Biggest improvements needed - discussion thread

[Mick]

I created a discussion thread because the rules for posting in the other thread sounded scary. I have no business posting in there because I can't speak for everyone.

This may go toward "feature complete", but I can sum up the improvement I think is most necessary as: Objectives, objectives, objectives!

There are lots of nice things you can do with the interface and tutorial and displaying information, but right now, I can figure out how to plop down buildings and create units just fine. However, I can't really test the game for "fun" because there is no direction at all in what I need to be doing, and there's so much different feedback on the "what you should be doing" should be, that I don't even know what to *pretend* the objectives are when I play.

Without a goal to the game, it feels like a tech demo more than anything else. It's like if I playing Carcassone in the middle of the game being designed, and the creator said to me "just place down tiles, make cities and roads and stuff, is it fun?" we'll work out the victory conditions later." I'd say, "the tiles are pretty, and I could see a cool game being made out of this, but I don't know what that game is yet."

That's exactly how I feel about Skyward Collapse right now.

[x4000]

Thanks for this thread.  By the way, in terms of god powers and objectives, you don't need to point those out to us since those are basically us pursuing "feature completion."  So we're with you there.

[Aquohn]

Indeed. The game is quite pointless right now.

But I think the UI needs quite a bit of work before a press release. I can't speak for the press, but I do think a major part of me tolerating the uncomfortable controls was my intense love for this company, which may not be shared by the press (for reasons unfathomable).

[mrhanman]

I was about to post in the other thread about more explicit direction being needed.  A list of objectives, along with a more helpful UI and tutorial.  That's mainly it, other than polish.

[Pepisolo]

The biggest issue that everybody seems to talk about is how difficult it is to get an overview of the current resource situation.

Would prefer a separate resource flows page, bound to "Q" or something.
 - Produced last turn (raw production per tile, simply a function of ownership)
 - Deposited last turn (the step where chaps drop them into your global stash or converts them)
 - Used last turn (all production and tile placements).

Some kind of overall separate resources screen would be good. With as much information on it was possible (within reason). Middle mouse button could be an optional way to access it.

-- myself

This is something that's really needed. A hotkey would work, a little box would work, but there should be some way to tell what's going on because otherwise it's pretty hard to plan.

I would definitely like this. Or even an end-of-turn, scrollable popup.

A page hotkey would indeed be great

There have been many other posts about it on the forum, too.  Bit of a no-brainer this issue as I'm sure you're probably already ready to work in this, but it is definitely the biggest issue I've seen.

The general solution most people seem to like is a separately bound button to bring up a global resources page.

[Misery]

I created a discussion thread because the rules for posting in the other thread sounded scary. I have no business posting in there because I can't speak for everyone.

This may go toward "feature complete", but I can sum up the improvement I think is most necessary as: Objectives, objectives, objectives!

There are lots of nice things you can do with the interface and tutorial and displaying information, but right now, I can figure out how to plop down buildings and create units just fine. However, I can't really test the game for "fun" because there is no direction at all in what I need to be doing, and there's so much different feedback on the "what you should be doing" should be, that I don't even know what to *pretend* the objectives are when I play.

Without a goal to the game, it feels like a tech demo more than anything else. It's like if I playing Carcassone in the middle of the game being designed, and the creator said to me "just place down tiles, make cities and roads and stuff, is it fun?" we'll work out the victory conditions later." I'd say, "the tiles are pretty, and I could see a cool game being made out of this, but I don't know what that game is yet."

That's exactly how I feel about Skyward Collapse right now.

This.

I'm still playing the game right now, but.... it feels less like playing a game, and more like I'm jamming things in random spots, and pursuing rather vague goals that I made up randomly myself simply to continue the testing process, searching for bugs and simple balance issues.   Actual strategy I use is always related to situations that I set up myself for the testing, generally by firing off large powers arbitrarily.   That part is still interesting and good, in that the large powers create those situations, but I'm not using the big powers for any real REASON.  The chaos has no real point right now.

If I WERENT a tester though.... and was just a player, either coming into this, or watching/reading about it.... I'd be bloody lost.  As best I could tell, the only goal is:  "survive", and the method to do this is: "create stalemate".  And that would appear to be the end of that.   I'm not very clear on wether or not you guys have chosen to go forward with the VP idea or not (it SOUNDS like you are), but if that's the case.... having that in there before showing off the game too much would seem to me like a good idea, since it would be part of the major "framework" of the game, right?   Same if you're going to add like, side-objectives or whatever people were calling those.


I think some of the UI things and such are important too, but I think the "basics" of the UI, like it's overall look and such, are what people reading about the game and seeing screenshots or whatever are mostly going to notice, and that's already there; extra tweaks, basically quality/polish stuff with the UI, can possibly wait a bit.   Maybe.

[nas1m]

For me, the biggest gripe right now is the lack of (implemented - not discussed) mechanics to make the game "interesting" by making the player tip balance out of its (boring) equilibrium by the use of god powers, random events that have to be handled etc. - and preferably have fun during the process  .

That's the biggest issue I can think of right now. Without anything like this players will strife to mimic one side with the other and create a boring tech demo in the process...

[nas1m]

I created a discussion thread because the rules for posting in the other thread sounded scary. I have no business posting in there because I can't speak for everyone.

This may go toward "feature complete", but I can sum up the improvement I think is most necessary as: Objectives, objectives, objectives!

There are lots of nice things you can do with the interface and tutorial and displaying information, but right now, I can figure out how to plop down buildings and create units just fine. However, I can't really test the game for "fun" because there is no direction at all in what I need to be doing, and there's so much different feedback on the "what you should be doing" should be, that I don't even know what to *pretend* the objectives are when I play.

Without a goal to the game, it feels like a tech demo more than anything else. It's like if I playing Carcassone in the middle of the game being designed, and the creator said to me "just place down tiles, make cities and roads and stuff, is it fun?" we'll work out the victory conditions later." I'd say, "the tiles are pretty, and I could see a cool game being made out of this, but I don't know what that game is yet."

That's exactly how I feel about Skyward Collapse right now.

This.

I'm still playing the game right now, but.... it feels less like playing a game, and more like I'm jamming things in random spots, and pursuing rather vague goals that I made up randomly myself simply to continue the testing process, searching for bugs and simple balance issues.   Actual strategy I use is always related to situations that I set up myself for the testing, generally by firing off large powers arbitrarily.   That part is still interesting and good, in that the large powers create those situations, but I'm not using the big powers for any real REASON.  The chaos has no real point right now.

If I WERENT a tester though.... and was just a player, either coming into this, or watching/reading about it.... I'd be bloody lost.  As best I could tell, the only goal is:  "survive", and the method to do this is: "create stalemate".  And that would appear to be the end of that.   I'm not very clear on wether or not you guys have chosen to go forward with the VP idea or not (it SOUNDS like you are), but if that's the case.... having that in there before showing off the game too much would seem to me like a good idea, since it would be part of the major "framework" of the game, right?   Same if you're going to add like, side-objectives or whatever people were calling those.


I think some of the UI things and such are important too, but I think the "basics" of the UI, like it's overall look and such, are what people reading about the game and seeing screenshots or whatever are mostly going to notice, and that's already there; extra tweaks, basically quality/polish stuff with the UI, can possibly wait a bit.   Maybe.

Wholeheartedly seconded (specific points in bold)!

[Mick]

I don't think I want a hot key to bring up a resources page, I pretty much want to see them all the time.

Like a bar along the top or bottom that has each resource icon with a number next to it, and when a unit gets produced or you plop down a building, the little red "-4" floats over the wood number (or whatever) and disappears after it decremented the value.

When you highlight a building and see you need 8 log icons to build it, and you quickly see on the bottom, oh I only have 6 log icons at the moment, I need more. And the tooltip for the building says under log icons that log icons are produced by the whatever.

On-demand resources are a bit funky, but I suppose the global bar could just show the maximum number you have based on the feeder resources. So when you built something that requires say bacon 4 bacon, that that really represents the loss of 16 pigs (or whatever, I don't remember the ratios), then you represent that by having -4 float above the bacon, and -16 float above the pigs.

[Misery]

I don't think I want a hot key to bring up a resources page, I pretty much want to see them all the time.

Like a bar along the top or bottom that has each resource icon with a number next to it, and when a unit gets produced or you plop down a building, the little red "-4" floats over the wood number (or whatever) and disappears after it decremented the value.

When you highlight a building and see you need 8 log icons to build it, and you quickly see on the bottom, oh I only have 6 log icons at the moment, I need more. And the tooltip for the building says under log icons that log icons are produced by the whatever.

On-demand resources are a bit funky, but I suppose the global bar could just show the maximum number you have based on the feeder resources. So when you built something that requires say bacon 4 bacon, that that really represents the loss of 16 pigs (or whatever, I don't remember the ratios), then you represent that by having -4 float above the bacon, and -16 float above the pigs.

The bit about seeing the base resources all the time, yeah, I second that one, big time.   I think that one's very important, as the UI stuff goes.  Alot of time is wasted just moving the screen to a city and checking it there.... and even MORE is wasted when I then realize, I'm looking at the wrong color city for what turn it is.   A nice bar along the side or bottom of the screen displaying each resource and how many are there would help a TON.


As for the on-demand stuff.... hmmm.  I do think that having the city center buildings give a list of what production structures are and arent active within them is important.... because that'd be a nice, quick, easy way to check which production buildings I have, and thus decide on what else I think I need in such and such city.

But, there's ALSO things like mythological creatures or whatever that want the production items.... yet are NOT bound to cities (which is a good thing), and thus only need one production building somewhere in the world, and particularly in the early bit of the game, it's very easy to NOT have such and such building, but not be aware of it.   There are plenty of times when I'll go to place an ice giant or something down and am like, "Wait a minute.... I *dont* have a smelter anywhere?".   

[Mick]

But, there's ALSO things like mythological creatures or whatever that want the production items.... yet are NOT bound to cities (which is a good thing), and thus only need one production building somewhere in the world, and particularly in the early bit of the game, it's very easy to NOT have such and such building, but not be aware of it.   There are plenty of times when I'll go to place an ice giant or something down and am like, "Wait a minute.... I *dont* have a smelter anywhere?".

On that note, I think the "global resource bar" should not show a zero for those icons, but instead have like an X or something whose tooltip tells you which building will make that resource start being available.

[Pepisolo]

I don't think I want a hot key to bring up a resources page, I pretty much want to see them all the time.

Like a bar along the top or bottom that has each resource icon with a number next to it, and when a unit gets produced or you plop down a building, the little red "-4" floats over the wood number (or whatever) and disappears after it decremented the value.

Sounds good to me. Not sure how big this bar would be, though. Hopefully it would work.

[madcow]

Definetly agree that UI is one of the bigger changes needed. Being able to tell the state of things, what's needed, etc without having to mouse over every village and building (in case you forget how buildings look) and then mentally calculate gain/losses should be streamlined. There's a balancing point between an info dump and not enough however you don't want to throw up everything, but it does need some change.

Likewise the resource building groupings could use some rearrangement to be a little more intuitive, and it should be easier to tell what a village has/needs - being able to toggle on/off building names on tiles for instance.

[PokerChen]

I've read though almost all the threads / mantises and compiled a couple of solutions for each critical problem that I think represents the community view here.

Please tell me if something important, or another good solution is missing! I have definite observer bias.

[nas1m]

I've read though almost all the threads / mantises and compiled a couple of solutions for each critical problem that I think represents the community view here.

Please tell me if something important, or another good solution is missing! I have definite observer bias.

Assuming they are working on the objectives/fun issue already/anyway I think you nailed things down fairly well...