DW2 New Player - A Few Questions/Feature Requests/Observations/Confused Stares/Pleas for Help
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2024 9:25 pm
Really enjoying playing DW2, so far only a couple of weeks in.
There are a few spots where I'm struggling though and wanted to ask if there is information available that could help, or if it's possible to suggest ways to improve the UI. Being a bit/a lot ADD, I find these things distract me from enjoying the game as much as I could, and I start focusing on what that little green icon means and jumping out to Google it in the middle of the game for 20 minutes (green thing that looks like a clock, turns out it's how much something has been scanned) when a mouse-over or help screen or tutorial mention would have cleared it up right away. I'm very open to being corrected with where I missed a lot this. But that's kind of the point, for the clueless new users, you don't want to make them work hard to figure out things that are not part of the game itself. As they say, if your product needs a detailed manual, you've failed as a designer.
Being a former developer (which explains the ADD), of course I'd like things to work the way I would have done it
And minimizing people hassling me with questions that a help file or mouse-over could answer etc is valuable in saving time and making users happier.
SEARCH
I can't seem to find definitions for many things in the Galactopedia, either I'm missing them or they aren't there. A search feature here would be incredibly useful as this is a large amount of information to look through.
As an example, Space Bastions. I built one but couldn't find these anywhere in the documentation, including looking under Orbital Batteries, etc. Could be I'm blind, but a Search function would save massive amounts of time for new users who aren't sure where things are categorized. Monitoring Stations was another one I hunted for. Eventually I found it on a website, but never did in the game. Is it a Planetary Facility? Nope. Ship? Don't think so. Hmmm. I understand part of the game is discovering things, but stuff I build for a specific purpose will hopefully have it defined what exactly it does and why I would want to build it.
Ditto for the Research screen, you do learn where things are, but a filter/filter would be so useful here for new users and just quickly navigating to the thing you want to find. I'm sure there are other areas where this will help too. It's a little weird here that the screen pops out when mousing over a tech and then after a moment changes to a larger information screen, I could have affected this by turning on a setting to show more info, but it's a bit jarring for it to show a screen and then immediately take it away and replace it after you'd have time to read a word or two.
ACCESS TO INFORMATION
I believe one way the game could be made easier to use is to include a link '?' on any object that will take you to that object's help document, or a pop-up with information about the object.
For instance, there's a fair bit of information for a newbie to absorb in screens like this, and mouse-overs or click to pop open more information would be super-ultra useful:
I found when choosing to research techs, there was precious little info in the research screen as to what some of the techs do, or sometimes a dense amount of information that I couldn't fully understand because it related to a lot of other concepts that I would need to figure out separately.
ICONS (Ships, Planets and Colonies and random objects, etc)
I've spent a fair amount of time looking for definitions of some of the icons you see on the screen, some are obvious, but many are not, especially for the newbie.
Practically all software will show a tip when mousing over icons, but DW2 is spotty in this, sometimes it will show you information like resource names in the planet summary screen, but not on objects in the larger central map.
For example, for a new user, this is very confusing:
Again I may be blind but haven't found the icons defined anywhere in the help and no help from mousing over here. If no mouse-over, a table in the help documentation would be super handy.
I haven't found a lot of information searching on the web as well, there are some spreadsheets people have made, but I think by the time they get to these they know the icons already.
COLOR CHOICES
This one drives me crazy during games, I don't think there's a way to change this in the settings, the Color Scheme in settings doesn't affect it. Dark blue on black is almost impossible to see (at least for me):
Not super important info, but I find myself trying to read it just because it's so hard to read.
I totally get that some of this is hard to code, especially if you've coded the game from the ground up, but hoping some things like mouse-overs everywhere can be added in to help the clueless like me
Thanks for any hints/advice/help etc!
There are a few spots where I'm struggling though and wanted to ask if there is information available that could help, or if it's possible to suggest ways to improve the UI. Being a bit/a lot ADD, I find these things distract me from enjoying the game as much as I could, and I start focusing on what that little green icon means and jumping out to Google it in the middle of the game for 20 minutes (green thing that looks like a clock, turns out it's how much something has been scanned) when a mouse-over or help screen or tutorial mention would have cleared it up right away. I'm very open to being corrected with where I missed a lot this. But that's kind of the point, for the clueless new users, you don't want to make them work hard to figure out things that are not part of the game itself. As they say, if your product needs a detailed manual, you've failed as a designer.
Being a former developer (which explains the ADD), of course I'd like things to work the way I would have done it
And minimizing people hassling me with questions that a help file or mouse-over could answer etc is valuable in saving time and making users happier.SEARCH
I can't seem to find definitions for many things in the Galactopedia, either I'm missing them or they aren't there. A search feature here would be incredibly useful as this is a large amount of information to look through.
As an example, Space Bastions. I built one but couldn't find these anywhere in the documentation, including looking under Orbital Batteries, etc. Could be I'm blind, but a Search function would save massive amounts of time for new users who aren't sure where things are categorized. Monitoring Stations was another one I hunted for. Eventually I found it on a website, but never did in the game. Is it a Planetary Facility? Nope. Ship? Don't think so. Hmmm. I understand part of the game is discovering things, but stuff I build for a specific purpose will hopefully have it defined what exactly it does and why I would want to build it.
Ditto for the Research screen, you do learn where things are, but a filter/filter would be so useful here for new users and just quickly navigating to the thing you want to find. I'm sure there are other areas where this will help too. It's a little weird here that the screen pops out when mousing over a tech and then after a moment changes to a larger information screen, I could have affected this by turning on a setting to show more info, but it's a bit jarring for it to show a screen and then immediately take it away and replace it after you'd have time to read a word or two.
ACCESS TO INFORMATION
I believe one way the game could be made easier to use is to include a link '?' on any object that will take you to that object's help document, or a pop-up with information about the object.
For instance, there's a fair bit of information for a newbie to absorb in screens like this, and mouse-overs or click to pop open more information would be super-ultra useful:
I found when choosing to research techs, there was precious little info in the research screen as to what some of the techs do, or sometimes a dense amount of information that I couldn't fully understand because it related to a lot of other concepts that I would need to figure out separately.
ICONS (Ships, Planets and Colonies and random objects, etc)
I've spent a fair amount of time looking for definitions of some of the icons you see on the screen, some are obvious, but many are not, especially for the newbie.
Practically all software will show a tip when mousing over icons, but DW2 is spotty in this, sometimes it will show you information like resource names in the planet summary screen, but not on objects in the larger central map.
For example, for a new user, this is very confusing:
Again I may be blind but haven't found the icons defined anywhere in the help and no help from mousing over here. If no mouse-over, a table in the help documentation would be super handy.
I haven't found a lot of information searching on the web as well, there are some spreadsheets people have made, but I think by the time they get to these they know the icons already.
COLOR CHOICES
This one drives me crazy during games, I don't think there's a way to change this in the settings, the Color Scheme in settings doesn't affect it. Dark blue on black is almost impossible to see (at least for me):
Not super important info, but I find myself trying to read it just because it's so hard to read.
I totally get that some of this is hard to code, especially if you've coded the game from the ground up, but hoping some things like mouse-overs everywhere can be added in to help the clueless like me
Thanks for any hints/advice/help etc!