Revolutionionizing The Wasteland
Giving the praised Exploration and Achievement features the much-deserved spotlight asked for.
Fallout 4
Redefining the Interface to Maximize Value for Gamers
Project Overview
This ambitious initiative aims to redefine the Fallout 4 gaming journey by tackling concerns surrounding the overshadowed main storyline and the demand for a more structured gaming experience tailored to goal-oriented players. By addressing these issues, we strive to invigorate the gaming experience for those less drawn to narrative elements and constrained by limited time for expansive exploration.
Platform
For Playstation 4, Windows, Xbox One
Scope
6 weeks
UX/UI Designer
The Challenge
As both a gamer and a researcher seeking improvements, I've delved into the world of 'Fallout' and observed a trend where Bethesda prioritizes expanding world content over refining the main storyline, leaving players feeling weighed down by lengthy fetch quests and dull plot points. Gamers crave a more streamlined experience with pinpointed goals and structured steps to achieve them within their allotted gaming time. Bethesda's revolutionary open-world approach in games like 'Fallout' offers expansive narratives but also caters to completionist players with vast amounts of additional content. However, it's time for Bethesda to acknowledge the needs of working professionals with limited gaming time by providing more streamlined pathways to achievements, waypoints, and legendary items, separate from the main storyline.
Painpoints
Information was taken from articles, forums, and user interviews. Here is a example questionnaire given to participants Here
The major pain points extracted from our data collection are:
Main story Limiting - Lacks Impact
Terrible Map: Dark and unclear map with a restriction of placing only one marker. (Although some people had acknowledged the map design being in line with the theme of the game they still put a great emphasis on clearer visuals).
No ability to track multiple quests simultaneously.
Need enhanced information in the journal with important details highlighted.
Research
The Wasteland
I delved headfirst into investigating why these pain points affected the players' experience. My starting point was reading several articles, gathering shared information from forums, distributing surveys, and conducting interviews. Despite being a fan, I also had to play the game and document my own findings to see if they aligned with those of other gamers.
In Fallout, the narrative elements of the game take a secondary role to side quests, exploration, combat, and crafting. Players prefer spending their time seeking out the limitless treasures of the wasteland. While the main story is an integral part of the game necessary for reaching its conclusion, many players spend upwards of 100 hours on side quests and exploration before even completing the main storyline, and some may never finish it.
Fallout Is Not Unique
Many open-world games struggle to maintain players' interest in the main narrative. The open-world concept provides a foundation for players to roam freely without feeling confined to a linear path. The main storyline should serve as a linear plot outline that creates the illusion of choice for players. The most successful games integrate the open-world seamlessly with the storyline, rather than relying solely on the map to create the illusion of choice. Players desire choice, but the narrative, depending on its intricacy and integration into the world, can draw them back to the main story.
In Fallout Though…
Fetch quests for significant items often feel disconnected from the main story, diminishing its significance. If the intention is not to prioritize the main story and instead rely on the world to convey choice, then a system should be implemented to assist players in locating precious items, characters, creatures, and quests.
This could involve implementing a more robust quest journal that provides specific details and functions like a map, pinpointing specific places and offering location tracking. Additionally, including a "wait anywhere" feature would allow players to operate in time-sensitive situations more effectively. Providing a new, updated map as an acquired item for players wanting a better visual representation of their surroundings could also enhance the gaming experience. Furthermore, informing players about significant events and enabling them to track these events could increase engagement. Implementing an online social feature that leverages online communities to share significant events, times, location stamps, and imagery from the game would foster a sense of community and enrich the overall gaming experience.
Development
I anticipated this problem would be relatively straightforward to address if individuals could gain a clearer understanding of their desires and the time required to achieve them. Integrating a wiki (possibly an ai bot) would be beneficial as it could provide answers to all questions related to the game. Users would then be able to perceive how the narrative intertwines with their objectives, eliminating the need for the narrative to inform their goals, which often results in a lackluster impact.
Furthermore, they would require a map to pinpoint these objectives. Players have expressed the need for a method to track their goals and progress, along with the ability to mark specific locations and generate a map detailing significant events and item placements.
The optimal solution was to develop an in-game map application. This map would serve as an enhancement of the pip-boy, retaining the original design while significantly improving its usability and incorporating additional features tailored to gamers' needs.
Comparative
An all new design of the UI is not necessarily warranted for these fixes. In fact the majority of users reported that the analogue retro interface of the pip-boy was an essential allusion to the bizarre time & setting of the game.
In an effort to keep that aspect intact I decided it best to direct my efforts away from UI focused comparative study and more toward features native to software geared towards interactive routes mapping, highlighting features and segmented oriented step-by-step directions and a search-based wiki.
The Pip-boy is so iconic I thought it best to start with a small project developing icons to orient myself towards the feel of this new design and how I would envision an interface for the gamer.
Google Maps is truely a quntisential influence on my research and design efforts. It is an application with all of the features lay out included in it. They have a solid base to work off of clearer defined maps & pining of locations, a search feature and an active turn by turn location queue.
My next questions were:
How personalized could this experience get? Would an AI bot be able to address specific queries? What would the experience look like?
PamPam is an application I had seen on trend recently. It revolutionizes the idea of planning a trip with interactive maps and suggested points of interest. It uses an AI bot to plot a days adventure based on a prompt provided by the user. It suggests specific locations as well a best times of day. It offers editing on the go as well as saving trips and snapshots.
These features can be advantageous to anyone wishing to save and track their progress. There is also a library of icons to mark your locations of interest. The new icons I created could be preloaded into the interface and utilized at anytime by the user.
Proposed Solution
An incorporation of a new feature exclusive to gamers that wish to better track their quests and customize their experience. An interface that meets all of those requirements would have to be a knowledge based glossary along with a first-rate mapping system incorporated into it so that it can instantly give the user an understanding of expectations for their goals.
Furthermore an interface that emphasizes suggestions to better serve the users needs and goals would be beneficial.
An example prompt might be: “I want to track down a flux sensor for The Brotherhood. I have one hour to play tonight. Can you suggest a route with steps?”
Example response might be: Sure, here it is (generates route) but you will have to hustle if you want to complete the quest within an hour. Good luck out there:)”
A pull out feature would reveal the generated route next to the map on the right hand side. This should not eat up any valuable space but maybe obscure the pip-boys aesthetic non-usable parts.
The mission is stated at the top of the route and the goals status and achievements noted at the bottom.
Further Evolution
Following this train of thought there always room to improve the UI to compensate for the new features. I believe that this would change the Pip-boy aesthic but not overhaul it. The new features would have to be fully integrated into the current interface.
Organization of information, quests, glossaries..etc.
Equally important a sense of organization to the information would require a better sense of data integration. Maybe a submenu for current quests organized by type.
