Introduction
I’m pleased to hear that Inf+2 is planning to make some changes after dropping version 7 (upon us). Unfortunately, it’s yet another example of poor Quality Assurance and a lack of understanding of how people (want to) play the game. That said, scheduling time (preferably in advance) to fix things immediately after a new version drops is very much something I’ve been advocating for years now!
In any case, I understand that many things will not be changed (call it “inertia” or “ego” – it doesn’t really matter). So I want to focus on positive changes that are more realistic to ask for. At least, I hope I’m being realistic. I’m also hoping to cover some ground that others haven’t, and will not double up on some stuff that’s already been mentioned.
Note: I am an Engineer, not a Usability Expert. However, I’ve always paid attention to Usability in everything I build. And I’m really good at spotting problems.
A Priori Suggestions
- Hire a competent Usability/Accessibility Expert!
- Hire competent Testers.
- Listen to your Beta Testers – some of them know what they’re doing!
- Run all text through Grammar Checking software – it won’t take as long as you think. But it will make you appear far less stupid than right now.
(Mis-spelling Aravatar as Aravata in the Campaign text was a new low.)
Problem 1: Card Design
Observed Issues
- Half my guild are getting head-aches from looking at the cards.
- Text is difficult to read on a mobile screen.
- Cast effects conceal status effects.
- Colours are confusing.
- Some information about troops is no longer visible.
Specific Suggestions - Main Card View
In general terms, I’d like to say that colours should only be used where they’re meaningful, and they shouldn’t be overused. Once you’ve said something (visually), you don’t need to say it again. I also think that multiple colour ranges can be used, but only if they’re carefully restricted to never overlap. And, of course, we want to support colour-blind and vision-imparied people (you’d have to be really mean not to).
Currently, we are looking at three groups of colours: mana colour (thank you for finally fixing the order in which colours appear in the mana circle – still some traitstones that needed flipping), troop/weapon rarity, and Elite level. Potentially, we can also include the three traits, which are now white.
The biggest issue other than font/symbol size at the moment is that mana colour completely dominates over anything else. It’s particularly hard to assess troop/weapon rarity and to identify traits.
Note: I’d really like to structure this properly for you, but it would take far too long, so let’s just jump right into it. (If you want something other than a rushed job from me, you’ll have to provide me with a structure, and pay me for my work.)
Also, I hate using the word “card” for troops and weapons, but it’s kind of necessary here.
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You’ve left blank space at the top and bottom of each card. Use this space to give it a trim in the colour of the card’s rarity. This is especially critical for Bosses, but it would also provide a good background layer for each card. To repeat: include a trim in the colour of each troops rarity at the top and bottom of each card.
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Make the filled stars indicating base rarity more distinct from ascension stars. The different between an open star and a closed star is much more significant than between a closed star and a “sparkly” star. Interestingly, putting an open dot in the middle of the sparkly star might be just what’s needed. Otherwise, consider circling the sparkly stars, or using a different shape entirely.
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Move the trait markers up onto the main body of the card. It’s important to be able to fully read both creature Types. (Remember to also move the Stun graphic, and not to hide these when a troop has full mana.)
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There’s something really problematic with the new trait markers. I suspect it’s because we’ve spent years thinking of the diamond shape as indicating rarity. It needs a different symbol or some colouration or something. I’m just not sure what. A simple option might be to have a stack of three horizontal bars (except that looks too much like a menu hamburger on mobile, so perhaps give them pointy ends, or make it a triangle). Make the bars wide enough so it’s easy to distinguish between outlined and filled. Another possibility might be to use the old trait colours just for the centre of each diamond. Basically, it needs changing, and it needs experimentation to know how to change it.
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Widen the banner on the left. Obviously. I think you’re also going to have to reposition and zoom out on some of the troop images, as big a job as that sounds. If you build simple tools, it shouldn’t take too long, as eye-balling each troop, then sliding it around should give a quick result.
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Make part of the Elite Troop marker more ornate for Silver and Gold troops. I haven’t seen the Bronze marker yet, but I’m pretty sure it will be casually indistinguishable from the Gold one. More spikes around the mana circle might do the trick nicely. On closer inspection, Gold and Silver are not identical, but I’d still look at something as simple as different numbers of spikes around the mana circle: Bronze = 0, Silver = 4, Gold = 6. You may need to remove the metallic bar across the top of the card in order to not obscure suggestion 1.
Spell and Trait Cards
This is where things get really messy.
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Completely remove the translucent colour overlay from the spell and trait cards. This is essential!
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Get rid of those coloured, horizontal stripes denoting mana colour. Go back to using them for rarity (in line with suggestion 1, above.
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The diamonds used for traits also appear left and right of the magic skill number, and also on the left of each trait. This is at least a double use of the diamond. Refer to point 4, above.
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When viewing the spell card, obviously we’ll no longer be able to see the troop’s mana colours. We can fix this more subtly that the overpowering mess we currently see. I suspect the best idea would be to keep just one bar of the mana colours on each card. If there’s multiple colours, I would remove the fade effect in this case (keep it on the banner, though), and have sudden transitions. A really cool option would be for the banner to slide over to the right when viewing the spell card! It would cover some of the mostly-hidden trait card, but it could be a sweet animation, while preservering visibility of all the troop data, not just the mana colours. Finally, you could use a vertical bar on the right side of all three cards (or just the secondary two cards). Again, I would drop the fade effect for this.
For all of this stuff, it obviously needs to be assessed at high and low resolution and at high and low dpi (or from a distance and close-up). And also in black-and-white. (Why am I telling you this?)
Weapons
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Restore the horizontal bands that indicate rarity. The coloured stars are utterly ineffective. Quickly spotting the base rarity of weapons is arguably more important than for troops!
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I can see that using a full banner (like on troops) would be problematic for fully-upgraded weapons. So how about putting the mana colours down the right side of the card, as I mention at the end of suggestion 10. If that doesn’t work, match whatever you decide to do on the spell card (as per suggestion 10).
Just a note here: I’ve already managed, quite organically, to come up with one way of distinguishing the main two colour spaces (though I can’t be sure how it will look, in practice). Namely, vertical bars indicate mana colour, while horizontal bars indicate rarity. Note that no colour should be shared between both colour spaces, so you may need to tweak the colour of Doomed weapons and bosses so it’s a different kind of red.
Pets
- The coloured backgrounds are not enough. I cannot tell, off the top of my head, whether a pet I’m looking at needs yellow or brown pet food. Best option would be to use the same device I mention in suggestions 10 and 12. Although, since you haven’t changed pets, I can see that the mana/food colour bar could easily and effectively be put immediately above the rarity bar at the bottom – so long as you don’t shrink the rarity bar to make space. That said, I still prefer the idea of using vertical vs horizontal bars for the two attributes.
Specific Suggestions - Pre-Combat View
Mostly, this is identical to what I’ve said above.
- I note that the Hero’s Class does not appear anywhere on their card when you click on it. The obvious change is to put the class crest where the Role symbol appears on other cards, but I think it would be far too small to be useful. Maybe get rid of the Hero rarity markers (since they don’t mean anything) and put the class name there instead, maybe in a special font or something (small-caps? shadowed?)
Specific Suggestions - In-Combat View
15. GET RID OF THE CASTING ARROW!!! I cannot emphasise enough, just how much the sky blue shading on the right of a full-mana card (and the arrow next to it) is both useless and obstructive! If you only change one thing, drop this awful, awful thing right now. I really don’t care whose ego gets hurt. It was worth a try, but it does nothing but make things worse.
- The biggest new problem here (aside from point 15) is the colour of the mana text. I bet no-one else will pick up on this, but it really does need changing. The issue is that you’ve chosen to make the mana text (“0/32” on Zuul’Goth) the same colour as the first mana colour for the troop. This makes no sense at all! Either you use every one of their mana colours (basically impossible, and thoroughly overkill) or you use a completely different colour/colour scheme fo the mana count. Short solution: go back to what you had before.
If you don’t get what I’m saying here, why should Zuul’Goth’s mana count text be blue rather than red or purple? He doesn’t get more mana from blue than purple (unless it’s on the banner). So, this is a use of colour in a misleading way. It’s also an opportunity to reduce the amount of colour cues to offset their increase coming from the card redesign.
- I honestly don’t really know what the colouration of the Skill numbers means. I think it’s something to do with whether it’s above or below it’s nominal value (it’s more complex than that, but you know). Given that there’s so much more colour on the cards now, I actually suggest revisiting the colour scheme for these numbers. Experiment with non-colour effects for indicating jinx or boosts. Nothing animated – that’s reserved for status effects. If you do settle on retaining colours, change the green and red, at the very least, so it’s not the same green and red used for mana. As I tried to say above, there should be no overlap between colour schemes with different meanings.
I don’t mind the Armour, Health and Attack symbols being white, given how much extra colour we’re seeing.
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Put the card rarity colour across the top and bottom of each card. There’s so much space there, perfectly suited to this purpose. Use the weapon rarity for the Hero (or at least, try it).
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Points 3 and 4 apply here. There’s just something wrong about using white diamonds for traits.
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Point 6 is particularly relevant here, so we can quickly distinguish between Gold and Bronze elite troops when we only of the two visible. I really think the 0/3/6 spikes around the mana circle would come into its own here (unless you have a better idea).
THANK YOU for finally allowing us to see mana colours when a troop has full mana (or is silenced)! This is a huge benefit of the new look, and shows the actual potential of making such changes – though perhaps not so many at once.
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The grey half-trapezoid where attack is displayed is just weird. This seems like wasted space in the image I’ve shown. It needs to be rethought.
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While you’re at it, maybe the Magic number should also appear on this view. (I suspect there won’t be room, once you increase the text size – that is obviously compulsory!)
Note that I haven’t tried viewing any of this with “detailed info” turned off. OTOH, that graphics setting seems to have been removed anyway. No idea why; giving people options on how to view stuff to best suit them is POLITE, if nothing else – and it can be much more than that. “One size fits all” has always been proveably stupid.
- Is the mana fill-level indicator really needed? All it really does is make it harder to tell what the upper colours in the mana circle are, by darkening them. Given my previous comment, that mana numbers can no longer be disabled, maybe this just isn’t needed any more. Or if you think it’s useful, perhaps make it a black line rather than a darkening mask. At least try some alternatives, please.
- I don’t know what half of these status effects actually are. For one, it looks like Burning is shown twice, thereby adding to the visual pollution of combined status effects. Please rethink some of these – if not for patch 7.05, then for 7.1.
Specific Suggestions - Large In-Combat View
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Following on from 24, in this view, there needs to be a list of status effects which the troop is currently under! If I can’t interpret all the animation, clicking on the troop is the logical way to see more detail about their current status effects, yet that is completely absent. I recommend a unique symbol (probably animated) and then the name of each current status effect. Lower priority, but tapping any of them could generate a pop-up describing what that effect does, similar to tapping on a card on the Victory screen. Again, probably something for 7.1 – but I’d make it a priority.
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Everything I said about Full card view earlier applies here.
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Why can’t I see the troop’s humorous quote in this view? It makes no sense. I suggest displaying the flavour text in the usual place, with the list of current status effects immediately above.
Surprisingly, that about covers it for cards!
Problem 2: Other GUI Problems
I could spend a long time on this, but I hate repeating myself, just because you’re understaffed. I’ll just try to mention some of the most problematic stuff off the top of my head, as I promised Sirrian on the last dev stream, just before Salty quit (yes, I owe him this, but he also owes me a full map image!).
In-Battle GUI Issues
- Mana boost colours are not visible unless you click the gear icon. Surely, it would be in the spirit of this revamp to show the mana boosts visually on the battle screen? While there’s a number of options where to put this – a vertical strip just outside the first troop is the obvious candidate – closer examination reveals some completely unused space on either side of the storm indicator, across the bottom of the screen. I recommend using just icons, if you can, but I suspect actual numbers may be needed. In that case, use the coloured text you shouldn’t be using for mana count. Again, something for v7.1.
Let me emphasise that being able to see your colour boosts and penalties on the battle screen would be hugely useful. When our Guild streams Guild Wars battles, everyone ends up checking their “banner” at least once every third match, and more than that, on average.
- The Gear icon is in the wrong place. And it’s the wrong icon. This is obvious as soon as you click on it. Please bear with me as I explain (it’s complicated, but important).
After clicking on the Gear icon, there are only four things you can do: 1) Click on a completely different (but identical) Gear icon in the top-left; 2) Click on the X in the top-right to return to the battle; 3) Click on the Retreat button at the bottom; or 4) Click anywhere outside the overlay to return to the battle.
In order to access Settings, we have to click on the first Gear icon, move the mouse all the way across the top of the screen/window, then click on the other Gear icon. This is stupid! To use more polite terminology, you’re requiring the user to move the mouse unnecessarily far in order to access what they thought they were accessing when they clicked on the first Gear icon (Gear means Settings to most people).
The other issue is that options 2 and 4 do the same thing! As does hitting the Escape key. So if you move the Gear icon to the top-left corner, the argument that you then need to move the mouse all the way to the right of the screen to return to the battle doesn’t hold up, because there are two other, easier alternatives. (Incidentally, I checked on my iPad, and there is also plenty of space to tap next to the Info overlay on a 4:3 form factor.)
How do we fix this crazy mess? Mainly, move some stuff around and change at least one icon. Here’s a mock-up of what suggestions 28 and 29 might look like. (It’s not a good mock-up, but you hopefully get the idea.)
Notes and Alternatives:
a) The icon buttons become a group of three. They can be in the top left or top right corner, or distributed between the two. On my iPad, they would have to be a horizontal group above the game board, rather than vertical, but that’s not a problem.
b) The Gear icon becomes an Info icon – obviously.
c) The Gear icon displayed is moves off the info screen, and back to the main screen, where it should always have stayed.
d) The drop-down icon (needs a better icon) moves out of the way.
e) A fourth icon, for chat, could also be added.
f) The 3 or 4 icons could be distributed across the two sides of the screen. Based on what I said above, it would make a lot of sense to put the Info icon on the right side of the screen, so it’s near the X icon to return to battle. The Gear icon might move with it, while the drop-down icon stays on the left (for example).
Colour Bonus Display
g) I’m not sure if zeroes or dashes look better when there’s no bonus, so I’ve tried both. I do know that “+0” looks silly.
h) My paint program won’t do proper outlined text. Obviously, what I’ve done doesn’t work for red, purple or brown. Easy for an actual artist to tweak!
i) The translucent box is 50% transparent black. I think the concept is sound, though I might make it a bit darker once the text colours are fixed. Obviously, the size and spacing also need to be the same on both sides.
If I can do that in about 20 minutes, your mob should be able to do it properly in less than a day!
Troop Screen GUI Issues
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Why are these buttons translucent green? More importantly, why do they look different from every other button in the game? Poor design.
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Why does the troop code look like a text box, when it’s actually a button? Harder to fix, but also poor design.
- This is the Troop Screenshot screen. It needs to show the troop’s mana colours, mana cost and role. Currently, these are all missing. The same is true for weapons.
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This is the Pet Screenshot screen. Since this is a cosmetic pet, it needs to display the event for which it was released; in this case, “Easter 2022.” It also needs to provide the colour pet food it takes, in text.
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Faction pets need to list their kingdom in the same was as Faction troops, eg: “Broken Spire/Fire Rift” for Burnie. I’ve had to name the Faction pets myself by setting their names to the name of their faction, just to be able to find them. This is really silly. And so easy to fix.
- Why is the drop-down so enormous?! This is a 1920x1080 window on a 2560x1440 screen that’s 27" across. I get more lines in the drop-down on my iPad, which is only 14" across. You need to be querying the dpi of the device before deciding on the font size! That’s GUI-design 101.
Critical Note: Point 35 also applies to the entire chat interface! I see far more lines of chat on my iPad than on my PC screen. It makes the devs look stupid, frankly. You need to be querying the device dpi and making the text for these interface smaller on a proper monitor. After all, the whole reason for buying a big monitor is to be able to see more at once! (Note: this does not apply, I suspect, to in-battle text and the troop cards themselves.)
- The list of options to filter and sort by are … sub-optimal.
a) Combine Gold, XP, Soul and Treasure Hunt pets into a single category. I suggest, “Resources”.
b) Split Kingdom Team Bonus into two categories: Kingdom Team and Faction Team.
c) Remove all factions from the Kingdom drop-down. They have one pet each, so it’s useless, and just makes for more scrolling.
d) Add “Kingdom” to the “Order” options, so we can see all pets grouped by their kingdom. This would be a real game-changer for monitoring our pets.
e) Either add inverted sort options for Amount (and possibly Rarity), or add a “Reverse Sort” button and get rid of the then-superfluous Z-A Order option.
Salty kept saying it was too hard to change the troop/weapon/pet filters. This was clearly revealed as a lie (deliberate or not) when you very easily added an option to show only “Single Troop Bonus” pets, when those were released. So please don’t start lying about how hard this is to do, again.
- Split the Troop and Weapon filters so they’re completely independent.
I currently have my Troop filter set to “Base Rarity” – as most people should, once they’re past mid-game. When I view my Weapons, they appear in Rarity order. However, the filter says “Card Name”. And if I modify the weapon filter in any way, the Order changes to Card Name unless I manually select “Rarity”. Let’s say that this is “confusing” behaviour. It’s definitely not helping your players. And the fix is very simple: independent Troop and Weapon filters. Just as the Pet filter is independent of the other.
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We desperately need a filter for Amount from lowest to highest. See suggestion 36e for a clean way of fixing it.
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The Kingdom list is getting more and more awkward to navigate. At the very least, widen the scroll bar so it can be used on mobile devices. Ideally, switch to a 2-tier hierarchy. That could involve a radio button set to choose between Kingdoms and Factions (halving the length of the list), or a drop-down that lets you choose from four or more options, (eg: Kingoms A-K, Kingdoms L-Z, Factions A-K, Factions L-Z), then choose the exact kingdom/faction from a much shorter list. I don’t care how you solve it, really, I just want you to do something to make it less of a problem.
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The class list has become two hard to navigate using the existing tools. My suggestion is to take a leaf from the book of Hero Wars and replace the scroll bar at the bottom of both the banner and class pages with left and right arrows. The arrows would move one screen at a time, exactly the same way as the up and down arrows on the Troop, Weapon and Pet screens. I would even include extra buttons to jump to specific points in the list, such as a 25%, 50% and 75% through the “list”.
Delves
- Go back to the old room graphics. The stars are not working, and the grey backgrounds are ridiculous.
If you can tell me how many level V rooms there are in this delve and which is the starting room and the boss room after glancing at the image for less than half a second, I retract my suggestion.
There’s three problems here. First, available level I rooms (such as the starting room) are almost exactly the same colour as rooms that haven’t yet been unlocked. Second, the boss room and the gnome room are hard to spot. Third, the stars are much harder to interpret than the previous Roman numerals.
At the very minimum, you have to change the graphic for the boss room and invert the colour of locked rooms, so we get dark stars on a light background (much as we had before).
But honestly, just go back to the old graphics. Please.
Other Things
I’ve been writing for 4 hours straight. I’m too tired to remember what else I wanted to mention.
And, I suspect 41 changes (admittedly, nearly all quite small) is likely more than enough for you.
Please make the time to do all this! Fixing bugs, tweaking graphics, and generally making the game easier to interact with will be far more effective at retaining players than new game modes!
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I am deeply concerned about the time load of the Underspire. DO NOT run it simultaneously with 7 other events, as you have done in the past! And because the battles get harder, and hence take longer to play, please give us our 7 battles per day every day, even if we haven’t used the previous day’s yet. Capping torches in the way you cap Daily Delve Sigils or Season Event Sigils would make people very angry.
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Fix the Guild Wars interface so it doesn’t look like someone forgot to finish programming it, during non-GW weeks. At the very least, allow us to see our results at any time before the next Guild Wars starts. Honestly, entering the Guild Wars interface outside of Guild Wars makes anyone seriously question the competence of the programmers.
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Allow us to view leaderboards, final guild and individual results for all events after they’ve concluded. You know it makes sense.
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Put icons on the Underworld map so we can tell which faction have an active delve. Same with active explore for Kingdoms. Maybe change the icons slightly, for Deep Delves or different Explore levels.
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Fix all the chat issues that you didn’t fix after chat was “fixed” (well, improved, at least) about 4 years ago. You should have all the bugs people mentioned at the time in your Known Bugs list. If you don’t, please put them in there!
That’s all I’ve got for now.
@Kafka - @Jeto - @Nimhain - @Sirrian (apparently, Sirrian has left the forums)
