Why the console HUD is terrible, why it effects you and how to fix it! Get this post moving

Console Discussion
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The HUD issues! Lets get into it.

In regards of experience I played seasonal hardcore pushing greater rifts 120+
And most of the flaws I list below isn’t easily noticed until a certain difficulty in gameplay is challenged.
I’m also slightly vision impaired and use glasses to correct it and i do believe it contributes to making the current HUD worse But all in all its not the leading factor.

The action or reaction taken is always derived from the combined information of cooldowns, buffs/debuffs, hp/resources and enemy position, animation and the layout of the field the battle takes place on.

Opinions

Position of HUD is terrible.

The HUD information is critical to track easily and precisely.
A screen cornered HUD is roughly 60% further away from your character on screen and completely outside of your focus range. Looking down in the corner forces you to give up incoming information on enemy actions to gain the information you are looking for.
Furthermore the HUD being outside of your focus range forces you to “look for it” As well.
if I need to know the remaining cd of frost nova I’m having a hard time instantly landing my eyes on the icon displaying it. I need to locate the HUD, then the skill icon, then the visual display on the icon that displays it and it feels super awkward when you look back at the character only to notice the boss is halfway through his big slam animation and now you don’t have time to react.

simple solution:

  • allow console players to use the old HUD centered at bottom of screen.

Preferred solution:

  • separate each individual part of the HUD and give freedom to position every part of it wherever you want on the screen.

Id love to have the most important skill icons literally right under my characters feet.

skill icons are very small and have a faded out display of remaining cooldown with very shy visual indicator that its ready again.

Suggestion:

  • allow individual parts of the HUD to have size scaling options.

  • Optional choice to increase icon glow on specific skills when ready.

missing a transparent map overlay.

The map is very nice, but i feel a huge setback in being forced to stop character movement to check the map as the mini map is usually zoomed to far in to give me the info I’m looking for.

Suggestion:

  • make mini map zoom customizable for overworld and dungeons.

  • Add a simplistic transparent map overlay.

Thank you for reading I would really love to receive thought’s, opinions and solutions from others. So I will end the post with a fair description of what a HUD is as encouragement.

What is a HUD?

“Head up Display, or shortly HUD, is a transparent display that shows data in a person’s line of sight. The projected display makes it possible to see the information you need while navigating directly in your line of sight, which is a safer option as opposed to looking away from the road ahead.”

@D4team

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I always hated the transparent map overlay, the finer details of combat seem to get lost in it. But I understand why many would want this, and since it can be turned off and on, I have no issues with it being put into the game. I do agree that the mini map is too zoomed in to get any real information from it.

Skill icons I also understand, if you have a smaller television, I can see where they would be more difficult to see. As long as they are on a slider, I would tend to agree with you.

Yes, the skill bar is in the wrong location. Bottom center is where it should be. This is especially important in the early stages of the game before you have memorized your bindings. I do not like the way the globes are stacked on the hud, or how the extra icons are strewn all over the bar.

These are thing sI can get behind, even if I don’t need them implemented.

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I remember disliking it as well until a certain point where it was quicker to navigate by it and it just stuck with me!

there is also a lot of skills that get reduced Cooldown when X criteria is met, so 8 seconds CD isn’t necessarily 8 seconds at all, depending on procs it might me 2 seconds and it’s sort of a pain to constantly have to look at the corner of the screen to get an idea on where they are at.
All in all the HUD in the corner just sucks and there is not really any good reasons to have it there…

Glad to hear!

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What I want the most is :

  • HUD opacity / turning off
  • Removing words like IMMUNE, DODGED, etc that constantly appear on screen
  • A cursor to navigate the HUD… like D2R on console. It worked so well… why go back to a rigid HUD like D3???
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Let me add a couple. But first, I want to say that while I have several things that need improving, I did really enjoy my little taste in the Beta. I couldn’t figure out my old Battle net account and had to make a new one, not just to get on, but also because I’m itching to chat about it.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out where the active quest screen was (I was hours in and over level 10 before I found it). Why would they hide it? Especially at launch or on a beta where we don’t have all this stuff memorized yet.

The skill trees were awkward to move around in, because they had to be zoomed way way in to read, and zoomed way way out to see the tree. I’m sure that’s better on PC, where you can mousewheel, but that sort of thing was weird.

And there was some little stuff, the zooming in on my char, when I really want to zoom out, so I have to go in and in and in until it pops out to max…

Crafting and salvaging the menus there are a mess. just a total mess. I hope they can tinker with that to make it more clear what’s happening, what things are costing, and what you’re getting. also, weirdly jumping back and forth between inventory and whatever tab you’re on. I could tell that there was some real depth built into that system that I can’t wait to dive into (now there’s types of materials, that I didn’t get a chance to see what I could make with them, all I did was “improve” a few items) but it wasn’t super clear what I was looking at. Especially when i only had so much time, I didn’t want to spend it all in the menus.

but the UI thing that bugged me the most was that the buttons for common menus weren’t the same as the default D3 ones. I can’t tell you how many times I brought the wrong menu up game menu is now the map, and TP moved to dpad up I think, but dpad right didn’t do anything? I couldn’t figure out where to look for stuff, and sometimes just wasn’t clear what I was doing. That’s just default mapping, and they could sort that out really easy. Put quests and objectives on the left dpad, where seasonal journey stuff was in D3. Then, when seasonal stuff comes up, make that a tab in your objectives / quests. Have it light up where there’s something there to see.

Keep TP where it was, it wasn’t broken, don’t fix it. Put the map back where it was. etc etc. Basically, make the transition easier on us and don’t make us dig through a bunch of menus to figure out where stuff is.

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You make good points. I like how unobtrusive it is but I was missing useful information in combat because it was so far off center. I prefer unobtrusive (how it is currently) for more immersion but I hope they give some other HUD options for players that would prefer a different layout.

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Remove the chat wheel message before it burns an image into my dang OLED

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The HUD is terrible for Console. My biggest question is why is it different than PC? The PC HUD is more traditional and centered at the bottom of the screen just below your character. It’s much easier to see instead of constantly looking to the bottom left of your screen. Plus the current HUD on console looks sloppy. Making it adjustable for players to reposition each part would be nice but just centering it would make a huge difference. Change the FONT to the Diablo official FONT!!!

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“The skill trees were awkward to move around in, because they had to be zoomed way way in to read, and zoomed way way out to see the tree. I’m sure that’s better on PC, where you can mousewheel, but that sort of thing was weird.”

I think the skill tree is in fullscreen on pc. Why not on console??? Dont understand why they did it so small on console, and i guess it will be the same with the paragon boards. :frowning:

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100% agree, blizzard please give it a change

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HUD opacity would def be a very nice option to have,
and I totally get why some would want the option for Combat information like DODGED and IMMUNE turned off and I cant se how its not an option.

I’m not sure I fully understand what you mean by navigating the HUD, do you mean the Inventory and game menus?

A HUD I believe is mostly referring to Vital combat information such as HP bars, Cooldowns, buffs and debuffs that sort of thing, maybe I lack context to understand since I didn’t play D2R on console but PC.

can you explain it to me?

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In D2r on console you have the equivalent of a mouse cursor like on your computer to click on stuff anywhere in the menus (with the left joystick). You also have all the shortcuts if you prefer to not use the cursor.

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yeah man, I fully get that. I’m stoked for the game and had a blast in beta.
I think it’s important to keep in mind regarding criticism that its possible that they had the beta ready to go months ago, so any Major changed they may have decided to go for on the released version of the game isn’t necessarily implemented to the beta.

I do agreed that a lot of the Game menu/features do feel “hidden” or “hard to find” exactly as the active quest menu for example a bunch of people completely missed that you could very easily Full screen the Talent/skill tree By opening inventory, go to abilities, then hit R3 Button to full screen, and then hit L3 button to get the skill selection bar ontop of it.

this thing right here, yes, the double marking of items to showcase what items you are comparing from equipped and inventory, the L1 - R1 tab swapping.
the annoyance in trying to select your equipped items when you are currently have a inventory item selected and on and on, complete mess!

on this note, you can look forward to Open beta. In game options you can Map aaaalmost any key you want to be what you want.
I believe the only key you could not change was the Wheel menu key, its stuck to the Rpad button and that is some weird stuff. I have health potion on Dpad and open the wheel menu so many times in combat.

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More detailed UI and user experience customization is becoming a standard.

I for one just want to disable almost everything from the super imposed user experience, and hope for a auto hide when not in fights and easy reveal if needed from the wheel. Also size adjustments, removing all subtitles, removing the open chat icon, removing mini map. Stuff like that. I’m more for immersive gameplay, and usually remove all UI features including health bars. Even in difficult games.

Right now this UI feels angled for mobile gaming inspirations and the FOV can’t be changed so I feel like everything is taking up visual space.

I want to delete the word Immune from the dictionary

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completely agreed with you there.
the way I kind of started to look at it is like they are trying to appease both the casual and the competitive player which is totally fine if its included with options to choose. when the HUD, the Unobtrusive positioning for increased immersion is nice for the casual player and on the other hand, take the status messages “Immune, dodged” etc. that’s being spammed during combat,
that for the competitive player.
I would not play Hardcore mode without those.
but again it lacks the option to choose if you want it or not.
and all that unobtrusiveness granted by the HUD for the casual player, is now being sullied by the obtrusiveness of the Combat text for the competitive player.

it feels super awkward and in the end neither the competitive or the casual player has been appeased.

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FURION-1204 - Great points!

Blizzard, please add a auto-hide for the UI. ALSO, an option to disable combat messages like “IMMUNE.”

One other thing. Going to OPTIONS and choosing SUBTITLES - OFF currently does absolutely nothing.

A lot of us seem to not enjoy the game with all the clutter which does seem like a mobile games UI. A mobile game that thinks the people that play the game cant remember to PRESS UP FOR CHAT WHEEL…

Sort of… blegh.

Other than these issues and the consoles HDR setting issues, i LOVE THE GAME

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Frankly, there is no need to give a variety of reasons. There is a “clear reason” that the console version should support central HUD.

That’s because “the PC version supports both HUDs.”

BLIZZARD is discriminating console users. As far as I know, this company even established a department that prevents discrimination. they seem to care sooooo much about the “race, gender equality” of fictional game characters that they forget to give equal treatment to users who actually pay to buy games. Sigh

They think Druid’s “diversity” is more important than the user’s “equality.”

Hey, you guys. Shouldn’t console users get a discount on the price of one HUD?

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Also you CAN make your talent tree full screen.

PRESS R3 to make full screen.
Roll the R3 analog up or down to zoom in or out like normal when there.

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Great post upvoted hope they see this

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Yeah you’re right makes me think of older games that had simpler interfaces and more immersive experiences for their time. Why are developers today so caught up in hand holding people through interfaces? They are so scared people might not understand how to play a game that they over compensate for these fears.

Diablo 2 had a very clean UI interface and it added to the immersion. I just hope I’m given the option to make it feel cleaner when released. I’m fine not seeing the mini map and roaming around the world finding things on my own. If I want to go somewhere I’ll open up the large map, if I want to see who’s still in my party I’ll open up social, if I want to know what a quest is about I’ll open up the journal. I dont need all that stuff consistantly in my face, it’s annoying.

My friend posted up a picture of our team after we finished a stronghold, and the nice picture is cluttered with numbers, words, and what not. It’s not nice.