This last week, a lot of playtesters were giving feedback on how they had no idea which levels were harder than others, as our game doesn't have a world and level system. The player can also access even the hardest levels at the beginning if they please, but will be ill-equipped. This decision was made so that hardcore players can try to do the hardest challenges with the worst weapons if they feel like doing so. The largest problem with this setup is that players had no idea which levels were harder than others. The portals were colored to determine the difficulty (green being easiest, red being hardest), however, this method seemed ineffective and didn't connect with players. To resolve this problem I created a new UI that helps determine the difficulty of the level for the player as well as recommends what weapon they should have at that stage. There are two interfaces, one for a quick glance that has no interaction with the player. It shows an image of the boss of the level and its name, and shows the difficulty through lit up skulls out of 5 with each skull becoming slightly more red as the difficulty grows.
The more specific UI showing off the level's details appears when the player gets close to the portal. The UI canvas shows up displaying the boss's image and name, as well as the difficulty like before. However, now more details like the amount of money to be earned is showed to give the player an idea of what the rewards may be. There is now a stamp-like text stating if the bounty has been collected or not (my way of saying if the level has been completed before).
If it is collected, the stamp changes the words to "bounty collected" and also adds the rank you achieved in the level. On the right, the game recommends a weapon for the player to use so the player doesn't go in with too weak a weapon, or even one that isn't helpful in that situation. The last touch shows a prompt that asks if the player would like to attempt the bounty and start the level.
These new interfaces were put together in about two days and show off the information of the level for the player so they never feel the game is responsible for how weak they may feel in a level. If the player goes in with less than the recommended and knowing the difficulty, they will expect to have a hard time and in result, not feel like they don't know where to go.
Overall, the takeaway from this experience has taught me that I should always convey the information to the player about what they are getting into. I realized that the player expects more information in a situation than one may actually have in a realistic situation to make the game easier to approach and fun to play.