Europa Universalis V (EU5) announced

[itix]

I’m so jealous I won’t be able to play until there’s a Mac version. I’ve been watching lots of streams, and it looks so fun!

And if the game is bad you should kiss your Mac. For saving your money

 

[queenpea]

And if the game is bad you should kiss your Mac. For saving your money

After spending $130 on the Founder’s Edition of VII, I swore off pre-ordering video games. Flash forward months later and I am considering a pre-order and googling how to run pc games on my Mac laptop

 

[itix]

After spending $130 on the Founder’s Edition of VII, I swore off pre-ordering video games. Flash forward months later and I am considering a pre-order and googling how to run pc games on my Mac laptop

Unfortunately the game is bugged and unplayable on my machine.

 

[itix]

After spending $130 on the Founder’s Edition of VII, I swore off pre-ordering video games. Flash forward months later and I am considering a pre-order and googling how to run pc games on my Mac laptop

I was this >< close to pre-ordering Founder's Edition but since there was no discount offered, I decided to wait until launch day. And then a week. And then a month...

But honestly there were more bad vibes about Civ 7 before release than EUV is having now. Paradox is getting trashed on Steam EUV discussion and rightfully so, they had many bad launches. But I have a good feeling about this and I never played EUIV, so no expectations.

 

[itix]

EUV overload from watching tutorials. It looks great, UI is great, can't wait!

 

[queenpea]

EUV overload from watching tutorials. It looks great, UI is great, can't wait!

Enjoy!!

 

[Siptah]

EUV overload from watching tutorials. It looks great, UI is great, can't wait!

UI is great? I think our opinions diverge very much here. It looks like it was designed in the 90s by someone who doesn‘t know how to align text and icons, or how to make crisp and intelligible icons. And functionality is… suboptimal. I will get used to it, as I got also used to EU4‘s and all the civ UIs. But it’s utter garbage for a game of that size and ambition.

I‘ll wait some weeks/months with starting my first game. I want to play in the HRE first, and the mechanics there are currently not working at all.

 

[queenpea]

UI is great? I think our opinions diverge very much here. It looks like it was designed in the 90s by someone who doesn‘t know how to align text and icons, or how to make crisp and intelligible icons. And functionality is… suboptimal. I will get used to it, as I got also used to EU4‘s and all the civ UIs. But it’s utter garbage for a game of that size and ambition.

I‘ll wait some weeks/months with starting my first game. I want to play in the HRE first, and the mechanics there are currently not working at all.

That’s interesting—most reviews have praised the UI. Do you not enjoy how it’s styled or is it lacking information?

 

[Siptah]

That’s interesting—most reviews have praised the UI. Do you not enjoy how it’s styled or is it lacking information?

The style is really, really ugly with all that brown. It looked much better in earlier dev diaries from some months ago.

It‘s lacking information, showing wrong/misleading/contradicting information, requires tons of clicks for anything, requires to search for everything, etc. It seems to be an absolute nightmare if you are playing wide to do things non-automated. There are some funny examples also in the first impressions thread over at paradox plaza.

It’s possible to improve this with ease, and I’m sure mods will do it fast. Getting all functions right might take some time tough. It‘s hard to tell whether there is a bug in calculations or a bug in display when it comes to numbers.

 

[itix]

UI is great? I think our opinions diverge very much here. It looks like it was designed in the 90s by someone who doesn‘t know how to align text and icons, or how to make crisp and intelligible icons. And functionality is… suboptimal. I will get used to it, as I got also used to EU4‘s and all the civ UIs. But it’s utter garbage for a game of that size and ambition.

I‘ll wait some weeks/months with starting my first game. I want to play in the HRE first, and the mechanics there are currently not working at all.

Now when I have actually played the game I think icons could be more memorable. The style is very similar to HOI4, probably the same artist and UI designer. I am playing the game on laptop with a relatively small 16" display. Game devs were probably testing the game on large monitors only, neglecting usability when you dont have that luxury.

But my concerns with the UI are with functionality. When building a road, I'd like to see resources and proximity simultaneously, but you can have only one or the other. And the UI is sometimes indeed a clickfest. Want to change values of your government? It can be done from cabinet actions but I have to jump between gov cabinet and values to see what value does what.

Another issue is the resource concept, which is not explained in the game at all. I run out of sand - ok. Gather more sand, except that it will tax another resource, should I gather more of that, too? There is no tutorial through this, and in-game hints are not helping. And because the game is new there are no online resources. Tomorrow I will try it more and looks like I am not going to need other games for months now.

 

[Nico_D]

The UI is honestly really badly designed. You only need to try to find a way to change the succession law or to how to build a city to find that out. Or if you go to any spesific good page and then move the cursor over the map, it suggests building a RGO spesific to that region, not places to build that good your a viewing. Or try to find an active schism without going through notification. Where are people needs if not you have removed it from the notification bar? Where can you see your religious influence/power (or whatever it is called)? There's a lot windows saying "requirements not met" but not saying what are the requirements. Why do trade menu show "suggested trades" first and not all the trades you are able to make? For that you have to go to a submenu.

A whole lot of icons are small and blurry - especially in the building menu where you have to guess and hover over buildings to see what they are.

There's a lot of tiny buttons which don't even seem button but have important function - like that town building.

I like the game a lot. But the UI is really bad. I don't like Victoria 3 but I think it has neat and logical UI as far as I understand it.

 

[AD1730]

The UI is honestly really badly designed. You only need to try to find a way to change the succession law or to how to build a city to find that out. Or if you go to any spesific good page and then move the cursor over the map, it suggests building a RGO spesific to that region, not places to build that good your a viewing. Or try to find an active schism without going through notification. Where are people needs if not you have removed it from the notification bar? Where can you see your religious influence/power (or whatever it is called)? There's a lot windows saying "requirements not met" but not saying what are the requirements. Why do trade menu show "suggested trades" first and not all the trades you are able to make? For that you have to go to a submenu.

A whole lot of icons are small and blurry - especially in the building menu where you have to guess and hover over buildings to see what they are.

There's a lot of tiny buttons which don't even seem button but have important function - like that town building.

I like the game a lot. But the UI is really bad. I don't like Victoria 3 but I think it has neat and logical UI as far as I understand it.

I agree. I have had far more trouble finding things with EUV than any other Paradox game. I’m not a UI stickler, and I have a lot of patience for these issues, but the UI for EUV has caused me to put it down until it’s improved. They massively increased the complexity of the game, and it wasn’t accompanied with a UI that can shoulder that load.

 

[itix]

The UI puzzles me. They have two UI/UX designers (HOI4 has none!) but it violates many basic UI design paradigms. For example in the location dialog, there is a satisfaction icon. Hovering the mouse over it displays a pop satisfaction in that location. Clicking on that button takes you to the society dialog. Uhm, why? Why does it have two different functions? It seems that UI designers never read any UI design theory, not in school, not by themselves.

I am not an expert in this field but at least know some basics, learnt in the uni (only one or two classes), learnt some more by reading great Jacob Nielsen's articles.

I got around UI issues by watching Hungary playthrough from YT, just repeating the beginning of the game again and again until I understood how it works.

 

[Nico_D]

The UI puzzles me. They have two UI/UX designers (HOI4 has none!) but it violates many basic UI design paradigms. For example in the location dialog, there is a satisfaction icon. Hovering the mouse over it displays a pop satisfaction in that location. Clicking on that button takes you to the society dialog. Uhm, why? Why does it have two different functions? It seems that UI designers never read any UI design theory, not in school, not by themselves.

I am not an expert in this field but at least know some basics, learnt in the uni (only one or two classes), learnt some more by reading great Jacob Nielsen's articles.

I got around UI issues by watching Hungary playthrough from YT, just repeating the beginning of the game again and again until I understood how it works.

Yeah, a lot of the problems in the UI are very basic level UI functionality like readability, color coding, text and icon size. None of these are good currently. And add to that the functionality of the menus. I will learn it in time - if I can keep on going and I would really like to - but what "terrifies" me is that how much is left unlearned because thanks to hidden buttons in obscure places I'm not even aware of a feature?

I hoped they would've mentioned the UI feedback while giving out 1.03 patch notes but nope.

 

[itix]

V1.03 was mostly stability and minor bug fixes, another similar one is coming later this week. There is a bigger bugfix update next (?) week but I doubt they did anything to UI.

 

[itix]

It seems that the next week update has QoL fixes to UI but I think it is not going to address the core issue, which is simply a badly designed UI layout.