First of all, thank you for creating such a good game experience and making beta testing it really awesome!
This round of testing was the first round after invite i got to test properly. I currently have about ~11hours of gameplay and the majority of that time has been spent doing mining related activities.
I'm a grinder per nature, so jumping on an activity like mining and try to take it to the 'extreme' felt natural (and relaxing).
Below are some of my observations as a low level character doing mining. I've tried to gather up feedback about stuff i find odd or inconsistent regarding the game UI and flow.
I do not expect you guys to pick up on all my suggestion, but it's an attempt to structure it for discussion. I have also attached some (visual) suggestions where this could contribute to the discussion.
Also, note that this was done as a quick exercise. I have spent a very limited amount of time testing, sketching and preparing this feedback. My apologies for the length of this post, i thought it was better to gather it up in one post rather than to flood the idea section with multiple posts.
So here it goes…
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*PS! You might want a cup of coffee before continuing the read*
*PPS! Some of the observations below might be mining/crushing specific or simply bugs*
*PPPS! I'm no copywriter, my apologies for poorly formulated text-string. They are only there to suggest a tone of voice/indicate the type of information needed*
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1.0 Help
1.1 Help me remember (even more)
Getting started with the game was easy. The introduction tutorials given quickly allowed me to get started with exploring the game and the world.
But… I wish i was better at reading those tutorial. I have to admit that after 30 minutes in game i started paying less and less attention to the tutorials and messages teaching me about the game mechanics. After a couple of hours in game i found myself looking for a way back to this basic information when notification appeared telling me my energy and mood was getting low.
It struck me that the chat and notifications were not 'call-to-actions' for triggering help or the correct dialogs to act on them.
Example: Your mood is getting low. The message appears in the local chat and as a notification in game, but neither the notification box or the chat message has clickable elements that triggers the 'about:mood' dialog you get from clicking the mood icon in the top left corner.
I've uploaded a suggestion with two examples on how notifications and chat messages could trigger additional help
Link: i53.tinypic.com/znjxq8.png&...;
1.2 Help me getting started with crafting
When clicking 'try to make something new' in the experiment tube dialog, the user is faced with an empty dialog where he/she has to drag stuff in from their inventory.
In this specific case, the materials possible to use is limited. Wouldn't it be better to to pre-fill the dialog with the materials to the the player quickly started?
Link: i55.tinypic.com/zlzqxv.png
(In the suggestion above, note: changed the help text under the title to reflect the action)
On first 'run' the dialog could explain how to get materials and the purpose of this action.
Example: "You have no elements to experiment with yet. This is how you get started (…)"
1.3 Help me produce stuff!
This one is not strictly a help feature, more a limitation in the game right now.
I discovered while trying to crush ores as low level that i often had more ores than i had energy to crush (all). I was forced into a behavior where i needed to crush 30 and 30 ores as clicking on the 'crush all' button only would trigger the message 'you do not have enough energy for that'.
Suggestion: i55.tinypic.com/whczlu.png
2.0 Chat
A couple of comments regarding the chat and chat UI
2.1 Chat formatting
The chat messages can be really hard to read when you try to get an overview of what you gained or lost from performing an action.
Link: i55.tinypic.com/3089wlx.jpg
It would be great if the chat was formatted so it became more glancable. This could be done either with icons (A) or bullet-points (B). The drawback of a formatting such as (A) would be that it breaks plain text in the chat, something that could hinder copy paste of such information in an intuitive way.
2.2 Chat trigger
I really miss a chat trigger in the game. It might already exist, if so I completely missed out on it.
Suggestion: Add a key input to trigger the edit box of the last active chat.
An example on where this is solved in a way that felt natural (to me) was World of Warcraft. In WoW the chat can be trigger and dismissed by pressing Enter.
Something similar to that flow would greatly increase my attention to the chat. Right now it feels cumbersome having to click in the chat edit field to type.
3.0 UI/chrome
3.1 Back button in dialogs
The back button is in different locations depending on the dialog type and style.
Link: i53.tinypic.com/30jmgxd.png
It seems the back button (A) is placed inside the dialogs main window due to it being a tabbed dialog (Buy/Sell) and back in this case means 'back to top level of buy', but personally i find this one hard to spot and would prefer the same type of back button as (B).
3.2 Placement of Currants in the UI
I keep looking for the information about Currants in the UI. I know it is in the bottom left corner, but I keep looking for it at the top right corner where i first saw it when being out of the game.
Is the reasoning that currants is 'part' of your inventory thus being down there with the inventory?
3.3 Mouse distances
I have no concrete proposals on this one, just a general comment:
Link: i52.tinypic.com/9k8s5x.png
When clicking actions (in this case crushing) the user has to click the grinder in his inventory, click Crush then move the mouse to the middle of the screen to choose material then choose amount. The entire process (if repeated a few times) feels cumbersome and slow and involves many click and big click-distances.
Would it be worth exploring UI's for making this more confined within an area of the screen rather than spread out as it is now?
(Note that you can drag materials on you grinder meaning you keep the focus inside the inventory area instead of doing the suggested behavior above.)
4.0 Inventory
4.1 Handling of surplus material when lacking inventory space
This one might be specific to crushing (ores), as I've seen it being handled differently when i.e. mining.
It was REALLY difficult to discover that materials where being destroyed as i had ran out of bagspace for elements.
Link: i56.tinypic.com/1199uup.png
4.2 Allow me to interact with my inventory while performing other actions.
Waiting for something to get mined or a herb to be picked can be really boring. Having the option to organize my inventory while doing so would be greatly appreciated
4.3 Allow me to swap items in my inventory.
Currently you are limited to dropping an item on an empty slot or on a slot with a similar item/stack.
Link: i51.tinypic.com/elbh4l.png
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Thank you for reading!
/Greengo