UI suggestions and a request

[Blave]

After playing WAY too much over the last week, I've come across a few things that would be really nice UI additions for the playability of the game.

 

1. Make Lini's Animal Trick autocast or at least make all active abilities that can be used in any situation more present and easier to spot. I can't count how often I've simply forgotten to use Animal Trick. Maybe show the ability icons directly above the cards when they can be activated or something like that (similar to passive abilities).

 

2. After creating a new party, immediately go to the deck building screen. I've created at least a dozen parties that I never played because I started the first scenario while forgetting to adjust their cards.

 

3. Add fixed groups to quest mode (like in story mode). Assembling the party again every time you play is needlessly complicated and gets worse every time you add more characters to the list by starting a different group, especially if you use same characters. If someone wants to mix and match his characters, he can still delete the groups and assemble the characters in a new party.

 

 

Now for my request: Make gold farmable without legendary dfficulty or quest mode again. I'm new to the PF card game and still trying out different parties and decks so I've not played any party long enough to farm legendary. At the very least, let us get gold for the first completetion of a scenario per party. With quest mode not allowing me to keep playing a party for more than a few scenarios, I'm basically without an income (not counting the small amonts of gold you get for defeating banes and such).

Edited May 12, 2016 by Blave

[Irgy]

Just a bit of "devil's advocate" on some of these suggestions...

 

For 1, I think autocast would just make things worse. As annoying as it is, remembering to use your powers is important. Making a few remembered for free will just result in even sloppier play and just result in other things like Lem's power (which you *almost* always want to use but which can't be autocast) forgotten more often. In Lini's case it also helps make you more aware of when you don't have an animal in hand. To take it to an extreme, once dice just appear and disappear and you don't even know why, people end up not even knowing where they're coming from and eventually make poor decisions as a result.

 

The UI does already light up and highlight abilities you can use now. Maybe ones you almost certainly want to use could be emphasised a little more and almost irrelevant ones (like pre-emptively casting "Strength" without any check for it to impact) a bit duller?

 

For 2, I think the way it works is intentional, to simplify things for new players, while it's assumed experienced players will know where to click to change things. The problem only exists for a small transition period between the two.

 

As for the gold farming, I do agree that the rate of gold acquisition as a pure f2p player isn't quite enough to keep you "entertained" doing new things all the time. Buying the "daily gold" is just enough to get you over the line in that regard. I think this is part of the economic design, to encourage people to actually "buy" the game. This game doesn't use a "whales + leeches" economy like certain other games out there - there's no whale gouging system (since you can unlock everything for a not small but certainly affordable price), and there isn't the need for a critical mass of fully f2p players for the game to function (compared to games based on random matchmaking for instance). So the economy instead needs to provide a motivation for the majority of players to spend a small amount. As entitled as we all feel by games where f2p players progress at a more entertaining rate, I think it's a reasonable economy and I'm glad they went with this style.

[Blave]

I agree on your thoughts tomy suggestions (with them being intentional and so on). Just to clarify:

 

Autocast might be a bit much, but I think showing available abilites more prominently than with a dark blue glow in the bottom right corner of the screen should be possible.

 

Going directly from party- to deck-building could be an advanced option that only unlocks on completion of Perils or something like that.

 

The thing with gold is: I already bought the Runelords-Pack. The game is fun, so I gladly spend money on it. Buying it once for such a huge amount of content is awesome and way better than the "buy a miniscule amount of premium currency for 100 bucks" that other f2p games use. I play some f2p games and have spend money on them but paying real money for random stuff like booster packs (or treasure chests in Pathfinder Adventures) that might as well be completely useless, just feels wrong.

I would just like to have a decent way to farm treasure chests without spending money. Just to have a goal beyond completing the campaign.

[Weskingofscots]

Just a quick chime in on the gold farming. 

 

These guys have made a very quality game here that at the least deserves your $2 real cash for the daily gold.

 

But if for some reason people can't afford that, you can still make around 40+ gold over and over in already completed scenarios pretty easily.

If you can, give these guys some cash for the effort.

Edited May 12, 2016 by Weskingofscots

[Feywood]

The rate at which you can pick up gold is fine, if not actually overly generous, truth be told. Considering that gold is held server-side, I'm sure that if the folks at Obsidian checked the stats for my device ID, they could see that I've probably raked in over 50,000 gold by this point, just by playing new characters and farming the different scenarios to gear them up.

 

When I originally picked up the game I considered the daily gold, but then found that it'd be easier and more fun just to complete a legendary scenario every day for that 200 gold (and then I end up playing multiple scenarios anyway). I would consider buying the P deck for actual money, because it's the only thing that comes with the bundle that isn't available for gold, and given that I own everything else available, I don't want to buy the entire bundle just for that one deck.

[StormbringerGT]

Good feedback Blave! Irgy nails a lot of this on the head.

The more game mechanics we automate the more it might lead to "sloppy play". Some things are very easy to forget and we try to remind you where we can. 

 

Gold farming is a delicate balance that is constantly being tuned and looked at. If we give it away entirely too easily there is no real incentive for players to buy anything with real currency. We all want to continue to pump out more content for this game, and I'm sure you guys want to play more content. That being said Gold is in there as an alternative. I think buying with money should be the more attractive of the two (my personal and biased opinion of course!) but the gold needs to be a viable secondary option as well.

Keep the feedback coming, we really appreciate it and we are listening!

[Feywood]

While things like automatically engaging Lini's Animal Trick would be useful most of the time, it could conceivably lead to the rare unforeseen or unwanted issue, although you could just manually drag the animal back to your hand to turn it off in those cases.

 

There should be options to manually turn on "auto-succeed" and/or "auto-recharge" functions, though, because most of the time those are just tiresome, and if I'm deliberately toggling those options on, it's because I know that I don't want to see fifty prompts every scenario for the same something I'm always going to want to have happen.

 

In addition, it may already have been brought up, but I'd like to see blessings in a character's hand glow if they match the current blessing in the timer window, because I find it very easy to forget about that interaction.

Edited May 12, 2016 by Feywood

[Blave]

As I said, the abilities don't need to be automatic. Just maybe a bit more present. I can (and probably will) get used to it either way but my first experiences with Lini were way worse than they needed to be.

It probably doesn't help that I'm often playing on my phone with even smaller buttons because my tablet has no mobile connection and prevents all Gold gain when I'm on the train. Can't wait for the Smartphone version.

 

I know Gold gain is complicated and hard to balance. I honestly think you did a great job with the way it works. It's just that my bugged quest mode doesn't allow me to farm Gold either (at least not without starting new characters every few scenarios) which is frustrating to say the least.

 

Any word on parties for Quest mode?

[Irgy]

I agree on your thoughts tomy suggestions (with them being intentional and so on). Just to clarify:

 

Autocast might be a bit much, but I think showing available abilites more prominently than with a dark blue glow in the bottom right corner of the screen should be possible.

 

Going directly from party- to deck-building could be an advanced option that only unlocks on completion of Perils or something like that.

 

The thing with gold is: I already bought the Runelords-Pack. The game is fun, so I gladly spend money on it. Buying it once for such a huge amount of content is awesome and way better than the "buy a miniscule amount of premium currency for 100 bucks" that other f2p games use. I play some f2p games and have spend money on them but paying real money for random stuff like booster packs (or treasure chests in Pathfinder Adventures) that might as well be completely useless, just feels wrong.

I would just like to have a decent way to farm treasure chests without spending money. Just to have a goal beyond completing the campaign.

 

Ok well you've spent more than me I guess I shouldn't lecture you about economics. The gold thing though isn't what I thought you were talking about, and now I'm a little confused. I'm playing not-my-first party through story mode on normal, and still getting the 100 gold rewards when I win a scenario. You seem to be having a different experience?

 

I agree with the other things you say there.

[Blave]

As far as I know (and judging from my experience) the patch changed it so you only get gold for the first completion of a story scenario on each difficulty. The next group doesn't get the 100 gold reward for finishing it (you still get the small amounts for defeating babes and such).

 

As far as I've read, you always get full gold rewards on legendary difficulty but I haven't started that yet. You also get full gold rewards for each scenario in quest mode which I'd like to use for gold gains, but it's currently bugged for me. I hope they can fix it.

[Brainwave]

Btw I like the original posters second suggestion - going directly to deck building from party selection when making a new party. I don't see why this would be confusing for new players, in fact you could put in a tutorial message that says "You may swap any cards with basic cards of the same type. Press the arrow to continue when finished." Especially based on comments I've already seen, I'm sure there are players that are confused by this process or don't even realize that they can adjust decks initially. And as an experienced player I've forgotten to click that button myself and had to go back, delete that party and restart.

 

Basically I think that most people would prefer to adjust decks so making it the default makes sense and even for those that don't want to do it, all they have to do is click the arrow to continue.

[Nightfind]

I know I am probably not in the majority when I say this, but I like starting with the default cards.  I take the view that my adventurers are beginners and don't start out with the best gear and it makes me look forward to acquiring ANY boon pretty much in my first few adventures.

 

But I do agree that it would be a good thing to cover in the tutorial having a character swap out one card for another so they get familiar with the process.

Even though I wouldn't use it, I'll give a +1 to having the deck building screen pop up automatically on party creation - sounds more intuitive to me to have that happen and I can just click continue without changing anything if I don't want to..

 

Nightfind

[kurtalb1]

After playing WAY too much over the last week, I've come across a few things that would be really nice UI additions for the playability of the game.

 

1. Make Lini's Animal Trick autocast or at least make all active abilities that can be used in any situation more present and easier to spot. I can't count how often I've simply forgotten to use Animal Trick. Maybe show the ability icons directly above the cards when they can be activated or something like that (similar to passive abilities).

 

2. After creating a new party, immediately go to the deck building screen. I've created at least a dozen parties that I never played because I started the first scenario while forgetting to adjust their cards.

 

3. Add fixed groups to quest mode (like in story mode). Assembling the party again every time you play is needlessly complicated and gets worse every time you add more characters to the list by starting a different group, especially if you use same characters. If someone wants to mix and match his characters, he can still delete the groups and assemble the characters in a new party.

 

 

Now for my request: Make gold farmable without legendary dfficulty or quest mode again. I'm new to the PF card game and still trying out different parties and decks so I've not played any party long enough to farm legendary. At the very least, let us get gold for the first completetion of a scenario per party. With quest mode not allowing me to keep playing a party for more than a few scenarios, I'm basically without an income (not counting the small amonts of gold you get for defeating banes and such).

 

I am totally for number 3!  It would be much easier this way.

[Steelbeard]

Rather than make a new thread, I figured I'd post a few suggestions on the UI here, all of which are quality of life improvements I'd like to see, no bugs or anything like that:

 

(1)  I like being able to tap the card and see an expanded, larger version of it that is easy to read.  Once the card expands, however, I have to tap again to return it to normal if I want to examine another card.  I'd like to have the ability to swipe back and forth and look at my whole hand, for example, while the card is expanded.   Or, when I have multiple cards I can play that are highlighted, expand, and then again be able to swipe back and forth so that I can examine all my highlighted options without having to close each one and open another by tapping them individually.

 

(2)  The character power buttons have nice icons on them that relate to what they do, but I easily forget exactly what their costs and effects are.  Right now, I have to tap the character portrait, then "powers" and then scroll down to examine them.  Instead, I'd like to be able to tap and hold on the powers button on the game screen and have a popup remind me what the powers do, so that I don't have to leave the action of the game to go look it up.

 

(3)  The dice are wonderful and fun.  However, they go by too fast.  After I roll them, I don't even get to see what I rolled before the total appears right on top of them.  This greatly lessens the fun.  The point of rolling (even virtual) dice is to see what I rolled.  If I can't, then there really isn't a point to rolling them.  As it stands now, you may as well just have a button that displays a random number.  That's not very fun.  So I'd love it if you'd implement a delay in there so that I could actually see what numbers come up on the dice before you jump in and total them up.  I know some people don't want any slowdown in the game because they want to race through it all to get to the result, so perhaps a UI option in settings to do this?  Or, at the very least, move the graphic that shows the total so that it doesn't obscure the numbers I rolled on the dice.

 

(4)  Please implement a turn log or journal.  I want to be able to open it up and look back and see what happened on the turn-- dice rolls, cards played, etc.

 

(5)  The tabletop version of the game has some terrific description text of the locations.  I think it would be neat if there was a button on the location name on the main game screen that I could tap that would open and display the descriptive text from the tabletop cards.

Edited May 15, 2016 by Steelbeard

[PinkRose]

I won't hold it against you if #1 is implemented, but 2,3,4,5 are Gold!

Edited May 16, 2016 by PinkRose