New user feedback/questions

[xanthan]

First of all, thanks for the excellent work. This is an amazing game and I'm enjoying it a lot.

There are two things I can't figure out. Please tell me if they are there somewhere and I am just missing them. If they are _not_ there, I'd like to suggest them as new features.

1) A turn indicator showing what turn it is, and how many you have until "time runs out". In a couple of scenarios time has run out, I think, on turn 20. The message just unceremoniously tells me "You have been defeated, without saying why." That message could be improved too!

2) There's a lot of detail on the damage and defense for attacks, but nothing that says how many times a particular attack is applied. That's very important information!

[thespaceinvader]

1: Top left - the coloured flags show which side's turn it is. The number next to them shows how many turns have elapsed. if there's just one number, you have no turn limit. If there's a second number after a /, then that's the turn limit.

2: When you see an attack, you'll notice that it's written as, say, 5-2 - this means that the attack does two strikes of 5 damage each.

[xanthan]

Thanks for the speedy reply! Now that I know what to look for, I have found the number of attacks mentioned where you would expect in the documentation. A notation of 4x5 would be more intuitive than 5-4, though. I had assumed that meant damage was between five and four.

If the tooltip by the flag said "turns" that would also make more sense than repeating the character name. Also, since the flag is used for claimed villages in the game, it would make more sense to me to use that instead of the house icon for villages, and use something else for turns.

I'm posting this as new user feedback, since it's all too easy to forget what it was like at the start once you're very familiar with a game and this user interface information can get lost. I hope it's useful to someone.

Cheers, and thanks
Xanthan

[Gambit]

I thought there was a button in the main menu that took you to a mini campaign that explained what everything meant and where you could find certain useful information...
I think it started with a T. Tut? Tutu? Tutor? Tutorial? Yes! "Tutorial". That's the one.

The message just unceremoniously tells me "You have been defeated, without saying why." That message could be improved too!

^ This would be a good idea though.

[xanthan]

Yes Gambit, of course I did the tutorial, but you only do it once and if these points were covered they did not sink in. I offer these comments as suggestions for simple improvements to the user interface to make something great even better. Good user interface design allows for making things intuitive without having to go to the documentation to figure it out. Wesnoth is excellent at this, but IMHO these few little improvements would take it even further.

[Kalajel]

Thanks for the speedy reply! Now that I know what to look for, I have found the number of attacks mentioned where you would expect in the documentation. A notation of 4x5 would be more intuitive than 5-4, though. I had assumed that meant damage was between five and four.

If the tooltip by the flag said "turns" that would also make more sense than repeating the character name. Also, since the flag is used for claimed villages in the game, it would make more sense to me to use that instead of the house icon for villages, and use something else for turns.

Hmm, those sounds like good suggestions that wouldn't be to hard to implement; I know I also made the same mistake you did concerning the current attack/damage notations… I wonder why those improvement haven't been made…

Could it be that wesnoth players are old grognards who like their game the way it is… sort of like those people who still play 1E AD&D today?

[MDG]

Changing the 5-4 style notation (to a variety of options) has been discussed numerous times before and never went anywhere. Turns out different people have different intuitions depending on an awful lot of factors.

I haven't, personally, seen the other suggestion discussed yet (which certainly doesn't mean that it hasn't been).

[Zarel]

If the tooltip by the flag said "turns" that would also make more sense than repeating the character name. Also, since the flag is used for claimed villages in the game, it would make more sense to me to use that instead of the house icon for villages, and use something else for turns.

Wait, what does the tooltip for the flag say? I thought it said "Turns"... Regardless, the main problem with this suggestion is... what should we use for turns, if not a flag?

I think a good solution would be to draw attention to the turn counter once you only have a certain number of turns left (but not if waiting out the turns causes you to win, such as in The Valley of Death in HttT).

Yes Gambit, of course I did the tutorial, but you only do it once and if these points were covered they did not sink in. I offer these comments as suggestions for simple improvements to the user interface to make something great even better. Good user interface design allows for making things intuitive without having to go to the documentation to figure it out. Wesnoth is excellent at this, but IMHO these few little improvements would take it even further.

I don't think the tutorial explicitly points out where the turn counter is, so it's reasonable for someone to miss it.

Changing the 5-4 style notation (to a variety of options) has been discussed numerous times before and never went anywhere. Turns out different people have different intuitions depending on an awful lot of factors.

I haven't, personally, seen the other suggestion discussed yet (which certainly doesn't mean that it hasn't been).

I've gotten used to "5-4", so I'd find a change weird, but it would definitely make more sense as something like:

5×4

And even if it wouldn't be the "best" for a specific group, it would probably have significantly more people understanding what it meant than the current system. It would also be uglier, though.

[MDG]

Here's one previous thread on the damage-strikes notation.

[Velensk]

Personally I have never had problem with the current notation. I can see why people might want the 5x4 notation but it shouldn't be a stumbling block to anyone who is willing to simply observe.

[MDG]

1) A turn indicator showing what turn it is, and how many you have until "time runs out". In a couple of scenarios time has run out, I think, on turn 20. The message just unceremoniously tells me "You have been defeated, without saying why." That message could be improved too!

Note that this message is set in the WML of the specific campaign it was encountered in, not in the core game engine. This means that if it is going to be changed then it would be the campaign maintainer that would change it. Unfortunately, you haven't mentioned which campaign this cropped up in so there's no way it'll get changed...

So, what campaign was it?

[xanthan]

I've only done the novice campaigns, so I know it was in two of those. I don't recall exactly which campaigns and scenarios, though. I didn't know it wasn't a generic behaviour, as it happened the same way twice in different campaigns.

[Minx]

So, what campaign was it?

It happens, for example, in HttT, in The Dwarven Doors.

No explanation, just, "you've been defeated", or something similar. Not a big deal once you remember that you have a number of turns you have to finish in, but might be confusing for people.

[MDG]

OK, my bad. I just had a quick scan through that scenario's WML code and there is no specific message regarding losing through time over. It looks like there is a default time out message that the game engine gives if there isn't a scenario specific one.

If you think changes need to be made to mainline campaigns, best thing is to post up in the feedback section of the forum.

[ydcl]

Hi, I want to point something. Most of the campaigns, have not level. For an experimented player no problem, but for a user like me, there are sometimes too hard at "expert" level. It's better, if the people show the challenge level. Like this more people, can test the campaigns.