In Game Information - Can this be improved?

I was just thinking today about getting a friend to play Pox when the changes come in and it made me think about what he would find be to big barriers when starting out. The main things I thought of here where in game effects not being conveyed very well.

Here are a few points:

Combat Log
1. Currently some things like spells are shown as spell.123 instead of linking the spell. This needs fixing before advertising if nothing else.

2. The combat log needs streamlining. A lot of text could be cut out to better represent what's happening.

3. Colour coding. Damage, healing, ability names, spell names, damage prevented. All of this could be colour coded for readability.

4. Icons. Small icons could be used in the combat log. For example:
"Forsaken Follower: Heal Mass" (with the icon size matching the text ofc)

From there the icon could be hovered over (or clicked) to display the full ability info. And speaking of being clicked...


In-Game Interface
1. Adapt the bottom left area to be able to show more than just unit details. If someone clicks an ability, have this area show the full ability info where champion abilties usually are. i.e. Rank, Cooldown, AP Cost and descriptive text. This could also be colour coded too and have nice graphics a bit similar to Poxbase for the AP costs and so on. See here: http://www.poxbase.com/#!/ability/100.

2. Spells. Spells just happen right now and you can only guess to check the combat log to see what spell it was (assuming it isn't bugged out and not linking it correctly). It would be nice if an area of the screen showed recently cast spells (possibly using their rune icons). These could be clicked or hovered over for information.

3. It would also be nice, if, as an AoE spell is cast, it clearly highlights the affected tiles. Some AoE spell graphics don't convey this very well to the enemy player.

4. Triggered abilities. I am talking about basic attacks, activated abilities and things like Enrage or Manic.
It would be so much clearer if these could be better displayed. Some suggestions:
- Display the ability icon over the head of the unit that triggered it. A unit triggers manic? A little Manic icon floats up over their head and fades away.
- Display the ability names. Same as icons, but the actual name of the ability.
- Allow the player to choose in options, ticking boxes for Names or Icons (so they can have one, both or neither as they come to know the abilities)
- This could also be the same when an equipment or spell is used on a certain unit. The icon/text appearing over their head.


Equipment
1. The equipped unit should show the equipment as an actual equipment icon, not just some crossed swords. This makes it easier as time goes on to quickly identify equipment on units.

2. Equipment text needs some colour coding too in the tooltips. Try equipping a Stitched Hex Doll and mousing over it on the champion. The wall of text is horrific.

3. Equipment abilities and the explanation of abilities. We don't all need the wall of text. Going back to Hex Doll. Here is the text right now:
"Equipped Witch, Priest or Wizard gains Hex 3 (This champion makes a Loss of Life attack for 8 life against target champion within 6 spaces. When a champion loses 1 or more life from this attack, it becomes Hexed 3 (This unit's DMG is reduced by 60%). This effect does not stack), Curse 2 (This champion makes an attack against target champion at range 1-4 at 50% DMG. This damage ignores DEF. If successful, the target becomes Cursed 4 (-1 DMG, -1 DEF, -1 SPD)), Shielded (This unit cannot be the target of your opponent's spells) and Depression (All champions within 3 spaces of this unit have -2 DMG)."

Here is what it would read as with colour coding and without the explanations:
"Equipped Witch, Priest or Wizard gains Hex 3, Curse 2, Shielded and Depression."

Again, if you clicked the equipment you could get a display similar to an ability in the bottom left. If you moused over the abilities, you'd get a tooltip with their explanation. If you clicked the ability, you'd get the ability info as described earlier.

The current equipment describes all the abilities for a new player. But which do you think is more confusing overall? A new player will drown in that sea of brackets and monotone text.

This is all I have thought of so far. But all of these things are high on my list of things that are not very newbie friendly.

I also realise re-writing the code for tooltips and interface would be a lot of work. But for comprehension (even to older players) it seems pretty important going forward.

EDIT:

Here is an example of a revised combat log. Also re-positioned it. Though it is more about the content of the log than the position.

CURRENT LOG:


REVISED LOG:


Things to note:

1. Turns are easier to spot as the start of turn has spacing and an arrow (<) at the end of the line.

2. Combat is resolved before being entered in the log. This means we can avoid two when hitting enemies. It also means defensive effects go in the log before the hit takes place. In this example Oblivion Shield is triggered before combat is resolved.

3. Enemy and Ally units are color coded. This means the player name is not required, saving space on each line.

4. Damage uses icons. This saves space in terms of typing damage types names. Note that with this log, you can mouse over the icons, meaning that player unsure of the type can see it. But with the limited damage types, you will quickly learn their icon. Also, for most new players, all they need to know is the damage.

5. Everything is color coded. Abilities, effects, spells, units, damage and healing and so on.

6. Standardised certain effects. Effects (and abilities) can be "gained" and "lost". Abilities are "used", etc.
Healing and damage show their source. In this example only healing is shown in the form of Divine Favor and Forsaken Conduit. Hits have no need to show a source unless an ability is used.

7. Not included here, but something I would suggest. Filter buttons at the bottom of the log. Filter for "This Turn", "Last Turn", "Selected Unit", etc. Things to make finding what has happened easier still.

PLAYER SUGGESTIONS & IMAGES

#LoganMkv
I think first thing to do in that direction should be implementing a real fullscreen.
Then it would be possible to implement EVE-style flexible filterable windows — for example you can have one small window for deploys and equips, another - for start/end turn effects, and a main log for everything else.

#Fikule
1. Being able to toggle different log effects on an off. i.e. turn on/off displaying applying effects, healing, damage, deploys, spell casts, etc so the player can see what he personally thinks is important.

2. Spell casting being more visible to players and a tray to view recent spells. Image below. Please imagine the spell cast banner and text being well designed. i.e. not something I knocked up in 5 minutes with powerpoint ^^
I also imagine the banner could be designed smaller to take up less screen space.

 

I am not exactly sold in terms of the colors and icons used in the combat log, it might make it harder to read and/or take up more space when the space is really limiting. I like some of the ideas here, but I personally would be happy with two steps occurring first. First and foremost is the spell.123 and other bugs, absolutely agree. Secondly, the ability to increase the size of the combat log so you can actually see what is going on.

A move towards simplicity in the combat log I think would ultimately be beneficial, with that I do agree.

Before with the interface, there used to be a text instead of icons. For me personally, I wonder if that would be a toggleable option, especially considering the overlap of some of the icons like absorb, arrow eater, all of the heals, and so on. Might not look as pretty, but for me, I personally would like that, but I like to read things.

I like the idea for the equipment, changes, I would have to think about it a little bit more before I can give an opinion on it beyond that though.

 

Thanks for the feedback

In terms of the icons in the combat log. As I said, they would be text sized, so they would not take additional line space. The streamlining of the text was also assumed with their addition. To be honest I should probably make a mock up of what I envision would make a clear combat log.

Also, they could eventually make the combat log much clearer as they could be moused over to show the ability in full in a tooltip. This would mean that once you learn enough about the units and their abilities, there could be an option to turn off ability names in the combat log, so it would just show icons rather than full ability names.

 

Updated with an image of a new combat log compared to a current combat log.

Might do an example of equipment/ability visual later.

 

You know, it looks pretty, but the amount of detail is too much, and once the battle scalates, useful information will be lost in a sea of meaningless icons

 

Can you elaborate? I stripped out masses of detail and flavour from the original combat log and reduced the amount of lines needed to convey information. Do you mean it would look better without colour or icons? Also, I imagine it would be easy to toggle either icons or color coding if the combat log was re-designed. That would allow everyone to see information as they prefer.

Also, would you care to comment on the syntax of the text? Color and Icon options could be easily customized by a player, but I think the syntax would have to remain the same.

Here is one without icons or color. The downside is you would have to add in the players name for each unit and since it wouldn't indicate tooltips you'd have to re-expand all the ability details:



The one without color and with icons looked better, but I sort of mucked that one up before I could save it out ><.

 

No, the icons and colors are great, it's just that if you log every ability ocurrence, it will take a lot of lines and will bury important things.

 

nevermind, I guess I'm so used to ignore the combat log that I forgot how it looked

 

That's why I am suggesting the filters.

Imagine you select your Inkblight Witch and press the "Unit Filter". This would filter out the log to just display anything relating to her, i.e.
- Activating abilties (passive or active: Blind, Forsaken Conduit, etc)
- Units gaining effects from her (Evasive, Cursed, etc)
- Attacking
- Engaging
- Taking Damage

Just anything that involves her.

The same for selecting a spell. Anyone damaged by the spell, healed, affected in general.

Maybe even an Ability filter too.


(Not arguing with you btw, I am enjoying responding to (and getting) the criticism ^^)

 

Hrm, how do you plan for this to work in 2v2 and observer mode?

 

Well, I imagine the "Your Turn" and "Opponent's Turn" can use player names. The colour of the turn (red or green) would determine the units color for observer.

In 2v2 I imagine Green for allies and Red for enemy units would still be fine as you don't need to know the specific player, just allegiance. The log already gets larger in 2v2 and I don't see any more ways to condense it. Suggestions are welcome though.

 

I think first thing to do in that direction should be implementing a real fullscreen.
Then it would be possible to implement EVE-style flexible filterable windows — for example you can have one small window for deploys and equips, another - for start/end turn effects, and a main log for everything else.

 

In that case I'll try to get the equipment/ability examples done and try to update the first post with suggestions

Also, any way to display an image as a thumbnail? I notice it sort of automatically does it in quotes.

 

Yeah, but to see the details they need to be larger. I suppose I'll need to keep them large.

EDIT: Nvm, got the thumbing on Photobucket. Apparently that linking option is turned off by default ><

 

XenForo automatically resizes the images to maximum unless you tinker with some of the extras, but it would affect all images. There is no way that I am aware of of saying something like

HTML:

<img src="http://imagestuff.com/?p=12938" height="500" width = "300">

that is supported by this software.

 

Now you tell me. I was trying [img 200x200]{link}[/img]

Ty

 

So yeah, anyone posting suggestions or example images, I'll try to add your posts to the main post

 

Yeah, that bb code I'm pretty sure is not supported on these forums though they may work other places, sorry >_<.

Depending on where you upload the images though you might be able to resize them, I think Photobucket gives you this option, and I haven't really played around with others but they might work as well, I guess I should actually look and experiment with them =P.