Hotkey menu concept

A user interface concept on how to make weapon and emote selection easier in Destiny.

Note: This was a short one day design task that I set myself when I had an unexpected break in some work. It was an idea that I had for a while. As a big Destiny fan I appreciate and admire all of the design work that’s gone into the game by the many talented artists and designers at Bungie. This was mostly for fun, but also to make me think a little outside the usual site/layout work that I do on a daily basis.

Problem

Players need to access their inventory to change weapons and emotes.

Weapons are split into three classes. Primary, Special and Heavy.

Each class has four additional subclasses -

Primary
Hand Cannon
Scout Rifle
Pulse Rifle
Auto Rifle

Special
Sidearm
Shotgun
Fusion Rifle
Sniper Rifle

Heavy
Sword
Machine Gun
Rocket launcher
Heavy Fusion

Added to this each class slot has space for 9 weapons, so a player could have up to 27 weapons on them at any given time.

However the current game only allows players to have one weapon type of each main class equipped, which they can switch between by pressing the triangle button on the controller.

So out of 27 weapons players can only quickly access 3.

Players can also emote to other players, such as waving, bowing, dancing or slow capping. Pressing right, up and down on the d-pad enables players to use their default emotes.

Players can set one custom emote within the game and use it by pressing left on the d-pad. Changing their custom emote requires them to access the menu, navigate to the emote panel, then equip it.

Both weapon and emote selection is limited and cumbersome.

The current menu can be cumbersome when you need to quickly change weapons, especially if you have all 27 weapon slots full.

Constraints

For this task I sketched out some initial exploration and gave myself one working day to come up with a general concept which would fulfil the following criteria.

1. Solution needs to work within the current Destiny menu interface.
2. Additional interface work needs to be kept to a minimum.
3. Any controller buttons remapped need to be low functional buttons which are not needed for core gameplay.
4. Players still need to access the games menu for routine equipping of items and equipment, so the solution needs to be an addition to the game, and not a replacement for, any current menu system.
5. Any system created needs to be modular and useable for all weapon types and emotes and should still be able to work with other inventory items such as ammo or consumables.

Solution

An additional icon could be added to the bottom of the weapon info panel which enables players to add a weapon to a hotkey slot which they would access later on with the d-pad (which is currently reserved for emotes only).

The d-pad (top left) is mostly used for emotes and has very limited functionality within the game.

In order to maintain gameplay balance and make it a quick selection process we could limit the hotkey slots to four — conversely this also fits into the number of subclasses for each weapon class which would enable players to quickly switch between each of their three weapon classes and four subclasses.

This would essentially allow players to quickly access 12 weapons as opposed to the current 3.

Hotkey icon states.

Primary weapon class

In this example primary weapons will be assigned to the left d-pad so the icon has the left segment lit up.

Primary weapon view. Note the hotkey icon has the left segment lit up to make it clear to players the d-pad direction they need to press to enable/disable.

Once the player adds a weapon to the hotkey by pressing left on the d-pad, the icon at the top left of the four blocks would update to signify that a weapon has been added into that slot.

The top left segment has turned white to indicate that the weapon has been added to the hotkey.

Players could continue to go though their inventory adding up to four weapons per weapon class.

The top two segments have been assigned weapons. The white block indicates the current weapon is in slot two of the hotkey.

Like the current locking mechanism in which players can lock a weapon from accidental delation, which is enabled or disabled by pressing on the right thumbstick, any hotkeyed weapon would need to be removed in the same fashion.

So if a player selected a weapon and hotkeyed it, closed the menu, played the game, decided they didn’t want it as a hotkeyed weapon anymore, they would need to go into the inventory and unselect that weapon by pressing on the d-pad again.

When a weapon is deselected it would leave a gap in the hotkey icon to indicate that there was now an open slot for another weapon to be added.

A weapon has now be removed from the fourth slot so the icon has gone back to a stroke to show that there’s space for one more weapon to be added.

In theory any weapon could be hotkeyed within a class, a player could decide to hotkey five assault rifles for example, but the idea here is that they would choose one of each subclass. Ultimately it would be up to the players to decide which four weapons within a class they wanted to quickly access.

If a player had filled up all the available slots and tried to add another weapon they would receive an error.

Error telling players that all hotkeys slots are full.

Special & Heavy weapon classes

Special and heavy weapon hotkeying would work the exact same way. The only difference is that the hotkey icon would have the appropriate segment lit up to indicate to players which direction to press on the d-pad to hotkey a weapon.

Heavy weapon view. Note the hotkey icon has the bottom segment lit up to make it clear to players the d-pad direction they need to press to enable/disable.

Hotkey menu

In terms of how this would work within the game, players would press on the specific d-pad direction to access the hotkey menu.

The full d-pad options are -

In the example below the player has pressed on the left d-pad which has brought up the four primary weapons they had added into their hotkeyed slots earlier.

The players currently selected weapon will be greyed out. The game’s background would blur but would not pause the game.

As per all menu’s in Destiny the cursor is always centered on load, which enables players to quickly access the four weapons with the right thumb stick on the controller.

A quick movement to the right and the press of the square button and the player has switched their primary weapon from a Hand Cannon to an Assault Rifle.

Destiny only allow’s players to equip one exotic weapon (the most powerful weapon class, represented by yellow) at a time.

It‘s likely that a player would try and equip, for example, an exotic primary when they already had an exotic special or heavy selected. If this was to happen the player would get an error message when they tried to select the second exotic weapon.

Errors would follow the same style as the current errors within the game.

An added benefit of using four weapon slots per d-pad is that players could also quick tap to get the next weapon in the hotkey slot.

For example a long press on the d-pad would open the menu like below.

A long press on the d-pad opens up the hotkey menu.

A short press on the d-pad would switch from whatever weapon the player currently had equipped to the next one in a clockwise direction.

In this manner players could quickly cycle through 12 weapons by pressing left, right and down on the d-pad numerous times.

Multi function d-pad allows both access to the hotkey menu or the quick cycling of weapons during gameplay and engagements.

So about those emotes…

Emotes would work the same way. As these are not essential to the balance of the game you could have more then 4, possibly 6 or even 9 depending on the legibility of the icons within the emote panel.

Emotes are a fun way to commute with players. It might be possible to hotkey all nine to let players express themselves however they want.

The beauty of reusing this menu logic for the emotes is that players can quickly switch between emotes which is extremely useful in PVP games.

When someone kills you with a precise headshot from half way across the map you can bow. When someone accidentally falls of a ledge you can slow clap. When your team is loosing 3200 to 17809 you can drop to your knees and cry.

Any hotkey slots not filled would be displayed as a light grey box.

All of these emotes can be quickly accessed with the press of two buttons. No need to access your menu and equip/unequip emotes during a game like you do currently.

Conclusion

I’m sure there are many reasons why Bungie never implemented a hotkey solution like this but I think it’s a valid addition and could work well with some refinement and testing.

As this was a quick concept that I set myself I welcome any and all feedback especially from fellow players.