Yep - you are quite correct there @turintuor
This would have been much better if we’d beta test with community (the previous 2 updates did, and were much better for it).
We’ll certainly try to do that in future when time allows, and if it doesn’t I think we’ll try and make a bit of extra time.
9 Likes
I didn’t know what a UI was until this week. This is my first online game. I loved it, spent money on it, and built a great guild. I have just one question… don’t you use beta testers? Have gamers with fresh eyes come in and critique your work? Thank you.
2 Likes
How many people played battles with the new board? A lot of people have been complaining that the new board is hard to see and hurts their eyes and causes headaches how did no one notice this?
I can’t even play the game anymore. Yesterday I did my GW battles the first battle I couldn’t even find moves on the board and trying to concentrate hard enough to find moves was hurting my eyes and I had to end up just waiting for the suggested moves to pop up and even doing that I ended up with a bit of a headache. I even lost a battle because one of the suggested moves gave the ai enough mana to fill a Forest Troll and have an extra turn and after that the Kraken devoured my last slot and filled a Mab that then destroyed everyone in my team except for my second slot.
Okay so since it got removed I’ll try again
The responses seem to me like a huge crock of crap. We get it you don’t own the game you developed because you sold the majority of your rights to get it published… but blatantly stating there is a problem and making excuses even after saying you aren’t trying to make excuse is just a horrible way of trying to cop out of your mistakes without just coming right out and saying we screwed up. If your main base is mobile then why wasn’t it tested on mobile screens… to me that is just saying we don’t really care or have time for this if it is done it is done. People are not scared to come out and say that they like the new ui, in chat no one has jumped on anyone for saying they like the new ui. Even in the previous thread no one jumped on anyone who commented liking the new ui. I mean are you guys PMing yourselves to feel better about the piss poor job done here, because in the gow community in chat we have seen a handful of people in there that like it… no cussing so #truth hurts #truthwillsetyoufree… shouldn’t be able to pull this one
1 Like
Personally? I played probably 10-20 hours on the new board in the week before release, and it doesn’t give me a headache at all! That’s why I was rather shocked when I heard reports of it.
Same can be said for Nimhain, and certainly the rest of the dev team all played a decent number of hours on it too.
If it had made ANY of us feel unwell or queasy, we would have attempted to address it.
My suspicion is that the darker contrasting colors may be something that some folks are sensitive to (just not any of US unfortunately).
We’ve just adjusted the colors back MUCH closer to their old levels for next week’s update though!
4 Likes
Sorry, but I have to bring this up again. Is adding contrasting borders or backgrounds around all text really not that obvious of a concept? I thought this was a generally accepted design thing. My headcannon explanation for how the text got put in how it is now was that there was that some basic design paramaters were given to a design team and assests were inspected out of the game, but the decision to use the borderless text never actually made it up the chain or was played with in game by any of the main designers. Otherwise, I find it really hard to wrap my head around how this violation of a basic design tenet go through so many sets of eyes including industry veterans without someone saying “That text can be displayed in these locations without solid backgrounds. Maybe we should put borders on the text so it is always readable”. It’s the kind of thing that should be have been vetoed at-glance if not when it was brought up in the initial design meeting. It is an issue regardless of screen size, and regardless of how long you have used it. Maybe not to the level of being physically ill, but a major issue nonetheless.
I understand and can sympathize with everything other game breaking bug introduced, as these things tend to happen when working with a complex system with many interactions, the need to meet a release schedule (though I will echo that you need a stronger testing process given how long it takes to push an update out and fix a game breaking issue), understand at least some reason behind even all the design direction choices that I don’t agree with and things that do not necessarily pan out when taken with a critical eye, and even see how some people might not be bothered as much by the lack of contrast in other UI elements. But the decision to unborder the text when you know it will go on all manner backgrounds is the first time that I can’t even see the other perspective or the line of thought that brought it to fruition.
Anyways, thanks for indulging this mini-rant. I really hope we can move past all these UI issues as quickly as possible so we can start focusing on the gameplay again, starting with the match trait rework and the lack of attention (or even refunds) given to the multiple majorly affected troops. It has been completely overshadowed and something I really don’t want to get lost in the shuffle.
2 Likes
I think one of the problems with the board is that the background isn’t solid. I hope next weeks update does fix it I miss playing.
2 Likes
Yes. Please put the solid grey background on the playing board. 
4 Likes
As I explained in another post, the opacity issues of the backgrounds overlaying with the movements on the top layer make it feel (and since I have been diagnosed with this) things are in different motion and the eyes can’t track correctly. (Hence motion sickness/eye issues) I can’t even go watch a 3d Movie thats how bad it is for me.
Some people are more prone to it than others. Motion games have done a lot of work to reduce this for players like myself. And they have gone out of their way to share what they have done to help us.
Now granted I would never have ever suspected GoW would have this problem but this last release it sure does, but I know the symptoms very well and I did all the things that normally make it easier but none of them worked other than taking breaks between each battle.
That’s why for me games like this are very valuable since I don’t get sick (until this release)
1 Like
Blur used to mess with my eyes, and I’m glad it can be disabled now.
1 Like
lol,
had to ‘reply’ to that cause it was one of the many pricelessly hilarious statements made since this ‘update’,
I’m one of those posters lol…
(one of the people that signed up in the forums just to post my dismay at this UI ‘update’… lol)
1 Like
lol, obviously,
you quickly wrote in what I was going to add, ‘3%’ daily increase,
lol that’s obviously a joke ‘hoodwink’ statement made by someone to linguistically try to fool you, pretend he’s your friend etc… (lol Sirrian forgive me, I have to play opposer to the devs for now, lol…),
The ‘trick’ proof in that, is the ‘daily’ statement, you can’t functionally say, “There’s been a 3% increase of daily players in the game” till you’ve had -enough time- to actually verify ‘daily’ for at least what an active player would play, at least a month or more.
We can see ehansen did the leg-work and showed (the obvious), factoid that sure, though many would log in and ‘check out the game’, shortly after the patch, the countless remarks of people saying they were leaving the game real time in global chat, would mean there would be a drastic decrease in ‘daily players’ within 1-3 weeks after.
Which is exactly what you see.
Yeah I hope this is showing people how unfortunately game companies have ended up like most all other companies trying to sell you something, relying more on marketing than an honest attempt at making ‘what you want’.
I’m starting to feel sorry for Sirrian a bit because he’s receiving a lot of flak on this, but none-the-less we’re still being spoon-fed reasons ‘why’ all this is good for us, instead of being given credit for playing the game, and putting our money in it… (and by extension we should have some sort of ‘voice’, but don’t…)
So you should all see how ‘this’ game is being played, lol…
- Well said
(personal note - I picked gems as my ‘daily’ unwind arguably simply because one of the things I like most is aesthetic consistency in it’s design, too many games are ‘Frankensteins’ with some parts good some parts bad, Gems had a consistent overall feel and fun-factor that allowed it, even though it was ‘simple’ in design, to stand head-and-shoulders above all the trash out there… )
It is rather disturbing that it’s strongest point, that consistent visual appeal and design, was thrown by the wayside for some obscure ‘my publishers/bosses told me to do it’ reason…
Sirrian you know you’re going to need an awful lot of wool if you’re going to try to pull one over the eyes of the players of this update, lol…
- Guys!
I think – This – is the bottom line in all this, based on Sirrian’s slippery responses (I think it’s safe to say most can tell) in regards to the UI comments etc, I think what’s becoming more clear is that Steam (pc) players are not seen as their ‘biggest market’, so they are (for lack of a better term), ‘disposable’,
as they try and make all the changes necessary to appease mobile players etc.
Obviously there has been some mention of this before (with how the UI is more ‘draggy friendly’), but seeing how Sirrian brushes off the clearly horrendous steam stats, simply shows that even if 50% of steam players leave that’s probably only a small segment of their total player base, hence why they don’t seem that bothered by the huge influx of (freshly registered) posters in the forums posting their negative responses etc. (because they’re mostly pc users)
Keep in mind this also correlates with the known habits that most people spend most within 6 months of starting up a game, so they’re calculating the mobile users now, and in the future.
They probably view steam players as not only the market segment least likely to grow, but also least likely to ‘spend’.
So yeah it’s all mathematically starting to come together…
Okay it’s all starting to make sense now, only thing left that they would seem to care about is the actual viewing issues people have with the game.
I think it’s safe to say once they straighten out the viewing issues people have (on mobile platforms) then they’ll be happy with the game where it is, and consider it a ‘success’ regardless of whatever changes they made to it up to that point.
Cool I’m glad I got some sense out of this.
Have to say though, Sirrian’s use of linguistics (Trivium etc lol) seems a bit cheesy here, surely you can all tell how he tries to ‘sugar-coat’ everything, I wonder if it’s actual working on anybody?.. lol
(Trivium is part of Masonry’s lessons in ‘Rhetoric’, how to speak using various techniques to get a desired result (in someone elses behaviour))
I think it’s unfortunate he’s clearly having to use every technique in the book, only shows what a huge failure this update was (lol…).
" If we judge it by the usual 10:1 negative:positive rule " ?.. lol what rule is that? the reality is the opposite, if you get -barely- any vocal minority (especially in forums etc) voicing a ‘negative’ opinion, that means there are tons of people not saying anything, but just leaving and going somewhere else.
(the fact so many signed up just to voice their ‘negative’ opinion shows what a massive downgrade this all is, lol…or at least is perceived to be… )
Again I’d like to make a remark to Sirrian about does he seriously think these (psycholinguistic) techniques would work in this situation?..
He would never answer though as he knows he has to play his role and just keep up the facade, but yeah you guys all see through it right?
‘10:1’ lol … very interesting to see stuff like this playing out, lol…
3 Likes
Mute this thread 
3 Likes
2 Likes
If there’s one thing I want to get out of this whole thing (lol),
Is a vote of whether you players think that sounded open sincere and honest,
or something a used car salesman would say lol…
I wonder if I started a new thread asking a vote on that how fast it would get shut down…
(lol…)
1 Like
considering you posted 3 massive pics that would annoy the heck of anyone just casually glancing at the thread far more than a few posts here and there,
you’re either being annoying on purpose (to shut down the thread cause it’s causing too much smearing on the game) or really have nothing better to do…
anyways, the reason I talk the way I do is because I find the interplay between people using psychology (most mundane way to put it) and people ‘believing’ things at face value is totally fascinating…
I’m not the type to lie and manipulate others, but at the same time am dumbfounded how easily manipulated people are…
note that while my posts may be long, I don’t insult anybody in them… is there really a reason to post such big pics with nothing but insults on them?..
hmm
2 Likes