Hi all!
I’d like to start out by saying that my brothers and I have been playing Generation Zero for roughly 60 hours in multiplayer (and we’re still on the main storyline). We’re having a ton of fun and it’s our “go-to” multiplayer game.
There is room for improvement though, as always, and in this post I’d like to suggest how you can change the inventory UX when playing with a game pad, and more specifically on Xbox One as that is what we’re playing on. I’m assuming that PS4 players have a similar challenge if playing with a game pad (and if not, chime in in the comments).
I won’t go into details on everything that works, this post will be long enough as it is, but I will say that I do appreciate the underlying mechanic of an inventory and four quick slots. That part is appropriate, it’s just how you interface with it that needs improvement.
In order for my first suggestion to make a bit more sense I’m going to compare the inventory to a back pack and the four quick slots to pockets.
Currently, if I want to use an item - for example a gas tank - I have to take it out of my back pack, replace the contents of one of my pockets with the gas tank, close my back pack, reach into my pocket and place the gas tank on the ground and, most likely, go back into my back pack and put back the previous contents of my pocket in said pocket.
This is clunky and cumbersome, and adds nothing to the gameplay.
Instead, you should be able to use certain items directly from the back pack, without having to go through a quick slot. Only items that doesn’t require you to aim - as in anything you throw and your binoculars - can be used directly from the inventory. Anything that you place on the ground when you use it, you simply place it on the spot where you opened your inventory.
Now, this is a small part of the inventory UX problem. The bigger problem is the context menus as they are not only awkward to navigate but also inconsistent.
For certain items the only option is ‘Drop’, for other items I have ‘Assign’ as well, and for other items again I have ‘Attach.’ The menu shows these options in a specific order - maybe alphabetical - which means that if I want to drop an item, that action is in a different place in the menu depending on what I can do with the item.
This requires me to pause and make an active choice, something that in turn interrupts game flow.
A better solution is a "context wheel" or "action wheel" a la the emote wheel. This wheel is invoked by selecting an item in the inventory and pressing A, just like how we invoke the context menu for an item.
For any item in the inventory - that is, not in a quick slot or a weapon slot - we have four basic actions (if we include my proposed ‘Use’ action): ‘Drop’, ‘Use’, ‘Attach’ and ‘Assign.’
These map to the four cardinal directions on the wheel; up, down, left and right. It doesn’t matter if an action isn’t viable for a specific item, it’s still present on the wheel, just clearly marked as disabled or non-active.
You select an action with either the left stick or the D-pad and then press A to confirm your selection. Depending on the action, this either closes the action wheel and returns you to the inventory, or displays an additional wheel (more on this below). To close the wheel without performing an action, press B. This returns you to the inventory.
If you select ‘Drop’ you simply drop the item, as you would today. If you select ‘Use’ the effect depends on what item your using.
‘Attach’ displays an additional wheel, this time with each weapon slot assigned to one of three out of the four cardinal directions and binoculars to the fourth (as you can attach “tech” optics to the binocular). One option would be weapon 1 on left, weapon 2 on right, sidearm on up and binoculars on down. This is so that you can use the D-pad to quickly and instinctively choose the weapon you want, or the binoculars.
This wheel always displays all four slots even if the attachment isn’t viable for a specific weapon or the binoculars. Those slots are simply disabled, as on the initial action wheel. For each viable slot the current attachment, including quality, is shown so that you quickly can decide if it’s worth replacing. If your attaching ammo, the current type of ammo is displayed.
You select a viable slot with the left stick or the D-pad and confirm your selection with A. This closes the action wheel and returns you to the inventory. To cancel, press B. This returns you to the initial action wheel.
For ‘Assign’ we have two scenarios; you either assign a weapon to a weapon slot or an item to a quick slot. Let’s start with assigning a weapon.
This action also displays an additional wheel with all three weapon slots, with the viable slot(s) actionable and the non-viable slot(s) disabled. Instead of showing the current attachment though, the wheel displays the current weapon, including quality.
You select a viable slot with the left stick or the D-pad and confirm your selection with A. This closes the action wheel and returns you to the inventory. To cancel, press B. This returns you to the initial action wheel.
If you’re assigning an item to a quick slot an additional wheel is displayed with all four slots mapped to the corresponding cardinal direction. The wheel displays the item currently in a slot, or “Empty” if the slot is empty.
You select a slot with the left stick or the D-pad and confirm your selection with A. This closes the action wheel and returns you to the inventory. To cancel, press B. This returns you to the initial action wheel.
The only action for items in a quick slot is ‘Drop’ and this is mapped to the same direction as ‘Drop’ on items in the inventory, again to allow for muscle memory to work properly.
For weapons in a weapon slot, things get a bit more tricky. We only have two initial actions; ‘Drop’ and ‘Remove attachment’. The problems arise when we go to remove an attachment as we can have up to five attachments for a weapon; barrel, magazine, main optics, “tech” optics and ammunition.
I don’t want to move away from the D-pad compatible layout of four cardinal directions, and I don’t want to introduce a one-off mechanic just for this scenario. My suggestion is instead to re-arrange the actions you can perform and move “remove ammunition” to the initial action wheel and call it ‘Unload weapon’ as this is what you’re effectively doing.
This allows us to have D-pad compatibility for the initial action wheel as well as for the additional ‘Remove’ wheel.
The ‘Remove’ wheel displays the current attachment and its quality, again with a specific type of attachment always mapped to the same cardinal direction, even if that type of attachment isn’t viable for the specific weapon. You select the attachment you want to remove with the left stick or the D-pad and confirm your selection with A. This closes the action wheel and returns you to the inventory. To cancel, press B. This returns you to the initial action wheel.
This should cover all inventory management scenarios as far as I can tell. Please let me know in a comment if I’ve missed anything, or if you have any other feedback or ideas.
If you got this far, thank you very much for reading!