Skull and Bones: Closed Beta — Thoughts on UX/UI(1/2)

I had the privilege to be selected for the closed beta playthrough of Ubisoft’s supposedly, next magnum opus, the game that has been in development hell for 10 years now and is to be released next year (hopefully): Skull and Bones

Agenda

In this two-parter, I will talk about my playthrough experience and the User interfaces (UI) I encountered along the way and its User Experience (UX) and share my thoughts on the same.

I played the game for little more than 2 hours (out of 6 hours of beta gameplay that was allotted to participants) on PlayStation 5, so I may not be able to explore the full strength of the game but it allowed me to understand what the game currently is, the warfare system, how the game is being categorised.

For a game that has been in development since 2013 and as a standalone multiplayer version of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag’s Naval Combat, Skull and Bones has some pretty big shoes to fit in and looks like it is on its way to do that, but still pretty far away.

Stability & Polish

The game was pretty stable for an online-only multiplayer game, as far as beta releases are concerned, and this being the first release after being in a long development hell, I can appreciate the stability as it crashed only twice in my three hours of gameplay (pretty good).

But presentation-wise, I was expecting the game to be more polished, Interface looked gritty, low-resolution and clean, but that maybe because of the aesthetic choice of the setting.
But as I said earlier, It is a beta build so they do have time on hand to work on presentation and polish.

Main menu / Structure

For the most part, the current Main menu UI of the game follows the same structure as the Ubisoft games we are getting at this point.

UI is segregated into three sections, with Navigation elements on the left in a list format, the centre space being emptied for looping cinematic-sort graphics and the right space for the Ubisoft store’s advertisements and content.
Like in the Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Valhalla, Odyssey, and even Origins.

The settings page / internal menu also resonates the same design structure with the main navigation displayed at the top and centre and the related settings shown below on the left with their “impact” on the right, followed by action controls at the bottom.

Safe to say, Ubisoft played safely to its defined UI patterns for the menus, which is a bit surprising to see since at least 10 studios are currently associated with this project at this point, including Ubisoft Mumbai and Pune as well.
So I was expecting a bit of a shakeup from the patterns and a breath of fresh new air to the primary User Interface.

Main menu / Fonts

Departing from its early font selection, Skull & Bones now uses sans-serif display font, which I believe is Ubisoft’s proprietary font, as its primary font, which is understandable and also appreciable since it is doing what it supposed to do, bold font, which provides required legibility to showcases its content, both in-menus and in-game.

But the same cannot be said for its secondary font, as Ubisoft decided to use a serif font, sort of like Garamond or Nanum Myeongjo, as its secondary pairing, which is used to showcase the content of the game.
The font is exceptionally thin and difficult to read at certain places in-game, which is unfortunate given it is a naval warfare online-only game that will include A LOT of particles occluding the text.

However, it does match the aesthetics of the in-game world depicted as the calligraphic style of a rough-n-tough pirate world.
But it does invoke the opportunity for developers to maybe include the following feature

• Option to switch secondary font from the list of industry-approved fonts.
• Maybe choose the thickness of the font, by using the variable font (if possible).

Main Menu / Accessibility Options

As evident from Ubisoft’s latest releases and the inclusion of accessibility features to provide a comprehensive solution for gamers of every kind, Skull and Bones is no exception.

Ubisoft has included all the accessibility options — including but not limited to Subtitle Sizes, Directional Closed Captioning, Controller stick swapping, etc.

But the inclusion of changing subtitle background & text colour which full control of choosing either from the presets or choosing your hex code gives an overall control and customisation as per players' preference, which is always a welcome addition.

One thing that I felt that could be added for ease of use, is the addition of quick increase or decrease using the right stick on the Dualsense controller.
Currently, the subtitle size slider works with a left stick where a nudge on the left or right will equally increase or decrease subtitle size by 1 point per nudge.

To make the process a bit faster, developers can incorporate a shorthand using the right stick where each nudge on either side changes the size by 10 points per nudge.

Main menu / Visual elements and menu artefacts

For reasons unknown, the visual elements used in the main menu looked surprisingly low resolution, which is visually evident as I traversed through various options in the menu and explored all the settings available, especially for a game to be released in 2024, which was a surprising touch as I could easily see jagged lines of static graphics.
And the same patterns were repeated as well in-game, and during naval warfare modules.

But I believe this would be upscaled accordingly when the game is fully released. So not a biggie, just an observation.

Transition issue

I also noticed that there is a move-in animation enabled for each setting in the settings page as the user scrolls down the page, and each element moves up with a move-in fade-in transition.

But it is slower and as a user can scroll fast, It takes time for animation to complete it, resulting in a but delay in visibility.
So it is something that can be enhanced and done a bit better.

Main menu / Missing Features

Preview

There is a feature where users can anonymise/hide their user names and also other people's during multiplayer play.

The problem is, that the language presented could have been clearer and also there is no preview as to what the will user see, as it does not hide markers.
So a preview feature is missing.

Legends missing

Probably a bigger issue for a game this massive and new to many users, like me, is the absence of a legends section in the menu that showcases what icon represents what in the game, and that is an important part to onboard new gamers to this game and bettering their UX.

Closing thoughts

I talked about Ubisoft’s next major release: Skull and Bones — Main Menu UI and its many features and what I observed during my playthrough as a close beta tester.

I do believe there are many improvements are still needed on its UI and also the main game, but it has the potential to be good because it's Naval Warfare, seeing that it is about to be released pretty soon (February), let’s hope it just releases stably at least so that everyone can experience this game and its many features.

Part 2 — very very soon (I promise)

This concludes the first part of this Skull & Bones review and I will start working on the second part just after this gets live, where I talk more about the in-game menus, the overall layout of the game UI and the good, bad and ugly of those implementations.

Stay tuned and if you want me to talk about any other recent game — let me know and I will see what I can do with it.
But in the meantime, explore some of my other work and follow for more.

Ankit Passi