Interface things that feel unnatural

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Hertz Doughnut

Great job guys.  This is really sweet.  Haven't run into any bugs yet. :)  Awesome job with all the hard work... getting the backend built, connecting users, and the graphics look fantastic on my 4K monitor.  Take my money!  I'm in!

Having made an independent videogame myself, the thing that I failed at the most was getting input from players about the interface and trying to make it feel natural to them.  Sure, the interface felt 100% natural to me... it was designed around my own habits and preferences.  But when demo-ing it to others, it became obvious that they had different habits/expectations of simple things like where-to-click for x, y, and z.  When they ran into two things that felt unnatural, they left.  No sale.  It only takes seconds to turn an ideal prospect off the game entirely.

The goal is to make the interface feel natural to everyone who tries it... and it's perfectly fine to have more than one way to do function x, if method 1 feels natural for half the players and method 2 feels natural for the other half.

Here are some things that feel unnatural to me on my first day...

1) Right-clicking to read the text of a card.  That wasn't my first impulse.  I eventually found it, but it would be more natural IMO if there was a little magnifying glass icon in the top-right corner of the card.

2) I right-click a card to read the text.  Then I right-click again expecting the big version to go away, but it doesn't go away.  I have to left-click an empty area

3) When drawing a card, it doesn't fly into my hand, so when I drew a copper (and already had 2) it felt like I didn't draw anything, (I didn't notice the 2 incrementing to 3)

4) When I play Herald and it reveals a treasure, the only way to know what happened is to look at the log.  I would prefer that a copper flew into the middle of the screen for a second, and then back to the top of my deck.  (With Ironmonger, the card shows up in the middle of the screen.  I'd like to see that for Herald.)

5) Lord Rattington's discard pile obscures his VP score and the play area obscures mine (see screenshot).  How about putting it at the top of the log?  (stickied above the scrollbar portion)

6) If I click the red 3 in the top-left corner of my coppers in my hand, I thought it would play all 3 coppers, not just one

7) It would be nice to see the card types in the kingdom.  e.g. currently, I have to right-click Scrying Pool to see that it's an attack.  If there isn't room for "Action - Attack - Knight - Victory" maybe we could use icons?

8) Playing a Vault-Tactician deck... When I play Vault it asks me for discards (really like how you handled this!) and I clicked all 7 of my coppers.  Then I realized that I need to keep one back to be discarded with my other Tactician... so I right-clicked the copper.  I wanted it to decrement to 6 coppers, but it didn't.  Also tried shift-clicking, alt-clicking, and ctrl-clicking... like in Windows Explorer, if you have 10 files selected you can ctrl-click to unselect one of them.  Fortunately, I can hit the big UNDO button and just reselect all my discards... that's just mildly inconvenient in this case. :)

9) It would be nice for the color of the numbers to change when a supply is <= 3

10) When my cursor hovers over the rounded-rectangle containing my name, VP chips, coin/debt tokens it turns into a hand... which makes me think something will happen when I left-click.  Left-clicking does nothing.

11) Potion is at the top of the treasures... due to its cost, I expect to see it between Silver and Gold

12) When I trash a card and have Market Square in my hand it says "(Click Below The Log)"... I think it would make more sense if it said "You May Reveal A Reaction"


Again, great job.  I love it.  Just trying to give some helpful feedback.

allanfieldhouse

Good ideas. A lot of these are minor things, but it's the small details that really make good products shine.

In particular, "right-click to deselect one of the seven selected coppers" would be a great feature!

AdamH

Quote from: allanfieldhouse on 21 December 2016, 04:46:33 PM
In particular, "right-click to deselect one of the seven selected coppers" would be a great feature!

Just wanted to echo this. It would be a huge improvement to the existing interface.

AHoppy

Super nit-picky, but on the final VP screen, it feels unnatural to see the "VP tokens" in the right column under Description.  I feel like it should just be "VP source" on the left, with the (Colony), Province, Duchy, Estate listed first and other sources below.  Just feels a bit odd

fett0001

Quote from: allanfieldhouse on 21 December 2016, 04:46:33 PM
Good ideas. A lot of these are minor things, but it's the small details that really make good products shine.

In particular, "right-click to deselect one of the seven selected coppers" would be a great feature!

Personally, left clicking again to toggle selection feels more natural.

Seprix

A lot of these suggestions are good ones, man! Thanks for the input! I do also think there should be some visual cues for drawing and topdecking. :)

serakfalcon

I'd like to add, Royal Carriage (and other "callables") should be "Callable" from the message in the middle of the play area, Calling it from the log is confusing.

tufftaeh

Quote from: fett0001 on 01 January 2017, 03:50:25 AM
Quote from: allanfieldhouse on 21 December 2016, 04:46:33 PM
Good ideas. A lot of these are minor things, but it's the small details that really make good products shine.

In particular, "right-click to deselect one of the seven selected coppers" would be a great feature!

Personally, left clicking again to toggle selection feels more natural.

If you have to select only one card, I agree.
If you have to select two ore more cards, the second left click needs to increase the number of selected stacked cards to 2, however.
The general solution would be to have another left click which cannot increase the number of selected cards on that stack (because it is already the number of cards in that stack or because the total number of selected cards has been reached) toggle the selection of that stack back to zero. I prefer this over right click which should stay "view card" in all situations.

fett0001

Quote from: tufftaeh on 03 January 2017, 04:47:02 PM
Quote from: fett0001 on 01 January 2017, 03:50:25 AM
Quote from: allanfieldhouse on 21 December 2016, 04:46:33 PM
Good ideas. A lot of these are minor things, but it's the small details that really make good products shine.

In particular, "right-click to deselect one of the seven selected coppers" would be a great feature!

Personally, left clicking again to toggle selection feels more natural.

If you have to select only one card, I agree.
If you have to select two ore more cards, the second left click needs to increase the number of selected stacked cards to 2, however.
The general solution would be to have another left click which cannot increase the number of selected cards on that stack (because it is already the number of cards in that stack or because the total number of selected cards has been reached) toggle the selection of that stack back to zero. I prefer this over right click which should stay "view card" in all situations.
This is what I wanted to express.

Cave-O-Sapien

I think the interface should move away from right clicks altogether. It's not well-supported in touch screens.

Quote9) It would be nice for the color of the numbers to change when a supply is <= 3

I don't like this one. What does it matter if a supply has three or fewer cards? What behavior are you trying to influence by alerting a player to this? It feels like an unnecessary "editorial" on the game state.

ElisabetK

I agree 100% on the right-clicks. Using them should be an option for advanced players but the game should not depend on those in any way. It's a real head-scratcher for new players, especially when their usual methods don't work, and it's not mobile-friendly.

As far as the number of cards changing color, it didn't on MF and then it did. It was useful to call attention to piles being almost empty, but not a big deal. I don't like the big red on white X for empty piles though. It doesn't fit the Dominion aesthetic at all. I assume that's for all intents and purposes a placeholder until they do better graphics.

gkrieg

Quote from: ElisabetK on 06 January 2017, 09:07:01 PM
I agree 100% on the right-clicks. Using them should be an option for advanced players but the game should not depend on those in any way. It's a real head-scratcher for new players, especially when their usual methods don't work, and it's not mobile-friendly.

As far as the number of cards changing color, it didn't on MF and then it did. It was useful to call attention to piles being almost empty, but not a big deal. I don't like the big red on white X for empty piles though. It doesn't fit the Dominion aesthetic at all. I assume that's for all intents and purposes a placeholder until they do better graphics.

Now a long press should work to see the cards.

allanfieldhouse

Quote from: Cave-O-Sapien on 05 January 2017, 09:48:01 PM
I think the interface should move away from right clicks altogether. It's not well-supported in touch screens.

Quote9) It would be nice for the color of the numbers to change when a supply is <= 3

I don't like this one. What does it matter if a supply has three or fewer cards? What behavior are you trying to influence by alerting a player to this? It feels like an unnecessary "editorial" on the game state.

It just makes it way easier to see if a pile is getting low without looking through all the numbers. I've never heard anything even slightly negative about this feature. I thought everyone loved it when MF introduced it.

twasa

Quote from: ElisabetK on 06 January 2017, 09:07:01 PM
I don't like the big red on white X for empty piles though. It doesn't fit the Dominion aesthetic at all. I assume that's for all intents and purposes a placeholder until they do better graphics.

I agree. Perhaps a monochrome card face could convey the same message. Something like the cards in "familiar cards" that have not been selected?

ElisabetK

Quote from: twasa on 07 January 2017, 03:19:27 PM
Quote from: ElisabetK on 06 January 2017, 09:07:01 PM
I don't like the big red on white X for empty piles though. It doesn't fit the Dominion aesthetic at all. I assume that's for all intents and purposes a placeholder until they do better graphics.

I agree. Perhaps a monochrome card face could convey the same message. Something like the cards in "familiar cards" that have not been selected?

A dark monochrome, like a shadow, would be great. You don't want anything in the least bit ambiguous. I still would like the lighter, easily read monochrome (like in Familiar Cards) for non-buyable during the buy phase. But who knows, a UI designer might come up with something better too.

zeruf

I think the goal was to make it obvious which piles are empty, which means less sneaky wins. On MF I had several games where I didn't notice that the ruins pile was empty (I really didn't like where they placed it) which was quite annoying. IRL games never have the problem of not knowing which piles are empty, though knowing which ones are low can be a problem. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is if they do change it I would prefer if they still made it something that stands out.