I wrote this shortly after the game was released:
The absolute disorganized swamp of a mess that is the User Experience/Interface in Overwatch 2 is shameful, and directly leads to the perception of this game as a mismanaged bad expansion that wouldnât even be good as DLC.
Letâs go over a few of the most glaring issues:
Colors:
It is astounding that you are going into a SECOND game where you place non-outlined white text over white backgrounds such as clouds and buildings, obscuring the text for even the most slightly vision challenged. Look at Ilios map announcement As an example, white text informing of the map superimposed over white clouds.
Placing a simple uniform backdrop over all floating text is standard practice when there is even the most remote chance of colors bleeding into the background.
Menus
The existence of 2 different âmain menusâ, where options, social, etc cannot be accessed from the same menu as hero selection is atrocious. The OW1 method of universal main menu with context specific popup window while in game was much more intuitive.
This is made even worse in that Social, Challenges and Career Profile are selections on both menus, and the likelihood of players viewing patch notes or credits in-game are exponentially lower than accessing Options, making essentially an entire screen for 1 choice.
Adding Options to the Main Screen and a simple âAboutâ screen which has Program info, crefits and patch notes for those who wish to access them is far less âcommunity college video game designer courseâ level than 2 of the most used commands being on a separate screen which includes 3 duplicates and 2 rarely accessed options.
The fact that game history and replays are tucked into âcareer profileâ is not intuitive at all. Career Profile implies being about the data from long term play. If you named it âMy heroâ or something it would make more sense.
Even worse is that Player Icons, Name Cards, and Titles are accessed through âcareer profileâ is insane. You are trying to sell these things, you want them to be FRONT AND CENTER as options to choose, not tucked away in stats. Who the heck is gonna buy something they need a guide to equip?
The Battle Pass interfaceâŚugh
Yet another âchallengesâ menu option which is mostly irrelevant to the Battle Pass and already has main menu access.
Starting with Console navigation. The fact that in order to select the left menu, you have to press âupâ on the D Pad, which is inconsistent with the R2/L2 navigation of all other, similar menus, AND you canât engage it with the âdownâ button on thw D-padâŚwhich does literally nothing unless you first engage the menu by hitting the âupâ button is about as bizarre as it can possibly get.
Challenges:
Good god this one of the worst. Challenge completion cards have the challenge name only, and no indication of any kind what was done to achieve the challenge. Now, after finishing a challenge, I need to go open the challenge screen and navigate to wherever the description might be.
Speaking of which, the inability to sort challenges by âcompleted on topâ is lazy and junior programming league level.
Please fire your accessibility people, as well as those responsible for firing them who did not do so Having fixed sized text in a skinny font for challenge information is an affront to any user again, not sitting 6 inches in front of their monitor with even the most minute vision difficulty. It is very difficult to read challenge descriptions under non optimal conditions and no options to change the layout to make it more accessible.
Play Interface
I will not address in-game controls because they are done quite well (Except that the lack of button combos in controller settings is 1990âs level UX)
However, the fact that âwhile you waitâ options donât appear after a match makes it, as Reaper would sayâŚâlooks like amateur hourâ.
Any queue with an automatic requeue literally only has 4 boxes that are disabled while queued having zero value to the player at allâŚin order to re enter the practice range after a match you have to back out, pick âtrainingâ then âpractice rangeâ, when the âwhile you waitâ options should always be up âwhile you waitâ.
The controller control scheme for menu navigation is horridâŚthe same button to change roles also confirms your role and also 3xits role queue entirelyâŚseriouslyâŚseriously, this is shareware level stuff.
And the absolute worst is the lack of a an option to confirm getting sucked into a game while doing something like looking at skins, purchases,etc is crazy.
Sadly, this is a PARTIAL list, this needs to be a part of game design course curriculum as a âwhat not to do when designing a UXâ, and I wonât even start on the unbelievable lost revenue opportunities from the bizarre UX decisions.