Usability Suggestions

[Brendone]

Hey Playmesh team. Long time lurker of the forums, first world I played in was 4, made it huge in 25 for a long time, currently very active in 75 and eagerly awaiting 100. I have a few suggestions but have previously felt that suggestions didn't get answered much, but I've noticed a very encouraging and cool shift in interaction from the development team into really moving this game in a direction that is great for players. With that in mind I have a few suggestions regarding increasing usability (not really to do with gameplay, though I have many of those, I think they merit their own threads later.)

First, Make the Notifications Work! The only notification I receive from the game, no matter how many times I reset, change ingame notification settings, iphone settings etc, the only notification I get anymore is when construction is completed at a city. Nothing for guild invites, being attacked, etc. This is a big deal especially once you have hundreds of cities, and even if you log into the game, can't find where the attack is headed. At least a notification out of game saying "Prime Base is being attacked" lets me know where to look ingame right away.

Second, Connect the Notifications Ingame! Not sure how many people have this issue, but I usually do a lot of city maintenance before bed, including upgrading buildings at just about every city I have. By time I wake in the morning I'll have 25-50 notifications from valor telling me where my construction is completed. This is great, but unless I want to get a pen and paper and write them all down before going to game, I still don't have any good way of figuring out which cities I need to jump to and restart work projects! The meat of this suggestion has to do with the implementation of the almighty sidebar added in the last update and then nerfed. I'd like to see it come back, but add some functionality to it! There isn't much of a reason to not have it fly out further over the screen (you can't do anything on the screen while it is out anyways) so add some symbols or letters beside each city signifying whats up. Example:

Prime --I--R--F--
Prime Alpha Site
Prime Base --I--
Prime Colony
Prime Domain
Prime Fortress --R--

The I would be for IDLE as in, the city is idle. Or a C for Construction Completed. Whatever. The R could be for new REPORT. The F could be for warehouse FULL. When you visit a city it would clear the notifications from the side bar, that way you can go through and check each city that has the construction completed, or attacks landed and has a report waiting, or warehouse full and need to do something. You could make it a symbol, or even just the name of the city a different color/highlighted to show there is some reason to visit that city. This data should be able to be stored locally to the device (sync it up with the notification system) so that you don't have to refresh all the time to get it. If you got a notification that construction is complete at Prime Base, that city should be noted in some way, until you visit it.

Third, implement your new top and sidebar. If anything adjust the colors a bit for more contrast and size stuff a little better for readability, but it was really better then the way it is now. The only suggestion I have, is make some way to quickly scroll from city to city. I like being able to scroll through my rally point to quickly look for scholars, assess the size of my troops, quickly attack or send support to one city from all of mine in a cluster (I name my cities by area), and especially go through my background cities and buy scholarships. I'm not sure if it would be possible, but if you could swipe the screen left and right to change city anywhere in the rally point, academy, or troop training/city hall screens, that would be a great way to replace the side scroll buttons without taking up real estate on the screen. I'm not sure if it would slow things down too much, but especially in those screens if it could start preloading the data from the city on either side (res, armies, etc) that would make load time once on the next city that much faster to quickly train troops or buy scholarships.

Anyways those are my suggestions for tonight. Off to city maintenance...

[PwnLaw]

Hey Playmesh team. Long time lurker of the forums, first world I played in was 4, made it huge in 25 for a long time, currently very active in 75 and eagerly awaiting 100. I have a few suggestions but have previously felt that suggestions didn't get answered much, but I've noticed a very encouraging and cool shift in interaction from the development team into really moving this game in a direction that is great for players. With that in mind I have a few suggestions regarding increasing usability (not really to do with gameplay, though I have many of those, I think they merit their own threads later.)

First, Make the Notifications Work! The only notification I receive from the game, no matter how many times I reset, change ingame notification settings, iphone settings etc, the only notification I get anymore is when construction is completed at a city. Nothing for guild invites, being attacked, etc. This is a big deal especially once you have hundreds of cities, and even if you log into the game, can't find where the attack is headed. At least a notification out of game saying "Prime Base is being attacked" lets me know where to look ingame right away.

Second, Connect the Notifications Ingame! Not sure how many people have this issue, but I usually do a lot of city maintenance before bed, including upgrading buildings at just about every city I have. By time I wake in the morning I'll have 25-50 notifications from valor telling me where my construction is completed. This is great, but unless I want to get a pen and paper and write them all down before going to game, I still don't have any good way of figuring out which cities I need to jump to and restart work projects! The meat of this suggestion has to do with the implementation of the almighty sidebar added in the last update and then nerfed. I'd like to see it come back, but add some functionality to it! There isn't much of a reason to not have it fly out further over the screen (you can't do anything on the screen while it is out anyways) so add some symbols or letters beside each city signifying whats up. Example:

Prime --I--R--F--
Prime Alpha Site
Prime Base --I--
Prime Colony
Prime Domain
Prime Fortress --R--

The I would be for IDLE as in, the city is idle. Or a C for Construction Completed. Whatever. The R could be for new REPORT. The F could be for warehouse FULL. When you visit a city it would clear the notifications from the side bar, that way you can go through and check each city that has the construction completed, or attacks landed and has a report waiting, or warehouse full and need to do something. You could make it a symbol, or even just the name of the city a different color/highlighted to show there is some reason to visit that city. This data should be able to be stored locally to the device (sync it up with the notification system) so that you don't have to refresh all the time to get it. If you got a notification that construction is complete at Prime Base, that city should be noted in some way, until you visit it.

Third, implement your new top and sidebar. If anything adjust the colors a bit for more contrast and size stuff a little better for readability, but it was really better then the way it is now. The only suggestion I have, is make some way to quickly scroll from city to city. I like being able to scroll through my rally point to quickly look for scholars, assess the size of my troops, quickly attack or send support to one city from all of mine in a cluster (I name my cities by area), and especially go through my background cities and buy scholarships. I'm not sure if it would be possible, but if you could swipe the screen left and right to change city anywhere in the rally point, academy, or troop training/city hall screens, that would be a great way to replace the side scroll buttons without taking up real estate on the screen. I'm not sure if it would slow things down too much, but especially in those screens if it could start preloading the data from the city on either side (res, armies, etc) that would make load time once on the next city that much faster to quickly train troops or buy scholarships.

Anyways those are my suggestions for tonight. Off to city maintenance...

Some excellent stuff in this post. I'm going to read it through again and respond tomorrow. But wanted to leave a note to let you know I saw it.

[Brendone]

Exactly what I'm talking about Pwnlaw, thanks for connecting with the players!

[PwnLaw]

First off: Thanks for taking the time to write out your ideas on this (and other) threads. You're correct that we're being more active about engaging with the players. We have always read the forums, but we've come to the realization that conversation is a lot more interesting when there are two sides.

On to the substance...

There really is some excellent stuff in this post. Some of the things we're aware of (the woeful state of notifications being high on that list) and others are interesting takes on iteration (I'm talking about the notifications being tied to the game).

A few high level thoughts for you. First of all, I agree with you that there needs to be some movement on multicity management. It's been high on our list of priorities for some time now. I will admit that our revamp (all of the hullabaloo around the lore and the raft of features coming out in a few months) is taking precedence, but multicity is currently under design for development immediately following the revamp. It is a very long conversation as to why this prioritization was chosen, but the simple answer is that we think we can improve the game significantly by focusing on competitiveness and that may have an impact on how multicity management would need to be handled. That's intentionally vague, but I figure it's better than nothing.

As for the sidebar, we've iterated on it based upon player feedback, and we'll have something better for you guys in the near future. Patch 2.1.3 really underscored the value of having a beta community so I'm glad we've undertaken the effort required to build one out. Make sure you sign up to be a tester.

Some of the things you've mentioned in this post are also going to be addressed inside the revamp itself. I won't say which, but I will say that many of your thoughts and concerns are shared by the design and development team here at PlayMesh.