Game UI - Is it just me?

Blaizze · 06-01-2014, 01:30 PM

I picked the game back up after this patch ready to give it a solid go but personally I find it very cumbersome to navigate through menus and very "clunky"

Is is just me or is this a common feeling as well? EHM is so seamless and easy to get around and quickly go back etc. This includes things like adding players to trades and changing line ups etc.

I did a "Clear all Lines" and then "Ask Assistant" so he automatically filled them in but it didn't appear that I could cancel his changes and revert back to what I had before.

In EHM I commonly would clear lines, Ask the Coach to fill them just to see his suggestions and then I would back out of the lines screen to revert back to what I had most times or I would alter his suggestions. In FHM it seems if I do that, I can't go back to what I had so easily.

Just little gripes but the UI does not seem game-playable friendly and I am interested in hearing other opinions on that aspect.

I personally find the UI to be too cumbersome and time consuming to move around to make the game worth playing regardless of if other things are working or not. (My scouts say my backup goalie is ahead of my main goalie in terms of skill and ability but when I click on my main goalie they say he is ahead of my backup goalie in terms of skill and ability.... which one is it?)

Crombeen · 06-01-2014, 06:24 PM

No I don't think it's just you..

I think everybody who uses any software at his/her computer would feel frustrated in this game trying to navigate around or simply click at something because most elements are designed way too small. We all know this game has bugs and less matured features that will greatly improve over the next few years if we keep supporting them but I also think if they can't hire a decent graphic professional in the next few years to do something about their global UI this game could easily still end up going silence just by the looks and feel of it.

I don't like to say, but 95% of everything OOTP does online or at a visual-/design interface is ugly and doesn't work in their favor, there is none general guidelines to spot in anything design. Everything seems like it has been designed just like the wind was blowing that day kinda approach, without trying to insult anybody who has made some design for them.

The company website (homepage) - the specific landing pages for each game - the forums we post in - email newsletters you may receive - the games itself or even something small as the online game manuals (also webpages).. You know what they all have in common? They all look and feel completely different and if somebody would say they're all made by 12 different people nobody would disagree. There is barely emotion involved in any of this.
The OOTP 14 logo was beautiful because it had details + often was used with an image of a baseball field at the background.
See we all remember this look even myself without knowing anything about baseball, this is emotion because it feels and breaths baseball all the way, it almost tells you a story and you would like to click it to view more.

Look at the top of this forum the OOTP 15 logo, not saying it's completely bad but it's emotionless, it has a blurry background and doesn't tell you with the same value we're talking about baseball here.

FHM Game:

The general design problem this game has is that the OOTP guys like the design elements a lot, their vision at this moment is " You maybe like the game UI or you don't " but that's not true at all I think. My vision is that you have people who seriously hate it and visit those forums to say something about it, and you have people who also don't like it a lot but don't say a word because they care and hope this game will get better code wise first, instead of graphic design at this moment.
If you'd design fire ( flames+puck ) and ice in 2010 you probably was very bold as a graphic designer at that time but when you do it in 2013/14 you're completely out of your league and doesn't understand what hockey looks and feels like today.
If you turn on your TV at ESPN, NHL, CBS or whatever broadcaster you would view you will never see a puck with fire and ice anymore because that was years ago when it had to symbolize a rocking hard slap-shot.
You will probably see a few elements that will never change to hockey like skates who hit the breaks from going at full speed and splash some ice (snowstorm). Frozen-/cold ice that turns into some kinda fog visible kinda smoke. Those elements will always be part of hockey but shooting a puck that got on fire because it has to symbolize it was a hard snapshot?

I bet you they really like this puck+fire animation in the game when you simulate a day or two.
This is so bad at so many ways. NHL 99? Eric Lindros cover also had those type of elements because it blended into area we lived in around this years. I believe that game also had some intro video in a factory with lots of sawing and fireworks flying around.
When I see this I would like to visit my grandma because I can't stop thinking of her that day

Navigating fast back and forward is key for a game where you often view different pages because you're scouting players all the time. In Football Manager you can just use the keyboard arrow keys to go one page back or forward. It's so lovely, small and easy.
That's what good UI is also about. Not knowing it's there, there's probably only a few people in the world who know it's easy to navigate by the arrow keys and think about it but almost all gamers use it without thinking about it. That's what make design work if it's not troubling you at first.

The menu to navigation between different teams or leagues is something so complex that I have never seen before anywhere else in my life. The menu is also called complex_menu in the game by the developers.

So they design something, name it complex and don't think, maybe that's not a good idea, maybe we should make it a lot easier to use and call it something like. easy_menu or fast_menu.

Why is there a color change at those buttons?
This has been one of those things I've been looking at from the very first Beta version that I bought. Always thought why isn't there somebody who would love to make that button look one equal color without that dark rectangle on it.
Let's face it, a designer who doesn't care about detail what kinda designer is that. I'm not even a designer but just love to play around and design stuff but this would completely freak me out of my chair if somebody at my team would upload this to a project.

Some other frustration are the amount of pop-ups in this game. Something simple as the credits (thank you) page at the welcome screen has it's own 'page template' in this game but clicking on Load Game or Start New Game will bring some freaking ugly pop-up modal to the screen that often is completely out of shape. And I'm not even talking about a pop-up inside another pop-up, I've seen that happen before too.

What's wrong with adding another clean/lean page template to the game when you click at Start New Game ? Why does that have to result in some small pop-up window where they have to try and get all their * into such a small fixed little window, while If you had a new clean page template you could align everything nicely and easy and give everything it's breathing space that it so deserves.
In general everything in this game to so tight designed that makes it almost impossible to align anything properly.

Long story short. They really need a designer who understands sports, and knows a lot about alignment and making things look more clean and mean ...or somebody that could at least design them some kinda company guidelines to follow when it involves games X or Z.
If they make things more beautiful and align stuff more nicely the problems of clicking way too many times will still be around but at least you're clicking at something more beautiful what makes it less frustrating.

No hard feelings!!

JeffR · 06-01-2014, 06:26 PM

Yeah, it definitely could stand some improvement. It's a bit of a Frankenstein monster at the moment - as we've changed and added things to the game, the focus was on improving the mechanics of the game, and as a result the new elements got shoehorned into the old UI, and the results are often pretty clunky.

The next version of the game will have a UI much more similar to OOTP15, and we've been discussing ways to get rid of some of the redundancies, make the key information a little easier to access, and make it a little less click-intensive in general.

asilvermtzion · 06-01-2014, 08:31 PM

i am a designer and the aesthetics and ui of software drives me nuts. i dont do ui work, but it takes some careful planning to make sure it works in an intuitive way.

i get that the team dont want this game to be a 'clone' of football manager or ootp or ehm, but they have ui (generally speaking) that works. taking cues from those sorts of games isnt the worst thing that could happen.

Blaizze · 06-03-2014, 05:38 PM

Thank you for the response I appreciate it. Appreciate the work put into correcting all of the bugs that have been going on as well and look forward to the 2015 version. I'm not sure I can deal with the current UI and playing the game personally as it seems to require a lot of extra time, ie. wasted time on navigation but I look forward to the future of the franchise.

AlpineSK · 06-03-2014, 05:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crombeen

No I don't think it's just you..

If you'd design fire ( flames+puck ) and ice in 2010 you probably was very bold as a graphic designer at that time but when you do it in 2013/14 you're completely out of your league and doesn't understand what hockey looks and feels like today.

I like to call it the "Flaming can of SPAM" :-)

Crombeen · 06-03-2014, 05:52 PM

I was bored today and created a redesign of FHM welcome screen.

1)
I used the colors from the FHM logo for the buttons and got rid of those yellow/gold icons and buttons.

2)
Bit of a general clean-up, a simple menu at the top which is very familiar for most of us in other software or web pages. Also tried to make the 'start new game' section a little bit easier to understandable by adding image banners. I think you only have three options to start from, Default Game, History Game or a Custom Game - it's simple to understand and from there you can do stuff.
The 'game loading' section is probably gonna be the most used buttons on the welcome page that's why I made the those buttons a little bigger and standout from the others. I also positioned them more to the top-/right side of the page because thats the position most people have their cursor near.

3)
The background image is just an image I found within this game.. I think this page still needs a 'hockey' background image. Little bit more emotion, people in a hockey arena or something.
.
.

.
.
Update: with Load Games modal.
.
.

.
.

asilvermtzion · 06-03-2014, 06:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crombeen

I was bored today and created a redesign of FHM welcome screen.

1)
I used the colors from the FHM logo for the buttons and got rid of those yellow/gold icons and buttons.

2)
Bit of a general clean-up, a simple menu at the top which is very familiar for most of us in other software or web pages. Also tried to make the 'start new game' section a little bit easier to understandable by adding image banners. I think you only have three options to start from, Default Game, History Game or a Custom Game - it's simple to understand and from there you can do stuff.
The 'game loading' section is probably gonna be the most used buttons on the welcome page that's why I made the those buttons a little bigger and standout from the others. I also positioned them more to the top-/right side of the page because thats the position most people have their cursor near.

3)
The background image is just an image I found within this game.. I think this page still needs a 'hockey' background image. Little bit more emotion, people in a hockey arena or something.

not bad at all. if it were me, id make the logo much smaller and do a vertical list of the options.

what are you using to mock that up?

AlpineSK · 06-03-2014, 09:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crombeen

I was bored today and created a redesign of FHM welcome screen.

1)
I used the colors from the FHM logo for the buttons and got rid of those yellow/gold icons and buttons.

2)
Bit of a general clean-up, a simple menu at the top which is very familiar for most of us in other software or web pages. Also tried to make the 'start new game' section a little bit easier to understandable by adding image banners. I think you only have three options to start from, Default Game, History Game or a Custom Game - it's simple to understand and from there you can do stuff.
The 'game loading' section is probably gonna be the most used buttons on the welcome page that's why I made the those buttons a little bigger and standout from the others. I also positioned them more to the top-/right side of the page because thats the position most people have their cursor near.

3)
The background image is just an image I found within this game.. I think this page still needs a 'hockey' background image. Little bit more emotion, people in a hockey arena or something.

THAT looks awesome

mking55 · 06-03-2014, 10:35 PM

I am reminded of Fernando who was famous for saying, "it is more important to look good than to feel good".

There is a lot of truth in that statement when it comes to UI. A good UI buys you goodwill from your customers and they are more likely to forgive mistakes (as long as they are fixed). Users don't want to type. The less keystrokes they have to make, the happier they are.

You might say a UI is just the packaging, but I truly believe a good UI buys you customer patience and goodwill.

Crombeen · 06-04-2014, 07:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by asilvermtzion

what are you using to mock that up?

Sketch 3 - It's Mac only software

http://youtu.be/EPOR1ac_aPc

It's a vector based design -/UI tool great for designing apps or websites, it can be best described as an Adobe Photoshop or Fireworks replacement but it's still very young and made by two or three persons.

asilvermtzion · 06-04-2014, 10:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crombeen

Sketch 3 - It's Mac only software

Sketch 3 Promo High Res - YouTube

It's a vector based design -/UI tool great for designing apps or websites, it can be best described as an Adobe Photoshop or Fireworks replacement but it's still very young and made by two or three persons.

nice, i'll check it out.

06-01-2014, 01:30 PM	#1
Blaizze Bat Boy Join Date: Jan 2014 Posts: 12	Game UI - Is it just me? I picked the game back up after this patch ready to give it a solid go but personally I find it very cumbersome to navigate through menus and very "clunky" Is is just me or is this a common feeling as well? EHM is so seamless and easy to get around and quickly go back etc. This includes things like adding players to trades and changing line ups etc. I did a "Clear all Lines" and then "Ask Assistant" so he automatically filled them in but it didn't appear that I could cancel his changes and revert back to what I had before. In EHM I commonly would clear lines, Ask the Coach to fill them just to see his suggestions and then I would back out of the lines screen to revert back to what I had most times or I would alter his suggestions. In FHM it seems if I do that, I can't go back to what I had so easily. Just little gripes but the UI does not seem game-playable friendly and I am interested in hearing other opinions on that aspect. I personally find the UI to be too cumbersome and time consuming to move around to make the game worth playing regardless of if other things are working or not. (My scouts say my backup goalie is ahead of my main goalie in terms of skill and ability but when I click on my main goalie they say he is ahead of my backup goalie in terms of skill and ability.... which one is it?) Last edited by Blaizze; 06-01-2014 at 01:31 PM.

06-01-2014, 06:24 PM	#2
Crombeen Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Jun 2013 Posts: 269	No I don't think it's just you.. I think everybody who uses any software at his/her computer would feel frustrated in this game trying to navigate around or simply click at something because most elements are designed way too small. We all know this game has bugs and less matured features that will greatly improve over the next few years if we keep supporting them but I also think if they can't hire a decent graphic professional in the next few years to do something about their global UI this game could easily still end up going silence just by the looks and feel of it. I don't like to say, but 95% of everything OOTP does online or at a visual-/design interface is ugly and doesn't work in their favor, there is none general guidelines to spot in anything design. Everything seems like it has been designed just like the wind was blowing that day kinda approach, without trying to insult anybody who has made some design for them. The company website (homepage) - the specific landing pages for each game - the forums we post in - email newsletters you may receive - the games itself or even something small as the online game manuals (also webpages).. You know what they all have in common? They all look and feel completely different and if somebody would say they're all made by 12 different people nobody would disagree. There is barely emotion involved in any of this. The OOTP 14 logo was beautiful because it had details + often was used with an image of a baseball field at the background. See we all remember this look even myself without knowing anything about baseball, this is emotion because it feels and breaths baseball all the way, it almost tells you a story and you would like to click it to view more. Look at the top of this forum the OOTP 15 logo, not saying it's completely bad but it's emotionless, it has a blurry background and doesn't tell you with the same value we're talking about baseball here. FHM Game: The general design problem this game has is that the OOTP guys like the design elements a lot, their vision at this moment is " You maybe like the game UI or you don't " but that's not true at all I think. My vision is that you have people who seriously hate it and visit those forums to say something about it, and you have people who also don't like it a lot but don't say a word because they care and hope this game will get better code wise first, instead of graphic design at this moment. If you'd design fire ( flames+puck ) and ice in 2010 you probably was very bold as a graphic designer at that time but when you do it in 2013/14 you're completely out of your league and doesn't understand what hockey looks and feels like today. If you turn on your TV at ESPN, NHL, CBS or whatever broadcaster you would view you will never see a puck with fire and ice anymore because that was years ago when it had to symbolize a rocking hard slap-shot. You will probably see a few elements that will never change to hockey like skates who hit the breaks from going at full speed and splash some ice (snowstorm). Frozen-/cold ice that turns into some kinda fog visible kinda smoke. Those elements will always be part of hockey but shooting a puck that got on fire because it has to symbolize it was a hard snapshot? I bet you they really like this puck+fire animation in the game when you simulate a day or two. This is so bad at so many ways. NHL 99? Eric Lindros cover also had those type of elements because it blended into area we lived in around this years. I believe that game also had some intro video in a factory with lots of sawing and fireworks flying around. When I see this I would like to visit my grandma because I can't stop thinking of her that day Navigating fast back and forward is key for a game where you often view different pages because you're scouting players all the time. In Football Manager you can just use the keyboard arrow keys to go one page back or forward. It's so lovely, small and easy. That's what good UI is also about. Not knowing it's there, there's probably only a few people in the world who know it's easy to navigate by the arrow keys and think about it but almost all gamers use it without thinking about it. That's what make design work if it's not troubling you at first. The menu to navigation between different teams or leagues is something so complex that I have never seen before anywhere else in my life. The menu is also called complex_menu in the game by the developers. So they design something, name it complex and don't think, maybe that's not a good idea, maybe we should make it a lot easier to use and call it something like. easy_menu or fast_menu. Why is there a color change at those buttons? This has been one of those things I've been looking at from the very first Beta version that I bought. Always thought why isn't there somebody who would love to make that button look one equal color without that dark rectangle on it. Let's face it, a designer who doesn't care about detail what kinda designer is that. I'm not even a designer but just love to play around and design stuff but this would completely freak me out of my chair if somebody at my team would upload this to a project. Some other frustration are the amount of pop-ups in this game. Something simple as the credits (thank you) page at the welcome screen has it's own 'page template' in this game but clicking on Load Game or Start New Game will bring some freaking ugly pop-up modal to the screen that often is completely out of shape. And I'm not even talking about a pop-up inside another pop-up, I've seen that happen before too. What's wrong with adding another clean/lean page template to the game when you click at Start New Game ? Why does that have to result in some small pop-up window where they have to try and get all their * into such a small fixed little window, while If you had a new clean page template you could align everything nicely and easy and give everything it's breathing space that it so deserves. In general everything in this game to so tight designed that makes it almost impossible to align anything properly. Long story short. They really need a designer who understands sports, and knows a lot about alignment and making things look more clean and mean ...or somebody that could at least design them some kinda company guidelines to follow when it involves games X or Z. If they make things more beautiful and align stuff more nicely the problems of clicking way too many times will still be around but at least you're clicking at something more beautiful what makes it less frustrating. No hard feelings!! __________________ FHM gamer since 2013 #oldskool

06-03-2014, 05:52 PM	#7
Crombeen Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Jun 2013 Posts: 269	I was bored today and created a redesign of FHM welcome screen. 1) I used the colors from the FHM logo for the buttons and got rid of those yellow/gold icons and buttons. 2) Bit of a general clean-up, a simple menu at the top which is very familiar for most of us in other software or web pages. Also tried to make the 'start new game' section a little bit easier to understandable by adding image banners. I think you only have three options to start from, Default Game, History Game or a Custom Game - it's simple to understand and from there you can do stuff. The 'game loading' section is probably gonna be the most used buttons on the welcome page that's why I made the those buttons a little bigger and standout from the others. I also positioned them more to the top-/right side of the page because thats the position most people have their cursor near. 3) The background image is just an image I found within this game.. I think this page still needs a 'hockey' background image. Little bit more emotion, people in a hockey arena or something. . . . . Update: with Load Games modal. . . . . __________________ FHM gamer since 2013 #oldskool Last edited by Crombeen; 06-04-2014 at 11:28 AM.

06-03-2014, 10:35 PM	#10
mking55 All Star Starter Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Boading, China Posts: 1,249	I am reminded of Fernando who was famous for saying, "it is more important to look good than to feel good". There is a lot of truth in that statement when it comes to UI. A good UI buys you goodwill from your customers and they are more likely to forgive mistakes (as long as they are fixed). Users don't want to type. The less keystrokes they have to make, the happier they are. You might say a UI is just the packaging, but I truly believe a good UI buys you customer patience and goodwill. __________________ Why do you live in Boading? Somebody has to. http://adventuresinjurong.wordpress.com/

06-01-2014, 06:26 PM	#3
JeffR FHM Producer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Kelowna, BC Posts: 17,249	Yeah, it definitely could stand some improvement. It's a bit of a Frankenstein monster at the moment - as we've changed and added things to the game, the focus was on improving the mechanics of the game, and as a result the new elements got shoehorned into the old UI, and the results are often pretty clunky. The next version of the game will have a UI much more similar to OOTP15, and we've been discussing ways to get rid of some of the redundancies, make the key information a little easier to access, and make it a little less click-intensive in general.

06-01-2014, 08:31 PM	#4
asilvermtzion Minors (Double A) Join Date: Sep 2012 Posts: 144	i am a designer and the aesthetics and ui of software drives me nuts. i dont do ui work, but it takes some careful planning to make sure it works in an intuitive way. i get that the team dont want this game to be a 'clone' of football manager or ootp or ehm, but they have ui (generally speaking) that works. taking cues from those sorts of games isnt the worst thing that could happen.

06-03-2014, 05:38 PM	#5
Blaizze Bat Boy Join Date: Jan 2014 Posts: 12	Thank you for the response I appreciate it. Appreciate the work put into correcting all of the bugs that have been going on as well and look forward to the 2015 version. I'm not sure I can deal with the current UI and playing the game personally as it seems to require a lot of extra time, ie. wasted time on navigation but I look forward to the future of the franchise.