Legolad

Just tried the backer portal. I think I already responded but wanted to make sure. Sadly, the portal won't load for me. I just get a blank page. Maybe it's getting slammed after update 70? I'm getting very excited about this game. Each update makes me more and more impatient, but I will persevere. )

I think it's a mixed bag and, for me at least, it is very dependent on how much time I'm given to read and whether the text is legible to me. As I've aged, I find myself struggling more with a lot of games because the designers make specific assumptions about the size of visual elements. In EVE Online, for example, I prefer to play the game at the highest resolution I can, but until very recently I was not able to increase the font size independently from the graphics. This meant I had to fiddle with the resolution making trade-offs between legibility of the font size and detail of the resolution. Not a fun trade-off to have to make. Even now, the ability to change font sizes does not affect all fonts. Rather it's limited to menus and other specific elements, making it impossible to get my ideal visual experience: fully legible text and beautiful high-resolution graphics. So, for me, any solution that involves text must also include the ability to set the size, color, background, and transparency of that text. And I'm not alone. The mean age of gamers is shifting upward, bringing with it a lot of people closer to my age (49). That means more people with vision problems will also grow. Lump into that people who are color blind and people who have other vision issues and I assume there are plenty of players who would love to be able to adjust these settings, and not just for aesthetic reasons.

This. As a lover of the isometric RPG game style, but not a hardcore spreadsheet player type, I have a problem with the "play harder" ethos that has crept into gaming in the last decade or so. This "play harder" ethos would have us believe that some character benefits should only be available to those players willing to dedicate endless hours of iterative/repetitive activity. While this works well in some game types (e.g. puzzle, racing, FPS) , I think it actually runs counter to the soul of an RPG. In 40 years of D&D play (yes, I'm old) I've never once found myself tempted to save a player reward for the rare player that can memorize every stat in every battle. That said, I'm not opposed to rewarding player skill, even if it is a bit meta. My point, and I do have one, is that any mechanism that puts a player at a disadvantage ought to be paired with a visual and/or audio clue that informs the player that he/she is operating at a disadvantage. It is not enough to build in the mechanism and trust that the players will figure it out. Also, given the nature of managing a party in battle, it is not enough to depend on simple onscreen damage tickers as these tend to get lost in the fray in an isometric party view. Instead, I start with the assumption that any member of an adventuring party who was involved in an actual fight would immediately get a sense for how well his/her attacks were working (based on the effect those attacks have on the enemy). I then assume that - as the party's proxy - I (the player) should also have this knowledge. Assuming this is true, the only question is "How do we let players know when there are abnormal attacks?" For example: 1. Does a party member need to swap weapons? (Blue Elf needs a mace badly.) 2. Does a party member need to swap armor? (Red Dwarf is apparently a pinata.) 3. Is a party member getting lots of crits? (Green Magician is the envy of his party.) I know it's all a bit meta and some players may prefer not to see this kind of information, but for me it makes the overall gameplay a little more engaging. Instead of pushing me out of the game to a spreadsheet (literally or figuratively), it enables me to organically see the effect of what each party member is doing and make proper tactical adjustments "in situ". That's my 2 cents. TL;DR Damage tickers aren't enough. Use something cooler to alert us to bad situations.