Neverwinter - Streak Breaker Lockbox
Design Process
(PC/Console)
Lockboxes are drop items in Neverwinter designed to give rare rewards and are opened by purchasing keys in the game’s Zen (in-game currency) Store.
Working alongside Product Managers and the Lead UX Designer, we created a new Streak Breaker Lockbox as a way to enhance the Lockbox experience for Players.
The Streak Breaker Lockbox is different than previous Neverwinter lockboxes because it incentivizes players to open more Streak Breaker lockboxes by giving them additional bonus rewards if they opened a certain number of them.
In addition to retaining all of the information from the old Lockbox system like showing their rewards and tracking their reward history (within a single opening session), the new UI also needed to educate players of this new Streak Breaker bonus reward system, as well as track how many lockboxes they’ve opened and also show what bonus rewards they can expect when they reach a certain goal.
In addition, we wanted to present larger and more aesthetically pleasing visuals to make the players feel that the rewards are indeed worth the value.
1. Wireframes
Prior to (and during) the Streak Breaker feature pitch, I worked with Product Managers and the Lead UX Designer to create several wireframes that would convey the new UI presentation to other stakeholders.
The Streak Breaker lockbox has two components: an Inspect Window that allows the player to view the Lockbox details prior to opening; and a Rewards Window that shows the reward content that the player receives after opening the Lockbox.
2. Feedback & Updated Wireframes
Below are the updated iterations of the wireframes after discussions with all of the stakeholders. One of the biggest changes from the early iterations was making the reward graphic to be more of a square shape instead of the wide rectangle shape that old Lockboxes used.
3. Mockups
For the mockups, I changed the Bonus Reward Meter to be horizontal to maximize space usage, as there was too much negative space in the vertical presentation from the wireframes. This also allowed us to increase the size of the Lockbox banner art to better balance the graphical and text elements.
4. Final Assets & Implementation
After the initial approval of the mockups, there was a design change from Product which was to add a possible additional bonus reward slot (from 2 to 3), so I adjusted the size of the large reward cards to accommodate the change.
Once everything was approved, I worked with the Lead UX Designer/Engineer to implement the final polished assets and below is the finished UI as seen in the game, on both PC and Console.
