UI has become a hotbed of frustration and discussion amongst Call of Duty players. Fans of the franchise are left tangled in the web of Infinity Ward’s new menu system for their flagship title, Modern Warfare 2. It begs the question, what strides are Infinity Ward taking to improve these features? Here’s the scoop.
Over the last 3 years, seniors, directors, and experienced formers in TV were hired into Infinity Ward’s UI/UX department, despite the expansion of the team and its talents throughout development, it left Call of Duty players lost navigating Modern Warfare 2’s obscure UI and UX systems; a muddled mess that goes against the intuitive menu designs established by past Call of Duty titles.
User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) play an importance in the overall game and execution, as it serves as a great tool for vetting the quality of a product. However, due to some internal disparity between departments, complicating instructions and workflows, it has produced the results many players see now. The issue was pressed internally for discussion, and a few flags were raised prior to the release describing the UI as ‘difficult, and invasive to design goals’ – UI tends to directly impact gameplay, and without emphasis on particular features, it can make or break the experience of the player.
Renovating Call of Duty’s interface
With the introduction of Warzone and Call of Duty: Mobile, it indicated a slight shift towards Activision’s desire to renovate Call of Duty’s interfaces to a more modern, stream-lined display for content discovery and store.
They sought after that talent and opened up hundreds of UI/UX/Engineering positions for hire, bringing on mavens from Hulu and Microsoft.
Design overhauls are always polarising and complicated, as generally, the UI/UX team are a forum for several other major departments that include Art, Design, QA, Marketing and more.
The results primarily boiled down to time, coordination, and working from home. In conversation with an associate, it was mentioned that some revision is coming to the UI/UX for the future of Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2.0,
“it’s a work in progress, there’s a lot of moving pieces […] updates have been well underway”.
Seemingly, a more piecemeal approach to refining the UI/UX in stages, rather than on launch. Several departments continue to work in collaboration to sharpen the UI and other additional interfaces for Season 1 and beyond.
Hopefully this change comes sooner than later… also these need to be addressed
-Hardcore being named “tear 1” (not good)
-Barracks (User stats need to be in the game and I would like to compare my stats to my friends stats)
-Lobby and Party gets muted after ever match
-Camo’s that have been unlocked should be sorted first
Thank goodness!
I was playing warzone and it kicked me out of the game 4 games in a row. MW2 also freezes up a ton as well. I also agree with the footsteps. You don’t know who is around all you keep hearing is thumping everywhere. Sometime you look at the tack map and then okay it’s my teammate. Then you go around the corner and get shot by enemy. I also like to say warzone AI are insanely crazy and come from no where. I was playing (when I could) and enemy’s would spawn right in front of me. What’s with that.
The user interface for this game is shockingly bad, especially considering that it’s an Infinity ward title. The best possible solution at this point is to simply import the modern warfare 2019 interface into the modern warfare 2 game. I know it’s not a simple copy and paste job from one title to another, but there is absolutely no part of the new UI that needs to be preserved.
I just hope this update is free and I won’t have to pay above the high price of the game.
I applied for the sr UX/UI role with 15+ years of experience but since I didn’t have a game titles on my resume the talent acquisition rep looked right over me after I saw he viewed my application, LinkedIn and website. And I went to school for media arts and animation in Santa Monica across the street (parking lot) from Activision!?! Go figure…
Horizontal menus are bad design, especially when the content to scroll is only given 33% of the viewable space. This is designed just like Hulu and Hulu sucks.
Weird, who knew a TV UI designer’s absolutely unrelated experience would make for a garbage game UI.
I just wanna play keeps kicking me of the game disconnects from servers freezing up on start for about a minute or two I play on a PlayStation 4 Pro and I’ve had trash time even getting to play
aren’t you the guy who lies on Twitter about news? you been wrong so many times.
Man they just got to put in the perk Ninja! FOOTSTEPS are so loud people are scared to move around the maps creating an overhaul of campers. It also makes people who like to play tactical game modes such as search & destroy play differently and not to their strengths.. This makes something as simple as trying to flank and spank the opponents nearly impossible!! Also hearing your teammates footsteps along with your own is very overwhelming with unnecessary extra noise everywhere!! That should be priority #1 to fix along with when your with a full group and search between games you lose ping constantly! This forces you to select a different game mode just to get ping. Then you have to go back to your game mode to search for a match but doing that makes your game freeze up briefly ( there is no reason you should be freezing if your rocking a Next Gen system like the PS5 it is so stupid but….. as the article was saying yes the menu system is very confusing at first but if your not a complete idiot it’s not so bad. It has some good features like if your in a party of 4 and got a friend with a party of 2 you can merge both parties without anyone backing out. Yes alot of that menu is very confusing but they just did too much.. Also the barracks need to be in the game every player would like to see their K:D (kill/death) ratio and achievements they have conquered along the way along with LEADERBOARDS! Who doesn’t want to see if they are in the top 250 in the world for their specific game mode they play. We already know hardcore will be there eventually because the past few games going back to BO Cold War they did the same thing adding the playlists in the game at a later date. This game has tons of potential if they actually listen to the people who play the game and fix the many minor problems at hand it could turn out to be one of the better titles in awhile. Hopefully they listen to us ” the players” and take our feedback and suggestions seriously!!
I blame Sledgehammer. They took so much from MW 2019 and in doing so IW wanted to make unnecessary changes to give a fresh experience. This led them to get rid of things and change things like the UI just for the sake of change