Feedback In-Depth UI/Navigation and overall feedback

Discussion in 'Suggestions' started by Goffterdom, Feb 2, 2019.

  1. Goffterdom

    Goffterdom Intergalactic Tourist

    Hello there.

    [EDIT: This thread basically sums up a lot of the suggestions I've made regarding UI and QoL in a better a clearer way:
    https://community.playstarbound.com/threads/immediate-ux-concerns-requests.151960/

    ] - I can only imagine how much I'd be enjoying Wargroove if those things would be fixed. It really goes a long way into continue playing for hours or stopping because the gameflow has been break by some various UI 'weird' behavior. Fact is, I stopped playing to write this feedback.

    Feedback available in PDF format on Drive:
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MC-AJ8DOUJkolHKV7VZ7Wi9Wbo63NNfo/view?usp=sharing

    I'm Yun-Kun a 28 years French hardcore player. I'm working as a game designer for nearly a decade and I'm an Advance Wars veteran player.

    I've played Wargroove on Nintendo Switch for ~10 hours, mostly the campaign and a little bit of everything else, including the map/campaign/trigger/cutscene editors.

    Here is my first feedback of the game.

    To sum up what I think of the game so far: I'm amazed at the game and hyped about its future. Unfortunately, many interface and timing aspects prevent me from enjoying at 150%.

    While connecting here, I've noticed a few threads pinpointing UI issues. I haven't read them yet but I'm just going to.
    These are the threads;
    https://community.playstarbound.com/threads/immediate-ux-concerns-requests.151960/
    https://community.playstarbound.com/threads/quality-of-life.151948/

    EDIT: Pretty good threads.

    First Feelings
    - I'm amazed at how you managed to transcribe the AW vibes while providing several welcome additions

    - It's gorgeous and I bloody enjoy playing AW in a fantasy universe

    - Some problems lie in the input / navigation design

    - Some slowness in the game rhythm tend to happen because of game delays

    - After exploring the game menus and the internet community, it sounds like between custom campaigns and modding, the game is ready to last a decade, I feel like I'm diving into something which is going to be deep

    Advanced Feedback
    Interface Display

    • "End Turn" in AW was at the bottom of the game menu, maybe was it to avoid missclicking on end turn by pressing A/A, in any case I felt like it was a better spot. But in the same time your current setup requires '-1 input' to end its turn… Tricky decision so maybe it can be a setting.
    • I'd love a setting to have another font which is more readable / cleaner, maybe a size setting as well
    • "Strong against / Weak against" unit icons are hard to distinguish, even more for a new player. If able it may be a good solution to replace them by unit type icons instead (infantry etc.).
    • I'd like to have a feedback in the UI telling me what unit is currently performing a critical strike while in a Battle Animation (maybe there's one but I haven't seen it).
    • When previewing unit movement and attack range, hatching means you can move here and squared means you can attack here. But if there is a unit of any faction standing here, it becomes impossible to tell. What if green means you can move to a location but not attack from or in it, orange means you can attack from or in it and red means you can attack in it? You could still distinguish this is units are standing on tiles.
    Input Navigation
    • I can bring up the "Tile/Unit Info" menu during enemy turn if I spam B (while my cursor is deactivated) which seems to be a bug (I'm not supposed to be able to click or take any action at others' turn afaik?).
    • Imho "B" should be held to display unit range and attack possibilities (currently "A"), it would allow us to preview our own units range even if they haven't played yet. In this case "Y" should bring the "Tile/Unit Info". It is crucial to have Attack Display on B rather than A because it would also have the benefice of allowing us to bring up the game menu by pressing A on a unit which is unresponsive (a unit which has already played or a unit from another faction). Currently we need to move one tile aside of one of our unit to bring up the menu which adds one additional action for no reason most of the time.
    • If "B" is held while not hovering a unit, it should switch navigation mode to "fast travel" like AW (all units are transparent, and I can move around the map pretty quickly with my cursor).
    • While fast-scrolling with Right Thumbstick, my cursor should go with me, currently it stays behind in its previous location and when I exit fast-scrolling and move my Left Thumbstick it instantly brings me back to my previous location leading to strange camera jitters and unwanted navigation behaviors.
    • Targeting a square should always auto-lock to valid squares in range (like in AW). What do I mean? Rangers, Wagons, Commander Abilities, everything that is triggered from the context menu and asking for specific targets around should only be able to target tiles where there is a valid target. For instance, when choosing a target for my rangers, moving the left thumbstick should only cycle through tiles where there are valid targets and not allow me to navigate on tiles where I can't interact with anything.
    • When a unit is in a melee range with another tile containing an interactive target (attacking, capturing, whatever…) the navigation system does not record the path I'm choosing for the unit to interact with the tile (whereas it does if the unit is not in melee range). Example: My knight is at the right of an enemy city, I select him and starts moving my cursor up, then left. My cursor is at the top of the city now and the movement arrow is clearly displaying the path. I want to tell the knight to attack the city, I move my cursor down to "smart-cast" the order of attack and then press A. It pops up the order validation window and resets the movement order: the knight thinks he must attack from his current location which is at the right of the city. Note: It appears to only happen with cities.
    Game Camera
    • Game shouldn't record cursor movement inputs when cursor is disabled. What I mean is: During a battle animation or a movement animation (a unit moving on the main game screen) my cursor is hidden BUT if I move the thumb stick it is actually moving the cursor. And my camera is currently focusing the battle or movement which is taking place. When said battle or movement is over, my camera is moved almost instantly to my cursor location, leading to awkward camera jitters all the time (also in the Campaign Editor, camera teleports / quickly moves from current action to new cursor location).
    • When going previous / next ready unit the game camera almost instantly teleports to the position of the unit, sometimes it feels a little jittery. Maybe the camera should lerp towards the new position in a set amount of time (it feels like there is actually a lerp currently in the game but maybe it is too fast). In AW I think it behaved a little bit differently: if the unit was on your screen the camera was not moving, whereas in Wargroove the camera always centers on the unit even if it's already on the screen.
    Game Delays
    • First of all, I understand that there is a "no animation" option. But animations are pretty stylish, and I want to see them. But it does not mean that I want to have "dead times". I'm going to pinpoint things I consider "dead times" here. I don't think these things should be "removed" from the game but I think one of the animation settings should allow be to remove them. Something like "Fast animations":
      • Most unit battle animations seem to have internal delays, or there are delays in the battle system in between "animation" phase, in any case it results in all battle animations having lots of "wasted 0.X seconds"
      • Upon entering combat screen, unit move in position then wait
      • The unit group which is attacking then proceed to switch screen to attack the other side, it is "hidden" for a fraction of second in the screen transition between two sides, for some unit type it feels like it waits here for too long
      • The unit group attacking plays its attack animation then there's a bit of a delay
      • The unit group defending plays its attack animation then there's a bit of a delay
      • The battle is over.
      • These are the kind of delays I'm talking about.
      • There are also some unit attacking animations which are a bit slow, maybe we could also have a setting to modify the attack animation overall playrate?
    • Maybe holding "B" should just increase animation speed and not skip them. We would be able to skip them instantly with another hotkey.
    • Fog of War should start revealing at the beginning of the unit movement and not be a "phase" between end-movement and should not prevent cursor focus / movement. Overall current Fog of War implementation makes playing with it kind of painful for veteran AW players (or anyone who is quick with his gamepad).
    • Fog of War reveal and hide phases should play simultaneously when a unit moves out of a tile.
    • Skipping a battle animation should take at max 0.5 seconds or even just need a single tap (or double tap if must-be), a setting could be a welcoming addition as everyone has different preferences
    Juice
    • During a battle animation I've noticed a little delay between the moment when a unit performs its attack animation and the moment when the health bar of the targeted unit starts to go down. This delay gives me a feeling of slowness, sloppiness in the combat. If the start of the health decay was synchronized with the unit hit, it would feel much reactive and faster imho. Maybe the delay is purposeful to make the player able to watch the attack animation then watch the result on the bar but since the health decay is "smooth" and lerping from initial health to health after hit the player gets the feeling of how much health he removed from that attack anyway.
    • I'd love to have a special sound / animation playing when performing a critical strike, maybe not even unit-specific but faction-specific or common.
    Editor Input
    • I'd love to see many of AW baseline features implemented such as: fill with terrain and copy hovered terrain. Not sure if there were Undo/Redo but it would be a great addition as well.
    • I'd love to be able to swap factions while the object menu is open and not be forced to close it, swap, open it.
    • I'd love to be able to open menu (+) while the object menu is open and not be forced to close it, then open menu.
    • I'd love to be able to navigate quickly while holding "B" as described in Input Navigation.
    • I'd love to be able to delete maps in Campaign Editor with any unused button while I'm in an edit-mode where I can focus maps and not have to switch to "Place Map" mode.
    What I Love
    Commanders

    Risk rewards calculation, reduction of game duration, reduction

    Critical Strike
    Wonderful addition to the game. Deep strategical layer. Great. I love it.

    Editors
    It goes beyond any of my expectations. The amount of work you've put into exposing the tool blows my mind. Well done and thank you very much.

    Modding
    I'm still not sure how Wargroove is going to be moddable but I'm eager to see what's going to happen with this. I have the game on Switch and I can only hope that one day Switch players will be able to play with mods from the community (but I highly doubt it). I any case I think I'm going to grab the Steam version of Wargroove just so I can try out what people are going to do.

    What I'd Love
    Commander XP

    I'd love to be able to assign each unit a fixed amount of XP to grant upon kill. I'd love to be able to tell a unit it now harvests XP from killed units and can level up every a set amount of XP. The set amount of XP would be modifiable for each level. Leveling up would grant additional stats to the unit and we would be able to specify how much stat it grants. Basically, allowing us to add some RPG layer and single-hero management (just like Warcraft 3) to decuples the number of map / mods players would make.

    Several Commanders
    I'd love to be able to add several different commanders to one faction in the map editor, each charging their Groove independently.

    Differences in Armies
    As mentioned in many different critic sites, we were all hoping for asymmetrical aspects in the factions. The commanders are one, but they were already here in AW (with the addition of passive bonuses to the whole army, which was enhancing the theme of each general). Maybe one unit in each faction could be different? Maybe there could be some variation in their baseline stats? I don't know but it could feel a little bit more… different. Especially since you've done a really great job at visually differentiating the different factions. I understand it's a really hard step to take because it adds a lot of balance work.

    Passive bonuses
    I don't know if it should be added to the game in any shape or at all. But I really enjoyed AW generals' passive bonuses. If I were to think of this feature in Wargroove, maybe I would only consider bonuses to some specific unit in the faction. Maybe unique units to each general? But I'm kind of getting of the trails here…

    And that's it for now.

    Thanks for reading through and happy grooving :)
     
      Last edited: Feb 2, 2019

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