UX Enhancements from Destiny 1 to Destiny 2

Destiny 2’s launch brings with it a large number of changes and enhancements to the original Destiny experience. Although many of these are large-scale features and design adjustments, many smaller changes focus on enhancing the game's usability, and understandability to the benefit of the user experience (‘UX’). This article intends to explore  some of these changes, by first describing the UX issues featured in the original Destiny, and then the steps Bungie have taken to address these issues with their latest game. 

Segmented Health Bars Better Allow Players to Understand Damage Dealt and Shifts in Attack Phases

In the original Destiny, enemy health bars were represented as a long, continuous bar. 

This could often make it difficult to discern with any real precision, the accumulation of damage that has been dealt to an enemy. For instance, it was difficult to interpret the bar to discern if a boss was at one third or one quarter of his health. In some cases understanding this difference was important as these points were associated with shifts in enemy behaviour, such as the introduction of new attacks. 

Destiny 2 splits the health bars of tougher enemies into thirds, and therefore allows players to more easily understand the amount of damage they’ve dealt to a boss at any point in time as they always have a closer reference point, with which they can use to gauge the amount of the boss's health bar that is missing. For instance, it’s easier to tell that a boss is ‘around half health’ if they’re missing one third and a bit of a bar, because you have a clear reference point that is exactly one third - and therefore somewhere in between the next third, is likely around half. Previously, to make this judgement players would need to compare the bosses current health to the full bar, which is a more distant reference, and therefore more difficult to make comparison to. 

The adjusted presentation of the health bars in Destiny 2, helps the player more easily recognise how much damage has already been dealt

Enhanced UI Flow for Travel Between Activities 

In the original Destiny, before engaging in any form of activity, players were required to hop into orbit before they could then select to travel to their intended destination, which meant that players would need to pass through two loading screens to access their destination. This two-step process was both slow and more effortful for the player, as they needed to operate the user interface twice to get where they wanted to go - once to go to orbit, and again to select a destination following the loading screen. 

In Destiny 2, this process is streamlined with a feature named The Director. Players are able to open their Director at any time, select any destination, and simply travel there in one step. Much faster!

Removal of Extraneous Information from Enemy Health Bars

In both Destiny, and Destiny 2, it’s important to understand when an enemy is too strong to fight, so that players can avoid challenges that their character isn’t ready for. Correspondingly, the original game would always present the level of every enemy they were fighting, next to the health bar, above the enemies head. Whether the enemy was level 4, 6, 7, or 20, the player would always be able to the enemies level. 

However, once the player hit level 20 there was very little difference in fighting an enemy that was 4 or 20; these enemies gave a similar amount of experience, and had the same chances for various loot drops, and their attack damage was balanced to match your level so that they could still pose a threat. 

Level information had potentail to confuse players, if the enemy is level 4, and I'm level 20, is this the mission I should be playing? 

When the level was important however, was when the enemies level was higher than your own. An enemy just a couple of levels above could present an extreme challenge to players and as such it was integral that the health bars clearly conveyed this information, so that players could understand when they weren’t ready for a certain fight, and needed to come back later when they were stronger. As well as the specific level, this information could also be interpreted using the colour of the icon, next to the health bar. Red meant the enemy was too strong, and that the player should return later. With this in mind, players already had a reliable means of discerning whether an enemy was too strong, and there was potential that the level only served to be a more effortful means of discerning the same information. Additionally, the presentation of the level had potential for players to mistakenly attribute incorrect value to certain enemies, for instance it’s easy to assume that a level 16 enemy might drop better items than a level 4 enemy, but in the original Destiny, this wasn’t the case. 

In Destiny 2, Bungie removed the enemies level from the health bar, which now simply focuses on communicating the answer to one question: 'Am I strong enough to attack this enemy?'. Just as before, if the icon next to the enemies healthbar is displayed in red, then the player may wish to consider running away. By considering the question that the information was intending to answer from the player's perspective, Bungie were able to consolidate the information presented on the healthbar to more readily, answer that players question. This also avoids any potential confusion caused by the level information, such as players attributing considerably more value in killing an enemy that was level 16, rather than one that was level 4. 

The removal of the level information ensures that there's no potential misinterpretation what the enemy level intends to convey, while at the same time, level appropriate content is still conveyed to the player through colour

Streamlined Bounty / Challenge System

In the original Destiny, players were required to travel back and forth from The Tower in order to accept, and then later turn in their bounty quests. While players originally needed to return to The Tower whenever they needed to turn in a bounty, this was later adjusted by Bungie, so that players could turn in a bounty at any time from their inventory. While this streamlined the process, players would still need to travel back and forth from the Tower and their activities, if they wished to change or accept new bounties. This could be particularly bothersome if, for instance players changed their mind, and wanted to switch from PVP to PVE, as they would need to revisit their tower each time, in order to adjust their bounties if they wanted to receive the additional benefits. 

Destiny 2 replaces this bounty system with challenges. Similar to bounties, challenges are available on a daily refresh, however they don't need to be collected, or turned in. Instead, challenges are simply available to you at the right side of the screen, whenever you view your ghost. Once complete, the rewards are immediately presented to the player, together, these features of the challenge system thereby forgo the need to return anywhere to collect new challenges, or turn in existing. 

With this system, players no longer need to ensure they have the correct challenge, for the correct activity type. With Destiny 2, players can simply jump to PVP and the game will adjust the challenges available so that they are automatically, PVP appropriate. Players can also return to previous activities to resume the challenges they may not have completed, earlier in the day. That means if your friend suddenly hops on and invites you to the Crucible (PVP), you no longer have to tell them to wait 5 minutes while you complete your current bounty, turn it in, and revisit the tower. 

This new system therefore, is likely to enhance the user experience by a) removing the inventory micromanagement of bounties, making it less effortful to maintain and manage for players to manage and maintain, and b) reducing the number of times players are forced through a loading screen in the process of completing their bounties, keeping players in the game. 

Merging the Vault and Collection to Make the Collection More Accessible

In the original Destiny, the collection was added post-launch and existed as interface that could be accessed through the tower, displaying a record of all of the exotic weapons and armour that the player had previously obtained. The collection had its own, unique access point, and its own interface. 

In Destiny 2, the collection is an additional component of the vault (where players can store their items), allowing players to more readily access the collection, and view their existing items from the same interface. This is likely to be more convenient, as players can easily view which items they already have in their collection when browsing their current vault inventory, and deciding which items they might want to keep. 

Despite the added conveinience of having the Vault and Collection accessible from a single location, the Vault itself becomes unmanagable as its inventory grows due to a lack of useful filtering

However, despite the collection being more conveniently accessed, it’s still difficult for players to locate specific items in their vault, as well as keep track which legendary weapons they do, and don’t have. This is particularly due to the fact that the vault interface can hold up to 200 items and offers no means of filtering for by type (only rarity, newest, power level and quantity). Therefore, while it’s easy to find a weapon I might have two of, it can be very difficult for players to locate a specific item of a certain type, or to compare items of the same type. 

Currencies Easier to Understand

Glimmer, Legendary Marks, Crucible Marks, Strange Coins, Mouldering Shards, Exotic Shards, Spinmetal, Helium, Motes of Light, and many more... the original Destiny had a large number of currencies. As such, It could be difficult for new players to understand which currency was used for what and particularly, which, of many NPCs they needed to go to in order to make use them.

These were largely, simplified in Destiny 2, with Legendary Marks being used for both weapon infusion, and making purchases from Xur (removing the need for strange coins).

A significant number of currencies still exist in the form of tokens (designated to each planet, crucible and strikes), but each of these currencies have a single use, and players are guided to the NPC with whom they can use them, via an in-game marker, and on the currency itself.

By stripping down the number of currencies that the player needs to be aware of, and providing guidance to players so that they can easily find the vendors they need to exchange these currencies with, it’s easy for players to understand the value of each currency, and how they can make use of each.  

Public Event Information Made Available to Players In-Game

In the original Destiny, public events were intended to be dynamic, featuring large scale battles that broke out unexpectedly when roaming around planets. Players quickly learned that they occurred in specific cycles, and so using crowdsourced information and third-party websites, players began to map the timings of these events.

Using websites like Destinypublicevents.com became a common way to play the game, which brings with it its own set of  issues, as if players are depending on third-party websites for information, and that information is incorrect, players can become frustrated. Additionally, the dependence on third-party sites means many players would often need sit with a laptop, or mobile device in order to play the game efficiently which can be a general inconvenience for some players, in addition to simply pulling players out of the game, away from the experience. 

Although Bungie likely had clear design intentions behind hiding the information from players, the resultant circumvention of that lead to players playing the game in a manner that wasn't intended, and anyone that wasn't doing it, was placed at a disadvantage. In response to this, Destiny 2 simply presents all of this information inside of the game itself. Using the map, players can see where events are available on each planet, and when they are going to start, and in the game world, these events are readily marked with flags so that players can rally together at a specific point.

While it's possible that Destiny 2's implementation doesn't achieve that initial design intention that the original game sought, the in-game presentation of the event information does resolve the issue

Final Thoughts

In summary, Bungie have gone to considerable lengths to address some of the most significant, persistent usability issues that were likely to negatively impact the player experience in the original game. Issues pertaining to the speed and ease in which players could switch between activities, and the games micromanagement of multiple currencies and bounties have been significantly alleviated, if not remedied altogether. Despite this, a number of usability issues, and potential for usability optimisations still remain, and it will be interesting to see how Bungie address these as the game moves forward.