Am I the only one who thinks UI and tutorials are really bad, even for pre alpha?

[Krajzen]

Title.
I have played four combat scenarios (won three of them), read all tutorials and stuff, and I still have no idea how do following things work:
- Flanking
- Damage calculation
- Line of sight for ranged units
- Line of sight in general
- Amphibious landings
- High/low ground (I mean, is there any clear UI indicator of height levels?)
- Everything about reinforcements (how far away, how quickly do they appear, I can't even handle their UI)

Is anyone having the same issues? Did I miss something regarding presentation? Frankly, I was really moving in the dark, and had flashbacks of Endless Legend where you get hilariously basic "how to move camera" tutorial and then need to handle magic storms, artifacts, altars of gods and five year old plans.

Add to this bizarre lack of "quick combat animations" button/mode, and I have seen very cool combat system buried under very unpleasant presentation.

 

[Narcisse]

I can't agree, missing Tutorials and Ui informations is typical from a pre alpha. You can't expect they already make a full and fonctionnal tutorial when some mechanics are subject to change.
And a lot of poeple have already suggested on G2G a lot of things : Improving the high/low ground visualisation, the forest tile, a clear indicator for the flanking conditions and participants, a clear indicator for line of sight, etc ...
And maybe the Devs were already working on it before poeple suggest it, so ...

The reinforcements system works really well and is consistant for me. Just need a tutorial again.
But participating in a pre-alpha need some personal investment, and you need to consider the possible WiP things. You can't attend a full tutorial in an "openDev", it's not a demo. In my humble opinion, ofc.

They explained some of the mechanics (highgrounds, flanking, line of sight of gunners being different of archers, etc.. ) in the dedicated streams and videos.

But my opinion is maybe biased because I participated in a lot of Alpha (Darkest Dungeon, starsector, etc ...). But an alpha ... is an alpha

 

[Elhoim]

I think that many things are not exactly clear, but I don't consider them very bad for a pre-alpha. It's actually quite fine for a pre-alpha. Making tutorials takes quite a bit of time, and not worth doing when the mechanics are in a constant flux.

BTW, combat animations can be increased in the settings, it's called "choreography".

 

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

You can't attend they already make a full and fonctionnal tutorial when some mechanics are subject to change

You can see this quite clearly in the OpenDev. We had added some tutorialization for the Press build we had a few months ago, and it is already outdated in several places we missed (For example he Science Mode tutorial, the number of combat rounds per turn mentioned in the tutorial, and several others I don't recall right now.)

 

[ehecatzin]

I...think It's perfectly acceptable for pre alpha, tho I have to say I found myself only realizing I could do stuff when I was asked about it on the feedback form, for example using pops for production.

I guess that's also useful for the devs to know and make clearer on the release version.

 

[Krajzen]

I...think It's perfectly acceptable for pre alpha, tho I have to say I found myself only realizing I could do stuff when I was asked about it on the feedback form, for example using pops for production.

Yeah, that's why I have made this thread. I do know it's just pre alpha, I was simply surprised by the fact devs expect us to comment on things we don't know about, or rate features without some introduction of how do they work It would increase the productivity of open dev.

 

[Elhoim]

Yeah, that's why I have made this thread. I do know it's just pre alpha, I was simply surprised by the fact devs expect us to comment on things we don't know about, or rate features without some introduction of how do they work It would increase the productivity of open dev.

Not actually. Maybe they didn't introduce them because what they were probably testing was how intuitive they were as well.

 

[Stringer1313]

As someone who gets confused easily, I completely agree. But I will say that I managed to mostly understand combat pretty quickly, miraculously. It's the other UI stuff concerning FIDS yields and where they come from, what districts yield what and why, which hex is a district and which isn't (visual clutter), the expansion versus linking cities versus merging cities versus outposts that are part of cities and those that aren't which is confusing as all hell, including how to link/merge/whatever outposts, etc., that is overwhelmingly confusing.

My rule is -- if you have to go on an online forum to understand what is happening, then Houston we have a problem. Someone posted an Einstein chalkboard explaining how districts and yields work, and I just threw up my hands.

Having said this, I don't have the experience to know what is normal for pre-alpha and what is not, and I have faith that they can and will fix this by release. I just hope they do.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I'm playing the newly launched Crusader Kings 3, without having played the prior game in the series. There's a tutorial that explains a few things, but the vast majority of the game mechanics are a mystery. Even searching online I can't figure out some things, like why sometimes a neighbour's borders start flashing.

Creating a good tutorial for a complicated game looks to be almost as much work as creating the game itself. I think it's reasonable for the tutorial to teach you a few things, and then rely on you to figure the rest out on your own, either through trial-and-error or by reading online guides. If the game is any good, a lot of people will contribute online guides, I think the best we should hope of the dev team is that they give us enough to get started.

 

[Elhoim]

I'm playing the newly launched Crusader Kings 3, without having played the prior game in the series. There's a tutorial that explains a few things, but the vast majority of the game mechanics are a mystery. Even searching online I can't figure out some things, like why sometimes a neighbour's borders start flashing.

Creating a good tutorial for a complicated game looks to be almost as much work as creating the game itself. I think it's reasonable for the tutorial to teach you a few things, and then rely on you to figure the rest out on your own, either through trial-and-error or by reading online guides. If the game is any good, a lot of people will contribute online guides, I think the best we should hope of the dev team is that they give us enough to get started.

Yeah, in general what Devs really need to be clear is to show where numbers are coming from, with really good breakdowns, and clear tooltips. Old World system in which you "freeze" the tooltip, so you can check tooltips on the tooltip is amazing in that regard.

 

[Atlas627]

I had no problem figuring things out from the UI, but I had played Endless Legend so that may not be representative of the quality of the UI. I think the important things are the tooltips and having some sort of in-game encyclopedia like the Civilopedia (but way better than Civ6s original one, which was trash).