STREAMLINE EQUIPMENT MANAGEMENT
"...if you don't have any space, it tells you you're out of room, and nothing more. This is an error, and good UX designs don't permit users to make errors, they handle them."
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The problem starts when the player walks over a dropped weapon and a UI button cluster prompt appears on-screen to pick it up. If you have space in your limited weapon inventory, no problem. However, if you don't have any space, it tells you you're out of room, and nothing more. This is an error, and good ux designs don't permit users to make errors, they handle them. This happens often because users tend to horde weapons.
To get around this, users have to press Start, navigate into the weapons tab, search for a weapon they don't want, select it, then navigate to the "Drop" item in a sub-menu. This problem with full weapon management is made worse when a new weapon is inside a treasure chest, since the chest closes when the user doesn't have enough space to pick up the weapon inside. This requires the user to re-open the chest after going through the previous routine of clearing out weapon inventory space. |
One of the ways I work around this clunky method is to press the Right Bumper to throw the undesired weapon away (which can be used as an attack move, such as to throw spears). This works for melee weapons, but bow and arrow weapons can't be thrown away, nor can shields. In this case, if you have full bows or shields, you have to browse through the equipment menu again to drop something.
Because you are dropping and switching equipment in the UI with greater frequency, users will likely encounter unnecessary friction. The best fix to avoid this clunky experience would simply be to add a context-sensitive "Swap" option that only appears when the user tries to pick up a weapon or open a chest when the weapon inventory is full. This would no longer force users to go through this frequent and tedious routine, making weapon inventory management more fluid and keeping users focused on the adventure and exploration, not futzing with menus.
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GIVE USERS Shortcuts tO Food
One of the more consistent hallmarks of UI design in the ZELDA franchise, even since the 16-bit era, has been the ability to remap the button functions to use different items. With BOTW we now have a system of magic rune powers that gives users agency over the game's physics systems, and an ingredient and cooking system that allows users to create different food items and elixirs to restore health and/or grant status benefits, like increased damage or resistances.
While you can select from the magic runes by pressing and holding DPad Up (more on this in a bit), there is no quick access to food items. Instead, users have to press the Start button, browse to the Food tab, sort through several sub-pages, then sift through an item matrix to read and evaluate which dish or elixir confers the desired status effect and/or restores the right amount of health (too much health would waste the food's benefit, too little and the user has to eat multiple items).
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"...frequent pauses during combat to sift through menus and evaluate healing/buff items ... puts quite a crimp of the pacing and fluidity of combat."
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This puts quite a crimp on the pacing and fluidity of combat, so one possible solution would be to clear up one of the DPad directions for a list of user-configured Food shortcuts to better support personalized, predetermine playstyles and introduce more of an element of planning versus clunky reactiveness. Here are two potential solutions, both of which would involve a number of cascading changes to the UI to make it work.
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- Relocate the Horse Whistle - Pressing DPad Down makes the player character ("Link") whistle to summon his current horse. While it's a semi-frequently used function, an acceptable tradeoff to place this one or two steps away. It could be grouped within the Rune Magic functions, or contextualized as a special item like a whistle or ocarina and placed within the Start Menu. Many times the horse can't reach the user anyway (due to distance or obstacles), so this is another instance of UX design permitting bad friction by allowing uncertain or undesired outcomes.
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MAKE RUNE MAGIC SELECTION MORE FLUID
What makes the Rune selection process slightly clunky is that if you hold the Left Bumper to enter the Rune mode, and you have the wrong power selected, you have to back out and go through the Selection process again.
WARN USERS THAT FOOD STATUS BUFFS DON't StACK
What I would prefer to see would be some warning or confirmation prompt that you're about to replace and lose your previous buff. This would be especially helpful if you just consumed a rare, high value, or powerful food item and was about to wipe it out with a weaker one, preventing user error.
GIVE USERS BETTER Item SORTS
When you sort items, like ingredients for cooking or crafting, there is one sort type and it doesn't really tell you much about the method it chooses to sort by. It seems to be by a general type (such as fruit, plants, meats, critter, mineral, for ingredients, and then by effect type for food). But in some instances, this enigmatic sort is not helpful. What if you're talking to a merchant and you want to sort the items by worth to find out what's the most valuable item? Nope! You have to sift through items one by one to see how much you can sell them for. How about sorting them by what you have the most number of items? Ditto, no can do.
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