HUD update: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
**NOTICE: these are MY opinions, if you don't agree just post a civil comment, eat some oranges and be K ** Before I begin I'm aware this is the umpteenth HUD post you've read today but stick with it because this one is different, it's not a hate post or a post of praise or even a meme post (which means Riot probably won't respond). Now that that's out of the way, let's begin.
The new HUD, love it? Hate it? Not sure? Well I think that Riot spearheaded a few key problems but unfortunately CREATED some more.
Before I go any further I'd like to reiterate what Riot wanted to do with the new HUD. The goal of the new HUD was to make everything less distracting but at the same time more clear and easy to read, by no means an easy task. The other goal was to distribute information to places players actually use it while not obscuring the play space. Now that we know the goal of this update, let's begin with the things I like about the new HUD...
**-THE GOOD-**
Color Scheme: I believe the color scheme of the new HUD is great because it fits the new map much better than the old HUD does because of the gray green blue ish color.
The size of this part of the HUD, you know, that central box thingy Not quite sure what this part of it is called (tell me in the comments so I can edit please) But whatever it is, its the perfect size and is one of the things that was wrong with the old HUD this box's size was much too large and the new one feels much more streamlined and feels more like a part of the game. Though as I'll get into later I don't necessarily like everything that's inside the box thingy.
Champion portrait: The new champion portrait is much better than the old one because now it's smaller, more streamlined and circular instead of a square I absolutely love the experience bar and the little level circle because they get you the info you need without feeling clustered and hard to read.
The shop: The shop may be my favorite part of the new HUD because it fits the new map so well. It not only has the new color scheme mentioned above but the new sounds and shape of the box it's in just seem to fit really well, it's what Riot was going for, getting the necessary information to be clearly visible without distraction.
The size of the tab menu and summoner spell timers: I like how it fits the color scheme and that it doesn't take up as much screen as well as the summoner spell timers, they make a WORLD of difference because everyone will know when everyone else (on their team of course) has summs up or down, making calling engages much easier not to mention you don't need to time allied summoner spells. But it isn't perfect and I'll talk later about what's actually in it.
PING and FPS display as well as timer: I'm happy that the game timer stayed in the top right corner because that's where I'm used to seeing it and I enjoy having the option to toggle the PING and FPS display on and off and having it not be distracting when it's on.
Settings Menu: Just like the shop it fits the color scheme and the addition of the surrender option is nice, all together feels more streamlined, just what Riot was going for.
Leveling up: Leveling up feels much more rewarding now, not only are the new sound effects great but the new Icons above your abilities are really clear and it gives you a deeper feeling of satisfaction to level a spell by clicking on it or pressing ctrl + QWE or R.
Ability Icons: These somehow seem smoother, it might be just me.
Surrender Vote box: Just like the shop and settings menu, displays things much smoother.
Enemy Character box when left-clicked: You can now see the opponent's KDA, CS health mana and stats in a much smoother way and a much clearer way
Jungle timer display: These just look cooler, I'm so glad they weren't moved to the under your resource bar.
**-THE BAD-**
The minimap: The minimap was not only scaled down but made harder to read, not only by all the cluttered information (I'll get to that later) but the fact that it's too dark, it blends in with the map too much. Despite this I do like how the red and blue minion dots are much clearer.
Muting People: Special thanks to Maeggles for pointing this out, not only is the mute button hard to find and see but it's very unclear whether or not you've muted someone and the way they went about it really makes no sense at all.
Cooldown timers: The new cooldown timers are incredibly strange. As someone who's played thousands of games, it's become instinct to just glance down and see your coolodown timers, but now there's a number and a weird circle going to opposite direction it used to in the middle of the icon and it doesn't take up the whole thing, this makes you have to consciously look down to see something that was totally unconscious before. This is against Riot's goal to make things less complicated and more readable. It's just made things harder.
Passive Icons and summoner spell icons: These just look unnatural because they're weirdly scaled compared to the normal ability Icons when they were just fine being the same size, makes it harder to read.
Your own health and resource bar:
They seem poorly sized and sort of bland animation wise, the ability Icons can have fancy animations but graves can't have a cigar but the health and resource bars can? The bars certainly never distracted me.
Stats column: I get how it's supposed to be more readable, but riddle me this? How is it easier to read brand new icons for stats that were previously fine (AD, AP, Crit chance, attack speed etc) I understand that the new useful stats you included don't have icons, but it doesn't mean the previous ones need to be redone (sort of like Fiora's VU) I'll apply the time honored saying of "Don't fix what ain't broken" to this.
**-THE UGLY-**
The minimap again: This is truly terrible, everything that was once in a neat, useful, non-distracting little bar has been used to clutter the top of the mini map, I have to look around for the game score, my KDA and my CS and then strain to see it, while I do that a team fight could break out I could be ganked o engaged on in lane. These are all essential stats and why you chose to move them, I don't know. But once again I'll ask how does scrunching a bunch of information in one space make it clearer?
The rest of the TAB menu/scoreboard: This is so unclear it drives me nuts. Riot said they were getting rid of useless information, so why are they making summoner icons visible? How are those related to the game in any way? The score swap makes it hard to tell what side of the map you're on or who's on your team, not to mention you can't see summoner names without wasting more time in the menu hovering over someone's name. And those ally summoner spell timers would be cool if you could actually see them, because they're super tiny and hard to see.
Item inventory: Why is it on the right? What difference positive difference does it make? For some reason as I was typing this popped into my head "Riot games, making things more clear by confusing people since 2009" Then the trinket slot is tiny for some reason. And why is recall an item?
Camera Lock/Settings button: There's literally no reason for them to be on bottom of the screen between the inventory and the minimap, it literally took me a game to find them.
Teammate unit frames: I saw them called these in another post, so I'll call them that. This change is by far the ugliest of the ugly. They went from being large and clear on the left side of the screen to obscure and miniscule in the bottom right hand corner just like everything else. The allied health and mana bars are tiny and hard to read and they're stacked on top of each other so much that it's hard to tell who's an ally and who's an enemy. Unlike before where you could easily see them out of your peripheral vision.
**-THE SOLUTION-**
The HUD update solved just as many problems as it's caused. Which sucks. Here's my idea for a fix in 10 steps.
- Move KDA, CS, and game score back to the top of the screen
- Make recall not an item and move the inventory back to the left side
- Enlarge the minimap
- Put the teammate unit frames back where they used to be and make them much bigger
- Brighten the minimap
- Fix the Cooldown animations
- Make the icons for your passive and summoners the same size as your other abilities
- Remove summoner Icons from the TAB menu and make it larger so you can add people's summoner names in as well as enlarge the summoner icons.
- Give Graves back his cigar (because that's totally related to the HUD)
- While we're at it let's make GP a true pirate again and give him back his Pirate buff.
Alternate solution: be able to select whether you want the classic HUD or the new one (Because this hasn't already been said enough times today)
That wraps it up. Feel free to comment and discuss what you think is good, bad ugly or maybe find a better solution.
and it ended up on the same axis as Summoners icons.
for 10 seconds only to die and learn what I thought was off-cooldown Flash was a fucking Blasting Wand.
