One of the things that really affects my user experience is the way the AIs talk to me. I try to talk to one AI and he says, What do you want now"? This line is delivered in a really nasty tone of voice. Another is always asking me about my haircut. I don't really want people talking to me this way. And, I doubt that the leaders of countries talk to one another this way. It really breaks the immersion to have this rude and childish interface with the AI civs.

The colour for highlighting 'Faith' is too close to the tutorial background. I'm not the only one who has issues reading what it actually says there, even if it is limited to just the word 'Faith'

In terms of UX there is one very simple thing that would greatly increase the decision making process regarding building districts vs plaza improvements: display the impact of plaza improvements. ex. tell the player how many production will the lumber yard actually provide based on the current forest/woodland tiles being worked by the city.

When choosing where to place a district there is still the issue where a pop-up is displayed above the yield of the tile on which we're hovering. The popup seems completely redundant and not that useful.

Planning where to place outposts/cities is impossible to do if the player doesn't have the required influence. This is annoying as it prevents players from sending a unit on the desired tile to wait until the influence is reached. The outpost/city yield should still be displayed even if players cannot build them immediately (The UI should, of course, make it clear that the influence requirement isn't met).

On a side note, I've been playing several games and I still don't understand how the cost of outposts is determined. This also makes it quite difficult to decide when and where to build.

Navigating the map, especially for large empires can be quite tedious. I don't know if this has been mentioned before but a minimap would definitely be useful to move quickly from one hand to the other of a large empire.

Aristos wrote:

UX for GPU: my first impression (and I had it in previous OpenDevs) is that the game is too demanding in resources right now. I have OSD through MSI Afterburner on to watch for resources while playing, and the usage for GPU is very high, much higher than expected and than it should be from my point of view. GPU is above 90% at all times (before turn 100) while on map, and most of the time at 98-99%. GPU RAM is almost maxed out that early in the game.

GPU: EVGA GTX 1660Ti at 2000 MHz, RAM 6 Gb DDR6

CPU: I7 4790 at 3.6 GHz (barely used)

RAM: 16 Gb DDR3 (also high usage, more than any other game I tried, above 10 Gb in early game)

I hope optimization runs are still to come, because as it is now, it is my impression that the game will be a resource hog and that is not good for sales.

+1, same problem, the computer is overheating, 80 degrees while I am at the minimum and limited to 30 fps. My config is an I7 8thgen, 24gb of ram and a 1060 ti 6gb of ram

I should be able to preview outpost placement without having the influence for it.

I can never remember which player I have what trade deals with and who can trade what resources. So I constantly need to click on each player to see if I can trade with them. I wish there was a dedicated trade interface with all the players resources in one page.

We really need infrastructures to give a preview of how much resources it will yield. It's really hard to judge what I should build next when I have a building giving bonuses to forest, another for mountain and another on makers quarter and I have no idea how many forest tiles, mountain tiles and maker quarters I have...

On the moral compass screen in the civics, it's hard to remember what moral compasses (I don't know how they are called) give what type of resources. I always have to hover on one side and then the next. Maybe having each side of the compasses color coded would help.

I really don't care if the AI changed opinion on me. I can't do anything about it. Instead of having a pop up that clutter the notifications, (I get between 1 and 4 of these each turns...) you could just put show me the AI's feeling when I hover their tag on the top of the screen.

Stability should show by how much you're above 100. I had a city with multiple religious sites and wonders and I was at something like 200 stability but I had no way of knowing without doing the maths myself.

I would like 2 things at this point: a mini-map and a scalable interface. I don't see too well anymore (yes, I'm getting old, although rumors that I campaigned with Alexander are exaggerated). If there is a means to enable the mini-map I haven't found it.

I dunno if that's the right section, still...

What about placing some informations about your contestant's culture? I don't always remember each characteristic and it would be nice to reach some key infos like ideology, quantity of resources, the actual culture...

Aristos wrote:

UX for GPU: my first impression (and I had it in previous OpenDevs) is that the game is too demanding in resources right now. I have OSD through MSI Afterburner on to watch for resources while playing, and the usage for GPU is very high, much higher than expected and than it should be from my point of view. GPU is above 90% at all times (before turn 100) while on map, and most of the time at 98-99%. GPU RAM is almost maxed out that early in the game.

GPU: EVGA GTX 1660Ti at 2000 MHz, RAM 6 Gb DDR6

CPU: I7 4790 at 3.6 GHz (barely used)

RAM: 16 Gb DDR3 (also high usage, more than any other game I tried, above 10 Gb in early game)

I hope optimization runs are still to come, because as it is now, it is my impression that the game will be a resource hog and that is not good for sales.

+1 I do agree fully.

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core Processor × 6

GPU: NVIDIA Corporation GF119 [GeForce GT 610]

RAM: 15.6 GB

AOM wrote:

Every time I quit the game I get the: Humankind - Closed Beta Early Finish questionnaire 

I've just started closing this without answering.

Meanwhile, I finished a game through the Industrial era and I did not receive any questionnaire to fill out about my finished game. 

That's because they want to be sure if you are quitting the game willingly. so they can receive your feedback even if you don't play through the ending date. 

Maybe you can just have a second run meanwhile, I'd do it if I was you.

CristataC wrote:

AOM wrote:
The pop-ups telling me an AI has changed their feelings towards me. These are not helpful, as the AIs are constantly changing their opinions, and there's not much I can or want to do about that. They make it so useful pop-ups are lost in the mix (like ones that tell me I'm being pillaged).

Jarke wrote:

As QoL I would be more than happy if hovering over diplomacy button You can see the name of an empire, something like this:

For me it is hard to remember all of the cultures and when they enter next era I lose track who is who and when I need to talk with for ex. Celts I just click one after another until i find this one specific civ.

I was just about to make a post about exactly this. Its difficult to remember what culture is what as they as 6 opponents are changing often. I would like the pop up to change in one of two ways:

1. When it say for example, "The Celts have reached the Medieval Era with the English" it could have both words Celts and English in the color the empire is using.

2. It could reference the actual Avatar name. "Vlad, of the English has reached the Medieval Era". Both the word Vlad, and English could be in his empire color as well.

I may also add that we should have something which remembers us the cultures and their peculiarity...maybe that's why the encyclopedia is there, but I wasn't able to select it and use it so...

AOM wrote:

One of the things that really affects my user experience is the way the AIs talk to me. I try to talk to one AI and he says, What do you want now"? This line is delivered in a really nasty tone of voice. Another is always asking me about my haircut. I don't really want people talking to me this way. And, I doubt that the leaders of countries talk to one another this way. It really breaks the immersion to have this rude and childish interface with the AI civs.

I read once that voices depends on the actual archetype and ideology. I can't change my archetypes (nor change the avatar for what it matters) so I can't experience.

As for the things they say, I guess it was a try for make them look interactive and lively ^^' 

Hello!
It would be very nice to have the Next Action/End Turn button on the bottom right be mappable to a keystroke! Saves so much mouse movement and improves quality of life significantly from having to drag my mouse to the corner constantly!
Ideally remappable as well so I can use the button on the side of my mouse to play the game in a much more streamlined manner.
Great game and thank you for being great devs!

I'll +1 the suggestions above that the tooltips for Infrastructures should display the current benefit of building that Infrastructure. I appreciate that the game already greys out any Infrastructures that would not have any benefit if built presently, and displaying the present benefit seems like a natural extension of that.

I'd also like to see some additional information in some of the diplomatic notifications that are currently missing some detail. Specifically:

• For the notification that tells me when an AI's attitude has changed toward me: tell me what their new attitude is in the notification
• For the notification that tells me when I have a new grievance against another player: tell me which other player that grievance is against

AOM wrote:

The game has a lot of text boxes that pop into existence blocking your view of whatever it is you're trying to see. It would be nice to be able to defer some of them and turn others off entirely. Examples include: 

The very large drop-down combat preview box that appears during battles. It obscures so much of battle scene that I have to shift my screen view to see what's going on. Meanwhile, I don't need the information it contains, as it will not influence my move in any way. It would be nice if players who don't want this box could turn it off.

The pop-ups that appear in the middle of the screen at the beginning of a turn (boxes to do with wonders and techs). These obscure the middle of the screen and require dismissal. Clicking through them at the beginning of a turn when I'm trying to maneuver my troops to be first into battle is annoying. It would be nice to defer these to the end of the turn. Alternatively, the completion of a wonder could be announced by a musical notification instead of a popup, and the science tech completion box made optional; after all, I'm going to be prompted to select a new tech, so I don't really need to be informed that I just completed one. If I have more than one queued, I know that, and I can keep track of the progress myself.

The pop-ups telling me an AI has changed their feelings towards me. These are not helpful, as the AIs are constantly changing their opinions, and there's not much I can or want to do about that. They make it so useful pop-ups are lost in the mix (like ones that tell me I'm being pillaged).

Pop-ups that appear over other pop-ups and can't be dismissed like the ones that show up on top of the little popups that say how much food/production a tile has when placing an outpost on the site of a previously pillaged outpost.

Basically, it would be nice to have a little more control over all the text boxes.

I tired of constantly having to turn off text boxes too!

Any key bindings available?

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

Hey everyone!

Please use this thread to share all your feedback about the user interface and user experience. We've made various improvements since Victor, and would like to know what you think.

Did I miss the key binding list?

I noticed the game is taking all controllers into account at all times, leading to the following situation:

1. I loaded the game for the first time (for some reason, it crashed, I restarted it, then it worked; unrelated to this).
2. I started a game using default settings.
3. The map (fog of war) was always moving a little while reading the tooltips/tutorial.
4. Then it kept moving and moving; it was impossible to play.
5. I then realized I had my HOTAS (X-55 Rhino) connected. I checked the stick, still scrolling. I checked the throttle and found two RTYs that were not in their "neutral position".
6. Resetting all buttons to a neutral position fixed the issue.

A fix would be to allow enabling/disabling controllers manually. On top of that, the game could automatically disable controllers that make no sense (like a HOTAS).

Besides that, I had only limited time to play, but I love that you rebuilt your combat system (this is WAY better). I can't wait to have the full game!

I would definitively liike to add to the request for being able to see the outpost preview without having enough influence.

The battle UI could use an elevation map. I also find it a bit hard to spot elevation on crowded maps, Just a setting to highlight each elevation level hex in a different colour would really help in this regard.

MaiFlow wrote:

I would definitively liike to add to the request for being able to see the outpost preview without having enough influence.

The battle UI could use an elevation map. I also find it a bit hard to spot elevation on crowded maps, Just a setting to highlight each elevation level hex in a different colour would really help in this regard.

+1 to both of these! Sometimes I want to get my scout in place so they're ready when I get the influence next turn and it's infuriating when I need to turn on the FIMS overview and manually do the addition to find the best spot.

And I definitely agree that an elevation map would be so useful! At least add something to make it clearer which inclines are climbable vs which are cliffs.

Why do games always default to 100% on all volume sliders? I don't enjoy getting my eardrums blasted out by the startup logos and cinematics. Please buck the decades-long trend and default to 50%?

A crash after an hour of play reset all settings and my logged-in status. Can/will all that be saved sooner than on normal game exit?

The rest of my feedback on the UI is in these screenshots and their captions: https://imgur.com/a/py6ysKZ

+1 Combat Strength from Effect_Status_Unit_Organized08

A (potentially simple) suggestion to improve the UI/UX: Visually differentiate the tiles being worked by districts.

Presently, all tiles being worked by districts look like they have fields on them. Even forest/woodland are just an overlay of some trees on what looks like fields.

This is not a major issue, but it does make it harder to see, in one glance, what the city is exploiting and what should be its next district.

It also makes it harder to pinpoint the type and number of districts in the city. 

There may be two ways to do this visual differentiation:

1. Based on the yields being exploited: fields for food, some type of quarry/lumber mills/mines for production (depending on the presence of trees or not). etc.
2. Based on the type of terrain: lush fields for grassland, sparse fields for rocky ground, etc.

Option 1 would make it very easy to see which areas of the city are dedicated to which production.

Option 2 would probably be simpler to implement (by not having to deal multiple resources being exploited by two different districts).

In addition to adding a form of visual aid, I think both options could just look very good and make the cities feel even more realistic.