Feedback after playing this morning: I don’t mind the concept of the new UI, but the execution is a complete failure.
I literally can’t play anymore with the way the game board looks now. After just a few fights, my eyes were freaking out and I had to stop.
Numerous UI elements are no longer visible.
The UI looks like it’s all “programmer art”. That may not mean anything to some people…but other people just winced and cringed at that phrase, and they know exactly what I mean.
The version, as a whole, feels like it was published without being QA’d. I obviously can’t speak to the devs’ internal pipeline, but many things seem like either no one in QA took even a cursory look, or QA feedback fell under “duly noted and promptly ignored”. Regardless - it suddenly makes the game come across as amateurish and slapdash.
As someone who has invested enough in this game to cover someone’s salary within the development team, it would be nice to think my opinion counted, but, we all know too well about opinions.
The new UI is glaringly different. Radically different. The biggest issue is the black and white contrast of letters and background blending into one another and making it impossible to read on a mobile device without causing undue eye strain. The new match background also takes an inordinate amount of focus to catch gems without background distraction.
As for aesthetics, the feel of an online card collection game has been neutralized; now we collect digital squares with impossible to read numbers, and woe betide the person trying to see specific statistics on friendly or enemy troops if a status effect is applied. Perhaps console or PC players aren’t having these difficulties, but mobile hurts my eyes to play.
I spent cash to meet guild minimums on seals this week because the idea of playing for longer than it takes to grind out Guild Wars battles (don’t even get me started on the end game meta there) is physically painful. I will give it another week, but after that, I thank you for the fun I had and hope my financial contributions are governed in a fiscally responsible manner in future game development.
It’s not going to be that simple. The devs likely went “all-in” on their new UI, and as such, even reverting it would be a big undertaking, let alone allowing a runtime switch between the two. And do you really want to have to wait for all future UI improvements to be implemented twice?
That was not a smart decision. If the beta tester actually tested it and told them what doesn’t work they could have made some changes first and there would probably be a lot less pissed off people.
Realistically, we would just have been the first to be disappointed. They have not used the public beta as any more than final sign-off and game-breaking bug fixing. Perhaps they’d have caught and fixed the Elspeth targeting bug, but the UI would not have been changed as a result of beta feedback.
It’s not that easy; it’s not like it’s just a skin picker. Maintaining multiple entirely different UIs would be…“an inefficient use of time and resources”, let’s call it. I.e.: don’t hold your breath.
I think what @Lyya is saying is that by the time you see the assets in game, they have already been developed and have had things built around them. Scrapping it and starting over is not feasible at that point, just like it is not feasible now to request an “old UI button”. What we have is more or less what we are stuck with aesthetically, which is why I’ve been focusing my recommendations on how to improve what we have and make it both visible and functional.
What we hopefully got out of all this is that the assets are somehow easier to work with and future UI changes will be faster or easier to implement. I can’t think of any other logical reason behind the need to actually go down this road in the first place with other big issues on the plate, even if some might find the new interface subjectively better looking (which a great many do not).