Dev Discussion Looking for On Duty Menu Feedback

Hey all, we’re back with another User Experience (UX) related post, this time regarding the On Duty menu (not the actual instances, just the menu interface). If you have any thoughts about the usability of it, please let us know!

Some helpful questions to answer for this would be:

1. How easy is it to use the On Duty menu?
2. Is all the information you need available?
3. Is there anything that you find helpful/unhelpful when interacting with the menu?
4. Is there anything you wish the On Duty menu did that it currently does not?
5. Is there anything the On Duty menu currently does that you wish it didn’t?

We’re looking to improve the experience of using the On Duty interface and we want to make sure we get it right by your needs and expectations, so all feedback circulating around the On Duty menu is totally welcome.

Last thing! Just so we can produce a better picture, please clarify if your experience pertains to using a controller or mouse/keyboard.

Thank you!

Tbh I can't think of anything really major wrong with it visually. I guess the only thing I might say is with Task Force X instances. It has a bullseye to indicate that but new players probably don't know what that means?

Also. Probably not gonna happen. But if we ever get a force Queue option that would need to be put somewhere.

Thanks for the response! Could you elaborate on "force queue?"

People have been requesting that we be able to queue up for an instance with less than the required number of players and queue into that instance with that amount as to help cut down on queue times for lesser populated instances. Mainly due to the lack of walk in portals post Tier 5. But I don't know if that's a legitimate possibility or a pipe dream.

I wish the On Duty menu had a toggle where you could choose whether to be only paired with an instance where there is a match for the full number of players (2, 4 or 8), or an option for the instance to pop for your group regardless of size. eg 5 players queuing for a raid, the group leader should be able to specify whether the group wants to go straight in, or sit waiting for 3 more to queue.

This is the force queue. But I don't think this is under this developer's responsibility to implement that. But if it did ever there would definitely need to be an option implemented in the UI

For newer players i would assume its complicated/confusing that once they select the instance they wanna play that they have to pick their roll before they can que in i think once they select the instance the pick roll should automatically pop up for that player to select or and tell him abit more what he has to do like a permament arrow that tells him what to do exactly.

Also if i que for something and dont pick my roll and leave the on duty there is a black card with green lines with a question mark on my screen the entire time untill i leave the que i think that should be reworked aswell to make it more clear what it actually means.

And when someone wants to leave que having the „leave que“ button in the right bottom corner is abit confusing too. I would prefer and gues its more likely to be seen by newer players.

And as other said entering a raid for example with less then 8 players.
(Console player)

How easy is it to use the On Duty menu?
The steps are pretty compact... open, tab, select. No problems here.

Is all the information you need available?
Most info is there, however they should have visual states (color, font, rollover) for...

• in relevancy vs out of relevancy
• locked vs unlocked bosses
• member vs non-member
• display role option on/off

Missing Info.

• interactively (changes when bonus is active, in relevancy, etc) show # of marks earned per instance
• show amount of prestige interactively, doing the math for the levels of penalty

Is there anything that you find helpful/unhelpful when interacting with the menu?

• general menu performance, especially on console
• selecting, queueing, deselecting, reselecting doesn't always work perfectly

Is there anything you wish the On Duty menu did that it currently does not?
More options:

• show/hide mark relevancy, prestige relevancy
• option to look for opposite faction match first (when trying to group with friends on villain side)

Is there anything the On Duty menu currently does that you wish it didn’t?
n/a

I wish the on duty interface show all ur online friends and league mates what your trying to run. Give the option to find friends league mates before random players. Give a friends list option league option or random option or all 3 at once to pick from. After you successfully implement this its time to take loot locks away forever if you want active players to stay active. Also when you que up with friends list on and league mates on active show what they want to run on my screen. Later they can select what Feats they choose to run which will also be posted on my screen

Well, he asked is there anything we wished the On Duty menu did that it currently does not, so that was the point I was responding to.

How easy is it to use the On Duty menu?
For the most recent content, relatively easy. Once you start scrolling down through the lists to find older content it's clearly pretty cluttered. Maybe search bar?


Is all the information you need available?
A couple things that I think could be improved here.
Sometimes I'm in a group and we're just going through older raids for marks. It pops up that we're queuing and I need to ready up, but I don't believe it actually shows what you're queuing for without scrolling through the list and seeing it highlighted.
I would like the instance being queued for be shown somewhere.
I also think that the info on rewards for an instance could be more dynamic, instead of just plain text that says ">300 gear <300 marks and gear". Show nice little marks icons with a mark count and have what you're actually going to get show up based on your character.


Is there anything that you find helpful/unhelpful when interacting with the menu?
Unhelpfulness was kind of covered already, I will say the organization by tier is getting less helpful every year because the tiers seem to just change whenever the team feels like it.
Group size tabs should obviously stay.
Group list with roles being queued for and icons beside them is good.


Is there anything you wish the On Duty menu did that it currently does not?
Yes but not really from a UI/UX point of view I think a lot of things could be done to make finding groups easier, and for entering older content easier, but that's a different project


Is there anything the On Duty menu currently does that you wish it didn’t?
I wish the Vault wasn't at the bottom of the 1 player tab

What platform are you on? I'm on USPC and it's at the top of my list and always has been.

First and foremost.. I appreciate all the hard work the DEVS put into this game, and i've been here since 2011, and i'm going to be here till DCUO is no longer playable. MUCH RESPECT TO ALL THE DEVS, I APPRECIATE YOU!!! Now thats out the way.

1. PLEASE just UPDATE THE LOOK of ON DUTY even if its CHANGING little things here( like sizes SHAPES, COLORS, FONTS, TABS, Stretching the ON DUTY SCREEN WINDOW wider for more text to be on screen. Its really been a bit stale for 10years lol updating the ON DUTY is just to give the game a REFRESHED LOOK.. Please! Thank you!
2. PLEASE AUTOMATICALLY COLLAPSE ALL CONTENT OUTSIDE OF END GAME CONTENT RELEVANCY WINDOWS
3. Maybe create a CR RELEVANCY MAIN TAB that shows all CR RELEVANT SOLOS, DUOS, ALERTS, and RAIDS, that you can just MASS QUEUE up from THIS TAB(L1 PS4) instead of individually going thru EACH tab to queue up missions... similar to EVENTS TAB, for all EVENTS..This might actually be VERY NOOB FRIENDLY..
4. Yes i wish to resume the Queue we had in place after leaving an ON DUTY mission.. Meaning.. Resuming Queue which would highlight the ones you didn't get into, PRIOR to, getting into an ON DUTY mission.. Its very tedious to go down the LOOOOONG list of Queues again and again and again to ultimate requeue everything all over again. Rinse and repeat.
5. OR add a QUICK automatic QUEUE(maybe like PS4 triangle, triangle to activate?) for all END GAME TIER CONTENT throughout DUOS ALERTS and RAIDS..
6. Please allow RAIDS below End game content to be 5man Queue ELIGIBLE, instead of trying to fill an 8 man ROSTER to run RAIDS.. please for the sake of POPULATION and trying to accomplish FEATS...

It's fairly easy, though I think the menu itself is due for a visual overhaul.

At a quick glance to find what is appropriate for your CR, yes. There is more that could be displayed that could be helpful, though.

If an instance has a chance to drop a rare item for a feat (the Dark Robins Henchmen from Into the Dark Multiverse Elite and the Sorcerer's Supply Drop from Convergence of Unmaking Elite, just to name a few), that should be listed separately from the general description of "Loot Items".

Something you can click on that can either tell you what feats you still have to do in that instance, or that moves you instantly to the feat menu for that instance, would be helpful.

The distinction between minimum CR and recommended CR is rather redundant. The recommended CR should be the minimum. It's otherwise useless information since most players that meet the minimum CR tend to queue in anyway, so listing a separate, recommended CR that almost no one adheres to is unnecessary.

The menu itself can be rather buggy at times. Especially when first logging in, it can take a minute or two for the menu to even register your character's CR, though that likely has more to do with the game loading in than the actual menu itself.

Selecting and deselecting instances, like when updating the queue of what you want to queue for, sometimes bugs out and requires closing and reopening the menu to fix. Something similar happens on occasion when queued in with a group that adds a member and you need to reselect/change roles, where the menu doesn't update the info correctly and you have to close and reopen it to fix the issue.

Allowing groups or individuals with less than the necessary number of group members for that content to queue in instantly. It would greatly help with running old content that most players don't bother doing anymore. Having a toggle that lets you do this would be very helpful, though it should probably be limited to instances that are outside of current CR relevancy.

The Events tab can be rather cluttered at times, especially when there's multiple events going on. Making a tab solely for these temporary events could help to alleviate that, like a tab that only appears for Seasonal instances and maybe a tab just for when there's Legends PVE weeks when all of those instances are available at the same time.

It's at the bottom if you order by descending tier which I do because 95% of the time I'm clicking the most recent tier of stuff to queue for.

Forcing Queue is a thing we are definitely investigating and yes, would need a UI element involved.

Touching on what Flying F0X said, I know that we can sort our on duty by tier. If we put the higher tiers first, it throws the vault at the bottom of the list. Is there a way to keep the vault at the top, regardless?

To echo others, yes it would be great if we could queue with less players for older content, and even current content. Then we won't have to find players to help Q into an instance if a group wanted to challenge themselves by 4/5 manning a recent elite raid, for example.

Operations even more so. Hard luck if you are a villain and need to run Love and War, or the Hand of Fate operations, or Artifacts from The Past. I'm sure many who need feats there or style feats would appreciate being able to solo/duo Q those raids in order to run them and get feats or acquire those missing styles. Or if you need certain base items.

Not every server is as populated as US server, so at this point in the game it would be an amazing quality of life update if we could have that feature with On Duty, being able to Q into 4/8man content with less than the required amount of players. Maybe there could be a toggle on either the On Duty tab or in Settings to allow for this.

Outside of that, it would be really nice if The Vault didn't auto-loot lock upon entry. Can be annoying if you Q Vault and then before you get to your nth metal drop/Source Mark/gear drop someone invites you to another instance and you accidentally click while breaking boxes.

I also don't know if it is time the tier system is revised. For recent years everything has been via recent episodes, but it does leave parts of On Duty quite bloated. Either that or alternatively have a < > way of scrolling through tiers to get to the desired content, so you don't have to scroll down 20 raids to get to the one your group is Qing for. There can sometimes be latency in doing this as well, so as your scrolling there may be pauses while you are trying to get to the content you intend to Q.

Maybe there could be other ways of organising content. Maybe an elite only tab featuring all elite content from a certain group content, so all elite raids (divided by tiers) can be navigated in a seperate subsection of On Duty.

Just my two cents.

(I'm on PS4 so use controller, but maybe these ideas might be beneficial to other consoles too)

Gotcha. I'm always doing my Vault so I've never even considered ordering it that way.

That makes me think...

Maybe move the Vault to the Events tab or segregate it on the solo tab so that it always remains available whether sorting by oldest or newest?

Also, can we have the ability to sort tabs independent from one another?

And can we get choices cached with character info? (I know they are not for the AH, which is annoying)

Also there can be times where everyone in group has queued for the raid, but the invitation (Your instance is ready) doesn't appear, and no-one has deserter. It can create challenges with queuing content, where players may have to re-queue.

(I know this is more about the queue system, but it is still a significant part of the On Duty that we know)