Topic

New & Improved Shrines (Super-Cool Visual Examples!)

As a graphic & website designer by day, I chose to take on the task of revamping the Shrine's to make them more accessible, less 'mathy', and more fun! "Shrines shouldn't be a chore", I thought!

Below is my little presentation on just that, with totally hand-created 'what a Shrine window could look like' windows! The first two slides just explain the dilemma of Shrines (as I see it) so you can skip them if you want, and get to the good stuff starting in slide 3!

If you want to know more about me, or contact me directly, hit me up on my site shivian.com

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Slide 1
http://shivian.com/images/glitch-ideas/glitch_shrine_improvement-01-01.png

Text on slide:

Currently

Shrines kinda stink.

Yeah they give you good XP... but it's hard to tell all the details you eventually both want, and need, to know.

How much will this get me?
How much can I donate today?
Is this too much to donate?

As one user said: they're too 'mathy'

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Slide 2
http://shivian.com/images/glitch-ideas/glitch_shrine_improvement-01-02.png

Text on slide:

We Need

Better, clearer information.

Simple functions that any user can understand and look / act like other in-game elements.

A shrine window that any user will find delightful, useful, and simple. From level 5 to level 60.

Less mystery, which generally just causes annoyance.

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Slide 3 (NEW SHRINE PICTURE!)
http://shivian.com/images/glitch-ideas/glitch_shrine_improvement-01-03.png

Text on slide:

New Shrines

A familiar set of buttons just like vendors, to remove confusion.

Text under the favor bar for the giant o tell you how much you can acquire today.

Bar at the bottom of every shrine window showing how much XP you can gain from all shrines in a day, as well as your current progress. It is darker to make sure a user does not get confused with the shrine itself. Hovering over this area would give a popup further explaining it, in the same way that the Mood icon does.

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Slide 4 (NEW SHRINE PICTURE!)
http://shivian.com/images/glitch-ideas/glitch_shrine_improvement-01-04.png

Text on slide:

Donating

Perparing an item to donate now shows you how much favor it will gain with that giant.

An animated gold (the color of emblems) bar in the shrine's favor bar showing how much it'd increase, as well as numbers in the favor bar directly. The bottom donation area would directly tell the value of a donation (including the effect of powders).

Optional idea: to keep the 'mystery' aspect, if you've never donated an item before it would show up with '???', until your Glitch 'learned' how much it was worth when donated.

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Slide 5 (NEW SHRINE PICTURE!)
http://shivian.com/images/glitch-ideas/glitch_shrine_improvement-01-05.png

Text on slide:

Spending

Spending is familiar, but keeps the same look and feel of the rest of the shrine's interface (same as buying vs selling at a vendor).

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NOT ON SLIDES

My other suggestion would be to simply also make donations 'wrap around'. If you accidentally (or deliberately) donate something that exceeds the maximum for an emblem, allow the favor to wrap around to the next favor bar. This also removes a level of 'mathyness' and makes shrines much more accessible and less calculated when interacted with.

Posted 13 months ago by ✦ SHI∇IΔΠ ✦ Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

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  • +1. I really like this idea.

    I'd also like some way of telling when I'm nearing my favour maximum with a Giant for the day.
    Posted 13 months ago by Siha Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Siha: my shrine window has that text, it's under the favor bar in light(er) grey.
    Posted 13 months ago by ✦ SHI∇IΔΠ ✦ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +all the numbers.
    Posted 13 months ago by Djabriil Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Personally, I really like this idea. It makes shrines easy to use and has an interface that is already familiar from the vendors. I particularly like the idea of keeping the favor increase of an item hidden until a person donates it for the first time. Then there is still some guesswork and a challenge in the area of figuring out the value of items. It could even be an achievement, getting all food items, or all minerals, or whatever.

    Even if this isn't exactly how things go I think the shrines need to be simplified somewhat so that it isn't just people who are really into Glitch who are able to benefit from shrines. As is anyone who isn't interested in spending time working out what to give with a calculator are limited in how much they can get out of a shrine. That being said, I think this is a fantastic idea for simplifying things.
    Posted 13 months ago by Siderian Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I love and need the different donate/spend tabs, as often as I accidentally spend my favor XD
    Posted 13 months ago by Garney Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Nice idea and interface.  ++
    Posted 13 months ago by bleefish Subscriber! | Permalink
  • well done... this is a much needed improvement :)
    Posted 13 months ago by IxÆoN Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I love your interface changes but, I gotta be honest, I kinda like that the shrines are a bit "mathy". Actually, I'd like to see them a bit more "mathy" with different giants favoring various things in relation to that giant (ie humbaba likes milk & meat, zille likes ores) instead of a straight up 1/10 value for all items to all shrines. I think this would not only add a touch of complexity, but would make the relationship to the giants a bit more tangible. Nibblers would, naturally, have more meat and should feel a bit closer to Humbaba and Miniers should feel a greater connection to Zille.Currently that might be a bit too confusing but with your interface changes it might be possible/better understood.
    Posted 13 months ago by Vera Strange Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Vera Strange: I don't think that'd be too complex... and I also think it'd be kinda cool to know that giants favor some items over others. Who knows, perhaps even instead of Zille favoring rocks, instead Zille might favor Meat (since that's what Zille doesn't have, and therefor craves it more).

    Beyond that, talking about the interface: merely showing a user "ooh look, I'm at a Zille shrine, donating this item, and I'm getting 5 favor, at Humbumba I was only getting 4 for the same thing" is simple enough. It's still slightly mysterious, since it won't directly say that it 'likes it' more than other items, but it will be evident by how much favor you're getting. For me, though, I'd want no more than a 10% upswing in benefit, which might not end up being that much (and some items might not change at all, eg: wheat).

    However, I think anything that requires a user to pull out a calculator or open a spreadsheet (or have to do trial and error, like a friend of mine does, until she isn't 'going over the max per day') makes shrines way less fun than they should be (it's a delightful game, after all!). Lets all go play for a long while! :-)
    Posted 13 months ago by ✦ SHI∇IΔΠ ✦ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Great presentation, great ideas. +111
    Posted 13 months ago by Zira Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Great idea and interface. Like it. You should post it in the ideas section
    Posted 13 months ago by Rah Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'm mostly in favor as well, for the reasons stated by Vera Strange. I actually want to see more complexity around the shrines. There appears to be a big back story to Ur regarding the giants, their history (11 eras alluded to, with up to 19 ages in them), and what the point of the 12th era *might* be. Clearly the shrines and the relationships of the Glitchen to the Giants are a big part of this, but they have very little story-based function right now.
    Posted 13 months ago by Petra Herata Dynica Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1111111111
    Posted 13 months ago by Tibbi Subscriber! | Permalink
  • good idea! :)
    Posted 13 months ago by The hot guy Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I would prefer this interface to the existing one. +1
    Posted 13 months ago by Fussycat Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I love these proposed changes.
    Posted 13 months ago by Verity Mendax Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +!
    (figure that counts as a big plus 1)
    Posted 13 months ago by BlackWolf Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I love this idea. Giant +1 from me
    Posted 13 months ago by HarleyQuin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thanks for all the support so far everyone! I look forward to hearing other comments, both in support (maybe we can get the Staff to look at this with enough buzz!) as well as comments and critiques :-)
    Posted 13 months ago by ✦ SHI∇IΔΠ ✦ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I really like this idea. Well done.
    Posted 13 months ago by ✰ Lorelei ✰ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • When I first started I tought that the picture on the shine had something to do with what the giant likes, i.e.: Humbaba has a cat so I gave some gain, meat, and butterfly milk
    But then I was trying to figure out what Grendaline likes cuz it has a pic of a sail thinghy
    and when I asked on chat I was shoked to find out that there is NO differnce between what ALL the giants liked. I think it would be cool if the gaints had prefences to what they liked, and with the "how much you get per unit" feature is just ??? for the one gaint until you donate it to THAT gaint. i.e:I give meat to Humbaba, i find out that it it is worth 5 to her, then i go to lem and find out that meat is worth 2 points to him

    With the finding out how much you can donate in one day feature is kina useless, why have a cap on it at all? I wouln't mind getting tons of presents all day, so why wouldn't the gaints? I say this because some days I am just minding my own business and harvesting stuff, and then the next day I go to turn it all in, but BAM I can't because there is a cap on it. But if you do have to have a cap on it, it should be to one giant, not all of them...
    Posted 13 months ago by Askarema Subscriber! | Permalink
  • As someone who has accidentally donated a very rare cubimal thanks to the current ridiculous menu system (for no favor, I might add), I am extremely interested in switching to the drag & drop interface. 
    Posted 13 months ago by Black Francis Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Askarema wrote: "I think it would be cool if the gaints had prefences to what they liked, and with the "how much you get per unit" feature is just ??? for the one gaint until you donate it to THAT gaint. i.e:I give meat to Humbaba, i find out that it it is worth 5 to her, then i go to lem and find out that meat is worth 2 points to him"

    I agree that this could be a really cool feature... and again, something I think could easily work into this interface I've suggested. More importantly, I think that without an interface such as this, each giant having preferances would become even more painful, annoying, 'mathy', and chore-based than it already currently is (which would, therein, make the game less 'fun').

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    Askarema wrote: "With the finding out how much you can donate in one day feature is kina useless, why have a cap on it at all? ... if you do have to have a cap on it, it should be to one giant, not all of them..."

    I can't speak for the specific reasons that the Staff has placed caps on the XP per day you can gain from shrine donations, nor the amount of favor you can gain per day... but I can only imagine that it's there to prevent people from power-leveling via shrines. Everything else that can gain you XP takes in-game time to accomplish; shrines are instantaneous.

    If there was no cap at all, people could easily use it as a way to super-quickly & game-rules-breaking 'power-level' by using IRL money to buy donateable items from a third-party site (in the same way you can buy Gold in World of Warcraft) and then donating them and gaining many, many levels in merely a few IRL hours - causing people who actually have to play at the game to level-up to get frustrated at those who are cheating, and cheapening the game for all of us.

    If the current cap was spread out to be per-shrine as opposed to per giant, that would mean that it would be much less XP per giant's shrine. Currently the most XP you can gain from Shrine donations per day is 10% of your current level's XP (if you will level up at 65,000 XP, then you can't get more than 6,500 XP from Shrine Donations per day). If this was spread out evenly among the shrines, that'd be less than 1% from each shrine (or in the above example, 590 XP).

    Since most people will 'power-donate' to only a few shrines per day by using an Extremely Hallowed Shrine Powder to get triple the Favor on a large volume donation (say of 700 sparkly) they would effectively 'lose' that XP - and would likely gain XP and level much slower than with the current system.

    If the current cap (10%) was kept and merely duplicated amongst the 11 giants, that would allow for people to easily & quickly level every day from merely donating to each of the 11 shrines, again creating the power-leveling situation noted above.

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    I'm glad for the discourse on these side-topics, and hopefully the Staff is as well :-)

    But, to be honest, I'm mostly happy to see people commenting and talking about the design suggestions & improvements for Shrines I made :-)
    Posted 13 months ago by ✦ SHI∇IΔΠ ✦ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Black Francis: I feel your pain! Due to lag I've accidentally donated things I didn't want to before as well (or due to the quick-enter-spamming to harvest wheat from chickens). If the interface was more drag-n-drop it would prevent me from mega-goofing and doing stupid things like that.

    PS: Cubimals should TOTALLY get you favor, it kinda cheeses me off they don't... 
    Posted 13 months ago by ✦ SHI∇IΔΠ ✦ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • ok w/ the cap and power lvl, you can just put a cap on the exp (i did not know it gave you exp if you donate...) and not the favor. yeah cubimals should esecialy be able to donate since you can geta lot of one kind...
    Posted 13 months ago by Askarema Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I am definitely a million zillion times in favor of a better interface for shrines.  The number of times I've donated something I didn't intend or dropped something instead of donating is absurd (the first when using the "donate" verb, the second when dragging an item to the shrine).  I like that we have the choice to drag, so keeping that (and perhaps letting it pop up an improved UI) would be fantastic.
    Posted 13 months ago by Magic Monkey Subscriber! | Permalink
  • one question though, what are you selling?
    Posted 13 months ago by Askarema Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Askarema wrote: "one question though, what are you selling?"

    Tehehe! I'm not selling anything (besides this idea), this is the kind of thing I love doing, both professionally and in my spare time. As noted above, I'm a graphic & website designer by day, a big glitch fan by night! :-)
    Posted 13 months ago by ✦ SHI∇IΔΠ ✦ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1 for making the donation window similar to the window for selling to a vendor.

    I would like the info about how much more favor is needed to get an emblem shown, in addition to showing how much favor you have and what the maximum favor is for the Shrine.  This is a great help for people who are donating in order to spend favor to speed up learning.  (Getting an emblem and spending that is significantly less favorable than spending favor before getting an emblem.)

    -1 for making items have different values for different gods.  Though I see an aesthetic point to this idea, it adds an unnecessary complication to the game, in my opinion.

    +1 for rollover of favor, or possibly better, a refusal of the portion of donations over the favor limit.

    PS:  I like the math aspects of the game, it gives it a little more depth for those who like the math.
    Posted 13 months ago by MasterOfMyDestiny Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Also it would be helpful to donate multiple kinds of items at once instead of one. That way you don't have to spend shrine powder for each donation.
    Posted 13 months ago by Noc Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +100
    Posted 13 months ago by drakodood Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I like Shivian's idea. I agree that the shrines are too mathy and confusing, and it's WAY too easy to accidentally donate the wrong thing.
    Posted 13 months ago by Knitomaton Subscriber! | Permalink
  • + 100 too!
    Posted 13 months ago by Reni's Mum Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Noc, you already can donate multiple of the same item at once.  I do it all the time.
    Posted 13 months ago by Magic Monkey Subscriber! | Permalink
  • MasterOfMyDestiny wrote: "I would like the info about how much more favor is needed to get an emblem shown, in addition to showing how much favor you have and what the maximum favor is for the Shrine..."

    In the designs I proposed, this text exists below the Favor bar. I moved it to a less obvious (but still accessible) location to make people who aren't number-counters to feel less pressure with the numbers.
    Posted 13 months ago by ✦ SHI∇IΔΠ ✦ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1,000

    As a new user currently learning the mechanics of shrines, I'm totally for this idea. Most of the other game mechanics are already so streamlined, changing things to ✦ SHI∇IΔΠ ✦'s suggestion would retain a level of consistency with gameplay.
    Posted 13 months ago by Punchy McFist Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @SHI...  The amount needed to donate in order to get an emblem is not shown where you say it is, as far as I can see.  You have how much favor that has already been donated and the total favor that will get an emblem, but not the difference between the two - which is what I'm asking for.  Having this simply saves the player one subtraction when calculating how much to donate.  The current Glitch windows include this number within the large body of text in the "check favor" window.

    I'm looking at:  http://shivian.com/images/glitch-ideas/glitch_shrine_improvement-01-05.png

    and:  http://shivian.com/images/glitch-ideas/glitch_shrine_improvement-01-04.png

    and:  http://shivian.com/images/glitch-ideas/glitch_shrine_improvement-01-03.png
    Posted 13 months ago by MasterOfMyDestiny Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1  

    I really like this idea, well thought out and presented.
    Posted 13 months ago by "big" Eric Hunt Subscriber! | Permalink
  • MasterOfMyDestiny: "The amount needed to donate in order to get an emblem is not shown where you say it is, as far as I can see."

    You're totally right, my apologies! I think the simple change of the text to read "Currently 531 out of 2200 favor points with Pot (1669 more needed for an emblem)" would work well, yeah?
    Posted 13 months ago by ✦ SHI∇IΔΠ ✦ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I like everything about it.
    Posted 13 months ago by Bajuba Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @SHI...  That would work perfectly.  :-)

    Thanks.
    Posted 13 months ago by MasterOfMyDestiny Subscriber! | Permalink
  • All this support is really fantastic guys, thanks! Please keep passing it around, I'd love for the Staff to see it!
    Posted 13 months ago by ✦ SHI∇IΔΠ ✦ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Buy this guys interface devs it's really nice.
    Posted 13 months ago by koolaroo Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Koolaroo: tehehe, I'm not selling the design, they can have it and use it as they want! I merely wanted to share what I could see as a vision for improving shrines :-)
    Posted 13 months ago by ✦ SHI∇IΔΠ ✦ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • donate this donation interface mock-up to the Dev's - get it implemented ASAP please hehe
    Posted 13 months ago by Balgra Fonzarelli Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The only part of this that I don't like is the "drag items here" thing, I like having the big list of all the things I have because it helps me find items that I didn't know I had.
    Posted 13 months ago by Dexiro Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Well I was guessing you don't want to sell it to them buy I'm betting if they used it they would probally pay you at least a little or give you a subcription or somthing.
    Posted 13 months ago by koolaroo Subscriber! | Permalink
  • For being a glitch who is constantly being told "you'll lose points if you donate this now!"....I TOTALLY dig this concept.  It looks great, well-thought out, and easy to read.  I hope someone's working on implementing this now! 
    Posted 13 months ago by MiNu Subscriber! | Permalink
  • k whith my Q on what r you selling? is ansered, I ment the spend, thank you for adding that slide:)
    Posted 13 months ago by Askarema Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Anyone else have any thoughts, positive or negative or otherwise on my suggestions above? I'd really like to hear any / all viewpoints :-)
    Posted 13 months ago by ✦ SHI∇IΔΠ ✦ Subscriber! | Permalink
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