Anti-Champion indicators
Inferring end-game preparedness at glance.
A player faces an enemy Barrier Champion, equipped with a nigh-impenetrable forcefield that can only be broken with specific mechanics.
In Destiny 2, end-game activities have a myriad of requirements.
Players are expected to have the proper power level for all equipment, rolled with optimal stats/perks and filled with mods to augment that capability further. Additionally, their subclasses each have their own strengths/weaknesses and many ways to customize them. On top of this, there is a seasonal artifact that adds additional benefits passively that one must remember.
One of the expectations as the player tackles higher difficulty content is the ability to handle “Champions.” Champions are elite enemies that require specific weapons, mods, or perks to successfully defeat, with each category of Champion having its own unique mechanic.
The ProblemS
Many places to look
Anti-Champion capabilities are spread across many different channels, but have no consolidated location to compile this information.
Imagine a pillar of triangles. Oh my!
a column, flooded
At the time that this feature was meant to drop, we had many other buildcrafting-related changes. One of the changes was that Artifact Mods were becoming Artifact Perks. The important distinction was that they no longer required players to place them on armor to activate, but instead are “always active.”
This meant that the effects would have been shown in the left column depicted, potentially causing them to run off the screen. We needed to come up with a solution for showing all of these effects.
Goals and Scope
A reusable and discoverable display
We need to create a display that shows the player’s current Anti-Champion capabilities without requiring navigation to many individual subscreens, that was modular enough to place in different locations and revealed all necessary information without requiring tooltipping.
Utilize all channels
The display needs to take in data from a number of different locations and show them gracefully.
A Teaching Moment
There is no singular location where players are taught about Champions and the methods to handle them, and this reusable display can be a great way to give them the information upfront.
Explorations
I immediately knew that I wanted to create collapsed “buckets” for these easily categorized champion perks and that, since I wanted them to be known at a glance, I needed to have a few different states that represented how the player’s build is.
I presented the other designers with different locations as options:
Potentially having it to the left of the Seasonal Artifact, leaving more space for the buff column to the right. This felt potentially viable as those effects are most heavily tied to Seasonal mechanics.
A potential location for the display, having it below the build stats.
A potential location for the display, as well as imagining if we needed to collapse any effects down (with the +2) and adding tooltips. The backing was also to make the element appear to be interactive rather than decorative.
Final Designs
Working with UX and visual designers, we agreed upon these two locations for the displays to live.
Character screen
On the character screen, we chose to have it above the perk column, having 4 different states. The three depicted are:
Available and Active (You chose a perk and have the matching weapon archetype equipped)
Available (You chose a perk, but do not have the matching weapon equipped)
Unavailable (You don’t have a perk selected for this.
Not depicted is a 4th state, which highlights the triangle in an “Exotic” yellow tint, meaning that the player has an equipped exotic whose capabilities match that category intrinsically.
I also collaborated with sandbox design to write a description for what the different champion types are and what subclass keywords also interact with them. However, having these keywords in your build does not highlight the display. More on this in the Outcomes section.
Mod Customization
With the advent of the Mod Customization screen, we also had the opportunity to give it space next to the Seasonal Artifact, having it fit neatly in the column with the current subclass and stat block. The layout takes some inspiration from one of the explorations where the display is to the left of the Artifact on the Character screen.
Outcomes
Successes
The display dynamically changes its coloration based on the player’s ability to engage with those Champions, and as they swap their items around, they can see that to be true.
The display was able to alleviate the amount of perks that would have shown up in the column in the character screen by filtering them and compiling them into the tooltip section. It also provided a good location for players to learn and remind themselves of how the champions work and the subclass keywords that interact with them.
Because of its modular nature, if we need it to be placed in other locations in the future, such as within activity UI, it’s very easy to drag and drop to do so.
Failures
Continued Support
Though the system is built ready for the many different channels of anti-champion capabilities, it requires tagging on weapons/armor that have one of said functions built in. This was done for a period of time, but continued support was dropped. Clearer documentation on how to do the (very simple) tagging as well as regular conversation to ensure it landed on designers’ schedules could have prevented this.
Contextual Exposure
While the character screen receives high traffic, the aforementioned indicators would be even more impactful if they were embedded within activity launch screens where the player is told that the activity will contain Champions in the first place.
An example of an activity launch overlay for a Grandmaster Nightfall, one of the highest difficulty activities the game has to offer. Notice the Champion icons to the left.