i understand fishing rods, axes, nets and shovels breaking, but... mister nintendo, why does my watering can just stop existing after i water a couple flowers? was the strain of pouring a bit of water just too much for this metallic object to handle?
My favorite Animal Crossing UX quirk is how the first option for fruit and medicine is to drop them on the ground, which means I accidentally drop them every time I want to use them.
Just give us a shopping cart. I hate having to go out and back inside, especially when you are on another island and get notifications about people coming in/leaving every 30 seconds
I absolutely detest how - in Animal Crossing - you can't buy multiple clothes at the same time, but for some reason they all have to be clothes for different parts of your body (like hats, shoes etc.) Let's not even get started on turning the clams into fish food, but you'll have to individually turn every single clam into individual fish food. Would've been nice if you could just do multiple things all at once.
why do all three types of wood have the same spawn rate? you need normal wood for most of the crafting, so when i go out and harvest wood i usually have stacks and stacks of softwood and hardwood left in my inventory, and practically 0 normal wood. it’s so annoying :(
remember when on top of that, like 50% of the drops from trees were wood eggs lol. I was very early in the game, didnt even have museum yet and it dragged the game out so long, that I didnt get new villagers untill the next real life week
The Good, the Bad, and the Crossing (Seriously, how does New Horizons do so much right, and at the same time, so much wrong, in terms of UX at least?) Exhibit A: the storage system. So much easier than new leaf, where you had to pick up each object using the touch screen and physically drag it to one of the open spots. Now you just press "Put in storage" and it automatically organizes it too! Exhibit B: The storage system. Why can't I put trees, dug up flowers, and *turnips* in the storage? I don't always know where to plant stuff right now, and having to dedicate a whole floor to storing turnips is terrible!
Animal Crossing is about looks over function, yes its charming to watch/look at but wastes so much time and a game with so much inventory needs good management system.
Much improved UI over NL in most respects (even if a lot of the franchise's... Quirks... are still present), but weirdly two of the improvements to UI result in a loss of functionality compared to if neither of them had been made - Storage is a button press away rather than needing to use storage items (Great! Much more convenient!), to change outfits you can now just go to a wardrobe (or... freezer...) and get a dedicated UI for that, with preview, including if the wardrobe's outside (Awesome, far more convenient and I can easially figure out if the black of a pair of shorts works with the black of a shirt or if they're just dissimilar enough to look off for added functionality). The old way would mean that I'd be able to place a storage item near the airport and wouldn't have to go home to put away whatever I don't want to take to an island with me and get out any tools I don't need around the island but do want to take with me between getting a nook miles ticket and using it, however. Not entirely fair on NH for comparing a hypothetical 'how placing items outside in NL would have worked', mind, and dear lord I don't want to go back to the old way for changing clothes especially, it would just be nice if we could also access storage from items like wardrobes as well as with a quick button press while inside the home.
There is a youtuber who theorised Animal Crossing: New Horizons was made by two teams, the old people and the new employees. The old people keept the slow and tiring mechanics while the new employees made the quicker and modern mechanics, and the reason why some stuff like you can´t stockpile clams but bait yes is because both teams dind´t agreed.
One of my game dev friends pointed out that the point of AC's breakable tools is to push you back towards the crafting table periodically so you'll maybe craft some new things while you're already there. I do wish you could work your way towards unbreakable tools, though.
Golden tools having enhanced durability rather than being unbreakable makes them significantly less attractive once you get the miles for crafting them...
man did they implement that poorly if thats the case. no ones going to make a table and some chairs when they went to the crafting bench to make a new axe after they were chopping wood. they want to finish chopping the wood, and furnishing is not their priority at all. And making new tools even bogs down the DIY project nook miles quest. That could have been a good incentive, but now making 1 tool fulfills 2/3 of the entire quest when you could have been persuaded to actually make some items.
@@harrylane4 even that anecdote barely supports that design choice on Nintendo's part. Supposing everyone could remember one or two times they noticed new recipes when they went to craft a new tool, that doesn't mean theyll make it right then and there, and it doesnt guarantee they will later either. Recipes are learned through recipe cards a vast majority of the time too so most people will register the fact that they have a recipe when they have to manually use the item to learn it. Also going off the DIY nook mile quest i mentioned earlier, that would be a much better way to get people to look for something to craft, and all they would have to do is make tools way more durable or not break at all like in past games.
I don’t even bother crafting tools anymore I just buy them form Timmy and Tommy. Take my money you cheeking rodents. They charge crazy prices too but they know damn well I don’t wanna go all the way back to my house look up the recipe get the materials and then craft the flimsy to get the nice one and put back all the extra materials to go back to the other side of the island where the fossil is. It’s all a racket that I suspect Tom Nook is in on.
@@OfficialNoCoast uhhhh ok chum, that's cute. try your entire beach, fully upgraded empty house and ground in front of the town hall region .....yeah, I'm not really proud of it either
Skipping during crafting would definitely be nice, and ditto with dialogue! Every time Gulliver shows up, you need to wake him up by pressing A about 10 times. Then once he does wake up, you have 21 whole dialogue boxes to get through, and the dialogue is the same every. single. time. The lack of a skip button (among many other things) is just ridiculous at this point. I'm glad they brought the graphics up to 2020 standards, but the UI and QoL are still stuck in 1998.
explained perfectly. once i farmed gulliver items and you don’t know how much time skipping and the many times of waking up gulliver i had to do, probably missing a good day of my life now dedicated to waking gulliver up.
Also, I love your design choice on stating that your "going on a 60 second rant about Netflix." Instead of simply telling us what you're going to talk about and where to skip to to avoid it, you presented to us everything we need to know about your sponsorship section in a single short sentence. And that is Good Design.
You didn't even list the worst part of Animal Crossing. Want to invite someone to your island that's not on your friend list? 1) Walk all the way to the airport 2) Enter the airport 3) Talk to Orville 4) Select "I want visitors" 5) Select "Online" 6) Accept that yes, you do indeed want to play online 7) Wait for the game to save 8) Invite by dodo code 9) Select "the more the merrier" 10) Accept that yes, you do indeed want to play with random people 11) Wait for the game to tell you that it's all done and exit the dialogue And God forbid you accidentally click the wrong item or back out at any step of this. Because if you do you're starting from step 3 all over again... If I select "play online", I shouldn't have to be asked if I want to play online. I selected it, shut up and put me online. If I selected "the more the merrier" (which is also an extremely dumb option. Why not put "everyone" instead?), I shouldn't have to be asked if I want to play with everyone. I selected it, shut up and let me play with everyone.
And there's the fact that the game wastes a solid 5-10 seconds straight up pretending to connect to the Internet each time, when it already is connected for the friends list, chat and mail systems to work at any given moment.
Onion Thief I’ve had a high turnip price and invited anyone to my island and it would take on average 5 minutes for one person to sell their turnips from the constant leaving and returning 2 minute cutscenes, not to mention the pain that is people joining in the first place
The reminder about everyone being able to go to your island is most likely to protect kids from getting their flowers etc stolen by crappy adults. Other than that, fully agree. Just put too dodo characters there, one on each side. One for online one for local. Or one for Leaving, one for opening the gates to your own Island.
Why is this super obvious stuff not a priority for Nintendo. Your game is fun DESPITE being incredibly annoying. Why not just fix it and make everyone love you even more?
I'm glad to see AC in bad design. I love it, it's great, it's charming. But it doesn't respect its players time and that's a shame. In the original one FROM 2001, if you had multiples of the same item, Nook would say "do you want to sell them all?" or you could select stuff from the inventory to drop many things at once
I think the problems with de Blob interruptions is a common industry thing of trying to pad-out a game by adding a bunch of little interruptions to force the player to slow down.
Thank you for mentioning the bad UX design in Animal Crossing. I've seen people DEFENDING it because it's apparently part of the charm of playing animal crossing is to BE frustrating and unintuitive. Like...no??? **edited bc I meant UX design and not UI, sorry!**
The game is fantastic, but yeah the UX isn't great. I will say that UX should not make or break a game. I know it's bad, but the rest of the game should make a bigger difference
And not only this, but some fans created a parody Nintendo Direct of these issues and supposed fixes, only to have that video DMCA'd by Nintendo. Man, they sure have a stick up their arse.
Something I'd love to see is an episode focused around the ds and 3ds, and how certain games took advantage to the bottom screen for various things, while other games not so much. I will always bring up my personal favorite etrian odyssey. Its top screen is a first person view of the labyrinth you are exploring and the battles, while the only UI elements outside of battle being the time of day with the hour, a circle that goes from blue to red to show when a random battle is about to happen. And this neat leaf that shows how close you are to A F.O.E. (pretty much a boss monster that isn't actually a boss) while the bottom screen is exclusively used as a map. More specifically a grid that you can draw in to fill out a map and even put special icons and note to say what things are on the map. Basile bottom screen is the map at all times, and top is everything else.
And the Monster Hunter series made really good use of the bottom screen as well. It allowed you to use item hot keys, a shortcut to the combo list, map, and even a virtual D-Pad so you could move and control the camera at the same time which was very difficult compared to the PSP(if you used "the claw") if you only used the physical D-Pad and control stick.
I didn't mind as much back when I was young with my first AC, City Folk/LGTTC, but I feel like my hands get oddly tired of all the button pressing for simple tedious things. I still like the game, but I think with age, time is more valuable to a person, so it's a lot more noticable.
in animal crossing, If im inside my home and in my storage i have the materials i need why do i need to get them out of the storage, i have them in my house that's why i'm in my house uuuuauaggg
Exactly. I think it would've also made more sense for the storage type furniture to open up to the STORAGE instead of the clothes closet, like how many times in the day are you going to be like, "yeah, let me change clothes for the 14th time"?, never. I would much rather go to the house to change and access the storage everywhere else (if I had to choose).
@@Rexodiak maybe the game can't quite do the Interactive villager stuff if it has multiple save files, but for a game like this it doesn't seem like too much of a deal breaker, I'd even argue it's more appropriate to keep one island since the whole premise is to chill and get to work on your island while making friends with the locals, and it's not a game with a real ending either so there's not that much of a reason to start over.
@@ginogatash4030 took you a little while to give your 2 cents lol. You forgot entirely about sharing a console with family members or special others. They live in your island, they have very limited control over what they can do, it's like they're playing as an npc. Honestly if you've been playing since launch I'm surprised you're still playing, sorry but I can't imagine someone caring for this long
@@Rexodiak I mean, clearly you're not as invested in the game, but many other people get a lot more invested in the game than you. Imo Animal Crossing is kind of a slow chill game, and that vibe obviousloy isn't for everyone. It's okay if you didnt stick with the game long, but other people did.
Alert fatigue is speculated to be what caused the Hawaii nuclear attack false alarm a few years ago isn't it? The same "Are you absolutely sure" confirmation in the test and real scenario leading to the operator sleepwalking through an accidental real when a test was intended being likely what happened according to some UX analysists, iirc? Animal Crossing's UI... Isn't bothering me as much as many, but every now and then I have a horrific amount of item juggling to do due to the lack of 'grab x' options (mostly after crafting something with weeds since I like to have a working supply of 30 available in storage. So now instead of selling all 57 weeds from my next island tour I need to peel 20 of the weeds off the pile, and then stack them again). I'm also in what feels like a constant argument with the game on if the item inventory should be read left to right (it's preference) or top to bottom (my preference) - I get that that's always going to annoy someone like camera invert is always going to annoy someone, but that feels like it could easily be an option? Workbenches in the home should be able to access items in storage as well as in pockets, they went back to turnips not being able to be stored in storage for some reason, some menus have menu wrap (pockets) which is great, but that just makes the lack of menu wrap in other places (typing especially) noticeably absent. Here's one that I've been thinking about recently for animal crossing - Storage not being tied to furniture and instead just being a quick button press while inside your house, with storage items instead being used to access a hugely improved UI for changing clothes, is a mixed blessing. It makes it easier to access storage while inside your house, sure... But if the NH storage was set up the old way, I would be able to put a chest of drawers near the airport and put away anything I don't want to take on an island tour and get out the vaulting pole without first going home to do. Instead if I place a storage item outside, I can conveniently change my outfit while outside, accessing anything in my storage to do so (Which... Really makes me question what the point of the wands are - I get almost as convenient an ability to change anywhere for the same one pocket space cost, but with several added pieces of functionality, if I just lug a wardrobe around with me - I don't think it's worth the cost of an inventory slot since I rarely want to change half way through a day, but... I happened to find a freezer on an island tour and tested if before I got it home a day or two ago? Freezers and fridges working the same as wardrobes do does make me wonder if this was a fairly late change to how storage worked, actually)
My eyes aren't skilled enough to be able to assess it in a vacuum, but the HD Remake of Trials of Mana has some MASSIVE UI and quality of life improvements over the original. It'd be neat to see a Design Doc about it.
With regards to Guilty Gear Strive, there's one important UI-related feature that was left overlooked: the character select screen. Whereas the other UI elements in Strive fall short in various ways, I think the CSS is a step in the right direction not only for the series, but for fighting games as a whole. The genre is guilty of not being the most beginner-friendly genre around due to the overwhelming complexity, and many fighting game developers go out of their way to simplifying various mechanics to make their games more accessible, but those efforts often do nothing to fix other problems regarding accessibility, such as a well-made tutorial or telling the players what the characters do at first glance. Sure, the characters themselves can give a rough idea how they play just by how they look, but developers can only do so much in terms of appearance to send a message. Typically in fighting games, the extremely large muscular men are grapplers for example, but in The King of Fighters, some of the women are also grapplers, even the ones that may not look the type, unlike R. Mika in Street Fighter where she's wearing wrestling attire. The CSS in Strive gives players very helpful information to decide which character suits them in a way most fighting games still struggle with. It gives players the following information: archetype, difficulty, game plan, strength, and control configuration. The CSS categorizes the fighters by archetype. If you're looking for a balanced fighter, the game will tell you who is balanced. Likewise for speed-, power-, and tricky-based fighters. It organizes the roster in a way where if you know what you're looking for, then you simply won't get lost, no matter how many fighters there will be at launch. When you highlight a fighter, on the upper part of the portrait, there's a difficulty rating where the higher the rating, the easier the fighter is to learn. What's great about this system is that it's a rating based on complexity. Usually, these fighters are considered easy because their move lists aren't as complicated, whereas the lower-rated fighters have more complex and daunting move lists. *As a side note, another great UI feature is the move list itself; in addition to displaying the inputs on the left, there's a demonstration video and a description of what it does on the right, and it includes little things like whether the move has invincibility (although frame data is still not visible). This is helpful for those who want to learn a fighter quickly and not have to experiment with how the move looks and interacts if they forget. On the lower part of the portrait, there's an overview that gives the player what type of game plan they will be involved with. Sol and May are considered very aggressive fighters who always go out on the offensive, whereas Ky is an all-rounder with everything and Axl is good at keepaway. There's also a scale that tells you exactly where fighters are at their strongest, and they're separated into three categories: short-, mid-, and long-range. With this scale, you know that Potemkin and Chipp are strong against Axl in close-range, for example, but they would be beat handily by Axl in long-range 'cause that's where Axl is at his strongest and where Potemkin and Chipp are at their weakest. Lastly, there's the control config. Typically, in most fighting games, it's on the bottom corner of the screen in fine print where most people won't even be looking at 'cause they should be looking at the roster. In Strive, it's made obvious as it tells the player right under the scale that controls can be customized with the Triangle button. All of these UI details can go a long way in helping new players get into a game that may be too much to take in. By being able to find the ideal fighter for their liking, players can start learning the game right away with solid background knowledge given thanks to the CSS. I get that Strive was in the Bad Design category, but I feel like the CSS had to be mentioned with regards to great UI design. Strive is not all bad in UI overall, and the CSS in particular is a great template for fighting game developers to follow when designing their own CSS.
Dang, now I'm actually kinda tempted to try GGS; fighting games have never really been my thing but I suspect that's mostly due to how intimidating most of them are to newcomers. I mean, the only fighting game that I don't feel completely out of my league in is Sonic the Fighters, and I think that's because I already had plenty of background knowledge on the series before playing it, meaning I was already pretty familiar with the characters, their capabilities, and their general playstyles. I've heard StF is generally considered a pretty bad fighting game, though, so if I enjoyed that one, having a good beginner-friendly game like GGS to help break the ice might help me branch out and discover something even better!
I totally agree in animal crossing. It's such a hassle to have everything rely on crafting. I have to go back and forth to make tools. Also the inconvenience of inventory. I know we're passed the ds era, but they could have still applied the touch screen functionality for the inventory and home management. It's a step back, especially that arranging the house was so fun in HHD.
First time Animal Crossing player here, and I saw the quality of life issues, and have accepted what's to come. Seriously Nintendo, I know you got a million dollar IP here, but show some love for your customers by making things more efficient! It's not hard!
Overall, Nintendo games ALL have bad menus. The bad part about that is that people expect that the Devs will just change the way things work because everyone in used to the fact that live service games are more than capable of changing these problems because they exist for much longer than console IPs, this is a problem because that is NOT how things work in this case. Menus are never addressed in patches because changing the way these assets work means pouring time away from other content (like every piece of furniture and clothing!) that has to be implemented and tested because there's already a release date set 2-3 years away. The menus are part of the first assets that get made and in order to make sure nothing shits itself EVERYTHING has to be tested again and that is too much time nobody is willing to invest, SPECIALLY not Nintendo.
@@Manbarrican I bought Breath of the Wild just before i bought Animal Crossing and it just makes AC's menus more annoying when compared to BOTW. They literally already had a game with a good menu system and just ignored any of what was there? I dont get it
Bad Design Idea: I've been playing Zanki Zero by Spike Chunsoft. It has an interesting premise and I was looking into it because I loved Danganronpa and 999 so wanted to see what else the company made. I'll preface this with a "good games can have bad graphic design choices" warning, cause I actually like the game. Zanki Zero has 8 characters all wake up on an island in ruins and are told that the world has ended and that they are the last of humanity. In fact, they are clones. Whenever the characters die, their bodies turn to dust and they drop the mysterious X-keys (strange devices implanted in their stomachs instead of belly buttons). As long as a survivor brings their ally's X-key to the Extend machine (an odd arcade game/cloning macguffin), the machine will make a new clone with their person's memories. It also pops them out as children. It turns out the clones have a problem - their bodies are aging rapidly and after 13 days, they will expire. They are given this info by the series two mascot characters who show up on videos playing throughout the island to taunt and prod the players towards fixing the Extend machine and being generally Monokuma like. So death is a big part of the game and something that the game will introduce frequently. The issue is with how they put their premise into gameplay. There is a mechanic called Shigabane where each unique way the players died are saved and converted to resistances and bonuses, making the characters stronger and stronger. This means that you as the player will face death by monsters, death by traps, death by aging, and death because you are going to be grinding the characters. Like I said, big part of the game. I actually like this part of the game - it's a unique idea to use past lives/experiences to get stronger. It can be a little inconvenient since there only one machine to revive your characters at the main base, so you'll be walking back a lot just to rez, but it's not the game's biggest problem. No, the problem comes in with the interface and inventory. Our characters have 4 equipment slots and 7-8 inventory slots. You will be making and finding weapons, materials, cooking food, and crafting all game. Your inventory is limited by how many living players there are. If someone is dies, they drop their inventory and equipment at your feet and you cannot utilize their inventory space until they revived. The items won't disappear or anything, but it does mean if you want something now, someone else will have to pick the items up. And you'll need to pick up items one by one, making sure you're not overburdening characters, etc. To transfer items and equipment, you have to pick each one, move to the character, drop, repeat for each object in the game and repeat. Now this might not be a big issue on it's own, but with how much you will /constantly/ die, it means that every single time, you'll need to either let items drop and have another character pick them up one by one, or go in the inventory and carry each time one by one to the preferred character. It. Is. Tedious. Oh, there is a storage for you items that you can drop them of at. But guess what. One item at a time - click, move, click, repeat. An option to pick up all the items in on square or an option in the inventory to move all items would stop how much tedious time you spend in your inventory so you can play the game already. Hell, maybe with all our crafting know how, we could make a backpack and when we go, it just drops a backpack with all the items inside. As it is now, you probably literally spend 25% of the game in you inventory. It weighs down on you, especially when grinding or facing accidental deaths. So it's another example of a questionable choice in a great game that takes you out of the experience and instead has you playing in your pockets Animal Crossing style.
Animal crossing is one of my favorite games of all time, I love the series. HOWEVER, everything you said is true and it’s so annoying, I hope they fix some of the issues in updates but I doubt it.
Often in animal crossing new horizons I wonder why couldn’t we also build multiples from the DIY recepies, like I have enough material to make 10 bags of fishbait, instead of doing one y one, it should have a system that lets us do many in one go xD
Especially as you can make ten fence panels at a time - why can't I make 10 fish bait and just have it require 10 clams? That would be 100x easier, especially as the bait stacks in lots of 10 anyway
And while we're at it, why can't we stack clams? I made around 100 fish bait early on, but after running out, I've just not bothered with it again because it's so tedious between multiple trips to dig up clams and then several minutes crafting each fish bait individually.
Well I definitely would like to make multiple fish bait, since well I’m trying to make a second batch of 400 and then sell the bait online. so I also wish I could drop multiple things at the same time because the first batch probably took me about 3 minutes to just drop all the bait. Oh and stack the clams
Christ, it’s unbelievable just how high quality your channel is with your current sub count. You’re going to grow incredibly quickly, I can just tell. It must take forever to edit and come up with the graphics for these videos. Keep up the great work!
when you put a new style in the wand, it make the item making the style dissapear from your inventory i'm all like why ??? i reaaally have to buy x amout of glasses or x amount of the same shoes to have them in all the slot ? It's really a weird way to make it Also YES having to take out the material from your storage to your pocket inventory is a huuuge downside
8:31 They NEED to remake Oracle of Seasons/Ages, immediately. I've tried playing those several times, but the Game Boy Colour's limitations make it near-impossible for me to enjoy what are likely two awesome games. I was able to get through Link's Awakening DX due to its simplicity, but OoS/A are more complex games.
I think an example of bad design is in the mario kart time trial menus since they never let you know which tracks you have already beaten and the one’s you haven’t which makes it almost discouraging for players to beat all of them when that means they have to check one by one to see the ones they have missed (MK8 was used for this example)
Honestly this has become my favourite youtube series. It is so incredible interesting to see a video which breaks down the designs of games. I really love watching these videos. Thank you so much! Please keep up the good work. I am eagerly awaiting the next video!
i’d love to see a comparison between the original cytus and the sequel cytus ii, both mobile rhythm games! i personally felt that the first one has some... pretty bad design for its songs, with clashing colours that are a assault on the eyes, which i think was greatly improved in the sequel!
8:47 if only TV was like this. Every time a reboot comes out its just some crappy stripped down version of the original. Its interesting that the videogame equivalent is nearly always improved.
Because to sell anything in the video game industry, you must display at least a minima of quality (even shameless franchises put real work into their production, even if it's crippled by defaults) While in other industryies just advertize it with big names/producers, on a well know franchises, and sheep who had zero critical senses will ask for more. Exception with the mobile game industry...but that's because it's populated by horde of non gamer sheeps.
@@ballom29 Theres also the fact that there's a thriving indie game scene, meaning your average joe is likely to make a game that millions will see. I mean just look at Undertale, that game came out years ago and people are *still* talking about it from time to time. And the indie games probably help the industry remain quality because there's so much more competition than in film. In film as long as you have big names, every movie or show that doesnt practically isn't competition.
I got distracted by the background music and realised it was from the Trauma Team OST! I love that game. Speaking of, what are your thoughts on their game/UI design?
So glad you covered GG Strive. That shit needs an overhaul, and a thurough one at that. Seriously, Who even thought it was a good idea to approve that travesty, let alone thinking it was a good idea in the first place. Though a little surprised you didn't go into the issues with all the different fonts and sizes used as well as that huge "positive" that appears in the corner after a wall break.
The first thing that stood out to me I’m Guilty Gear is that the characters are on the layer above the health bar, so half the time it is totally obstructed from view by all the explosions and whatnot
Another crazy stupid thing about the UX of Animal Crossing to me was the assignment of buttons. They could’ve made things so much more efficient if they just used the buttons on the Switch well. For example, when I initially started the game, I noticed switching tools was a pain because I had to click the bottom left buttons which meant that I had to stop my character from moving due to having to take my left hand off the joystick. It ended up making the gameplay feel choppy and really not smooth to play. This could’ve been easily solved if they just switched it with the top two buttons to switch rather than for a chat function (which btw is not even used that often and would not affect the gameplay negatively if you moved it somewhere else). This to me would allow for me to run and switch tools at the same time so I wouldn’t have to spend an extra three seconds trying switch tools to cross a river or climb a cliff, just to spend another three seconds to switch to an axe to cut a tree down. Another crazily frustrating issue was the terraforming feature. I’m certain there could’ve been a better way to make this feature, it was just ridiculous how many times I ‘accidentally’ removed or added some terrain in a spot I didn’t want to just because they put the adding and removing tool on the SAME button. I wasted so much time trying to remove stuff that I accidentally created, only for it to CREATE MORE terrain rather than removing what I wanted (and then I’d have to take the time to destroy double as much and it just goes in a cycle). If they just separated these two things to two different buttons I know it would been wayyyy less frustrating for so many people. Not even mentioning the crazy airport and crafting process, so much about the game design is so flawed, honestly.
I've never played an Animal Crossing game, so, when I saw you were going to criticize AC: New Horizons, I felt that you were being too harsh, since the game has good reviews. However, as soon as you started showing the menus, I realized that, indeed, AC New Horizons menus are cumbersome. It takes too long just to do something so basic.
As someone who plays this version of Animal Crossing, I was poised to disagree. Then I heard him talk about the menus and everything was so spot on. I love the game and they don’t really detract from my enjoyment of it, but the issues he pointed out are definitely irritating.
How about you do something on crafting systems, and how games can inform the player in a non-intrusive way new information for it? Don't Starve has a very neat crafting system. The whole crafting menu is at the side of the screen, not taking up much space and intruding your vision unless you want to craft something. Everytime you have eniugh materials to craft something, you hear a ding, and the tab with the craftable item is highlighted green, or blue, if it's a structure you've prebuilt. The little item descriptions give you an idea of what the item does. If you have an idea of a game with a better crafting system, feel free to point it out for me.
Everyone talking about Animal Crossing, and I'm over here thinking about how De Blob in this video was actually De Blob 2, and I only played the first game, which was free on PC and it didn't have any of the problems of the sequel. Amazing how college students can do better than companies sometimes.
Those games made my childhood lol Oddly enough, the games came from a European country, but they were more popular in North America and Australia, apparently
Animal Crossing's UX is exactly why it's never truly hooked me. I've been tried it many times over the years, but the obvious inefficiencies that border on padding drive me absolutely bonkers.
- A dedicated select all button that doesnt select favorited items in the inventory. - A dedicated button for picking up a single item from a stack in the inventory. - A dedicated button for picking up a whole item slot on single button press, not holding A for 3 seconds. The UX in ACNH is abysmal even outside other key design decisions. Feels like whoever worked on the Pocket Camp design for mobile was asked to create a console game without prior experience.
Nintendo: The masters of adding massive and outlandish good features to a game and refusing to deal with extremely simple flaws that affect the game nearly as much.
I'm having so much fun with Animal Crossing, but I agree 100% add crafting 30 fish bait one at a time and no shopping cart at the Able Sisters on my list.
Online Multiplayer in Animal Crossing is terrible unfortunately! Wanna have a lot of people come and go? 30+ seconds of charging and menus for each single player to come AND to leave. Everyone else has to stop anything they're doing and wait each time. When you're on really busy island, that means you have about 2 seconds to move until you will be interrupted by the next 30 second loading screen again. Also, if one player turns their system off, everyone gets another loading screen and is sent back to the airport, or if you're not lucky, to your own island.
*starts with Guilty Gear* Oh yeah, this is one everyone can agree with. The game looks amazing, but literally everything else from the UI, HUB, and that lobby system is a mess.
@@juanrodriguez9971 rather the opposite, for some ungodly reason Daisuke wanted the UI and certain important elements of it to be hard to read because advantage against new players
@@aftertone3146 That is so ridiculous, that would get the opposite effect, the veterans would adapt to it and keep winning while the new players will never understand how much health they have, when they can do the combos, and why they can't understand a thing during the fight.
I finished this whole series (so far) and I loved it. I'm taking a UI test for a game company this week and I feel like this series has really helped. Thank you!
I remember booting animal crossing up for the first time and just thinking about how obvious of improvements I thought they could make in terms of the UI. Now we just have to wait and see if they will ever hear us.
I don't remember if you did an episode where you covered Guilty Gear Xrd, but that would be one to look into, especially to compare to Strive and how the two differ.
(2:45) I do like the creativity of writing the name of the number inside the number. Which works with the large numbers. But I don't like how it says "one two" inside 12 instead of just saying "twelve". By just designing the digits with a gap in then, and fill it with text in-engine, would not only allow you to write "twelve" inside the 12, but also translating the names with little effort.
One big issue about Animal Crossing's DIY that I'd like to add: The only way to see what non-recipe items are customizable is by having it in your inventory and going to a workbench. This means if you've stockpiled a lot of furniture in your home's storage and want to see what can be customized, there's no easy and time-efficient way to do so. Like crafting, this could have been easily remedied if they allowed players to access their storage when using a workbench in their home, but alas...
I only ever make fish bait in Animal Crossing when I have to go use the bathroom or grab a snack or something. That way, I could just ask my younger sister to spam A while I'm away from the console. The fact that I am able to use the bathroom, wash my hands, grab some Ritz crackers and return to see that my sister is still spamming A goes to show that Animal Crossing really needs to have a better UX, and, more importantly, bulk crafting
In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, some flooring can be laid out either horizontally or vertically. If you're laying out the flooring from your inventory, the first option is "Place Horizontally". If you're laying out the flooring from your storage, the first option is "Place Vertically". Even the menu options for the exact same item aren't always in the same order!
Thats what I like about Namco, they keep updating their GUI in free updates. Also, alert fatigue is THE horror game killer. Introduce every enemy with a cutscene and you'll never get scared.
I didn't knew that about "the Blob". I got it on my wish list and now that I know about this problem, I can get ready to not get much upset when I play it.
I'm not sure what you'd choose to talk about when it comes to UI, but Astroneer's is very interesting to me. I like how little text there is. You can find it, but most things are symbols. It feels more real that way, as though you're from a place where these symbols need no explanation, like red octogon meaning stop, but the description is readily available if you need it. It's also diagetic (I think?) which is awesome.
MAN, animal crossing's multiplayer menu is a MESS too! It feels like when EVER I need to go outside, I need to talk to the dodo for 100 pages of choices.
I really wish animal crossing had more levels of tools with more durability. The iron ones felt like the lasted forever in the very beginning but now I burn through them quickly. A huge problem I think as well is how slow terraforming is, having to go block by block :
Thank you for mentioning Deblob! It and its sequel seem to both fail in the Alert Fatigue sense. The missions in the sequel have the same cutscenes, and they can last 40 minutes! That’s 40 minutes of do this, do that, before free-roam is unlocked, and by then, you’re tired of the level. The ticking 60-minute timer is also inverse to the “paint by location” relaxing feel of the game. Even though it’s extendable, the pressure, however mild, keeps you out of the flow. I hope they remaster or remake the games in the future with these issues fixed.
one of my favorite UI things from REmake 2 was the "this key item is no longer useful" icon that indicates that you can now discard an item knowing that you found/used all of its stuff
A would love to hear about Media Molecules Dreams UI and UX design. I think they did a very impressive job condensing so many different creation tools into one package.
And now ArkSys have answered some of the feedback regarding Strive, and man, it is downright baffling what is going on inside their heads. That bit about the RISC gauge being a hard to read drop shadow? That was by intentional design. They were fully intent on making it hard to read, to somehow make it "easier for newcomers". No it doesn't make sense to me either.
I recently played Viva pinata 2. It's full of annoyances: The overall first player experience feels cryptic, the constant interrupting when new pinata are spotted even when you are doing something makes you want to throw your controller at the tv and the worst is the terrible almost dark pattern Ux of menus and shop. it's soo frustrating!! I don't remember if you ever talked about it. If not, you might want to get a look :p
i like that crosscode lets you skip darn near anything when it comes to cutscenes and unlocks meaning if you wanted to you can just blaze trough the game at high speed or your own pace
I’ve encountered the Animal Crossing problem a lot because, when I’m low on bells, I use my miles to get coupons and the problem comes when I want to get 10 or so. (Also, they should fix the durability problem by adding the gold tools from the previous games where they don’t break)
I'm so happy to see comments about Animal Crossing's convoluted... Everything. xD I have a hard time motivating myself to keep playing because everything in that game is a chore. Having friends over isn't even fun because you have to jump through so many hoops, can't pull out your phone, can't hit rocks, can't redecorate, etc. etc.
One interesting thing about De Blob is that it's based on a game made by Dutch students. The original version is much closer to your description of how it should've been. So really THQ took a few steps back in terms of design when it acquired the rights.
For me, as good as AC is, it feels like a unfinished game, or more like a high-school essay where you used longer sentences to get the word count. Everything is there, but it could have been at least 100% faster without loosing the relaxed gameplay. I think it would get a much worse review if people would not have as much time as these days...
I like that pressing the A or B buttons can speed up the crafting process (though I wish the game would tell you that) in Animal Crossing since the animation gets old rather quick after crafting a bunch of stuff, but god forbid you ever find yourself crafting a lot of things that can be stacked (i.e. Fish Bait). Let's say for example that you have at least 50 clams that you want to use to craft Fish Bait. First you'll have to select the Fish Bait recipe 50 times, spam the A button A LOT to hurry up the crafting process, and then wait for the animation and dialogue box that appears whenever you finish crafting something 50 times, and then select the option to continue crafting more stuff 49 times. In this example alone the player has to interact with a menu at least over 100 times. Not to mention that the clams that you use for the fish bait recipe cannot be stacked, so you would also have to manage your inventory to make space for them before you can begin the crafting process. I hope they'll consider releasing an update where they allow you to choose how many of one item you want to craft in order to streamline the crafting process, or just streamline the process entirely by allowing you to choose everything you want to craft and the amount and just craft everything all at once (I can make do with the former, but I would LOVE if they implemented the latter).
Bulk crafting is needed, as is bulk buying from the Able Sisters. You can only buy one item from each category at a time. Just the other day, I wanted all the magical girl dresses. Instead of being able to buy them all at once, I had to select one, buy it, choose whether or not I wanted it sent to storage, then repeat the process 5-6 times, along with Mable's dialogue of asking if I want to use the changing room and letting me know my stuff was sent to storage every single time. Super tedious and time consuming for no good reason
Ways to fix the gameplay/UI in Animal Crossing New Horizons: - Offer a fifth inventory row - Allow people to craft stuff in the home with material in their storage, maybe display the amount in your pocket and in storage separately. - Allow 100 per item; it's like that for turnips, it should be for all items, as some items are full at 10. - Allow bulk crafting; you can buy turnips at the max amount based on your bells AND pocket space, so bulk crafting could do the same for crafting the same items as many times as you can. - Allow queue crafting. - Display a durability meter for tools... and offer ways to strengthen them. - Ditch cutscenes for insects, fossils and fishes you already pick up. Got a Sea Bass? just pop the speech bubble without dropping the action. - Allow a "sneak peek" of any furniture you have picked while checking your inventory, instead of dropping the item to check it out. - After assessing fossils, give to options to donate new fossils, art pieces, fishes and insects right away. Blathers should ask you if you want to donate new stuff after assessing. As for when you visit other islands or getting visitors, I... hav eno idea... It feels like the long screens are actually loading screens.
agreed with AC:NH comments. I love AC:NH, great game. I plan to put 200+ hours *at least* into it. but I'm kinda disappointed at how archaic the menu interface feels at times, without mentioning key things many countless others have mentioned. I do wish we could dye clothes though without having to buy the actual separately dyed clothing... Maybe we unlock that sometime down the line but I'm still just chillin with my town going at a regular pace. ^^;; 3-star so far but I want that 5-star for the lilly of the valley flower!!
i understand fishing rods, axes, nets and shovels breaking, but... mister nintendo, why does my watering can just stop existing after i water a couple flowers? was the strain of pouring a bit of water just too much for this metallic object to handle?
the water is obviously acidic so it melts through the watering can.
Maybe Tom Nook has a “watering tax” where after you use the can a few times, he takes it away from you.
It runs out of water. So it explodes.
Obviously the iron watering can is rusting at an excelerated rate because we didn't treat it correctly.
Water can melt steel beams
My favorite Animal Crossing UX quirk is how the first option for fruit and medicine is to drop them on the ground, which means I accidentally drop them every time I want to use them.
Oh.my.God, I can't even count how many times this has happened to me 😭😭
Same.
Really small thing, but really annoying when it happens.
Oversaturated Shrimp Not really. The problem is the inconsistency. Most items drop option is on the bottom.
@@jashipeanut9124 Imagine eating the fruit you wanted to give to your friend
except It's the last fruit on the island
The fact that you can’t buy multiple clothing of the same category is also pretty stupid
Just give us a shopping cart. I hate having to go out and back inside, especially when you are on another island and get notifications about people coming in/leaving every 30 seconds
dedicationtoKiKi worst thing is they absolutely can, when Nook shopping you just press A and it’s done and you can continue shopping.
@@MrsWhiterock "Please close the window. Please close the window. Please close the window. Please close the window. Please close the window"
I absolutely detest how - in Animal Crossing - you can't buy multiple clothes at the same time, but for some reason they all have to be clothes for different parts of your body (like hats, shoes etc.) Let's not even get started on turning the clams into fish food, but you'll have to individually turn every single clam into individual fish food. Would've been nice if you could just do multiple things all at once.
That’s my thing, or buying bulk objects in more than just 5s. I need 40 custom kits I don’t want to sit through paying it 7 times
@@YukiLeiu 8 times*
I want to die everytime i have to craft fish food, like omg was that difficult to add a multiple craft option for gods sake
why do all three types of wood have the same spawn rate? you need normal wood for most of the crafting, so when i go out and harvest wood i usually have stacks and stacks of softwood and hardwood left in my inventory, and practically 0 normal wood. it’s so annoying :(
IKR
Yeah I usually end up crafting them into things and selling the results
remember when on top of that, like 50% of the drops from trees were wood eggs lol. I was very early in the game, didnt even have museum yet and it dragged the game out so long, that I didnt get new villagers untill the next real life week
Wait, they have equal spawnrates? I have an excess of hardwood for some reason
Yeah, as much as I love AC, it has infuriating menus. Let me stack clams!
Heh heh, stacked clams.
Manila is my favorite flavor of clam
or AT LEAST let me bulk craft them into fish food!!!
"Did I say stacked clams? What I meant to say was steamed hams! Mmm mmm. Steamed hams."
I don't even use fish bait because the grind from harvesting clams and crafting each individual piece is just too annoying.
The Good, the Bad, and the Crossing
(Seriously, how does New Horizons do so much right, and at the same time, so much wrong, in terms of UX at least?)
Exhibit A: the storage system. So much easier than new leaf, where you had to pick up each object using the touch screen and physically drag it to one of the open spots. Now you just press "Put in storage" and it automatically organizes it too!
Exhibit B: The storage system. Why can't I put trees, dug up flowers, and *turnips* in the storage? I don't always know where to plant stuff right now, and having to dedicate a whole floor to storing turnips is terrible!
Nook: "For a fistful of dollars, I can upgrade your user experience."
Animal Crossing is about looks over function, yes its charming to watch/look at but wastes so much time and a game with so much inventory needs good management system.
DIY CARDS
DIY CARDS
WHY
Much improved UI over NL in most respects (even if a lot of the franchise's... Quirks... are still present), but weirdly two of the improvements to UI result in a loss of functionality compared to if neither of them had been made - Storage is a button press away rather than needing to use storage items (Great! Much more convenient!), to change outfits you can now just go to a wardrobe (or... freezer...) and get a dedicated UI for that, with preview, including if the wardrobe's outside (Awesome, far more convenient and I can easially figure out if the black of a pair of shorts works with the black of a shirt or if they're just dissimilar enough to look off for added functionality). The old way would mean that I'd be able to place a storage item near the airport and wouldn't have to go home to put away whatever I don't want to take to an island with me and get out any tools I don't need around the island but do want to take with me between getting a nook miles ticket and using it, however.
Not entirely fair on NH for comparing a hypothetical 'how placing items outside in NL would have worked', mind, and dear lord I don't want to go back to the old way for changing clothes especially, it would just be nice if we could also access storage from items like wardrobes as well as with a quick button press while inside the home.
There is a youtuber who theorised Animal Crossing: New Horizons was made by two teams, the old people and the new employees. The old people keept the slow and tiring mechanics while the new employees made the quicker and modern mechanics, and the reason why some stuff like you can´t stockpile clams but bait yes is because both teams dind´t agreed.
One of my game dev friends pointed out that the point of AC's breakable tools is to push you back towards the crafting table periodically so you'll maybe craft some new things while you're already there. I do wish you could work your way towards unbreakable tools, though.
What's the point in golden tools if they're breakable...
Golden tools having enhanced durability rather than being unbreakable makes them significantly less attractive once you get the miles for crafting them...
man did they implement that poorly if thats the case. no ones going to make a table and some chairs when they went to the crafting bench to make a new axe after they were chopping wood. they want to finish chopping the wood, and furnishing is not their priority at all. And making new tools even bogs down the DIY project nook miles quest. That could have been a good incentive, but now making 1 tool fulfills 2/3 of the entire quest when you could have been persuaded to actually make some items.
@@Fligyn i mean, i've gone back to make a new shovel, etc. and noticed i have a new crafting recipe at least once.
@@harrylane4 even that anecdote barely supports that design choice on Nintendo's part. Supposing everyone could remember one or two times they noticed new recipes when they went to craft a new tool, that doesn't mean theyll make it right then and there, and it doesnt guarantee they will later either. Recipes are learned through recipe cards a vast majority of the time too so most people will register the fact that they have a recipe when they have to manually use the item to learn it. Also going off the DIY nook mile quest i mentioned earlier, that would be a much better way to get people to look for something to craft, and all they would have to do is make tools way more durable or not break at all like in past games.
Thank you sincerely for talking about Animal Crossing's failures in menu design.
I don’t even bother crafting tools anymore I just buy them form Timmy and Tommy. Take my money you cheeking rodents. They charge crazy prices too but they know damn well I don’t wanna go all the way back to my house look up the recipe get the materials and then craft the flimsy to get the nice one and put back all the extra materials to go back to the other side of the island where the fossil is. It’s all a racket that I suspect Tom Nook is in on.
@@UnluckyOctopus I just have all the materials for crafting tools in the inventory all the time :/
I love how nintendont forgot about touch screen that switch have. JUST LET ME TOUCH THINGS I WANT TO STORE.
I feel like a lot of what he talked about is just an issue with New Horizons. I've never had those issues in New Leaf
fully 100% agree with the AC part
also
"Collecting beach garbage", Shows gulliver
nice XD
Because I'm not allowed to store turnips, I have dedicated my entire 2nd floor to my turnips.
That's rookie stuff. My whole basement/2ndfloor/kitchen is full of them it's so annoying lol
@@OfficialNoCoast uhhhh ok chum, that's cute. try your entire beach, fully upgraded empty house and ground in front of the town hall region
.....yeah, I'm not really proud of it either
@@yeahSloom what are we having a bigger virgin contest? Jk lmao I'm jealous!
Last Sunday I bought turnips worth 20M, they covered about 1/6 of the entire island! XD
Wait you can get multiple floors!?
Skipping during crafting would definitely be nice, and ditto with dialogue! Every time Gulliver shows up, you need to wake him up by pressing A about 10 times. Then once he does wake up, you have 21 whole dialogue boxes to get through, and the dialogue is the same every. single. time.
The lack of a skip button (among many other things) is just ridiculous at this point. I'm glad they brought the graphics up to 2020 standards, but the UI and QoL are still stuck in 1998.
explained perfectly. once i farmed gulliver items and you don’t know how much time skipping and the many times of waking up gulliver i had to do, probably missing a good day of my life now dedicated to waking gulliver up.
きゃ～、みきゃんだ！！ かわいい～～
@@gLoveofLove89 みきゃんが知ってる？日本以外、みきゃんのファンが珍しいだね！⭐️
@@PetitMarionette うん、もちろん知ってる。愛媛県に住んでいたからです。
@@gLoveofLove89 いいね！私も、その前に二回も愛媛県に住んだことがある。大洲市都松山市だった。でも、愛媛県の間にどこに行っても美しいな〜
Also, I love your design choice on stating that your "going on a 60 second rant about Netflix."
Instead of simply telling us what you're going to talk about and where to skip to to avoid it, you presented to us everything we need to know about your sponsorship section in a single short sentence. And that is Good Design.
Good Design, Bad Design is by far my favorite series on UA-cam
Me too.
then you'll also like the videos of mark brown (aka game maker's toolkit)
@@kunai9809 Game Makers Toolkit is awesome man, same with the gaming architect Adam Millard I think his name is! Thank you for the suggestion
You didn't even list the worst part of Animal Crossing. Want to invite someone to your island that's not on your friend list?
1) Walk all the way to the airport
2) Enter the airport
3) Talk to Orville
4) Select "I want visitors"
5) Select "Online"
6) Accept that yes, you do indeed want to play online
7) Wait for the game to save
8) Invite by dodo code
9) Select "the more the merrier"
10) Accept that yes, you do indeed want to play with random people
11) Wait for the game to tell you that it's all done and exit the dialogue
And God forbid you accidentally click the wrong item or back out at any step of this. Because if you do you're starting from step 3 all over again...
If I select "play online", I shouldn't have to be asked if I want to play online. I selected it, shut up and put me online.
If I selected "the more the merrier" (which is also an extremely dumb option. Why not put "everyone" instead?), I shouldn't have to be asked if I want to play with everyone. I selected it, shut up and let me play with everyone.
and then every single time someone arrives/leaves there's a 15 second unskippable global cutscene.
And there's the fact that the game wastes a solid 5-10 seconds straight up pretending to connect to the Internet each time, when it already is connected for the friends list, chat and mail systems to work at any given moment.
Onion Thief I’ve had a high turnip price and invited anyone to my island and it would take on average 5 minutes for one person to sell their turnips from the constant leaving and returning 2 minute cutscenes, not to mention the pain that is people joining in the first place
The reminder about everyone being able to go to your island is most likely to protect kids from getting their flowers etc stolen by crappy adults. Other than that, fully agree. Just put too dodo characters there, one on each side. One for online one for local. Or one for Leaving, one for opening the gates to your own Island.
Why is this super obvious stuff not a priority for Nintendo. Your game is fun DESPITE being incredibly annoying. Why not just fix it and make everyone love you even more?
I'm glad to see AC in bad design. I love it, it's great, it's charming. But it doesn't respect its players time and that's a shame. In the original one FROM 2001, if you had multiples of the same item, Nook would say "do you want to sell them all?" or you could select stuff from the inventory to drop many things at once
I think the problems with de Blob interruptions is a common industry thing of trying to pad-out a game by adding a bunch of little interruptions to force the player to slow down.
The first comment i've seen not about animal crossing lol
Thank you for mentioning the bad UX design in Animal Crossing. I've seen people DEFENDING it because it's apparently part of the charm of playing animal crossing is to BE frustrating and unintuitive. Like...no???
**edited bc I meant UX design and not UI, sorry!**
Thats probably what the devs also think. Absolutely terrible garbage that shouldnt be defended, but here we are.
No no no no, Animal Crossing doesn't have bad UI, the UI is gorgeous. It has bad UX, there's a difference. 😰
The game is fantastic, but yeah the UX isn't great. I will say that UX should not make or break a game. I know it's bad, but the rest of the game should make a bigger difference
And not only this, but some fans created a parody Nintendo Direct of these issues and supposed fixes, only to have that video DMCA'd by Nintendo. Man, they sure have a stick up their arse.
I dont understand people that seem to think that part of what makes animal crossing calm and chill is forcing you to work at a grueling pace.
Remember when you could select multiple items in the inventory at the same time of the ORIGINAL Animal Crossing but not in any of the following games?
Yup that is the second main thing I care about since I sell a mass amount of items per person
Something I'd love to see is an episode focused around the ds and 3ds, and how certain games took advantage to the bottom screen for various things, while other games not so much.
I will always bring up my personal favorite etrian odyssey. Its top screen is a first person view of the labyrinth you are exploring and the battles, while the only UI elements outside of battle being the time of day with the hour, a circle that goes from blue to red to show when a random battle is about to happen. And this neat leaf that shows how close you are to A F.O.E. (pretty much a boss monster that isn't actually a boss) while the bottom screen is exclusively used as a map. More specifically a grid that you can draw in to fill out a map and even put special icons and note to say what things are on the map.
Basile bottom screen is the map at all times, and top is everything else.
The fact that the map is interactive and not just a static graphic really makes it feel like a better use of the touch screen than most games
Yes etrian odyssey has amazing design! It's very easy to understand. Though god forbid you mislabel the map.
@@emmad4308 Yes! that can lead to hours of frustration wandering around the floor you're in. All because of one- simple - line. Still fun though!
And the Monster Hunter series made really good use of the bottom screen as well. It allowed you to use item hot keys, a shortcut to the combo list, map, and even a virtual D-Pad so you could move and control the camera at the same time which was very difficult compared to the PSP(if you used "the claw") if you only used the physical D-Pad and control stick.
@@amadeo-mysticmusic1542 yep! Or you miss a pit fall or warp tile. Done that it was genuinely hell.
I'm not used to this series starting with Bad Design, it completely threw me out of the loop for a good minute :D
I didn't mind as much back when I was young with my first AC, City Folk/LGTTC, but I feel like my hands get oddly tired of all the button pressing for simple tedious things. I still like the game, but I think with age, time is more valuable to a person, so it's a lot more noticable.
in animal crossing, If im inside my home and in my storage i have the materials i need why do i need to get them out of the storage, i have them in my house that's why i'm in my house uuuuauaggg
Exactly. I think it would've also made more sense for the storage type furniture to open up to the STORAGE instead of the clothes closet, like how many times in the day are you going to be like, "yeah, let me change clothes for the 14th time"?, never. I would much rather go to the house to change and access the storage everywhere else (if I had to choose).
It would be really cool to see a Xenoblade Chronicles DE review when it comes out so we can see how much better the UI is compared to the original
It already looks like a vastly improved menu system, I would really like to see a full analysis!
"thou shalt not have more than 1 island per console" said the Nintendo overlords
and so, the people conformed, and the day was saved
Animal Crossing has always been like that. A single island for multiple players/characters on the same console. I still think it's kind of weird.
@@Rogerioapsandrade not per console, it was per game copy. Bad design shouldn't be tradition anyway. I'll let people enjoy it but I'll pass.
@@Rexodiak maybe the game can't quite do the Interactive villager stuff if it has multiple save files, but for a game like this it doesn't seem like too much of a deal breaker, I'd even argue it's more appropriate to keep one island since the whole premise is to chill and get to work on your island while making friends with the locals, and it's not a game with a real ending either so there's not that much of a reason to start over.
@@ginogatash4030 took you a little while to give your 2 cents lol. You forgot entirely about sharing a console with family members or special others. They live in your island, they have very limited control over what they can do, it's like they're playing as an npc.
Honestly if you've been playing since launch I'm surprised you're still playing, sorry but I can't imagine someone caring for this long
@@Rexodiak I mean, clearly you're not as invested in the game, but many other people get a lot more invested in the game than you. Imo Animal Crossing is kind of a slow chill game, and that vibe obviousloy isn't for everyone. It's okay if you didnt stick with the game long, but other people did.
Tom Nook working at the umbrella corporation, perfect!
The T-Virus
@@FlutterSwag Who can forget when Chris Redfield punched a boulder to get some bells!
Raccoon City.
Alert fatigue is speculated to be what caused the Hawaii nuclear attack false alarm a few years ago isn't it? The same "Are you absolutely sure" confirmation in the test and real scenario leading to the operator sleepwalking through an accidental real when a test was intended being likely what happened according to some UX analysists, iirc?
Animal Crossing's UI... Isn't bothering me as much as many, but every now and then I have a horrific amount of item juggling to do due to the lack of 'grab x' options (mostly after crafting something with weeds since I like to have a working supply of 30 available in storage. So now instead of selling all 57 weeds from my next island tour I need to peel 20 of the weeds off the pile, and then stack them again). I'm also in what feels like a constant argument with the game on if the item inventory should be read left to right (it's preference) or top to bottom (my preference) - I get that that's always going to annoy someone like camera invert is always going to annoy someone, but that feels like it could easily be an option? Workbenches in the home should be able to access items in storage as well as in pockets, they went back to turnips not being able to be stored in storage for some reason, some menus have menu wrap (pockets) which is great, but that just makes the lack of menu wrap in other places (typing especially) noticeably absent.
Here's one that I've been thinking about recently for animal crossing - Storage not being tied to furniture and instead just being a quick button press while inside your house, with storage items instead being used to access a hugely improved UI for changing clothes, is a mixed blessing. It makes it easier to access storage while inside your house, sure... But if the NH storage was set up the old way, I would be able to put a chest of drawers near the airport and put away anything I don't want to take on an island tour and get out the vaulting pole without first going home to do. Instead if I place a storage item outside, I can conveniently change my outfit while outside, accessing anything in my storage to do so (Which... Really makes me question what the point of the wands are - I get almost as convenient an ability to change anywhere for the same one pocket space cost, but with several added pieces of functionality, if I just lug a wardrobe around with me - I don't think it's worth the cost of an inventory slot since I rarely want to change half way through a day, but... I happened to find a freezer on an island tour and tested if before I got it home a day or two ago? Freezers and fridges working the same as wardrobes do does make me wonder if this was a fairly late change to how storage worked, actually)
My eyes aren't skilled enough to be able to assess it in a vacuum, but the HD Remake of Trials of Mana has some MASSIVE UI and quality of life improvements over the original.
It'd be neat to see a Design Doc about it.
With regards to Guilty Gear Strive, there's one important UI-related feature that was left overlooked: the character select screen. Whereas the other UI elements in Strive fall short in various ways, I think the CSS is a step in the right direction not only for the series, but for fighting games as a whole.
The genre is guilty of not being the most beginner-friendly genre around due to the overwhelming complexity, and many fighting game developers go out of their way to simplifying various mechanics to make their games more accessible, but those efforts often do nothing to fix other problems regarding accessibility, such as a well-made tutorial or telling the players what the characters do at first glance. Sure, the characters themselves can give a rough idea how they play just by how they look, but developers can only do so much in terms of appearance to send a message. Typically in fighting games, the extremely large muscular men are grapplers for example, but in The King of Fighters, some of the women are also grapplers, even the ones that may not look the type, unlike R. Mika in Street Fighter where she's wearing wrestling attire.
The CSS in Strive gives players very helpful information to decide which character suits them in a way most fighting games still struggle with. It gives players the following information: archetype, difficulty, game plan, strength, and control configuration.
The CSS categorizes the fighters by archetype. If you're looking for a balanced fighter, the game will tell you who is balanced. Likewise for speed-, power-, and tricky-based fighters. It organizes the roster in a way where if you know what you're looking for, then you simply won't get lost, no matter how many fighters there will be at launch.
When you highlight a fighter, on the upper part of the portrait, there's a difficulty rating where the higher the rating, the easier the fighter is to learn. What's great about this system is that it's a rating based on complexity. Usually, these fighters are considered easy because their move lists aren't as complicated, whereas the lower-rated fighters have more complex and daunting move lists.
*As a side note, another great UI feature is the move list itself; in addition to displaying the inputs on the left, there's a demonstration video and a description of what it does on the right, and it includes little things like whether the move has invincibility (although frame data is still not visible). This is helpful for those who want to learn a fighter quickly and not have to experiment with how the move looks and interacts if they forget.
On the lower part of the portrait, there's an overview that gives the player what type of game plan they will be involved with. Sol and May are considered very aggressive fighters who always go out on the offensive, whereas Ky is an all-rounder with everything and Axl is good at keepaway. There's also a scale that tells you exactly where fighters are at their strongest, and they're separated into three categories: short-, mid-, and long-range. With this scale, you know that Potemkin and Chipp are strong against Axl in close-range, for example, but they would be beat handily by Axl in long-range 'cause that's where Axl is at his strongest and where Potemkin and Chipp are at their weakest.
Lastly, there's the control config. Typically, in most fighting games, it's on the bottom corner of the screen in fine print where most people won't even be looking at 'cause they should be looking at the roster. In Strive, it's made obvious as it tells the player right under the scale that controls can be customized with the Triangle button.
All of these UI details can go a long way in helping new players get into a game that may be too much to take in. By being able to find the ideal fighter for their liking, players can start learning the game right away with solid background knowledge given thanks to the CSS.
I get that Strive was in the Bad Design category, but I feel like the CSS had to be mentioned with regards to great UI design. Strive is not all bad in UI overall, and the CSS in particular is a great template for fighting game developers to follow when designing their own CSS.
Dang, now I'm actually kinda tempted to try GGS; fighting games have never really been my thing but I suspect that's mostly due to how intimidating most of them are to newcomers. I mean, the only fighting game that I don't feel completely out of my league in is Sonic the Fighters, and I think that's because I already had plenty of background knowledge on the series before playing it, meaning I was already pretty familiar with the characters, their capabilities, and their general playstyles. I've heard StF is generally considered a pretty bad fighting game, though, so if I enjoyed that one, having a good beginner-friendly game like GGS to help break the ice might help me branch out and discover something even better!
Finally somebody mentions it... I already knew about the CSS in GG Strive when Stumblebee talked about it
And then they killed one of the few useful features they had for the UI while still not fixing it's other problems.
I totally agree in animal crossing. It's such a hassle to have everything rely on crafting. I have to go back and forth to make tools. Also the inconvenience of inventory. I know we're passed the ds era, but they could have still applied the touch screen functionality for the inventory and home management. It's a step back, especially that arranging the house was so fun in HHD.
The switch is called the Wide Gameboy now, idc
And now introducing the THICC Gameboy!!!
W I D E B O Y
Gameboy Wide - All the hand cramps of gameboy...... but wider
@@jordanbalch1500 thiccboy
@@lostmarble540 yes
First time Animal Crossing player here, and I saw the quality of life issues, and have accepted what's to come. Seriously Nintendo, I know you got a million dollar IP here, but show some love for your customers by making things more efficient! It's not hard!
Overall, Nintendo games ALL have bad menus.
The bad part about that is that people expect that the Devs will just change the way things work because everyone in used to the fact that live service games are more than capable of changing these problems because they exist for much longer than console IPs, this is a problem because that is NOT how things work in this case.
Menus are never addressed in patches because changing the way these assets work means pouring time away from other content (like every piece of furniture and clothing!) that has to be implemented and tested because there's already a release date set 2-3 years away. The menus are part of the first assets that get made and in order to make sure nothing shits itself EVERYTHING has to be tested again and that is too much time nobody is willing to invest, SPECIALLY not Nintendo.
@@Manbarrican I bought Breath of the Wild just before i bought Animal Crossing and it just makes AC's menus more annoying when compared to BOTW. They literally already had a game with a good menu system and just ignored any of what was there? I dont get it
“alert fatigue and interruptions”
*cough* Tokyo Mirage Sessions *cough*
Love the game though!
My gods yes it's so colourful and vibrant. Also the combat is super fun!!
See also P5/R. I'm glad you could shorten animations on both, but I wish it was a menu option like how you can in a lot of FF games.
The UI in Guilty Gear reminds me of beginner level stuff I saw in design school.
I don't mind the inventory management in AC, or even Durability, for me planning is part of the game. But crafting and menuing need to be improved.
"...aaaand it's night now"
Perfect
Bad Design Idea: I've been playing Zanki Zero by Spike Chunsoft. It has an interesting premise and I was looking into it because I loved Danganronpa and 999 so wanted to see what else the company made. I'll preface this with a "good games can have bad graphic design choices" warning, cause I actually like the game.
Zanki Zero has 8 characters all wake up on an island in ruins and are told that the world has ended and that they are the last of humanity. In fact, they are clones. Whenever the characters die, their bodies turn to dust and they drop the mysterious X-keys (strange devices implanted in their stomachs instead of belly buttons). As long as a survivor brings their ally's X-key to the Extend machine (an odd arcade game/cloning macguffin), the machine will make a new clone with their person's memories. It also pops them out as children. It turns out the clones have a problem - their bodies are aging rapidly and after 13 days, they will expire. They are given this info by the series two mascot characters who show up on videos playing throughout the island to taunt and prod the players towards fixing the Extend machine and being generally Monokuma like.
So death is a big part of the game and something that the game will introduce frequently. The issue is with how they put their premise into gameplay. There is a mechanic called Shigabane where each unique way the players died are saved and converted to resistances and bonuses, making the characters stronger and stronger. This means that you as the player will face death by monsters, death by traps, death by aging, and death because you are going to be grinding the characters. Like I said, big part of the game. I actually like this part of the game - it's a unique idea to use past lives/experiences to get stronger. It can be a little inconvenient since there only one machine to revive your characters at the main base, so you'll be walking back a lot just to rez, but it's not the game's biggest problem.
No, the problem comes in with the interface and inventory. Our characters have 4 equipment slots and 7-8 inventory slots. You will be making and finding weapons, materials, cooking food, and crafting all game. Your inventory is limited by how many living players there are. If someone is dies, they drop their inventory and equipment at your feet and you cannot utilize their inventory space until they revived. The items won't disappear or anything, but it does mean if you want something now, someone else will have to pick the items up. And you'll need to pick up items one by one, making sure you're not overburdening characters, etc. To transfer items and equipment, you have to pick each one, move to the character, drop, repeat for each object in the game and repeat. Now this might not be a big issue on it's own, but with how much you will /constantly/ die, it means that every single time, you'll need to either let items drop and have another character pick them up one by one, or go in the inventory and carry each time one by one to the preferred character. It. Is. Tedious. Oh, there is a storage for you items that you can drop them of at. But guess what. One item at a time - click, move, click, repeat. An option to pick up all the items in on square or an option in the inventory to move all items would stop how much tedious time you spend in your inventory so you can play the game already. Hell, maybe with all our crafting know how, we could make a backpack and when we go, it just drops a backpack with all the items inside. As it is now, you probably literally spend 25% of the game in you inventory. It weighs down on you, especially when grinding or facing accidental deaths.
So it's another example of a questionable choice in a great game that takes you out of the experience and instead has you playing in your pockets Animal Crossing style.
Holy cow, i didn't knew you could actually speed up the craft animation. Damn.
Benjamin Hadjaz I know the feeling, Today I learned you can actually move things within your inventory.
Animal crossing is one of my favorite games of all time, I love the series. HOWEVER, everything you said is true and it’s so annoying, I hope they fix some of the issues in updates but I doubt it.
Often in animal crossing new horizons I wonder why couldn’t we also build multiples from the DIY recepies, like I have enough material to make 10 bags of fishbait, instead of doing one y one, it should have a system that lets us do many in one go xD
Especially as you can make ten fence panels at a time - why can't I make 10 fish bait and just have it require 10 clams? That would be 100x easier, especially as the bait stacks in lots of 10 anyway
And while we're at it, why can't we stack clams?
I made around 100 fish bait early on, but after running out, I've just not bothered with it again because it's so tedious between multiple trips to dig up clams and then several minutes crafting each fish bait individually.
Well I definitely would like to make multiple fish bait, since well I’m trying to make a second batch of 400 and then sell the bait online. so I also wish I could drop multiple things at the same time because the first batch probably took me about 3 minutes to just drop all the bait. Oh and stack the clams
Christ, it’s unbelievable just how high quality your channel is with your current sub count. You’re going to grow incredibly quickly, I can just tell. It must take forever to edit and come up with the graphics for these videos. Keep up the great work!
when you put a new style in the wand, it make the item making the style dissapear from your inventory
i'm all like why ??? i reaaally have to buy x amout of glasses or x amount of the same shoes to have them in all the slot ? It's really a weird way to make it
Also YES
having to take out the material from your storage to your pocket inventory is a huuuge downside
The second you mentioned bad multiplayer lobby UX in your update post, I knew what you were thinking.
19:40 arriving from majula, i can hear the ocean waves and the music.
8:31 They NEED to remake Oracle of Seasons/Ages, immediately. I've tried playing those several times, but the Game Boy Colour's limitations make it near-impossible for me to enjoy what are likely two awesome games.
I was able to get through Link's Awakening DX due to its simplicity, but OoS/A are more complex games.
I know what you mean. It somehow felt better to play Link's awakening. Also I don't really care much about the music in the oracle games..
I think an example of bad design is in the mario kart time trial menus since they never let you know which tracks you have already beaten and the one’s you haven’t which makes it almost discouraging for players to beat all of them when that means they have to check one by one to see the ones they have missed (MK8 was used for this example)
Honestly this has become my favourite youtube series. It is so incredible interesting to see a video which breaks down the designs of games. I really love watching these videos. Thank you so much! Please keep up the good work. I am eagerly awaiting the next video!
i’d love to see a comparison between the original cytus and the sequel cytus ii, both mobile rhythm games! i personally felt that the first one has some... pretty bad design for its songs, with clashing colours that are a assault on the eyes, which i think was greatly improved in the sequel!
ooooo hell yeah I love Cytus that would be amazing :D
8:47 if only TV was like this. Every time a reboot comes out its just some crappy stripped down version of the original. Its interesting that the videogame equivalent is nearly always improved.
Because to sell anything in the video game industry, you must display at least a minima of quality (even shameless franchises put real work into their production, even if it's crippled by defaults)
While in other industryies just advertize it with big names/producers, on a well know franchises, and sheep who had zero critical senses will ask for more.
Exception with the mobile game industry...but that's because it's populated by horde of non gamer sheeps.
@@ballom29 Theres also the fact that there's a thriving indie game scene, meaning your average joe is likely to make a game that millions will see. I mean just look at Undertale, that game came out years ago and people are *still* talking about it from time to time. And the indie games probably help the industry remain quality because there's so much more competition than in film. In film as long as you have big names, every movie or show that doesnt practically isn't competition.
5:51 I thought you were going to cut to BBTAG’s character select screen.
I somehow knew that Strive was going to be in this video
I got distracted by the background music and realised it was from the Trauma Team OST! I love that game.
Speaking of, what are your thoughts on their game/UI design?
So glad you covered GG Strive. That shit needs an overhaul, and a thurough one at that. Seriously, Who even thought it was a good idea to approve that travesty, let alone thinking it was a good idea in the first place.
Though a little surprised you didn't go into the issues with all the different fonts and sizes used as well as that huge "positive" that appears in the corner after a wall break.
The first thing that stood out to me I’m Guilty Gear is that the characters are on the layer above the health bar, so half the time it is totally obstructed from view by all the explosions and whatnot
Another crazy stupid thing about the UX of Animal Crossing to me was the assignment of buttons. They could’ve made things so much more efficient if they just used the buttons on the Switch well.
For example, when I initially started the game, I noticed switching tools was a pain because I had to click the bottom left buttons which meant that I had to stop my character from moving due to having to take my left hand off the joystick. It ended up making the gameplay feel choppy and really not smooth to play. This could’ve been easily solved if they just switched it with the top two buttons to switch rather than for a chat function (which btw is not even used that often and would not affect the gameplay negatively if you moved it somewhere else). This to me would allow for me to run and switch tools at the same time so I wouldn’t have to spend an extra three seconds trying switch tools to cross a river or climb a cliff, just to spend another three seconds to switch to an axe to cut a tree down.
Another crazily frustrating issue was the terraforming feature. I’m certain there could’ve been a better way to make this feature, it was just ridiculous how many times I ‘accidentally’ removed or added some terrain in a spot I didn’t want to just because they put the adding and removing tool on the SAME button. I wasted so much time trying to remove stuff that I accidentally created, only for it to CREATE MORE terrain rather than removing what I wanted (and then I’d have to take the time to destroy double as much and it just goes in a cycle). If they just separated these two things to two different buttons I know it would been wayyyy less frustrating for so many people.
Not even mentioning the crazy airport and crafting process, so much about the game design is so flawed, honestly.
Do what I did and use the version 10.0 switch update to remap your buttons.
I've never played an Animal Crossing game, so, when I saw you were going to criticize AC: New Horizons, I felt that you were being too harsh, since the game has good reviews. However, as soon as you started showing the menus, I realized that, indeed, AC New Horizons menus are cumbersome. It takes too long just to do something so basic.
Cumbersome is an understatement, honestly 🤣
I got tired just from listening
As someone who plays this version of Animal Crossing, I was poised to disagree. Then I heard him talk about the menus and everything was so spot on. I love the game and they don’t really detract from my enjoyment of it, but the issues he pointed out are definitely irritating.
How about you do something on crafting systems, and how games can inform the player in a non-intrusive way new information for it?
Don't Starve has a very neat crafting system. The whole crafting menu is at the side of the screen, not taking up much space and intruding your vision unless you want to craft something. Everytime you have eniugh materials to craft something, you hear a ding, and the tab with the craftable item is highlighted green, or blue, if it's a structure you've prebuilt. The little item descriptions give you an idea of what the item does. If you have an idea of a game with a better crafting system, feel free to point it out for me.
factorio, not necessarily better. It's crafting, that doesn't feel like crafting, but it feels more like crafting!
Everyone talking about Animal Crossing, and I'm over here thinking about how De Blob in this video was actually De Blob 2, and I only played the first game, which was free on PC and it didn't have any of the problems of the sequel. Amazing how college students can do better than companies sometimes.
Those games made my childhood lol
Oddly enough, the games came from a European country, but they were more popular in North America and Australia, apparently
6:09 I just watched your other video, and literally said out loud, "oh wow, that's so much better"
Actually, almost each of these episodes has a fundamental flaw. It's way too short ;) Love it, continue this great work!
Animal Crossing's UX is exactly why it's never truly hooked me. I've been tried it many times over the years, but the obvious inefficiencies that border on padding drive me absolutely bonkers.
- A dedicated select all button that doesnt select favorited items in the inventory.
- A dedicated button for picking up a single item from a stack in the inventory.
- A dedicated button for picking up a whole item slot on single button press, not holding A for 3 seconds.
The UX in ACNH is abysmal even outside other key design decisions. Feels like whoever worked on the Pocket Camp design for mobile was asked to create a console game without prior experience.
I'm SO happy that he mentioned de Blob (even if it is for a bad design) :D
It's such a good game (at least in my childhood memories)
Yess to the Trauma Team forensics mission music in the beginning of this video! Always love seeing that game get the representation it deserves
Am I the only one here that appreciates the Dark Souls 2 reference?
(Assuming he didn't call his island Majula for entirely different reasons.)
Nintendo: The masters of adding massive and outlandish good features to a game and refusing to deal with extremely simple flaws that affect the game nearly as much.
I'm having so much fun with Animal Crossing, but I agree 100%
add crafting 30 fish bait one at a time and no shopping cart at the Able Sisters on my list.
Online Multiplayer in Animal Crossing is terrible unfortunately! Wanna have a lot of people come and go? 30+ seconds of charging and menus for each single player to come AND to leave. Everyone else has to stop anything they're doing and wait each time. When you're on really busy island, that means you have about 2 seconds to move until you will be interrupted by the next 30 second loading screen again. Also, if one player turns their system off, everyone gets another loading screen and is sent back to the airport, or if you're not lucky, to your own island.
*starts with Guilty Gear*
Oh yeah, this is one everyone can agree with. The game looks amazing, but literally everything else from the UI, HUB, and that lobby system is a mess.
Looks like Arcsystem focused only on improve the gameplay and the visuals but not the UI, I hope they fix that for the final game.
@@juanrodriguez9971 rather the opposite, for some ungodly reason Daisuke wanted the UI and certain important elements of it to be hard to read because advantage against new players
@@aftertone3146 That is so ridiculous, that would get the opposite effect, the veterans would adapt to it and keep winning while the new players will never understand how much health they have, when they can do the combos, and why they can't understand a thing during the fight.
@@juanrodriguez9971 Yeah, that's what everyone said but who knows what goes on Daisuke's head
the CSS is good imo
edit: that's kinda the only thing I like GG Strive's basically everything apart from Gameplay
I finished this whole series (so far) and I loved it. I'm taking a UI test for a game company this week and I feel like this series has really helped. Thank you!
I remember booting animal crossing up for the first time and just thinking about how obvious of improvements I thought they could make in terms of the UI. Now we just have to wait and see if they will ever hear us.
I don't remember if you did an episode where you covered Guilty Gear Xrd, but that would be one to look into, especially to compare to Strive and how the two differ.
I just noticed the little detail of Nook's leaf shirt having the umbrella logo! Clever. 🙂
(2:45) I do like the creativity of writing the name of the number inside the number. Which works with the large numbers. But I don't like how it says "one two" inside 12 instead of just saying "twelve".
By just designing the digits with a gap in then, and fill it with text in-engine, would not only allow you to write "twelve" inside the 12, but also translating the names with little effort.
One big issue about Animal Crossing's DIY that I'd like to add: The only way to see what non-recipe items are customizable is by having it in your inventory and going to a workbench. This means if you've stockpiled a lot of furniture in your home's storage and want to see what can be customized, there's no easy and time-efficient way to do so.
Like crafting, this could have been easily remedied if they allowed players to access their storage when using a workbench in their home, but alas...
In animal crossing, why do vanilla clams not stack, but shells do
I only ever make fish bait in Animal Crossing when I have to go use the bathroom or grab a snack or something. That way, I could just ask my younger sister to spam A while I'm away from the console. The fact that I am able to use the bathroom, wash my hands, grab some Ritz crackers and return to see that my sister is still spamming A goes to show that Animal Crossing really needs to have a better UX, and, more importantly, bulk crafting
In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, some flooring can be laid out either horizontally or vertically. If you're laying out the flooring from your inventory, the first option is "Place Horizontally". If you're laying out the flooring from your storage, the first option is "Place Vertically". Even the menu options for the exact same item aren't always in the same order!
Thats what I like about Namco, they keep updating their GUI in free updates. Also, alert fatigue is THE horror game killer. Introduce every enemy with a cutscene and you'll never get scared.
I didn't knew that about "the Blob". I got it on my wish list and now that I know about this problem, I can get ready to not get much upset when I play it.
I'm not sure what you'd choose to talk about when it comes to UI, but Astroneer's is very interesting to me. I like how little text there is. You can find it, but most things are symbols. It feels more real that way, as though you're from a place where these symbols need no explanation, like red octogon meaning stop, but the description is readily available if you need it. It's also diagetic (I think?) which is awesome.
MAN, animal crossing's multiplayer menu is a MESS too! It feels like when EVER I need to go outside, I need to talk to the dodo for 100 pages of choices.
I really wish animal crossing had more levels of tools with more durability. The iron ones felt like the lasted forever in the very beginning but now I burn through them quickly. A huge problem I think as well is how slow terraforming is, having to go block by block :
Thank you for mentioning Deblob! It and its sequel seem to both fail in the Alert Fatigue sense. The missions in the sequel have the same cutscenes, and they can last 40 minutes! That’s 40 minutes of do this, do that, before free-roam is unlocked, and by then, you’re tired of the level. The ticking 60-minute timer is also inverse to the “paint by location” relaxing feel of the game. Even though it’s extendable, the pressure, however mild, keeps you out of the flow. I hope they remaster or remake the games in the future with these issues fixed.
one of my favorite UI things from REmake 2 was the "this key item is no longer useful" icon that indicates that you can now discard an item knowing that you found/used all of its stuff
A would love to hear about Media Molecules Dreams UI and UX design. I think they did a very impressive job condensing so many different creation tools into one package.
Tom Nook with the Umbrella logo has terrifying implementations.
And now ArkSys have answered some of the feedback regarding Strive, and man, it is downright baffling what is going on inside their heads. That bit about the RISC gauge being a hard to read drop shadow? That was by intentional design. They were fully intent on making it hard to read, to somehow make it "easier for newcomers".
No it doesn't make sense to me either.
I recently played Viva pinata 2. It's full of annoyances: The overall first player experience feels cryptic, the constant interrupting when new pinata are spotted even when you are doing something makes you want to throw your controller at the tv and the worst is the terrible almost dark pattern Ux of menus and shop. it's soo frustrating!! I don't remember if you ever talked about it. If not, you might want to get a look :p
I feel the entire design of receiver 2 reaches levels of stress and tension that many horror games fail to
i like that crosscode lets you skip darn near anything when it comes to cutscenes and unlocks meaning if you wanted to you can just blaze trough the game at high speed or your own pace
I’ve encountered the Animal Crossing problem a lot because, when I’m low on bells, I use my miles to get coupons and the problem comes when I want to get 10 or so. (Also, they should fix the durability problem by adding the gold tools from the previous games where they don’t break)
I saw that gold tools are in it... But that they also break.
GhostLoveScore then what’s the point?
I'm so happy to see comments about Animal Crossing's convoluted... Everything. xD I have a hard time motivating myself to keep playing because everything in that game is a chore. Having friends over isn't even fun because you have to jump through so many hoops, can't pull out your phone, can't hit rocks, can't redecorate, etc. etc.
One interesting thing about De Blob is that it's based on a game made by Dutch students. The original version is much closer to your description of how it should've been. So really THQ took a few steps back in terms of design when it acquired the rights.
For me, as good as AC is, it feels like a unfinished game, or more like a high-school essay where you used longer sentences to get the word count. Everything is there, but it could have been at least 100% faster without loosing the relaxed gameplay. I think it would get a much worse review if people would not have as much time as these days...
Isn't that a Nintendo paradox? Takes many steps forward into one part of game design, but still keeps a few "classic" mechanics?
I like that pressing the A or B buttons can speed up the crafting process (though I wish the game would tell you that) in Animal Crossing since the animation gets old rather quick after crafting a bunch of stuff, but god forbid you ever find yourself crafting a lot of things that can be stacked (i.e. Fish Bait).
Let's say for example that you have at least 50 clams that you want to use to craft Fish Bait. First you'll have to select the Fish Bait recipe 50 times, spam the A button A LOT to hurry up the crafting process, and then wait for the animation and dialogue box that appears whenever you finish crafting something 50 times, and then select the option to continue crafting more stuff 49 times. In this example alone the player has to interact with a menu at least over 100 times.
Not to mention that the clams that you use for the fish bait recipe cannot be stacked, so you would also have to manage your inventory to make space for them before you can begin the crafting process.
I hope they'll consider releasing an update where they allow you to choose how many of one item you want to craft in order to streamline the crafting process, or just streamline the process entirely by allowing you to choose everything you want to craft and the amount and just craft everything all at once (I can make do with the former, but I would LOVE if they implemented the latter).
Trauma team music
Bulk crafting is needed, as is bulk buying from the Able Sisters. You can only buy one item from each category at a time. Just the other day, I wanted all the magical girl dresses. Instead of being able to buy them all at once, I had to select one, buy it, choose whether or not I wanted it sent to storage, then repeat the process 5-6 times, along with Mable's dialogue of asking if I want to use the changing room and letting me know my stuff was sent to storage every single time. Super tedious and time consuming for no good reason
Ways to fix the gameplay/UI in Animal Crossing New Horizons:
- Offer a fifth inventory row
- Allow people to craft stuff in the home with material in their storage, maybe display the amount in your pocket and in storage separately.
- Allow 100 per item; it's like that for turnips, it should be for all items, as some items are full at 10.
- Allow bulk crafting; you can buy turnips at the max amount based on your bells AND pocket space, so bulk crafting could do the same for crafting the same items as many times as you can.
- Allow queue crafting.
- Display a durability meter for tools... and offer ways to strengthen them.
- Ditch cutscenes for insects, fossils and fishes you already pick up. Got a Sea Bass? just pop the speech bubble without dropping the action.
- Allow a "sneak peek" of any furniture you have picked while checking your inventory, instead of dropping the item to check it out.
- After assessing fossils, give to options to donate new fossils, art pieces, fishes and insects right away. Blathers should ask you if you want to donate new stuff after assessing.
As for when you visit other islands or getting visitors, I... hav eno idea... It feels like the long screens are actually loading screens.
agreed with AC:NH comments. I love AC:NH, great game. I plan to put 200+ hours *at least* into it. but I'm kinda disappointed at how archaic the menu interface feels at times, without mentioning key things many countless others have mentioned.
I do wish we could dye clothes though without having to buy the actual separately dyed clothing... Maybe we unlock that sometime down the line but I'm still just chillin with my town going at a regular pace. ^^;; 3-star so far but I want that 5-star for the lilly of the valley flower!!