The bewildered Everyman
Posts: 3
12/15/2017
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Hello everyone,
it's my first post here and I hope I have not missed a thread for UI-Feedback. But after playing a while (with the branched build, I couldn't play last week) I have a few bits of feedback to the UI, that I wanted to bundle up a bit.
General UI
- Placement of Combat-relevant UI-Elements: In combat I am most interested in heat and hull, but I have to look from one to the other and back while fighting. I would prefer it, if both informations would be in the same area of the screen (same for the weapon-cooldowns, when they are added).
- The Heat-Bar is a welcome addition, but I think it could be a bit bigger. Also, I would suggest adding in a small Piece of Art (a thicker line, a small whistle or something) at the 60%-marker. I now from reading here that 60% is the threshhold for risking damage through heat, but the UI communicates that in no way (in fact, before reading here I assumed I had hit 100% for a short period of time, when one of my weapons malfunctioned instead of seeing it as a percentage-chance when heat is over 60%).
- I would (in addition to indicators for weapon-readiness) suggest a similar indicator for the amount of "straving"-steam available. It is by far the most impactful movement-type in combat right now (with most projectiles flying in a straight line and the ships facing each other with their fronts to fire).
- I like the new information design in the top-right. But I think the color blue for Fuel doesn't match the fantasy of the storylets well. When we talk about fuel, it's about heat, coal and burning. So orange may be a better color.
- Lastly, I am missing a clear indication of time like given in sunless ea (the bells and lamp-symbol). It doesn't have to be a chatlog-style logbook like Sunless Sea (in fact I really like the text being written on the overworld) but an indicator of the date/a calender with a small indication if I currently own the date-property would be much appreciated.
UI in open Windows
- The Journal is for the moment in chronological order. this is fine in the beginning, but it gets tedious when it is full, because you always have to scroll down to check your most actual quests. I would strongly recommend changing the order to be anti-chronological, with the newest element first.
- It is at the moment not possible to see how much Favour I own from redeeming port reports (except when I have just redeemed some). It would be pretty nice to be able to check the amount of Favour I currently have in the peculiarities tab like I can with most other qualities. (Or even make it a posession?) Also, it may be nice to know how much Favour each transaction in New Winchester will cost me before doing it.
Shops:
- When buying equipment it would be a very welcome if it would display which type slot it will fit into.
- For the moment buying/selling higher quantities via the arrows is not really better than clicking the Sell/buy-button X times, as I still have to click the arrow for each additional element. I would like the ability to just click the quantity-number and type in the desired quantity via the keyboard.
I hope this helps a bit. I will probably do some write-ups for the different focused-Feedback-Threads next and then write another longer focused Feedback on some ports and storylets.
Best regards,
TbE
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FailbetterFuzz
Administrator
Posts: 232
1/24/2018
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Greetings The bewildered Everyman
You've not missed one of our sticky threads for UI, we've not done one on this topic yet so your thoughts on this are very welcome.
The bewildered Everyman wrote:
- Placement of Combat-relevant UI-Elements: In combat I am most interested in heat and hull, but I have to look from one to the other and back while fighting. I would prefer it, if both informations would be in the same area of the screen (same for the weapon-cooldowns, when they are added).
- The Heat-Bar is a welcome addition, but I think it could be a bit bigger. Also, I would suggest adding in a small Piece of Art (a thicker line, a small whistle or something) at the 60%-marker. I now from reading here that 60% is the threshhold for risking damage through heat, but the UI communicates that in no way (in fact, before reading here I assumed I had hit 100% for a short period of time, when one of my weapons malfunctioned instead of seeing it as a percentage-chance when heat is over 60%).
- I would (in addition to indicators for weapon-readiness) suggest a similar indicator for the amount of "straving"-steam available. It is by far the most impactful movement-type in combat right now (with most projectiles flying in a straight line and the ships facing each other with their fronts to fire).
- I like the new information design in the top-right. But I think the color blue for Fuel doesn't match the fantasy of the storylets well. When we talk about fuel, it's about heat, coal and burning. So orange may be a better color.
All awesome feedback, thank you very much. I've added the lot to our feedback spreadsheet and we'll be reviewing it in the near future. We're working on a few combat and movement tweaks for February's update actually and some combat related UI tweaks may be in that. But if not there will almost certainly be other tweaks we make afterwards based on additional feedback to those changes.
The bewildered Everyman wrote:
- Lastly, I am missing a clear indication of time like given in sunless ea (the bells and lamp-symbol). It doesn't have to be a chatlog-style logbook like Sunless Sea (in fact I really like the text being written on the overworld) but an indicator of the date/a calender with a small indication if I currently own the date-property would be much appreciated.
It's our intention to eventually get the date somewhere on one of the interfaces, so watch this space. It's not ideal but until that's done you'll always be able to tell the date when you send out the scout, or in any of the in-game messages when approaching a port (or soon to be released spectacles and discoveries)
The bewildered Everyman wrote:
- The Journal is for the moment in chronological order. this is fine in the beginning, but it gets tedious when it is full, because you always have to scroll down to check your most actual quests. I would strongly recommend changing the order to be anti-chronological, with the newest element first.
Yeah, so we're working on a bit of tech that will allow us to mark quests as complete once they reach a certain variable state and that will filter away the ones you've done to the bottom of the Journal. I get the anti-chronological suggestion though, we'll take that on board if there's time.
The bewildered Everyman wrote:
- It is at the moment not possible to see how much Favour I own from redeeming port reports (except when I have just redeemed some). It would be pretty nice to be able to check the amount of Favour I currently have in the peculiarities tab like I can with most other qualities. (Or even make it a posession?) Also, it may be nice to know how much Favour each transaction in New Winchester will cost me before doing it.
I had a discussion with our Narrative Director about this before Christmas. I'll look at my notes to see what was decided (I've slept since then) and i'll chase it up. The second point however (how much a quality you need to play a branch) is one of our bugs. It doesn't affect every quality in game, only certain categories, but it's on our radar and we'll get that fixed ASAP.
The bewildered Everyman wrote:
Shops:
- When buying equipment it would be a very welcome if it would display which type slot it will fit into.
You'll be pleased to know I put a task into our database for this just last week.
The bewildered Everyman wrote:
- For the moment buying/selling higher quantities via the arrows is not really better than clicking the Sell/buy-button X times, as I still have to click the arrow for each additional element. I would like the ability to just click the quantity-number and type in the desired quantity via the keyboard.
You're not the first to mention this and it's already in our feedback spreadsheet. I've added your voice to this particular point.
edited by FailbetterFuzz on 1/24/2018
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