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Nearing beta, need help with user friendliness
2,769
September 13, 2012 11:06 PM
Since you have some space along the bottom, you could make a box of text explaining what each field means when the player mouses over them.
For example, it could explain what the archetype is when the mouse is over it, and the same for the subclass. When a player is 'inspecting' (whatever you want to call it) a field like this, you could put an outline around the specific field so they know which one you're talking about. Then, since the main menu's "section 2" is rather self-explanatory, you could just have the entire section outlined explaining "This is where you determine which skills you have, and which buttons you'll be pressing to use them" rather than explaining what each field is individually (which would be unnecessary since they're all so similar, just attached to different buttons).
For example, it could explain what the archetype is when the mouse is over it, and the same for the subclass. When a player is 'inspecting' (whatever you want to call it) a field like this, you could put an outline around the specific field so they know which one you're talking about. Then, since the main menu's "section 2" is rather self-explanatory, you could just have the entire section outlined explaining "This is where you determine which skills you have, and which buttons you'll be pressing to use them" rather than explaining what each field is individually (which would be unnecessary since they're all so similar, just attached to different buttons).
[twitter]Casey_Hardman[/twitter]
404
September 13, 2012 11:31 PM
I'm going to make some simple suggestions relating to the first screenshot. I think I would have to fiddle to see exactly what's going on in the second screen before suggesting what to do to it.
The first thing I would do is basically what you've done in the screenshots, group things together in a box and title them:
Put a box around '1' and title it "Champion Creation"
Put a box around '2' and title it "Ability Setup"
Put a box around '3' to try and make it more like a 'navigation bar', or alternatively put a border around the entire screen and try to integrate the three buttons like 'tab headings'
Put a box around '5', differentiate the two rows of resources, and like you've titled the bottom row, title the top row "Current Resources"
Put a box around the Trade Goods just to keep consistency.
If I'm interpreting this correctly, the disband button is only used for Disbanding the current champion, and the exit button is what you use to leave the house and return to play. If you don't have a champion, the exit button is replaced with a 'hire' button (ie, you can't leave if you don't have a champion)
If the above is correct, then I would do the following:
Enlarge the 'Exit' button.
Move the 'Disband' Button to the Character Setup portion of the screen (I would put it just on the bottom edge of the character portrait).
If you do not have a champion, I would make the "Disband" button a "Hire" button, and grey out the Exit button.
Add a tooltip to say "You may not exit without a hired champion" when the exit button is greyed out.
Possibly, rename the "Exit" button to "Return to World" or something of the sort.
Hopefully these help. Obviously they're not gospel, but I think it would clear things up.
The first thing I would do is basically what you've done in the screenshots, group things together in a box and title them:
Put a box around '1' and title it "Champion Creation"
Put a box around '2' and title it "Ability Setup"
Put a box around '3' to try and make it more like a 'navigation bar', or alternatively put a border around the entire screen and try to integrate the three buttons like 'tab headings'
Put a box around '5', differentiate the two rows of resources, and like you've titled the bottom row, title the top row "Current Resources"
Put a box around the Trade Goods just to keep consistency.
If I'm interpreting this correctly, the disband button is only used for Disbanding the current champion, and the exit button is what you use to leave the house and return to play. If you don't have a champion, the exit button is replaced with a 'hire' button (ie, you can't leave if you don't have a champion)
If the above is correct, then I would do the following:
Enlarge the 'Exit' button.
Move the 'Disband' Button to the Character Setup portion of the screen (I would put it just on the bottom edge of the character portrait).
If you do not have a champion, I would make the "Disband" button a "Hire" button, and grey out the Exit button.
Add a tooltip to say "You may not exit without a hired champion" when the exit button is greyed out.
Possibly, rename the "Exit" button to "Return to World" or something of the sort.
Hopefully these help. Obviously they're not gospel, but I think it would clear things up.
September 14, 2012 06:51 AM
@Pyro Thanks a bunch! those are excellent suggestions!
I will implement them all today, you are hereby added to the 'thanks to' section
I am impressed at how well you got the interface and how quickly you where able to think up improvements, I really struggle when i comes to intuitive user interfaces.
I will implement them all today, you are hereby added to the 'thanks to' section
I am impressed at how well you got the interface and how quickly you where able to think up improvements, I really struggle when i comes to intuitive user interfaces.
13,718
September 14, 2012 09:48 AM
Add an advanced button and reduce the number of displayed elements using a default configuration for these element.
For example 2 seems to be more advanced settings which should be hidden to new players. The players will get curious over time and will play around with the advanced settings once they got familiar with the basics.
For example 2 seems to be more advanced settings which should be hidden to new players. The players will get curious over time and will play around with the advanced settings once they got familiar with the basics.
404
September 14, 2012 10:24 AM
@Pyro Thanks a bunch! those are excellent suggestions!
I will implement them all today, you are hereby added to the 'thanks to' section
I am impressed at how well you got the interface and how quickly you where able to think up improvements, I really struggle when i comes to intuitive user interfaces.
Glad you liked my suggestions. I didn't get a chance last night to install the alpha but I'll have a look after work today to see if I can come up with anything for the second screen.
Honored to be included in the "Thanks to" section, makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. ^^
Add an advanced button and reduce the number of displayed elements using a default configuration for these element.
For example 2 seems to be more advanced settings which should be hidden to new players. The players will get curious over time and will play around with the advanced settings once they got familiar with the basics.
I agree in principle that hiding any advanced features is a good idea to simplify the UI for newer players, but I disagree with the fact that '2' classifies as an advanced setting.
In the early stages when the abilities are limited it is essentially control setup for your character, which I think should be made obvious rather than hidden. Just make it obvious that you will unlock further abilities as you progress, and then it's understandable that you can add to it later but for now you can change what button does what.
819
September 14, 2012 01:03 PM
What follows is my personal take on design in general. Maybe you'll only agree with parts of it. I only want to give you another outlook on things.
Interestingly enough, when I saw that first screen shot, in its tiny thumbnail form, I thought "Oh god, far too much stuff is happening on that screen." When I enlarged it, I still felt that way; but after a few seconds of just looking at it, I realized it was straightforward and not too hard to understand. But that's not a good thing. In my time testing out some simple games with friends/family and justbeing a gamer myself, I've realized that you just cannot underestimate the fact that players absolutely refuse to do two things:
1. Wait
2. Read
I don't know why this is the case, but I've caught myself falling into this attitude plenty of times. A menu pops up, I assume it's too complicated, and just try to keep clicking through because I don't want to deal with it at the moment.
The solution? I think you need to try to design your menus around very specific gameplay scenarios. Imagine what your menus would be like for a player who's just jumping into your game to try it out for 20 to 30 minutes. He's playing your game with a sense of some self-imposed urgency, and wants to get the breadth of the experience with very little depth. He doesn't want to customize anything, learn any special techniques or experience any subtle nuances. If a menu comes up, 9 times out of 10 he's going to click around until it goes away. Designing around this case, it might be best to do as someone else before me has said: Just have some default settings and "next" and "back" buttons that let the user glide through a menu, glossing it over.
Another gameplay scenario might be the I'm in a terrible mood case. We've all been like this. You wanna try something new out, but you're also in an awful mood; you're just waiting for a reason to decide that it's garbage and move on. And usually what's the first thing that gets you to toss the game aside? It's either unintuitive controls: It takes more than one try to get the gist of how the game is played; or bad menus: It takes more than 5 seconds to understand the gist of what any given menu is asking of you.
The solution? I think you should use very obvious human tendencies in your favor. What do we tend to focus on in any given situation? The center of something. Putting something in the center almost inextricably ties it to a meaning of "This is the focus. Look at this. This is what you care about." Anything on the side will literally be treated as a side item. It's not important, or so it seems. So you might want to center the most important stuff, and put the less important stuff (Like controls, which probably should be in their own unique menu) on the sides. Also note that symmetry means a ton. If your screen is vertically symmetrical, the player will feel like there's some inherant meaningful connection between where an option is and what it actually does. This means you'll have to make sure options are where players expect them to be. How do you do that? I dunno. Try some different layouts on people, watch what they do rather than asking them what they think. Follow the mouse (or whatever cursor is used), and you'll see where the common tendencies are. You can then re-arrange the most important items.
I hope these ideas at least help you out.
Interestingly enough, when I saw that first screen shot, in its tiny thumbnail form, I thought "Oh god, far too much stuff is happening on that screen." When I enlarged it, I still felt that way; but after a few seconds of just looking at it, I realized it was straightforward and not too hard to understand. But that's not a good thing. In my time testing out some simple games with friends/family and justbeing a gamer myself, I've realized that you just cannot underestimate the fact that players absolutely refuse to do two things:
1. Wait
2. Read
I don't know why this is the case, but I've caught myself falling into this attitude plenty of times. A menu pops up, I assume it's too complicated, and just try to keep clicking through because I don't want to deal with it at the moment.
The solution? I think you need to try to design your menus around very specific gameplay scenarios. Imagine what your menus would be like for a player who's just jumping into your game to try it out for 20 to 30 minutes. He's playing your game with a sense of some self-imposed urgency, and wants to get the breadth of the experience with very little depth. He doesn't want to customize anything, learn any special techniques or experience any subtle nuances. If a menu comes up, 9 times out of 10 he's going to click around until it goes away. Designing around this case, it might be best to do as someone else before me has said: Just have some default settings and "next" and "back" buttons that let the user glide through a menu, glossing it over.
Another gameplay scenario might be the I'm in a terrible mood case. We've all been like this. You wanna try something new out, but you're also in an awful mood; you're just waiting for a reason to decide that it's garbage and move on. And usually what's the first thing that gets you to toss the game aside? It's either unintuitive controls: It takes more than one try to get the gist of how the game is played; or bad menus: It takes more than 5 seconds to understand the gist of what any given menu is asking of you.
The solution? I think you should use very obvious human tendencies in your favor. What do we tend to focus on in any given situation? The center of something. Putting something in the center almost inextricably ties it to a meaning of "This is the focus. Look at this. This is what you care about." Anything on the side will literally be treated as a side item. It's not important, or so it seems. So you might want to center the most important stuff, and put the less important stuff (Like controls, which probably should be in their own unique menu) on the sides. Also note that symmetry means a ton. If your screen is vertically symmetrical, the player will feel like there's some inherant meaningful connection between where an option is and what it actually does. This means you'll have to make sure options are where players expect them to be. How do you do that? I dunno. Try some different layouts on people, watch what they do rather than asking them what they think. Follow the mouse (or whatever cursor is used), and you'll see where the common tendencies are. You can then re-arrange the most important items.
I hope these ideas at least help you out.
2,211
September 14, 2012 01:46 PM
Interestingly enough, when I saw that first screen shot, in its tiny thumbnail form, I thought "Oh god, far too much stuff is happening on that screen." When I enlarged it, I still felt that way; but after a few seconds of just looking at it, I realized it was straightforward and not too hard to understand.
Seconded.
One of the things that jumps out at me is the one thing that doesn't appear to have been mentioned anywhere. What's the deal with the 'Trade Goods' section down the side? This does not appear to bear any relevance to character creation or anything else that belongs on this page. If feels out of place and seems to add confusing clutter that detracts from the focus of the screen. If it's not relevant to this screen (character creation), stick it somewhere else. If it does belong here, it might need to be split into a separate screen.
I think a vertical resource bar might be better. At the moment, the sheer width of it makes it impossible to take in at a glance, whereas with a vertical bar you'd be able to put the icons closer together while still having space to fit some big numbers next to them. Failing that, if they can be reasonably categorised into regular columns, use a grid.
Consider breaking the character creation/upgrade process into a step by step wizard. Doing this means you can present the player with a minimum set of controls to perform one very specific task, and a continue button to go onto the next step. On upgrades, certain steps (where there are no new options) might be skipped entirely. The process of buying upgrades (which can then be added to the control scheme) could also form a step in this wizard. This way you don't waste the user's time trying to figure out what's new, and what they need to do, as well as giving you more screen real estate to use for clearer text, help text, and maybe even lists so that multiple options can be viewed at once (often preferable to than spin/dropdown style controls, if you have the space)
404
September 14, 2012 02:29 PM
Consider breaking the character creation/upgrade process into a step by step wizard. Doing this means you can present the player with a minimum set of controls to perform one very specific task, and a continue button to go onto the next step. On upgrades, certain steps (where there are no new options) might be skipped entirely. The process of buying upgrades (which can then be added to the control scheme) could also form a step in this wizard. This way you don't waste the user's time trying to figure out what's new, and what they need to do, as well as giving you more screen real estate to use for clearer text, help text, and maybe even lists so that multiple options can be viewed at once (often preferable to than spin/dropdown style controls, if you have the space)
I don't believe that using a wizard would be an option except perhaps the first time you create a character. Looking at the video of gameplay it looks like you are able to change aspects of your champion on the fly. I would rather not have to launch a wizard each time I wanted to change something, and I think it'd be better then to have the one way of creating a champion consistent throughout rather than have a wizard and then a different option for making changes.
One of the things that jumps out at me is the one thing that doesn't appear to have been mentioned anywhere. What's the deal with the 'Trade Goods' section down the side? This does not appear to bear any relevance to character creation or anything else that belongs on this page. If feels out of place and seems to add confusing clutter that detracts from the focus of the screen. If it's not relevant to this screen (character creation), stick it somewhere else. If it does belong here, it might need to be split into a separate screen.
Agree with this. I don't know what the trade goods is there for, I couldn't work it out from the screenshot. Maybe it's obvious through gameplay but I haven't got to trying the game out yet. I don't feel that it's really out of place. It seems that way for me because I don't know what it's for. If it has a purpose relating to this screen, then I think it would be fine where it is. If it doesn't, then it needs to go.
169
September 14, 2012 06:58 PM
i didn't read all the others posts, and didn't have chance yet to try your game, but what i can tell from you initial post is:
there seems to be way to much going on - which means that the player will have to read a lot, and not play; as axel cholewa puts it in his post on gamastura: "Players want to play. If you want to teach players, make them play!" (http://gamasutra.com/blogs/AxelCholewa/20120808/175498/Players_dont_want_to_read.php)
so what you may ask yourself is: how far can i strip all this stuff down so that the game is still playable? and how can i introduce all those features gradually?
introducing all these mechanics (and thusly the corresponding parts in the interface) at a time would give you a lot of advantages:
x you can provide a smooth learning curve
x you gain rewards for your player, in unlocking all those functionality in a gradual fashion - "oh sweet, i can trade resources now?"
x you won't alienate players by providing (on the first glance) a too complex interface
...
and is it really necessary providing all the different resources right from the start? john shafer (civ5) for example said: "We didn’t bother teaching the player what iron or other strategic resources were good for until it actually mattered." (http://jonshaferondesign.com/2012/04/16/loweringthegates/)
it also seems to me that the option to configure your keys might be a little out of place in the first screenshot - i don't think that players will want to change the controls too often, so i suggest to put it somewhere less prominent.
i think a few icons might also make things more appealing - for example for the equipment slots etc.
other thoughts:
i think the disband button should be nearer to the champion himself, i wouldn't name the exit-button "exit" - as some players might think it may leave the game itself, aaand.. there doesn't seem to be such an exit button from inside the upgrade-menu (which is actually on the same layer as the champion-button?)
so i hope i made some sense/didn't just repeat what has already been said,
best of luck for you beta! keep it up
there seems to be way to much going on - which means that the player will have to read a lot, and not play; as axel cholewa puts it in his post on gamastura: "Players want to play. If you want to teach players, make them play!" (http://gamasutra.com/blogs/AxelCholewa/20120808/175498/Players_dont_want_to_read.php)
so what you may ask yourself is: how far can i strip all this stuff down so that the game is still playable? and how can i introduce all those features gradually?
introducing all these mechanics (and thusly the corresponding parts in the interface) at a time would give you a lot of advantages:
x you can provide a smooth learning curve
x you gain rewards for your player, in unlocking all those functionality in a gradual fashion - "oh sweet, i can trade resources now?"
x you won't alienate players by providing (on the first glance) a too complex interface
...
and is it really necessary providing all the different resources right from the start? john shafer (civ5) for example said: "We didn’t bother teaching the player what iron or other strategic resources were good for until it actually mattered." (http://jonshaferondesign.com/2012/04/16/loweringthegates/)
it also seems to me that the option to configure your keys might be a little out of place in the first screenshot - i don't think that players will want to change the controls too often, so i suggest to put it somewhere less prominent.
i think a few icons might also make things more appealing - for example for the equipment slots etc.
other thoughts:
i think the disband button should be nearer to the champion himself, i wouldn't name the exit-button "exit" - as some players might think it may leave the game itself, aaand.. there doesn't seem to be such an exit button from inside the upgrade-menu (which is actually on the same layer as the champion-button?)
so i hope i made some sense/didn't just repeat what has already been said,
best of luck for you beta! keep it up
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