_Mutual_ nominations for biggest improvements needed.

[x4000]

READ THIS BEFORE POSTING!
I will be as brief as possible, to hopefully also be clear.  So please do the courtesy of reading it, because if you don't that undermines this whole thread.

PROBLEM DEFINITION
1. This game releases on the week of the 20th of May, which is 1.5 weeks from now.
2. This game is a day or two from being nominally feature-complete.
3. There are some things that seem to bug a number of people and make an otherwise fun game harder to understand and play than it should be.
4. Crucially, if we want this game to do well, we need to get this into the hands of press sooner than later.  As soon as possible.
5. We will handle item #2 fine on our own, but if we don't identify and resolve the items from #3, then #4 will be a disaster rather than an aid.
6. The biggest barrier to #3 is the fact that we have TOO MUCH FEEDBACK and thus the important things get buried in the noise.  There are a lot of minor polish things, many of which we are happy to do, but which need to come after the press build.

SOLUTION
We need people from the community to discuss things among themselves and then add to this thread the items that several people agree is something of a blocker for a press build.  Not a blocker for a 1.0 build, but something that would make a busy member of the press have a bad impression and give us a bad review or preview.

WHY MUTUAL?
Because everybody has their own opinions.  Obviously we want to please as many people as possible, but we'll never please everyone.  So any posts to this thread should either be things that:

a) Already have multiple supporters on mantis, or multiple mosts on mantis, or multiple posts in other threads with people commenting on this.  You don't have to provide these sources to us, we trust you, but out of respect please don't post something that only you have thought up unless...

b) A separate thread is created to discuss an idea with your peers, and some level of consensus is reached that at least there is a problem, whether or not anyone can agree on a solution.

TLDR
Please post only huge issues in this thread, and only issues that multiple people think are huge issues.  The less clutter, the better -- please no discussion in here, keep that to other threads so that we can actually find things in this thread.  Thanks so much for your help!

[Aquohn]

Hate to harp on the same issue over and over, but this: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13019.0.html

Particularly the second issue.

The UI can be a pretty frustrating turn-off for beginners. Might not be so good for a first impression.

[x4000]

If you can pull specific ideas into your post via an edit, that would be appreciated.  Much has already been changed since your original thread post, and so having notes that are actually up to date would be helpful.  That's another big problem with a lot of the feedback we have at this point: much of it is "stale" and possibly doesn't apply anymore, or applies in a different way.  We have no way of telling what people still think is specifically an issue versus what are things that are solved but were once a problem.

[Aquohn]

OK, new post with remarks related to .805 added.

[chemical_art]

The UI, both for buildings and for resource.

( _still_haven't_played the_game_because the UI and the tutorial is so obtuse)

[PokerChen]

I've compiled a shortlist of things to do here in Aquohn's thread of all recent discussions that I've read and made a rough headcount of their relevance.

EDIT: I'll also try to strike them out as you work through them in the patch notes, since new things may crop up in there.

[iozay]

I personally find the game fun enough to play as-is and a huge improvement over the early alpha.

I suppose that the best thing you can do is to disable the not-finished gods for the Press-Build(or clearly highlight that the god is not finished yet).

Edit: Tutorial is not taken into account based on this post.

[JAlfredGoodwin]

The unfinished Gods and God Tokens need to say *Not Implemented Yet* instead of _*_

[Cinth]

The unfinished Gods and God Tokens need to say *Not Implemented Yet* instead of _*_

Rather see them implemented.  It's pretty quick to see what is and isn't in based on the _*_

[Cyprene]

http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=11192

The biggest issue for me, and it sounds like for a lot of other people, is that it's very hard to plan because resource flows are not made clear.  The game does an excellent job of telling you if you're missing something, but it's very hard to answer questions like, "If I place another barracks in this village, will I have enough pigs coming in for a steady supply of marauders?" or "I need to decide whether to plop down some Giants now or wait for the Norns.  How many turns until I have enough incense?"  For me, at least, this makes strategic thinking impossible, and makes the game much harder than it should be.

It's an easy enough fix, too.  Just next to the icon for pigs, show in parenthesis the amount of bacon they'll bring in, and then next to that the number of pigs generated per turn.

[Winge]

It would also be nice to see a 'rate equivalent' cost for Military production.  Sure, I can calculate my main cost concerns out by hand...Norse Archer costs 24 bread, which equates to 72 wheat every 5 turns or 14.4 wheat per turn.  I could also calculate the cost rate of ships in AI war--I'd be a little bit off due to time rounding to seconds--but I don't really want to do that either.

It looks like orzelek has this on mantis already:  http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=11410