New features on hold for polish on UI?
issueid=2759 10-10-2020 07:49 PM
GrimMist
New features on hold for polish on UI?
Thinking that new features should be put on hold while some polish is done on basic features.

First let me say I am new to the game and I'm loving it, mostly.

I know the game is in alpha/beta aka steam's "early release". But there are some things that really need to be address that impact the usability of the game, like the UI. (I know some of this is on a to do list somehwere, but I want to be specific and granular about what I see and suggestions to make it better). I think a lot of it adds to the grindy feel of the game and the lack of some of these just turn new player off the game. This is mostly just UI issues, but yet it covers a large scope of things. Yea it's long, but they are all mostly UI stuff.

I am old, not that old :P, and I can't read most anything in this game, yea I know the bane of 2k monitor, but it's even bad on my 1080 ultra-wide. With farming I can't distinguish between the 0 and 5% bars for weeds and pest and 10 is a real push. The chat text is horrible to try and read. I have resorted to using Microsoft magnifier just so I can see what I'm typing. The quantities on most anything... forget it, it's there until it's blank, which makes crafting a real B$$$$. And I understand that the UI just got a major overhaul, but it feels disjointed. So the following is my list of things that I think (and wish) need to get addressed before new features are added:

1.
Can we get a way to scale the ui and is it possible to make the handling of the text seprate from the ui enlargement in some way. So that font has maybe a regular vs large vs extra large choice and scaling the ui scales everything. so that when you choose the extra large that barely fits, it gets scaled up to keep the same ratio of extra largeness as the ui scales.

2.
A different text font with different effects might make this a lot easier to read. Instead of a serif font (with feet) I'm thinking a San-serif font will be cleaner and easier to read. Less fiddly stuff on each letter will maybe make the font easier to read, I know that some say the serif makes it easier to read, but I think that is for book format with the serif creates a flowing bottom line across the page.

The outline of the text makes it harder not easier to read. It needs to be a lot bigger, or a lot smaller, as it is right now it's just adding noise. So make the outline really really big and then soften it so that it forms a large cloud behind the text? This will hide the background and pop the text. Or just make it really really small and still soften it, to where you don't really see the outline but it's still there.

The colors also need to contrast the brown brassy colors of the UI background, that purple isn't great, the green is amazing, white is ok in some instances. Maybe allow the user to choose their own font colors for chat? The white doesn't work really well in the item quantities, I see that you did some shadow boxing to try and fix it, but it's not enough, that green for tribe chat is really pretty good and might be a better choice for the quantities.

Could the line spacing be increased? I think a little more space between text line could add to readability.

3.
The game needs to remember what monitor to open on and the position it opens at. I've seen some games that use the windows maximum icons in the title bar to swap between full screen boarder-less windowed and traditional windowed mode and that would be really nice. I know that some games get around the UI scaling issue by forcing a 1080 base resolution and then doing some kind of up-scaling for the 2k and 4k monitors to get around the scaling issues. This might be something to look into and then issue #1 wouldn't be such a big deal. Or the game recognizing and using the scaling set by the user in the OS? But the game is really bad on 2k monitors.

4.
Can we get the indication of different tiers and powers of items needs to be on the icon. I know it's sooo WoW-ish, but icon boarders for the low, medium, and high tier. I know there is more tiers than this, but these are the basic, and then say low is white, then junk can be a really dark gray, and the highest low can be white. Medium can be green, with the lower being more of a yellow and the upper more of a blue green and so forth and so on.

The the power, which if I'm not mistaken (which I probably am) there are 4 of, we can do stars, or dots or something along one of the edges. Or you do different things or colors for each power, like regular is white, next is green, then blue, then purple, and it's a dot, a box, a plus, and a star, or maybe the quantity number is this color against a small black background, something small but indicative of a different power level.

I know it's been done again and again in games, but that is because it works. It's an easy visual cue to the level and quality of an item.

5.
Tip and extended information needs to be housed in text boxes. It's a big blob of text as it is, there is no uniformity to it, and it's hard to find what you want. Create a master extended text info box for most categories of items, on the left of this box is the Heading of this info, and to the right is the info, while the headings will always exist, not everything will have info the to the right. Lets take food items:

See how I combined the cooked food and the plant details for one uniform extended details box that allows the info to be in the same place all the time, even if some of it gets left blank?

6.
A big gripe I have as a new player coming into the game is that the keys to do and access things are all over the place. The whole click, right click, shift click ect needs to be redone with a mater plan in mind. I get where it was coming from, right click to access more options menu, BUT ALMOST EVERYTHING HAS MORE OPTIONS (imagine Kermit the frog frustrated at miss piggy yelling). So that now to do anything your always right clicking everything.

Left click should be the primary function key, and if there are several primary options are available it brings it up, So that left clicking any pouch/bin/storage selects it and opens it. If I don't have the rights to open it, it selects it and that is it. The whole label/permissions thing needs to be moved to right click. If it's an empty fire, left click it fills the fire. If it's a stocked or semi stocked fire it lights the fire. If it's a lit fire, the I get the options of cook, fill, extinguish, and right click is the destroy. This way when I hover over an item, I get a tip box of "fuel fire" or "light fire" so that I know what the basic function that is going to happen on left click. (tips can be turned off in a menu somewhere so the immersion for some players isn't butchered, along with settings that allow the adjustment of time to pop, to time to stay, and even where to display, top, bottom left right or at cursor) Some items will remain just selected upon click, most won't.

Right click should be less used functions like split stack, labels, delete, discard (drop item), and admin guild leader functions.

Shift click should function like any other shift click and should select everything from selected to what is shift clicked on. Shift Click and Drag could/should be added to in world item selection, so that players can select multiple things in an area to move or reset permissions on. This is one area where clicking anything else would do nothing more and just deselect or single select the new item is it was just a single left click, but right clicking a selected item would bring up options menu.

Control click should be like any other control click of selecting multiple items. Control Clicking could/should be added to in world item selection, so that players can select multiple parts of stuff to move or reset permissions on. Once again this is one area where clicking anything else would do nothing more and just deselect or single select the new item is it was just a single left click, but right clicking a selected item would bring up options menu.

Control Shift click, or shift scrolling on an already selected item could be for splitting stacks.

Being able to select multiple thing and set permissions, or delete, or move to other inventories are basic usability features that this game really needs and I think has a huge impact on player retention and the overall feel of how grindy the game is, but really isn't. Like when I was grinding basketry, I made a bunch of bins and I was totally willing to set the out for anyone to take, but the daunting task of having to set permissions on each single one of them at a time was "screw this" reaction (change to a bad word and that was what went though my mind) and then not being able to sell a stack of them on the trade was even worse I wasn't going to list each one, and defiantly not for a dollar each, but the though of just having to delete them was soul crushing. Having to delete 3 hours worth of work because the game doesn't have the basic functionality to set permissions on multiple items at a time is a HUGE turn off when experienced by a new player in this way. So while I know a lot of devs and programmers see this functionality as late stage polish, it's not, it's a basic functionality of the game that needs to be implemented early.

7.
Needed craft items slots needs a different background that clearly identifies them as being empty. Maybe a red wash to the entire empty icon area? It's it's empty and needs an item it's washed in red, if it's optional it's washed in orange. As it is now, it's really hard to see that some of the tool slots are empty, take for example the paddle when making mortar. OMG it's almost impossible to see the difference between the paddle and the empty paddle! I have sat here yelling at my screen why won't it craft, just cause it didn't take when i though i had slotted the paddle and I can't see the difference.

8.
You have made a choice to go with stacks of 1s 4s (for the back, not so great) 50s and 100s, but then why on earth have you then gone with crafting in quantities of 5s and 20s?!? This is just infuriating. If my verbiage seems a little aggravated it because I can feel the anger tensing in my shoulders and neck at this. Pick a number and stick with it, 5 should be your base (cause it works with what you've mostly done). The back should hold 5 items. Stacks should be in multiple of 5s (50s 100s like you have most everything). Crafting should be in multiples of 5s and I would prefer if the max crafting stack would be the same as the stack quantity, but if you really insist on limiting to smaller size then do half at 25s not 20s. You've added unnecessary clicky-ness and grindy-ness to the game by making a player stack and re-stack items to craft just because the craft quantity doesn't match the stack or the remainder of the stack.

I am by no means saying get rid of the 1s or make 1s stack like the tools or outfits, I'm only referring to the stacks of things, but i do think empty bins and pouches should stack in 5s.

9.
Maybe a redo the crafting interface and get rid of the "action/f1-f11/crafting bar" and combine all the crafting into one panel so that at the top of the panel is a drop down or scroll though option to choose the crafting category? This choice then auto populates the recipe choices below. The search bar still stays above the recipes but now can search all categories. Since most of the crafting panels are exactly the same in layout, just different recipes.

Also just list all the recipes and make them all visible learned and unlearned, but gray out (slightly) the title of one not discovered yet, or put a faint line though them. This allows new player to see the material needed for things they can't craft and be able to gather them and take the items to someone that can craft it for them.

Roll the cooking panel into this too, but when you choose the cooking recipes, it changes to the cooking layout? It also has a fire ring indicator slot. This slot is red washed if you are not standing close enough to a lit fire.

9.5.
Allow the crafting interface to pull from any open inventory. Allow the crafting items to auto populate from open inventories, choosing the lowest quality and then lowest durability first. There should be a check box that allow this option "auto fill from open inventories". Now this doesn't mean that you open your cart and it sees inside all 20 bins, it means fully open inventories that are showing the items needed. When you uncheck the "auto fill from open inventories" you then have to slot each tool and item.

10.
Finally can we have a set of buttons for Stack All, Stack by Tier, and Stack by Tier and Power, and a Sort button for inventories (like the inventory sort of does now, but move it down a row and add more), along with a search function. Stack all stacks all of the same thing combining tiers and removing all powers. Stack by Tier, combines by tier keeping low quality tier together into one stack, mid quality tier into one stack and high quality tier into another stack. but erases the power. Then the Stack by tier and power stacks by combining tiers and keeping powers but stacking them by same powers (sort of like how stack works now). Then there is the sort function that doesn't do anything but reorder the stacks by category, name, tier, and then power.

The search function... a separate window that pops up from a button is probably the best way to handle it? like a magnifier glass down in the icon tool bar in the bottom right? It has a search bar at the top that you type in what your looking for, then under it has a few check mark boxes that limit or expand the search area such as: open inventories, open containers (tents, carts), personal access to, family access to, tribe access to, alliance access to, public access to. the bottom shows the results with the Item with the details of that item and then go into the location such as tribe lands, the container name, the bin/pouch name/location, so that if I searched for trout it would looks something like this:

Item quantity tier power tribe container/description bin/Pouch
Trout 5 89 .1 pawnee sally's cart fish
Trout head 1 25 1 haven grim's tepee junk

These are just ideas and suggestions that I've though were really needed. Like I said I'm new to the game, so maybe I've got it all wrong, I know some of these ideas are a huge undertaking, some not so much. Any ways my 2 cents of things to add and polish.
Issue Details
Issue Number 2759
Issue Type Feature
Project Suggestions
Category Unknown
Status Acknowledged
Priority Unknown
Suggested Version Unknown
Implemented Version (none)
Votes for this feature 3
Votes against this feature 0
Assigned Users (none)
Tags (none)




10-10-2020 10:10 PM
Xsyon Citizen
I fully understand your difficulties with the letters being too small. My solution (which might help as interim solution for you?) was resolution set to 1366x768 with full screen. This made it playable for me.

Regarding the chat window, there is a tiny litte dot near the scroll bar with which you can make the chat window less transparent.

I hope that these two hints might be useful for you until Xsyon can react on your proposal. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you that you can enjoy the game more :)

10-11-2020 10:18 AM
Xsyon Citizen
I like some of the ideas others I do not.

4) Love this idea, would be super helpful.

6) It's pretty standard to use shift left click to split a stack.
I can see how you would like to use MS standard options however, most games do not do this for many reasons.


Telling someone to play at 1/2 their res just to read things on the game seems silly. @Wyry


9) He is already doing this. Great minds think alike.

10) Not sure what "tier" means in this case. Power can't be stacked together. Removing the power would pretty much just make it 100% grinding material. I think the better key here is to lower the # of diff powers in the game instead of 5 we should have like 2 or 3.


1) and 2) are really good ideas and pretty much a must to bring it into playable for most people.
Unable to read text, unable to play on my second monitor for issues like combat.

7) Loving this idea.


5) I would love to see this, it would make reading things a lot better. One of the hardest things I have to try to read is the recent uses on skills. You use this a lot in top end skilling/stat gains and its super hard to read.
I've even cut down my res to 2k instead of 4k.


3) This is a good idea, but I dont see it being a big deal. Moving a window into another screen is not that hard to do once a gaming session. Also some people might not even want it in the same spot as last time so it cuts down on who would even use this.
I would use it, but I don't think its high on the list of things needed to be figured out.

10-11-2020 11:12 PM
Xsyon Citizen
Quote Originally Posted by MrDDT
Telling someone to play at 1/2 their res just to read things on the game seems silly. @Wyry
I know :) This is why I wrote "INTERIM solution". We all know that Xsyon needs time to change things. Meanwhile reducing the resolution MIGHT enable the player to play UNTIL the changes are done. :D

11-02-2020 06:48 AM
Visitor
Quote Originally Posted by Wyry
I fully understand your difficulties with the letters being too small. My solution (which might help as interim solution for you?) was resolution set to 1366x768 with full screen. This made it playable for me.

Regarding the chat window, there is a tiny litte dot near the scroll bar with which you can make the chat window less transparent.

I hope that these two hints might be useful for you until Xsyon can react on your proposal. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you that you can enjoy the game more :)
I tried changing the resolution and setting it to fullscreen, but it made no difference for me. Do you know if there are any other options?

11-02-2020 07:00 AM
Visitor
Quote Originally Posted by ashwyn
I tried changing the resolution and setting it to fullscreen, but it made no difference for me. Do you know if there are any other options?
Ah nevermind, apparently I had to restart the game, heh.