Adam's thoughts

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AdamH

I haven't really gotten used to it yet so I don't have many thoughtful things to say at the moment, but from one game I played I have a few things I want to mention. I'll add more things to this thread as I think of them, if that's appropriate.

When I was selecting things with Courtier, at one point I was able to select two different things. This means I was presented with six buttons that corresponded to the six legal choices. This was confusing, I feel strongly that it should be four checkboxes and I should select exactly two of them and then click a button that says I'm done.

Also, there's an option for "coins" and an option for "gold" which I know will be confusing for some players -- many of them (incorrectly) refer to money/coins as "gold." I think the coins should just be the icon for coins, like the one that is used to show you how much money you have. If there's space I think "gain a gold" would be a lot clearer than just "gold."

Beyond Awesome

I agree with this 100%, especially the check boxes. Right now, it's overwhelming reading through all the options on cards like Courtier and Pawn.

werothegreat

Checkboxes yes please.  Same with Trusty Steed.  I don't want to imagine all the buttons when I reveal Dame Josephine for Courtier.

allanfieldhouse

Quote from: werothegreat on 13 December 2016, 02:25:12 AM
I don't want to imagine all the buttons when I reveal Dame Josephine for Courtier.

Wouldn't that just be one checkbox? "All 4 options"

Seriously though, checkboxes seem like the way to go for all the "pick x of y options" cards.

AdamH

Obvs if you select four out of four things it makes the trivial decision for you, but if I get three options out of four with my Courtier, I want to check three boxes to select what I want, even though that is "less efficient" than clicking one out of four buttons.

In other news, I just played a Page game where I spent several turns not exchanging my Pages for T-hunters because I was confused by the interface. I thought that I should click the button that said "exchange" because then I would be exchanging them.

Obviously the X over the pictures helps, it's what made me realize I was doing something wrong (yes I didn't realize it when I never saw T-hunters in my deck after two shuffles, it was the X. Feel free to make fun of me for this). And yeah I get the intent of it now, but I don't think I'm a complete idiot and I was confused by it.

What would I suggest instead? I'm not sure tbh, I haven't completely thought it through. Maybe if there were two buttons, one that said "keep" and one that said "exchange" and you could toggle between them somehow, and it was obvious which one was active? I dunno.

I also found it weird that I needed to confirm the card I trashed to my Expand before choosing what to gain. I realize the intent is to be able to undo it but I think you can still do that while selecting the card you want to gain. I have not thought this through.

dscarpac

Quote from: AdamH on 13 December 2016, 02:56:56 AM
I also found it weird that I needed to confirm the card I trashed to my Expand before choosing what to gain. I realize the intent is to be able to undo it but I think you can still do that while selecting the card you want to gain. I have not thought this through.
I suppose the issue here is with on-trash effects that might give you info about what card you might gain (or choose not to trash at all)

J Reggie

I agree that Courtier should give you checkboxes rather than the one-click thing.  When revealing a Swamp Hag to a Courtier (and being faced with four options of three choices each), it may be less clicking but it's way more confusing.

limetime

Let it be changed in settings?

Philip

Quote from: AdamH on 13 December 2016, 02:56:56 AM
I also found it weird that I needed to confirm the card I trashed to my Expand before choosing what to gain. I realize the intent is to be able to undo it but I think you can still do that while selecting the card you want to gain. I have not thought this through.

You can disable the need to confirm trashes/discards/etc. of single cards in your user profile under game options. These options will be accessible from the game itself as well at some point.

Bbl

One more +1 for the Checkbox solution instead of the multitude of otions.

scottc

QuoteI just played a Page game where I spent several turns not exchanging my Pages for T-hunters because I was confused by the interface. I thought that I should click the button that said "exchange" because then I would be exchanging them.

"Exchange" is the wrong word to use on that screen.  It's very confusing when you first see it.

I think it would be adequate to let people click the card images, which would behave just like html radio buttons - when you click one the other automatically changes its state.

allanfieldhouse

The biggest problem withe the Page exchange interface is that it works completely opposite for a single card vs multiple cards. For a single card, you click "exchange" to perform the exchange. For multiple cards, clicking the "exchange" button switches the state to "keep".

I'm not sure what the best solution is, but it should at least be consistent. I think I like the "radio button" sort of approach. One for keep and one for exchange. That way it's explicitly obvious which state each card is in.

It would also be great to have a way to switch them all to keep/exchange with just one click.

gkrieg

I will point out that I like being able to not have to click multiple times for things like courtier and pawn.  I like the one-click system.

werothegreat

Quote from: gkrieg on 13 December 2016, 07:26:45 PM
I will point out that I like being able to not have to click multiple times for things like courtier and pawn.  I like the one-click system.

I do not.  I think it's clunkier than a checkbox system.

AdamH

Quote from: werothegreat on 13 December 2016, 07:44:27 PM
Quote from: gkrieg on 13 December 2016, 07:26:45 PM
I will point out that I like being able to not have to click multiple times for things like courtier and pawn.  I like the one-click system.

I do not.  I think it's clunkier than a checkbox system.

I understand how someone could like clicking a mouse less times, but I said I feel strongly about this in my OP and there's a good reason for that. In computer UIs, when you have multiple options, you either use radio buttons or checkboxes for it (depending on how many choices you want to allow to be picked simultaneously). That's so ingrained in all applications at this point that doing anything else will confuse every single user out there.

If enough people like buttons for this, then sure maybe there should be an option for buttons, but the default for this really really needs to be checkboxes -- they can use radio buttons if you're doing exactly one but buttons are just going to confuse like 90% of people or more out there.

Click efficiency is not the highest priority for a product that's just starting out, accessibility and intuitive controls are. I feel strongly about this and I'm willing to continue to defend this position.

Polk5440

Quote from: AdamH on 13 December 2016, 09:22:43 PM
Click efficiency is not the highest priority for a product that's just starting out, accessibility and intuitive controls are.

This is so important to remember.

ehunt

oh man, I really like the click one of 6 instead of 2 of 4 and confirm; on goko i often avoided pawn just because the annoying clicking outweighs the benefits.

dscarpac

I agree on checkboxes -- it takes a lot longer to read through all of the possible permutations. Sure I'd get used to it but it does not seem intuitive.

Thankfully since we have great developers, why not make both options available? I think the default should be checkboxes, but hey, I doubt this is a difficult thing to program and the more flexibility in the interface the more likely more people will be happy!

LaLight

Quote from: dscarpac on 14 December 2016, 02:40:53 AM
Thankfully since we have great developers, why not make both options available? I think the default should be checkboxes, but hey, I doubt this is a difficult thing to program and the more flexibility in the interface the more likely more people will be happy!

This. I personally don't know what is better. At first I though 1/6 is terrible, then I really got used to it. So i'd play with both implementations and checked one in the personal settings that would be more convenient.

Jacob Marley

I'm with Adam on this one.  (Note that I have not played the new client yet)

AdamH

Is there a way to play a game in such a way that it cannot be spectated?

I ask this because it would be nice to playtest some kingdoms I'm designing for my IRL tournament with people not from my area, and I don't want people to be able to see what kingdoms I'm playing.

LaLight

Quote from: AdamH on 14 December 2016, 11:35:56 PM
Is there a way to play a game in such a way that it cannot be spectated?

I ask this because it would be nice to playtest some kingdoms I'm designing for my IRL tournament with people not from my area, and I don't want people to be able to see what kingdoms I'm playing.

I'm afraid not now... Stef is redoing lobby in a major way, maybe that would be possible then.

Psyduck

Quote from: LaLight on 14 December 2016, 06:38:30 AM
Quote from: dscarpac on 14 December 2016, 02:40:53 AM
Thankfully since we have great developers, why not make both options available? I think the default should be checkboxes, but hey, I doubt this is a difficult thing to program and the more flexibility in the interface the more likely more people will be happy!

This. I personally don't know what is better. At first I though 1/6 is terrible, then I really got used to it. So i'd play with both implementations and checked one in the personal settings that would be more convenient.

One thing to keep in mind about buttons is that they don't scale. At the moment, the highest number of options on a card is 4. But imagine having a card with 5 or even 6 options. And maybe you can select 3 or 4 of these. It's unreasonable to try to display any combination then.
Checkboxes do scale, though.

Also, I would recommend to keep the amount of personalization by configuration small. Having many configuration options makes it harder to maintain the software because of the number of available combinations and may become confusing for the users as well. Sometimes it's better to decide on one solution and then stick to it.

limetime


I am not seeing Donald doing 5 or more options on a card.

Donald X.

Quote from: limetime on 16 December 2016, 07:37:33 AM

I am not seeing Donald doing 5 or more options on a card.
That's Donald X. to you.

It doesn't sound so likely, but I prefer checkboxes anyway.

Hertz Doughnut

Quote from: dscarpac on 14 December 2016, 02:40:53 AM
Thankfully since we have great developers, why not make both options available? I think the default should be checkboxes, but hey, I doubt this is a difficult thing to program and the more flexibility in the interface the more likely more people will be happy!

This is precisely the point of my thread:

http://forum.shuffleit.nl/index.php?topic=732.0


Whenever possible, accommodate EVERYONE. Ideally the interface should feel natural to everyone, but we all have different habits and expectations. There's nothing wrong with having multiple methods for accomplishing function x.

yed

It is always harder for the developers to manage more options.

Hertz Doughnut

Quote from: yed on 17 December 2016, 03:11:17 PM
It is always harder for the developers to manage more options.

No, not "always".

Yes, I agree that it is cumbersome to add user preferences. Like keeping track of which background each user wants or whether they want the Auto-Buy functionality.

However, most interface options could simply be programmed as two or three ways to do X. These aren't too hard to program.  e.g. Four hypothetical ways to play treasures: (1) left-click each treasure, (2) left-click "Play Treasures", (3) press spacebar to play all treasures, (4) say "Play treasures" into a microphone.

Even if I never use (4), it doesn't hurt me that it's there. If it's natural to someone else, that's a win for the game. I mean think about all keyboard shortcuts in Microsoft Excel or Adobe Photoshop that casual users don't know about. It doesn't inconvenience them one bit having those options there, and then when one day when they learn about shift-drag (in Excel) they are suddenly 20% more productive. :)

yed

You can't compare this with keyboard shortcuts because they can work at the same time.

If you have too much user preference options designing screens and reproducing and fixing bugs and becomes harder to do. The code is not as much more complicated, the stuff around it is.

Hertz Doughnut

Quote from: yed on 17 December 2016, 04:39:19 PM
You can't compare this with keyboard shortcuts because they can work at the same time.

If you have too much user preference options designing screens and reproducing and fixing bugs and becomes harder to do. The code is not as much more complicated, the stuff around it is.

Completely agree. User-preference-type interface options are relatively difficult. Keyboard-shortcut-type interface options (aka multiple-methods-for-doing-X) are relatively easy.

Overall the goal has to be to make the game feel natural to as many people as possible... and user-preference options are unavoidable for some things (e.g. sound level), but should be used as rarely as possible.

For the widget in question, it could be programmed both ways without a user preference. A dialog box pops up, and on the left side are the MF style checkboxes; on the right side the SI style buttons. The player can use either one. Is that more confusing for new players? Perhaps. Is it worth implementing a user preference? Probably not.

UI is hard. Making everyone happy is hard.

JunkDealer

Adding my voice to checkboxes.  The first time I encountered this I had to read each box several times to make sure I was picking the one I wanted.  This is especially true when each button contains three different items.  Checkboxes while more clicking is faster for me.

On an added note, but slightly different.  I've played a lot of dominion, yet I still couldn't tell you all the different card types any particular card has.  Consequently, I keep having to right click to look at each card to determine which card is the best to reveal with the Courtier.  If you want to minimize clicking in that case the card types should be visible straight from the main play area. If there isn't room perhaps icons for each type?  Although iconography can quickly become problematic too.  For every solution there's another 5 problems :P