that accommodates the hunter roster, traits and health bar, hunter model, and player loadout.
13. Convert navigation items to menu features
The features found under the Respec navigation item can be converted into buttons in the Hunter tab, saving tons of screen space and at least one click.
Proposed Changes: Inventory Menu
The current Inventory menu is easily the game's most intimidating screen, hosting a myriad of important features that are essential to gameplay. Because of this, it's understandable that there's a learning curve to it, but research suggests that even veteran players encounter frustrations. I believe some quality of life features can drastically improve the experience players have while using this menu without fundamentally redesigning it.
14. Add custom loadouts
Custom loadouts give players the ability to save enormous amounts of time. Give players the options to name each loadout, edit them, and include or ignore blank loadout slots for more dynamic options.
15. Offer a compact menu view
Currently, weapon menus can be confusing and extremely cluttered with items you don’t even own. Consolidating these items and representing item totals as numerical values instead of separate weapon images should help players find items faster. The classic menu view should be available in menu preferences.
​
To illustrate this new compact view, take the first weapon seen below, the Caldwell Rival 78. On the right of it, there is a stack of color-coded numbers followed by a red skull. The top "2" is golden signifying the player owns two legendary variants of this shotgun. The gray "2" below that signifies the player owns two normal variants of this shotgun. The red skull below this signifies the player owns a contraband variant of this shotgun.
​
Currently, the legendary variants are selected but any available variant can be selected and then equipped, bought, or sold. To cycle between legendary variants, simply tap the arrows directly to the right of the weapon image.
16. Add menu preferences
There are a myriad of options that could allow players to streamline and personalize their loadout experience, including:
-
Allowing players to automatically buy a weapon when they equip it (assuming they have enough Hunt dollars)
-
Change how weapons are displayed
-
Ignore warning messages for selling contraband weapons and over-buying
See the prototype for a full list.
17. Add detailed weapon stats
Currently most weapon stats deal with damage to the chest or headshot kill ranges. However, allowing players to select an ammo type, a specific hitbox, and a specific range can help both new and veteran players understand a weapon’s capabilities with different ammo types on different body parts at various ranges
18. Add weapon progress and unlocks
Adding a tab that displays weapon progress for a selected weapon might save players from having to navigate elsewhere (previously to the Store) to check the progression of a selected weapon or item.
19. Add player weapon history
Giving players the ability to see how many kills, shots fired, damage dealt, and other concrete stats with a specific weapon would likely give players a sense of pride with their favorite weapons and help them see what play styles work best for them
20. Allow players to hide weapons & items
In an effort to de-clutter the inventory menu, players should be allowed to hide items they deem undesirable or rarely used. These items can still be searched for and filtered for, and restored to the menu.
Proposed Changes: In-Game Menus & HUD
The in-game menus and Heads-Up Display are vital to player success in Hunt Showdown. In general, they are effective and useful, but a few quality of life updates could really improve player satisfaction.
22. Move traits to the loadout screen
In Hunt, there exist 2 types of in-game menus: the loadout menu and the map menu. I believe it would be far more intuitive and efficient to move the traits from the map menu into the loadout menu, bringing everything player-related under one roof. Alternatively, everything map or match-related would stay in the map menu. This way players don’t have to swap between both menus to see what weapons and traits they have.
23. Show both teammate's loadouts
Currently, players have to click a button to cycle through their teammates' loadouts. In-game, this can waste precious time if communication isn’t possible. Having both loadouts plainly visible at once can help players understand their teams capabilities and health pool, especially when playing with random teammates.
24. Add a teammate username toggle
Teammates in Trios are denoted in-game by 1, 2, or 3 dots above their heads. At times, it can be confusing to keep track of who is who via just dots. Player names could clear up a lot of confusion at the cost of being slightly more obtrusive. This option should be toggleable.
Final Thoughts
This redesign really revealed how complex of a game Hunt Showdown is—there are many intricate systems and important features crammed into the menus, so making sure they're well-represented is no easy task. While the current UI is admirable in its effort to combine these systems, I think my proposed changes are a huge improvement to the overall UX.
It wasn't easy finding a balance between making meaningful changes and keeping things familiar for current players, but I think I struck a nice balance. Plenty of other artists and designers have proposed great changes to the menus and I look forward to Crytek making their own improvements.
Note: This project focused more on menu structure than stylized aesthetics, however I think the more simplified art style could lend itself to better legibility and learnability. I’m also aware that some minor features might have been excluded from the redesign. Some may have been intentional and others simply overlooked. A final version would definitely change this.
Note: For the best prototype experience, enter full screen mode in a desktop browser.