Journey Token

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SkyHard

I tried it. I tried to get used to it. I don't liked it. Please change it!

Why do you want to make it harder for us (and thus for yourself)?

Jacob Marley

Please don't say "us."  That implies that you speak for the entire dominion playing community.  You don't.  At least, you don't speak for me.  I like the way it is.  You speak for yourself only.  It happens that some people agree with you.  Others don't.  Go ahead and say "it makes things harder on me" but let the rest of "us" speak for ourselves.

I'm not trying to troll you, but I see it over and over online where a vocal minority assume they represent the entire population and it annoys me every time.

AdamH

There are many cases on here where there is an argument to be made for what the interface "should" be. It can be difficult to determine what is going to be more intuitive for more people, what the audience should be for catering this stuff towards, etc.

This is not one of those cases.

What's happening is not what the card does. There is no clear way to tell when the journey token is "face up" or "face down" when that's the one thing that absolutely needs to be made clear. Literally, that's the only thing that matters and the current interface fails at doing it.

I'm not suggesting that I know what the best thing is, but I can tell you that if there is any doubt in anyone's mind over what state your token is in, or what's going to happen when you play a card that uses the journey token, then the interface is not good enough.

This is different because it's trivial to just have some text that says "Journey token face down" or "Journey token face up" and then the problem is solved. With a picture there and no label and no actual tie to what the card is supposed to do, the current interface fails to do the only thing that it actually has to do.

And really, I'm surprised that anyone out there is willing to defend what's out there right now. Maybe it's clear to you but there are people who it's not clear to: so it's not good enough. There really isn't anything else to it.

jdcw

I really like how it is now - MF's version never made sense to me - to me grayed out is inactive.  I like the indicator that tells me that if I play it, it will be good.

LibraryAdventurer

Quote from: Witherweaver on 21 February 2017, 04:44:27 PM
Token State: [Face] Up/ [Face] Down

text is optimal.

I never once knew the state of my journey token from physical inspection while playing Making Fun.

If there is a graphic, mouseover could tell you the token's state in terms of the card descriptions. (I.e., with "Current State: Up/Down")
I agree. Mouseover or text-only seems like a good way to do it. I agree with Adam that it should be clear.

ravi

Quote from: AdamH on 22 February 2017, 02:15:06 AM
... I can tell you that if there is any doubt in anyone's mind over what state your token is in, or what's going to happen when you play a card that uses the journey token, then the interface is not good enough.

I think this is taking it a bit too far. In MF's implementation (and the same could happen in an IRL game), there could definitely "be doubt as to what's going to happen when you play the card." This is because some people may not realize that the flip happens before resolving the card.

However, in MF's implementation, that means you may be mistaken because you haven't learned the card yet. In this implementation you will be mistaken because the interface is literally doing the opposite of what the card says to do. I think some set of new users will still be confused the first time they play a journey card, but this can happen just by learning a card. However, it should be clear that the interface does what the card says.

This has nothing to do with me "not giving it a chance" or "not getting used to it". I'm used to it after one game, that's not the point.

Both implementations can be confusing, however, here is how someone confused by the MF implementation would probably go about it:

"Hmmm, why didn't my Giant attack? Let me look at the card closer. Ohhh! I see it flips the token before resolving the action. Okay, I didn't get that, I guess that the bonus happens when the token is upside down before I play the card."

Here is what happens in your implementation:

"Huh? Why didn't my Giant attack? My token was gray and the card says it flips the token and then resolves. It should have flipped, making it colored and then it should have attacked. ???? I don't get it." Looks at log "what? okay so the token got flipped over and that made it colored? So colored means that it is upside down" - Looks through this forum - "Oh I see, they wanted to change it so that the colored token represents the card doing something 'good' and the gray token means it doesn't."

Again, I am taking the case of someone confused by the journey token, there will be some subset of people who get either implementation intuitively. Maybe there are more people who get yours at first than the MF, however that is not the only consideration. To someone who is confused by the MF implementation, they only need to study the card to understand why they are confused. If someone is confused by this implementation, they will probably first study the card, then get more confused. Then they might look at the log and figure it out, but be confused by the implementation. Then they have to look at this forum (I'm guessing a tiny fraction of your users use this forum) and then see that you did something to be "more intuitive".

I'm in general optimistic of dominion.games, but I really think you made a wrong move here. There have been other things that I disagree with (I think it is counter intuitive to find the tavern mat and other mats), but I can accept that. This is a decision which I really think is just wrong.

jsh

#21
In some sense this isn't a big deal either way because it's something someone will figure out when they make the mistake one time. It's literally a 50/50 guess up until then. I think changing it over and over just makes it more confusing; they picked a way to make it work and should stick with that. I do see the point that it needs to reflect the text on the card, but as far as the online implementation goes, whatever is more intuitive is probably better.

With that said, I do like Rabid's color suggestion, though I can't say if it's color-blindness friendly or not.

Ingix

I think what this boils down to is the simple question: Which of the sides the of Journey token (colored, grey) is the face up side, and which is the face down side? I just checked the Adventures rule book online, and it actually never says! It only ever talks about it being face up/down, but never about colored/grey.

I always considered the colored side the face up side, and it seems that many players here agree.

ravi

Quote from: Ingix on 22 February 2017, 01:30:12 PM
I think what this boils down to is the simple question: Which of the sides the of Journey token (colored, grey) is the face up side, and which is the face down side? I just checked the Adventures rule book online, and it actually never says! It only ever talks about it being face up/down, but never about colored/grey.

I always considered the colored side the face up side, and it seems that many players here agree.

The rulebook is written for the real life board game version. I am pretty sure that in that version there is a colored side and a blank side (no gray side). Clearly Colored is face-up and Gray is face-down. They are trying to change the meaning of the GUI token from giving you "face up/face down" info to "will do the good thing/won't do the good thing" info.

AdamH

Quote from: jsh on 22 February 2017, 01:00:20 PM
In some sense this isn't a big deal either way because it's something someone will figure out when they make the mistake one time. It's literally a 50/50 guess up until then. I think changing it over and over just makes it more confusing; they picked a way to make it work and should stick with that. I do see the point that it needs to reflect the text on the card, but as far as the online implementation goes, whatever is more intuitive is probably better.

With that said, I do like Rabid's color suggestion, though I can't say if it's color-blindness friendly or not.

It doesn't work, though. Just because the IRL game might have a problem with things being unclear is not an excuse for the online version to have a similar problem. At least IRL you can define it whichever way you like and be consistent with it -- the online version forces you to do it their way.

Getting used to it is a thing that can happen, but as you mentioned, this is not colorblind-friendly and also could just be made better by text. I'm not saying that text is the best solution but right now it's way better than the current implementation and anything else that has been suggested here because there will be no question what it does to anyone if they just read the card and look at the display.

And for any solution to be functional at all, it needs to do at least this much. If it can be made clear by a picture to everyone (even colorblind people) with no ambiguity at all, then sure that's cool. You could even make it exactly the same as the board game and that would be something (at least you can say it's a problem with the board game and shift the blame, but I don't think that's a good solution. Just saying it's better than what we currently have).

I just don't understand why anyone thinks it's OK to say "just give it a chance and get used to it" when there's a very easy way to do it that is just clear to everyone without any acclimation period. Every single thing that doesn't "just work right" the first time for a new player is a source of frustration and this is a very easy way to eliminate one of them. Arguing that it should stay when it simply doesn't have to just doesn't make any sense.

SkyHard

Quote from: Jacob Marley on 21 February 2017, 10:25:53 PM
Please don't say "us."  That implies that you speak for the entire dominion playing community.[...]vocal minority assume [...]

Us only implies me plus at least one other person. Since my wife has the same oppinion, which personal pronoun should I use? And tell me good sir, why do you assume that I am a minority? Aren't you doing exactly what you say "annoys" you?

Polk5440

Mouse over text is only a partial solution for the browser version. This won't work for touch screen devices down the road. Ideally, mouse over should not be used even in the browser version because it hides crucial information one layer deep rather than being obvious looking at the screen.

More/clearer animations could help. Play Giant, display a quick animation of the token turning over, then do what card says (rather than doing a simple color change of token and everything on the card seemingly happening at once).

I agree the implementation should match the card text, or the card text should change to match the preferred implementation. This isn't such an outlandish suggestion once you realize many cards' text don't match currently printed versions of the card because they've already been updated online to 2nd edition text.


allanfieldhouse

Okay, so this implementation is completely backwards from how the real game works. A colored boot icon is "face up" IRL. Why would you make it backwards?

allanfieldhouse

Honestly, "colored = good play" is more intuitive and would be a better design. Unfortunately, it just doesn't match up with the wording of the card.

Lots of possible solutions of course. A translucent up/down arrow over the image, for example.

Funhaver

#29
Lots of good ideas in this thread... let me attempt one more.

Part 1: Add an obnoxious U and D (or Up and Dn, or FU and FD, or Allan's idea of translucent up and down arrows) atop the black-and-white and colored Journey token images, respectively.

Part 2: Create an option to remove said gaudy text (or arrows) from the images.

It seems to me that this would satisfy most people's requests, keeps the excellent (imo) convention of colored = good is coming, and is color-blind–friendly to boot. Let me know if I'm missing something.