UI & Icons - an Analysis

First off, thank you Relic for your hard work and a fantastic game.

Second off, what ON EARTH is going on in your 2D art department?

As someone with a little professional experience in UI / UX / 2D design, there's just so much obviously... wrong, inconsistent, or unfinished with the 2D art.

Some examples:

Inconsistent Toggles

Untoggled-toggles.


Toggled-toggles.


Note that the "hold fire" icon is in colour in both cases, while the "prioritise vehicles" icon is uncoloured when turned off. Also... your best idea for a "hold fire" icon was... a gun firing?!?!

In several cases there is confusion between a toggle-on meaning "do this" or alternatively "don't do this".

Mixed Styles

Three icons visible at the same time in a British commander.


First icon is in the new style. Second icon is an old CoH2 icon where the Tommy looks totally different. Third icon is a unit that isn't even in the game any more!

Another example - two mines buildable by DAK.


The visual style is clearly inconsistent, despite them being displayed next to each other - left is new, right is a recycled CoH2 icon (like many CoH3 icons).

The icons are also just wrong. Guess which icon plants a group of small AP mines? Yes of course, the left one... and which plants a single powerful AT mine? You got it, the right icon.

Incorrect Ability Icons

Here's the No. 69 British grenade.


Except... no, that's an American Mk 2 Pineapple. Okay, here are the other grenade icons everyone gets.


Except... that's an American rifle grenade and a Soviet anti-tank grenade. Okay how about the Italian Gustatori smoke-sprint passive ability.


Oh cool, so Gustatori actually have a magic ability to turn into Tommies?

Squashed Icons

Here's an example of what you see when trying to select some battlegroups.


Can you tell what kind of battlegroups those are?

One has a plane, that's all I can tell... the other two, no idea, impossible to tell. It's actually a lot better than the beta (when a bunch of placeholders were there) but those are not icon images, they are large artworks squashed down to fulfil a function they cannot fulfil.

Similarly here are two upgrade icons.



Can you tell what they are? The first one you can eventually tell is a minesweeper, though it looks more like a hovering UFO shooting green lasers. The second one... I don't think anyone is ever going to have any idea WTF that was supposed to be.

Low Resolutions

Here are two large-size unit portraits.

One is new, the other is a recycled low-res CoH2 image which doesn't look like the unit it represents.

Indistinguishable Meanings

Here are three icons.


One is a usable ability, one is a passive yet usable ability, one is an unusable ability. They are very similar. Likewise, when an ability is actually in-use, unlike CoH2 it's often impossible to tell that because the icon barely changes. So you're unsure if you actually threw that grenade or not.

Here are six icons in a build menu.


Some of these are locked behind tech, some are unlocked but the player doesn't have enough resources to build them. Can you tell which are which? Another backwards step from CoH2 here.

Unhelpful Recycled Icons

What do you think this commander ability does?


That's right, it adds one extra shell to artillery barrages (the 1 in the image represents the CP cost, not the extra shell). There are 3 other icons in that commander with pictures vaguely related to artillery, and there's no way of getting any idea what each of them does without mouse-overing.

Incorrect Unit Portrait Icons

Can anyone tell me what units these icons represent?


If you said a Centaur AA, an OKW Flak HT, and an Opel Blitz... congratulations, you're wrong. The first one is a Grant Medium Tank, and the last two are BOTH used for the CMP Truck.

Incorrect Weapon Upgrade Icons

Here's a standard American Rifleman with upgraded BAR.


And here's an Italian Bersaglieri with upgraded Breda.


Guess he got bored and switched to a BAR. Bonus: DAK using the PIAT in North Africa.

CONCLUSION

These are a few examples but really there are 50 or 100 more mistakes just like this, or ugly old icons reused in totally the wrong context.

I was expecting most of these to disappear after the beta, but it's almost as if the 2D art guys were given 2 weeks to work on this stuff rather than 5 years. There's just no clear overall style or direction in the icon art, there's no consistency in the way things are represented, and there's just so much missing.

It may seem like a small thing to complain about, but it just adds to the feel of total lack of polishing, and in many cases it's confusing and adds extra cognitive overhead for the player

I hope that Relic already has a LONG ticket backlog and are just waiting for this stuff to get improved. If not, someone high up should probably take a look into what's going on here.

Man do I get tired of being right ALL the time.

Like I said months ago, I (a noob) could fix ALL of this stuff in a day or two if I was at Relic. Here we are months later unfinished???

"wHy u cOmpLainIN aLl THe tIme. U r bUMmin mE OuT bRo." - Org Readers

No my children. I am not complaining. I am actually dumbfounded at how this happens for a game in development since 2017 at least.

Like I said months ago, I (a noob) could fix ALL of this stuff in a day or two if I was at Relic. Here we are months later unfinished???

Thats quite the statement.

Send Relic a quote for your approximated work? They should have some cash to spend now.

This is a little embarassing tbh. I think the 2D icon artist could've made new icons within 1 or max 2 days. And the programmers just need to assign the appropriate icons which is another couple days.