UX Problems

[Zachary Phillips 0]

Game has a bad rep. for its AI but sitting down and -really- playing the heck out of this game it's becoming quite clear there's nothing wrong with the AI, just that the AI is better at using the user interface than the player is, which isn't necessarily the game's fault-- AI will always be better at using UI than a player if not designed to be otherwise, but this game's UI doesn't help the matter; it has major flaws. A lot of these problems can be solved thru custom-built key layouts, but that's a cop-out and should never have to be suggested for the average player to get a streamlined experience of a game; for the purposes of this discussion (and any UX/UI discussion in general), re-binding keys doesn't exist. I'll bullet them out real quick and elaborate later, with suggested fixes. To be clear, these aren't AI problems, or gameplay design problems; these are purely player-facing -interface- problems and should largely be fixable without having to rebuild any of the gameplay, aside from the AI's use of the menus
(Edit: P.S. term explanation; UI = "User Interface" and is the information given to the player outside of the physical in-game models and their controls, UX = "User Experience" and is how well the UI allows a player to interact with the game without frustration)

1) the units selected, default shortcut command menu jumps around w/o user input
2) the "back" button is the farthest button on the keyboard from the resting position & there's no mouse-input for menu selection
4) "engage" and "disengage" are misleading and don't do what players think they do
5) the order of the 6 "action" menu is backwards
6) the AI doesn't keep the player aware-enough of injuries for it to be reasonable to require the player command their squad to heal up manually 100% of the time
7) the default command in an aircraft is "eject" ????????!!!!???!
8) the "assign team" menu & its "select team" sub-menu are in the wrong order
9) "assign vehicle" so you can construct mobilized/mechanized teams
10) a modifier in the "stance" menu for when to dismount automatically

So, I'll try not to text-dump the elaborations here

1) you select your machinegunner, scroll down the default shortcut command menu to get to a specific command, an enemy happens to run across your crosshairs and the cursor jumps up to "target" and then instantly snaps back to the default "move-to" position when the enemy finishes passing over your crosshair, effectively deleting all of the input the player put in to scroll down to their selected command. THis is awful. This UX decision killed my crops and now my family will starve. Don't do this. Remove the part where the player highlight automatically snaps to the context-sensitive slot and allow the player to highlight the context-sensitive slot even if it's empty. That way, if the player wants to use the "target" command once they get an enemy in their sights that's appropes for the "target" command, they can just highlight the blank slot and hit space once they've got it lined up properly; same affect as the current system without the downside of constantly and randomly deleting player input and giving the sensation of being actively fought by the UI

2) using number keys at the top of the keyboard to select things is clumsy & prone to miss-clicks. F# to select units is fine because if you hit the wrong key you can immediately hit the same key to undo your improper selection and all of the rest of your queued selection isn't lost, but using # to select command menus is not great because if you select the wrong command menu you have to move your hand all the way over to the backspace button to undo the menu selection without also losing all the units you've selected. Double-clicking the tilde key to select-all and then de-select all (or just right-clicking to dismiss the menu altogether but iirc that doesn't work 100% of the time) and then re-selecting your squad members and THEN re-trying the menu selection is vastly quicker than actually moving your hand to the backspace key and also doesn't require resetting your hand position (which increases your chance of miss-clicking -again- and starting the whole darn process over). This is generally fine in most cases when commanding a small squad with simple commands, but it multiplies the effort of complex commands and large squad management, having to figure out who to reselect every time you hit the "formation" key instead of the "stance" key. My suggestion; move the "select all" tilde key to F1 (which is occupied by the player himself in literally every scenario I've ever seen where the player has command authority), move the backspace "navigate menu" key to the tilde key so it can be used at the resting hand position, encouraging players to construct complex commands without fear of losing all their inputs to a bad menu selection

3) this one is closely related to 2 and completely undercuts its entire problem at the core; the game uses an incredible amount of the scrolling context command menu interface, which is a pain in a lot of ways due to menu bloat but there's one area where menu bloat isn't a problem and where the accuracy of the scrolling context menu is key; selecting command menus. TLDR; make a menu accessible from the default context-sensitive command menu where you can use the mouse wheel & space key to select menus instead of the 1-9 hotkeys, for players who don't like hotkeys & situations where the potential input-loss of a miss-clicked hotkey makes using the slower scroll menu worth it.
Also, there's a sneaky UX trick available here; make the scrolling menu-selection list the menus backwards, so it starts at the 9 key and goes down instead of up, to give players a quick way to get to the right half of the menus without moving their WASD hand off the resting position. This gives a use-case for players who -are- comfortable with hotkeys by giving them a quick way to access the far buttons

4) human beings think the "engage" command is what the 2 "target" menu does, but it doesn't. The AI High Command knows what it does but no amount of play-time can make most players realize it naturally. Rename "engage" to "break formation", "disengage" to "maintain formation". That way people will stop hitting ` 3 4 thinking that's telling the AI to start shooting people when really what it's doing is telling the AI that they can move freely of the player's formation; will make them more likely to start using the "Target" menu more & properly

5) take every command in the "action" menu that is available regardless of the environment and put that first. I shouldn't have to tell human beings this but putting everything except for the heal commands after a varyingly long list of "pickup ____" that's as long as every single gun in the nearby vicinity is an awful idea. Take all of the "pick up ____" commands, put then in a "0 - More" sub-menu like the "Target" menu has for targeting empty vehicles & non-hostile entities, that way the default "Action" menu is a nice, clean & consistent set of commands and there's a "more" button available in case you want the game to make you scroll thru a list of every single individual gun in known existence
also another trick; putting the most-important, most commonly used command and the command with no situation where you wouldn't use it if it's available as the same key that it takes to open the menu it's in makes UX vastly superior. Take the "heal yourself (or whoever's closest if you're not hurt)" command, make it be blank if there's nobody to heal but selectable with an immediate "negative - no injured" response, make that the same key as the menu to access it. That way in the heat of battle the player can just select someone and jam the 6 key twice to get somebody a medkit thrown at them, since there's no such thing as a poorly-used medkit. Also, for the sake of making the menu quickly useable (hotkeys are worthless if you have no clue what's gonna be in a menu), you should probably start making environment-heavy menus like the 6 "action" menu start leaving keys blank if that input is invalid ATM so players can memorize what key gets bound to what action & be able to speed-maneuver the menu as needed, and leaving actions like healing that generate a theoretically infinite amount of menu commands at the end of their menu so they don't mess with the memorizeableness of the commands that come before it

6) This follows after 5 but the AI literally -never- heals themselves unless ordered to? Can't tell you the amount of times I've been playing my current play-thru of the campaign, noticed my squadmate is lagging really far behind and assumed the pathfinding had gotten themselves stuck, ran for five minutes to get back to them only to realize they were walking-wounded and just needed to use a medkit on themselves but wouldn't unless I ordered them to but didn't know they needed it. This is a UX thread so I won't suggest AI heal themselves automatically, but, if a squadmember is falling behind their squad and the squad is A) out of combat and/or B) moving in formation, they should let you know they're walking-wounded and won't be able to keep up without stopping to heal. And maybe they should let you know in the process whether they can just patch themselves or will need someone else to double back do it

7) WHO DID THIS???? This is the sort of thing that convinces me Bohemia Int. is run by cockroaches. This wasn't as much of a problem in vanilla ARMA3, but with the updates you can find yourself in a situation where you need to adjust the vectoring of a VTOL by toggling it five times in a row or drop the flaps of a jet 3 times, which is thankfully a command which doesn't close the menu, but it doesn't indicate when the next input is ready to be taken or queue inputs so you're encouraged to just mash the button until you're there, but once it's done vectoring -the cursor jumps all the way up to "eject" and your character jumps out of the plane-!??! I discovered this in the VTOL scenario and the only way I can imagine this getting past a dev-team that was actually doing UX passes on their builds is if the game is being made cockroaches skittering around on keyboards. For the love of god, either make hitting vector/flap up/down the last time so that the option disappears from the menu also close the menu, or put the default position for the cursor on something that isn't fatally catastrophic 100% of the time
(also, since vectoring/flaps is a gradual process that you've decided should require extended input and also to keep the menu open for it, let us select the option and then just hold the space bar/numerical hotkey to automatically instantly trigger the next phase of the vectoring every time it's ready for the input, and then close the menu once it's vectored all the way up/down, so we don't need to repeatedly input the same command; you should never have to do that)

8) you have an opportunity to make unit selection incredibly natural in the ability to split your command into up to five teams, but it's just not there yet. I'm not gonna explain the thought process first and then make a suggestion, just open up the engine editor and do this right now; make it so that when you hit the tilde "select all" button and the game opens the default context-sensitive menu, the "teams" button is adjacent to the the default cursor position (which, as we've established in 1 will no longer jump around without the player's explicit input) and when you select it it opens straight to the "select teams" menu NOT the "assign teams" menu.
That way, the player can assign teams outside of battle using the on-screen commands, and then once in battle needing only hit the tilde key, scroll -once-, hit space and then hit either one two three or four and have a team selected without needing to A) read the actual menus or B) move their hand from the resting position. This will encourage players to make commands & plans on the scale and pace that the AI high command does by allowing them to remove all the mental busywork of selecting specific units when it's not needed.

9) it's incredibly natural for a player to construct mobile/mechanized infantry out of their squad and some vehicles but the UI really doesn't support it as-is; inside of the "assign team" menus somewhere place a submenu or command where you can assign a vehicle to a team, so that when you open up the "mount vehicle" menu with said team selected that vehicle will always be the one highlighted by default. Also if the team is physically inside of the vehicle when you assign it to them, from now on when you order "get in - anywhere" to that team and to that vehicle, your character will check to see if the positions the team members were in at the time of vehicle assignment are available, if so ordering those team members to retake those same positions and otherwise actually issuing the "get in - anywhere" command.

10) this one sounds a bit AI adjustment but mostly it's UX changes to enable the player to do something that's supported by the AI but not the UI; in order to make modern mobile infantry a thing, a "dismount at will" sub-menu in the "stance" menu that allows you to order a team to dismount passenger positions & move with the vehicle (in formation unless ordered to engage or left on "engage at will") 1) always 2) when anyone in the vehicle is targeting an enemy or is targeted 3) when the vehicle is targeted 4) when the vehicle's crew is placed (automatically or manually) in RED "combat" mode or 5) never. Also a toggle in that menu for whether or not the team/passengers/anyone manning critically damaged positions should back-fill driver & gunner positions within the vehicle if the driver or gunner dies/dismounts and the relevant equipment isn't critically damaged, and a toggle for whether or not the vehicle's driver should maintain formation with escorting team/squadmates or if they should make full use of their mobility and allow the foot-mobiles to keep up best they can.
This one menu would allow the player to do anything from constructing an ambulance team for evacuating wounded from the battlefront to a quick-reaction shock-trooper force that armor-drops to/from critical points in an armored personal carrier to a mechanized infantry troupe who travels in a marshal that rolls over small-arms forces with its autocannon but gets out and engages (left on "engage at will" to break formation as soon as they dismount to seek cover & fight dynamically) to screen for it when it gets engaged while it backs out from the front to provide covering fire and only packing back up once the All-Clear is called for both the foot-team and the crew, or a tank acting as mobile cover slow-rolling thru a town center with infantry marching in formation with it, guns up & searching for hostiles to suppress until the tank comes about

Edited April 10, 2018 by Zachary Phillips
clarity