There’s two reasons for these suggestions:
- We use troop Filters a LOT, so small problems quickly get very frustrating.
- While a few extra options have been added to the Filters since they released, there’s been no fixes at all to the issues that have been present since launch.
Consequently, I feel this needs to be moved up the priority list, ahead of major game changes!
Generally, the Filter system is very good (necessary, even). However, some mistakes were made during the last overhaul, and tweaks need to be prioritised.
All of the suggestions below should take very little effort to implement (I’m deliberately not asking for much).
I’m going to use the term, “Cards,” to represent “Troops, Weapons or Pets.”
Double-Arrows
Double-arrow currently moves to the next/previous category in the Sort Order. This is often problematic.
A) Once double-arrow reaches its last position, clicking it once more should take you to the very last screen of the currently filtered Cards (showing the last 8 Cards).
This is similar to how DVD authors always create one final bookmark two seconds before the end of a movie. This is already implemented for the top of each list, but we need another at the bottom.
B) Double-arrow should always move at least one screen.
It makes no sense that clicking the double-arrow moves the display less than clicking the single-arrow. If we’re actually looking for a troop, it’s safe to assume that if it’s already on-screen, we can see it. So moving from A to B alphabetically when there’s just one card starting with A is silly and frustrating.
C) For some sort Orders, break up the categories used by double-arrow into something less granular.
For example, when sorting by Amount (number of troops), it makes a lot of sense to have the following jumps: start, …, 2000, 1000, 500, 200, 100, 50, 40, 30, 20, 15, 12, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, end. This should probably be somewhat dynamic, based on how many Cards are actually in the currently-filtered list. Something similar applies to Sorting by Skill values. Obviously, this also interacts with suggestion B.
General Filter Stuff
D) Separate the Troop and Weapon filters.
The current situation is too complex to bother explaining (though see suggestion E). Suffice to say that it makes little sense for Filter settings we select (or Save) on the Troops tab to carry over to the Weapons tab (they already don’t carry over to Pets). I say this from my experience using the Filter: not once has it been useful to have the settings carry over.
E) After clicking a Task from the Kingdom Power screen, force all tabs to show only Cards from that Kingdom.
Currently, tabs other than the one first shown will show all Cards. However, if we’ve come in here from a Kingdom’s Power screen, we’re only going to be interested in Cards relevant to the at Kingdom, including Pets and Weapons. (This is the only real-world exception to suggestion D.)
Text Search
Text Search is very powerful, but sometimes it picks up too many things, rendering it somewhat useless.
F) DO NOT include Troop Roles in Text Search.
We already have a drop-down for this, and Troop Roles just aren’t searched for very often. The best example is how searching for Warlock gives you dozens of Troops with the Warlock role, but the troop itself is buried at the bottom of the list. (See suggestion L for a case in which the opposite behaviour actually would help.)
The Pet Filter
Pets are especially difficult to Filter in useful ways.
G) Add “Sort by Kingdom” to the Pet Filter.
In many situations, this is much more useful than “Filter to a specific Kingdom.”
H) Combine the Pet Types, “Gold,” “Souls” and “XP Bonus” into a single “Resource Bonus” Type.
Each of these categories have just one pet. It’s a pain!
I) Add a Pet Type category: “Non-Cosmetic”
J) Add a Category to Upgradable for “Tradeable.”
Once you have a lot of pets maxed, it can be quite hard to find which maxed pets you have extra copies of. Ideally, you’d also add a “Trade All Extras” button (yes, there’s lots of places it would fit nicely in the interface, for any platform), just as you can “Ascend All” Troops. Suggestion A also makes navigating Pets much easier once many of them are maxed (eg: it currently takes me 8 clicks to get to Wyrmling when sorted by Upgradeable – not smart).
Harder to Implement
Two more-difficult requests (and a corrolary), for longer-term consideration.
K) Reduce the size of the Filter (and the Chat interface) on PC.
It’s silly that I can see so much more at a time on my iPad than on my 24" 1080p PC screen; that I have to scroll down to see the Troop Role drop-down on PC but not on iPad. I think the game needs to have some awareness of its DPI display state, and be able to reduce font and control sizes to compensate at low DPI (ie: large display size). Obviously, this requires an order of magnitude more work than any of the previous requests.
L) If I type a Kingdom or Troop Type name, automatically move it out of the text box and into the appropriate drop-down, once I Apply.
This is actually a pretty standard feature for Filters like this, but it does require some more intelligent behaviour than the current system. It’s not actually that hard to implement, and it does make a fair bit of difference (esp. in light of suggestion M), mainly because it frees up the text box. This probably should NOT be implemented for keywords in the other drop-down lists, nor the colour selector (and definitely not for Troop Roles). This is effectively the flip-side of suggestion F.
A really good system would pick up on common typos for the Kingdom names, but that’s probably a bridge too far. (Incidentally, I see the detection routine for this as working similar to a rude-word filter for chat: you check what’s been typed against a short list of keywords, and act if you get a match.)
M) Typing a Class name in any Text Filter changes to the Class tab with the Class visible on-screen.
There’s currently no Filter on the Class tab, and the list of Classes is getting longer. Scrolling from Archer to Slayer is now a major pain.
While this is a much simpler suggestion than suggestion L, it’s a very similar behaviour, and could be implemented at the same time. It’s definitely a lot simpler (for both us and you) than adding a Filter to the Class tab.
Obviously, the text Filter used to do this should also be cleared, in most cases. And there are simple ways to work around the fact that some Class names overlap with traits, etc (eg: Slayer).
Last Words
To Finish: I feel like every new feature should be adjusted in the patch soon after it’s released. This is NOT currently happening – at least not to the extent that seems to be needed.
Implementing everything above would almost certainly delay a patch’s release by less than a week. That’s totally worth it, from a player point of view!