Slitherine

Kaede11 wrote: ↑Sat May 30, 2020 4:03 pm Obviously, this was made using paint in 5 minutes, but you get the idea.

This game is amazing, but some quality of life improvements would be welcome both for understanding everything that happens and making the game less daunting for new players.

Kaede11 wrote: ↑Sun May 31, 2020 7:43 am That said, why this answer? Are suggestions unwelcome here? honest question, really. I might have overlooked a rule and I aplogize if that happens to be the case.

Pocus wrote: ↑Mon Jun 01, 2020 1:50 pm The main reason is not laziness, but time allocation. Also on a personal level I don't see much of a point of showing that 12.6 divided by 10 is 1.26 ... Just move the decimal separator a few pixels to the left in your mind and you get the result

Anything, even trivial requires time, and translation/changes in 4 languages. What you think is trivial ... is indeed trivial, but I'm sure that in the end that's 20 mn on my side, all accounted for. Seems not much? No it is not, but when your TODO list is 20 pages long ... Everything is a matter of priority.

travling_canuck wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2020 9:15 pm To me, the main value of the original suggestion was less the natural Decadence decline - although I agree that putting it in as a green number visually provides the information very quickly and in a way that is more intuitive than reading the text and dividing the total by 10, I also agree it's not critical to add.

The main value was the second number Kaede11 suggested adding, although I'd tweak it so that instead of it showing the expected Decadence next turn, it showed the Expected Change next turn: a quick snapshot of whether Decadence is going up or going down in the region. Green if going down, Red if going up.

To figure this out right now, the player needs to add the Nation size factor to the Structures factor, then divide the current Accumulated figure by 10 and subtract that number. Can I do that? Sure. Would it be more useful for the player to be able to simple look at a line and know whether Decadence is going up or down in that region? Yes, I think so.

Is this the highest value use of Pocus' time? No idea! But consider this a suggestion for some version of the game.

MarkShot wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2020 11:22 am The bright side of this is as the customer base grows the less tutorial information will be needed.

I mean look at PDS. They don't even bother with manuals. All useful material other than tool tips are produced by their customers.

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But to be honest ... if this game and FOG2 had not come with excellent manuals, I would have thought less of both you and Richard. Because I think the expectation of making customers do your job for you is somewhat arrogant. Clearly, for Empires and FOG2, there are wonderful videos that give insight into game strategies. I don't think the documentation needs to be that extensive, but it alone should be sufficient that someone can play decently on balanced difficulty level and have a good time. I would say the the both game manuals were a few times beyond that. I was pleased with both games.

Also, as a software engineer, I always required the writing of high level docs before the coding. If it is impossible to coherently explain in plain language how something is to work, then there is a good chance it is flawed and cannot be coded. So, much less expensive to find this out by writing 10-30 pages than months of coding. So, in a way, a players manual is the first validity check of concepts.

Oh, as long as I am rambling (I think I can do that as a senior now) ... one of thing Empires does very well is the graphical combat presentation. The old AGEOD games contained that much information and more, but Empires ... if you just watch a days worth of battles ... you get a good sense of what is going on and how you can improve your outcomes. Although the old titles were very detailed, battles did not leap off the screen and fill your mind with many insights.

So, you are a team of one. But just think of how much time you get to save on senseless meetings!

MarkShot wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2020 11:58 am I usually detest TBS wargames at the tactical level.

But FOG2 is a fantastic product. It is very intuitive, and if your TBS complaint is that they are tedious ... FOG2 has options which speed the pace and an exceptional UI.

Similar to you, it wasn't really my primary purpose ... Empires was ... but I got the bundle and was pleasantly surprised what treat FOG2 is.

Pocus wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2020 9:28 am There is a fraction of players, and a fraction of the team, who dislike lengthy tooltips. For them, if a tooltip is too long, it gets in the way, is not read, and probably, you should have put this text elsewhere, like in an online help. I'm 50/50 on that. I see both pro and cons to each philosophy.
One could say, why not having 2 levels of tooltips, for each category. It boils down to having enough time for even more QOL improvements. These are never done ... You could have one person full time on it and still, there will be remarks and requests for improvements.

If you want to help, then you should probably start modding the game with easy things first, it will show if you have sustained interest or not. 95% of people, including me, we play a game, then move along after some time.