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Feedback: User Interface and User Experience

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4 years ago
Jun 21, 2021, 2:29:24 AM

All of my feedback for the UI surrounds a lack information or some part of the UI obscuring information.

  1. I might forget what districts I've placed where. Even when I have FIMS on, it's still a little difficult to figure out what I have on the ground when I'm trying to plan for adjacency. Can there be some kind of distinguishing marker (a building, a color) that tells me what the district is at a glance? All the buildings are the same color at the moment. This would be especially important for special districts.
  2. When I'm putting a district down, sometimes the screen that shows the math breakdown for that district obscures the quick view that shows me the simpler +/- effects. If possible, put the math screen to the side or a little farther above the quick view - sometimes, I just want to see what I get for putting the district down without the breakdown. I ran into this several times (to fix it, I had to push my map up to give the math breakdown more room).
  3. I need information. What are the diplomatic ramifications for doing things (the system of how they're feeling toward me is good, but I can't use that very much at all), how much of a stability hit do you take by absorbing cities, what is it that's making the infrastructure buyout cost increase despite being infrastructure from earlier eras? Frontload as much of that information as possible for the people that like to micromanage a little.
  4. There has to be a way for me to not need to respond to the treaty that I'd rejected already each turn.
  5. On the above note, text boxes. If I renounced a grievance and see that same grievance three turns later, the text for it pops up each time. Maybe there should be some control over the kinds of notifications you get, or the frequency?
  6. I have no idea what era my opponents are in or what civilization they are. I feel like I should be able to do this from one place, perhaps the fame screen where we see all the scores? I instinctively try to hover over my opponents symbols to see who they are and where they are technologically, but I can't. This is information I want early, just in case I have to plan.
  7. Please just make the "defend" icon a shield. It's easy to understand at a glance; right now, the defend icon looks like a "skip" icon.
  8. The emblems...I like the personalization, but they don't help much when I'm trying to tell who my opponent is.
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4 years ago
Jun 21, 2021, 3:59:36 AM

Something that annoys me is information spam at the start of your turn THAT BLOCKS YOUR ACTIONS. I can't even see where the AI I'm at war with is going because some window blocks my view, and an insignificant units needs orders when I only what to move units that already have them that I prepared a turn before. After the time it takes to get through all of them my preparations went down the drain, couse it's too late. At least make the "execute army orders" or what it's called button the highest priority (something you again did in Endless Legend before and somehow forgot about it here, that button and its priority is a godsend there).

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4 years ago
Jun 21, 2021, 4:08:11 AM

A few minor UI issues I thought I should mention.

1. If I try to annex a district center or an outpost and I do not have sufficient money, the mouseover box says "Missing Parameters..."

2. Faith in the "Religion Mode" tutorial dialogue is bright yellow on a white background, making it barely visible.

3. When choosing a culture, the UI displays attributes of special units alongside their icon - strength, movement and range. However, the icon next to the range is incorrect, it is a "remaining turns" icon. 

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4 years ago
Jun 21, 2021, 7:02:17 AM

I really appreciate the search function in the tech tree. I would probably have expected it to actually highlight the technology and not just scroll in that area. But I guess that is fine.


But the feature that I am missing the most in the UI is a map search function. For example searching for resources on the map is really important since scrolling out makes them disappear. 


Another thing that I would like to see in the release is a setting where I can define which kinds of notifications I want to see. Currently there are so many and most of them are not really interesting (like a city got a new pop). I would like to turn of some of those to better focus on the important ones.


Otherwise I think the most important UI change would be to let user adjust at which zoom level the level of detail changes happen. I personally, and I know many other streamers and player think so too, would like to still see the terrain structure on further zoomed-out views. Even if the performance would drop due to higher visual complexity, it would still be useful to at least have the option in the menu so that I can find the adjustment that is right for my screen and my hardware.

Updated 4 years ago.
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4 years ago
Jun 21, 2021, 7:33:30 AM
Bug: I got quite a few notifications that "We are loosing the war against XY" due to low war support, yet I was at peace with them.
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4 years ago
Jun 21, 2021, 1:10:01 PM

Some suggestion regarding UI/interface

O It is very hard to distinguish Train Station from other districts, if they are clustered. Just like this screen shot:
Yellow hexagons are Train Stations.

I would like to suggest that when clicking on units standing on Train Station, reachable Train Stations should be illuminated just like when re-stationing Biplanes like the screen shot below:

O When an army is standing on Airfield district where an air squadron is stationed, the unit icons become overlapped. Both icons should be separated not overlapped.

O It would be nice to have key binding for certain frequently used functions like disband unit and transfer unit

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4 years ago
Jun 21, 2021, 1:11:41 PM
Lrs wrote:
Bug: I got quite a few notifications that "We are loosing the war against XY" due to low war support, yet I was at peace with them.

I guess this is because having an alliance reduces War Support to near 0, which triggers such messages. It should be an easy fix for the Devs

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4 years ago
Jun 21, 2021, 1:21:32 PM

I'd still like to see some easier way to recognize the various ground levels as well as whether a coastline is a "beach" (can cross) or a "cliff" (can't cross).  Most of the time this was visually obvious, but not always.  Maybe a topology view mode?  My best way to tell what was passable was to just try to move a unit across it.


There are a few minor complaints, but the only other thing that sticks with me is that when setting a path for a unit, there is some bad behavior.  If a unit is unable to spend all of it's movement (embarking/disembarking) it stops, but the game end button forces you to still go to the "idle unit".  Also, a "skip unit movement animation" option would be ideal.  Not sure if this is the place to mention it, but I've mentioned it elsewhere because this probably took up most of my turn (especially on units moving 6+ spaces).

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4 years ago
Jun 21, 2021, 1:35:08 PM
Lrs wrote:
Bug: I got quite a few notifications that "We are loosing the war against XY" due to low war support, yet I was at peace with them.

I also got similar notification about winning a war with a nation I was at peace with.

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4 years ago
Jun 21, 2021, 1:48:37 PM

The game at times will have a visual glitch (could be the leaders not showing up in diplomacy or the options being blacked out) and when I end that turn it will crash (happened several separate times). The game overall crashes a lot more the later into the game I get. On the first session it maybe crashed once at the very end of 3-4 hours, but near the end of my 200 turn game it was crashing every 10 turns or less. I absolutely love the game, but I'd love to see much stronger game stability. Crashes in single player are one thing, but thinking of the future when I want to play multiplayer sounds like a nightmare if we're all separately crashing.


A few other things off the top of my head that are unrelated. Didn't understand clearly what becoming influential over another culture/city did exactly. I don't know if it gives me fame, makes their cities have lower stability, makes them like me more, or gives me any other benefits. Does it make the city easier to conquer? Similar to that would be religion. I understand that more faith generation means your faith spreads faster and stronger, but besides your tenants are there more benefits to spreading it? Maybe a buff to stability or makes another city unstable if they don't follow the same religion? I think these things could use a better explanation (in my opinion) because they felt interesting (and cool to spread around), but abstract and unclear.

Thanks for the great beta it was a blast

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4 years ago
Jun 21, 2021, 2:44:19 PM

There are times I'll click an info window will be obscured by another info window.  if I click on something, that info window should be up front.

I do hope trade route displays get updated. Right now it is difficult to find where there are issues, stopping trade, such as violence. Please get more detailed and highlight the problem area.  

As is, the UI layout is very good, it reads easy  and is pleasant looking.

Also as other people have mentioned, the game is pushing graphics surprisingly heavily. it is rare I fell heat coming out of my PC.

But overall the game is very enjoyable, if not challenging. I had to play on the easiest mode just to get an understanding of things.

CPU
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 40 °C
LG HDR WQHD (3440x1440@60Hz)
4095MB NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER

Updated 4 years ago.
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4 years ago
Jun 21, 2021, 3:12:55 PM

I have played the Lucy, Victor, and the Closed Beta.  Thank you for taking feedback and for the advancements made thus far.  The majority of my issues related to UI or awareness issues.  For much of the game I felt like I was make semi-random decisions "in the moment" being unsure as to the consequences of those decisions.



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4 years ago
Jun 21, 2021, 5:11:33 PM

I like the Endless Legend art design better.  I expect I will get used to Humankind art but I find it hard to see things like district expansion tiles given the washed-out look.  The starting units have visibility range smaller than movement range.  This encourages one hex at a time movement which I find tedious.  Overall user experience has been a bit disappointing so far.  I have 380 enjoyable hours in Endless Legend.  I've started the Humankind beta about 5 times but have quit each campaign after about 2 hours play (each).  Not sure why & I expect it will be more enjoyable with more play - but it seems like I'm going to have to work to like this game.  I have high hopes for Humankind given my experience with Endless Legend so I'm wishing you the best of luck & much success with the game.

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4 years ago
Jun 21, 2021, 6:23:00 PM

I'd like to see more detailed information in the city window:


  • How exactly does surplus food affect population growth?

  • At some point, tooltips for the FIMS yields collapse and for example "+x Industry from Districts" is not broken down anymore. I was wondering where all the industry from districts in one of my cities was coming from because the districts I built didn't add up to the correct number. Then I looked at a newer city and realized that apparently all my cities were getting industry from a Luxury Manufactory. But it still didn't say which one. Please make this kind of information clearer.
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4 years ago
Jun 21, 2021, 6:23:43 PM
impetuousskink wrote:

There is a very annoying bug where if you queue a units movement for a path that involves embarking, if the unit has excess movement left when it reaches the tile it has to embark from, it requires you to press skip on the unit. The unit should automatically wait for a turn and then use full movement to embark without needing additional user input. 

I ran into this as well - it's very annoying

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4 years ago
Jun 21, 2021, 6:27:32 PM
Tinor wrote:
When you use the clear ruins option in a city, it is very unclear where you should use it and what it is used for.
I'll second this. It only seemed to show up in a few cities, and was never clear where the ruins to clear were. I presume the white shaded hex would turn green if the targeted hex was eligible (as it does for something else) but it's not clear visually on the map what hex that might be.
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4 years ago
Jun 21, 2021, 9:04:25 PM

I would appreciate some tile highlighting.

With armies/unit selected - highlight where I can go.

When placing an outpost or a district - highlight exploited tiles (this would help new players with understanding how districts interact with territory borders for example), just changing the yield icons isn't visible enough

Yield icons themselves could also be better. Right now it's pretty hard to differentiate between 1 / 2 / 3 of a resource because the icon is so small.

It's also not a good idea to completely hide unexploited yield icons if there is no adjacent district currently exploiting it. I might wanna build another adjacent district that will exploit it.

Some icons could be better. Ransacking could be more symbolic (like just a flame or a torch), idle army icon isn't intuitive and is very similar to idle city icon.

Reinforcments UI could be better. You don't even need to use it. The reinforcements add themselves automatically when their tile is empty. But first seeing the reinforcments UI (+ the tutorial message) made me feel like I actually have to do something to use the reinforcments.

WASD camera movement should scale with camera zoom. Currently when you zoom out to max, WASD is unusable to move the camera.

Please remove the long delay between diplomacy voice-lines.

Unit health bars in combat don't represent the actual health value. 90/100 hp units have half of the health bar gone and 10/100 hp units still seem to have like a quarter left.

There's currently no way to find out a territory's name which makes choosing war victory rewards a hard guessing game.

Movement of units on the map is currently too slow.

A minimap wouldn't hurt. Or at least a shortcut to instantly switch to maximum zoom out and back.

Event story font is a little bit hard to read (some lines are too thin).

Faith symbol and text are invisible on the white background of tutorial popus.

The emblems of sanctuaries and cities should be located closer to the ground to more clearly convey which tile they're actually on.

Could mixed armies maybe visually show a mixture of those units instead of just one type of unit?

And I would like it if the game didn't notify me about war support status of a non-existent war with my ally.

Updated 4 years ago.
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4 years ago
Jun 21, 2021, 10:50:03 PM

Hello! This is the first beta I played for the game - it exceeded my expectations, I had a blast and can't wait for August. Here are some notes I took during gameplay about UI/UX:

- I would really appreciate a way to quickly browse empires on every tab of the diplomacy screen, rather than have to go back to Relations to switch the empire I'm looking at


- Trade:

  1.  I would love a recap screen of all Trade Routes in effect on my empire - see for each resource who I'm trading it with. If there was one, I couldn't find it.
  2.  On the Trade tab, I could see what resources I'm buying from the other empire, but not what I'm selling to them; that seems weird.
  3. I could absolutely never tell why/where a trade route was getting interrupted; a localized marker on the disruption would be nice, and the Localize button on the notification should bring you to the disruption rather than the resource


- In the Cities list, I would like to be able to see city stability at a glance like I see other important city values, as well as sort cities by stability.


- The Wonder claiming feature seems a bit hidden; it's only accessible through what you'd think is only a convenience menu (the cities list), and the button for it is quite non-descript, looking like a filter or similar tertiary UI function. An icon would help it stand out as something actually important. That feature is also not tutorialized until you have saved enough influence, which you might never do if you never noticed its existence (not helped by how discreet it is)

- Exact borders of territories are hard to see when zoomed in (mostly on unsettled territories but also for territories inside your empire)

- Seems like attacks on your units should be the topmost notification you get. Right now, the game tells me I can open grievances for an attack before telling me who attacked me and where, it's quite confusing to understand what actually happened

- When playing an Expansionist culture, my annexations attempts got interrupted several times without me understanding why. Does the unit have to stay on top of the outpost? If so, it's not quite clear, the same way it's not quite clear at first that Ransacking will get interrupted if the unit moves (logical maybe, but not very clear in the UI). An animation/change of state of some kind on the unit to clarify it's in the process of doing an action that takes several turns would probably help.

- I was quite confused at not being able to withdraw specific demands. It also seemed like you had to accept/refuse demands all at once? That seems very strange. I got into a situation where I think the AI just couldn't pay the total amount of demands, so they just got stuck unable to accept any of them at all. It feels like you should be able to withdraw, accept of refuse specific demands.


- Breaking an alliance also removed all my grievances, I didn't quite understand why; seems some grievances, such as demanding a city because of religious population, should remain?

- Maybe a bug, but I bought out a unit on a city that was building a holy site, and it completely cancelled the construction of the holy site and lost all turns of progress on it, I had to restart it from scratch. Is the intent that unit buyouts cancel/overwrite the current production? If so, a warning would be appreciated if you're going to lose several turns of progress

- I really really want a Terrain/Elevation map; reading types of terrains at a glance is hard and elevation can be nearly impossible, even in battle where it is crucial. Being able to toggle the map into a simplified, clear layout of tile types and elevation would help a lot.


- When hovering above the button to build infrastructure that affects specific types of tiles, I would love for the relevant tiles to be highlighted and the bonus yield shown on them, the same way as when you build a new district. For example, highlight river tiles when building irrigation, highlight mountain/rocky terrain tiles when building masonry...It can be hard to visualize how many relevant tiles your city has and calculate the benefit otherwise.

- The little outpost/district yield recap above the selected tile often gets hidden behind other icons such as tutorial pop-ups or trading post icons.

- I would like to be able to see precise numerical values on research advancements in the Technology recap (aka how much research is still needed to reach the next tech) to precisely micromanage my scientists.

- Unimportant, but it would be handy to be able to hide/reduce the icons for districts/infrastructure/units we know we'll never want to build on a specific city, to get them out of the way (it'd help remembering our specific plan for each city as well)

- When a battle takes place close to a city, the battle overlay covers the city districts, making the city layout impossible to read so it becomes very hard to decide what/where to build next. I'd prefer for the battle overlay to only show up when I click on the battle, or to have a way to toggle it on and off.

- I often couldn't understand why my archers didn't have line of sight. A way to visualize it would help.


Thank you for reading!



Updated 4 years ago.
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4 years ago
Jun 21, 2021, 10:55:35 PM
FaeBriona wrote:
Tinor wrote:
When you use the clear ruins option in a city, it is very unclear where you should use it and what it is used for.
I'll second this. It only seemed to show up in a few cities, and was never clear where the ruins to clear were. I presume the white shaded hex would turn green if the targeted hex was eligible (as it does for something else) but it's not clear visually on the map what hex that might be.

Thirding this. I never understood what that "Clear Ruins" button was for.

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4 years ago
Jun 21, 2021, 11:13:25 PM
MarLard wrote:
FaeBriona wrote:
Tinor wrote:
When you use the clear ruins option in a city, it is very unclear where you should use it and what it is used for.
I'll second this. It only seemed to show up in a few cities, and was never clear where the ruins to clear were. I presume the white shaded hex would turn green if the targeted hex was eligible (as it does for something else) but it's not clear visually on the map what hex that might be.

Thirding this. I never understood what that "Clear Ruins" button was for.

One way to get ruins is to ransack an outpost, city, or district. It might happen for sanctuaries, too. Anyway, finding the right tile is quite troublesome without highlighting. You just have to check every tile until you find a green one.

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