First off, thank you Relic for your hard work and a fantastic game.

Second off, what ON EARTH is going on in your 2D art department?

As someone with a little professional experience in UI / UX / 2D design, there's just so much obviously... wrong, inconsistent, or unfinished with the 2D art.

Some examples:

Inconsistent Toggles

Untoggled-toggles.

Toggled-toggles.

Note that some icons are in colour in both cases, while the "prioritise vehicles" icon is uncoloured when turned off. Also, there is the big red circle for AA fire being off, but not for the others. Why do you need two separate things - a green on/off light, and the red circle - signifying on and off at the same time?

Also... your best idea for a "hold fire" icon was... a gun firing?!?! ;-)

Furthermore in several cases there is confusion between a toggle-on meaning "do this" or "don't do this". Let's look at the Wehrmacht panzer hull-down ability.

Clicking this button will turn hull-down ON. Once it's turned on, you see this button:

Clicking this button will turn hull-down OFF. Note that this is the opposite convention (red circle appears when state is active, rather than inactive).

Mixed Styles

Three icons visible at the same time in a British commander.

First icon is in the new style. Second icon is an old CoH2 icon where the Tommy looks totally different. Third icon is a unit that isn't even in the game any more!

Another example - two mines buildable by DAK.

The visual style is clearly inconsistent, despite them being displayed next to each other - left is new, right is a recycled CoH2 icon (like many CoH3 icons).

The icons are also just wrong. Guess which icon plants a group of small AP mines? Yes of course, the left one... and which plants a single powerful AT mine? You got it, the right icon.

Incorrect Ability Icons

Here's the No. 69 British grenade.

Except... no, that's an American Mk 2 Pineapple. Okay, here are the other grenade icons everyone gets.

Except... that's an American rifle grenade and a Soviet anti-tank grenade. Okay how about the Italian Gustatori smoke-sprint passive ability.

Oh cool, so Gustatori actually have a magic ability to turn into Tommies? ;)

Squashed Icons

Here's an example of what you see when trying to select some battlegroups.

Can you tell what kind of battlegroups those are?

One has a plane, that's all I can tell... the other two, no idea, impossible to tell. It's actually a lot better than the beta (when a bunch of placeholders were there) but those are not icon images, they are large artworks squashed down to fulfil a function they cannot fulfil.

Similarly here are two upgrade icons.

Can you tell what they are? The first one you can eventually tell is a minesweeper, though it looks more like a hovering UFO shooting green lasers. The second one... I don't think anyone is ever going to have any idea WTF that was supposed to be.

Low Resolutions

Here are two large-size unit portraits.

One is new, the other is a recycled low-res CoH2 image which doesn't look like the unit it represents.

Indistinguishable Meanings

Here are four icons.

One is a usable ability, one is an unusable ability, one is a passive ability, one is an in-use / active ability. They are barely distinguishable - especially the highlighting on the active ability, is so soft as to be invisible.

Because it's so hard to tell what's active, you're unsure if you actually threw that grenade or not, or if the passive ability is enabled or locked behind vet - it's a big problem.

Here are six icons in a build menu.

Some of these are locked behind tech, some are unlocked but the player doesn't have enough resources to build them. Can you tell which are which? Another backwards step from CoH2 here.

Unhelpful Recycled Icons

What do you think this commander ability does?

That's right, it adds one extra shell to artillery barrages (the 1 in the image represents the CP cost, not the extra shell). There are 3 other icons in that commander with pictures vaguely related to artillery, and there's no way of getting any idea what each of them does without mouse-overing.

What about this one?

Maybe it targets a tank treads? The Stuart ability? Nope. It's the DAK's Flak-88 ability to target a tank engine.

Okay, one more.

Oh, finally an easy one. This is the icon from CoH2 that makes your tanks speed up. What does it do in CoH2? It slows your tanks down! The insanity doesn't even stop there, because this is also the icon for a DAK commander that allows salvaging of vehicles. What exactly is it about a tank glowing red and shooting its gun that signifies salvaging?

Incorrect Unit Portrait Icons

Can anyone tell me what units these icons represent?

If you said a Centaur AA, an OKW Flak HT, and an Opel Blitz... congratulations, you're wrong. The first one is a Grant Medium Tank, and the last two are BOTH used for the CMP Truck. There are many more incorrect icons like this.

Incorrect Weapon Upgrade Icons

Here's a standard American Rifleman with upgraded BAR.

And here's an Italian Bersaglieri icon with upgraded Breda.

Guess he got bored and switched to a BAR.

Bonus: DAK using the PIAT in North Africa.

CONCLUSION

These are a few examples but really there are a hundred more mistakes just like this, or ugly old icons reused in totally the wrong context.

I was expecting most of these to disappear after the beta, but it's almost as if the 2D art guys were given 2 weeks to work on this stuff rather than 5 years. There's just no clear overall style or direction in the icon art, there's no consistency in the way things are represented, and there's just so much missing.

It may seem like a small thing to complain about, but it just adds to the feel of total lack of polishing, and in many cases it's confusing and adds extra cognitive overhead for the player

I hope that Relic already has a LONG ticket backlog and are just waiting for this stuff to get improved. If not, someone high up should probably take a look into what's going on here.

@Euan
Great Post!

As someone who does UX/UI for work, I am glad someone brought up all these issues. When playing I am spending most my time trying to distinguish what is an actual active ability and what is a passive ability, and wondering why my DAK pioneers have PIAT launchers!

There is quite a lot of work to be done under the hood. The framework is there but it is disappointing that none of the QOL updates from COH1 and COH2 were taken into account. 

A lot of icons are placeholders and reused from coh2. Hopefully they have plans to update them soon.

Agree completely and massively! There is no more completeliness available. I ran out of my completeliness. This game need more completeliness across the whole board.

For real, I mean it needs love in every department. I like your points and I apreciatte the care you gave to this thread. It is painfull to see our beloved child to be born like this, but as every parent or any other caring person ever, I love my prematurely born little dude already. If we are strong enough to endure, we will get a great game we are asking for.

There's a lot of great feedback here. Hopefully the art is mostly placeholder and will be revised in an upcoming patch. 

However, it does say a lot about the project when much of the art is not only recycled but out of context. 

In addition the main menu art and "faction select" portraits are objectively quite poor. They lack a basic understanding of anatomy and the design work is really muddy with a lack of refinement. Are these placeholders too? Let's hope so.