ToT UX Proposition

Raijindono · May 2023

I've been playing with the Almalexia deck on the PTS and I have some ideas I'd like to share for the user experience (UX). My feedback is primarily focused on the of the "Do an Action" prompt/modal/interstitial.

There are certain cards in ToT decks which prompts the player to look at your or the opponent's cards to make a choice. Here's a list of actions which utilize the same prompt:

Donate (new, Almalexia)
Confine (new, Almalexia)
Refresh (Ansei)
Toss (Psijic)

If you play with some combination of these decks, I found myself getting a bit lost as to what the action should be for the prompt. There is text at the top that says the action, but, let's be honest, when you get anywhere near proficient at this game or any software for that matter, users don't read. I'm wondering if we modified the prompt to make the action more clear.

Donate Example

Proposition
This isn't the greatest aesthetic, but I wanted to show an idea here:

Update the text to exclude the copy "up to". I felt like that was confusing since it's pretty much always 1. Also, I think adding context of "from your hand" helps the user understand where they're moving cards to and from.
Not sure how we'd achieve this, but I added a large icon of the action to the left of the modal. It's a good way to reinforce the action without reading the text. This'll help more advance players speed up their gameplay while knowing exactly which action they're performing. Perhaps this would help with muscle memory. Note: I grabbed a screenshot of the icon from a card... it looks bad atm, lol.

Confine Example

Update the text to exclude the copy "up to" and added "from your opponent's cooldown pile".

Remove the Bars
I understand why these bars are separating each of the patrons and the patron use counts, but I feel like they make the UI busy. Here's a rough edit of what it looks like without those bars.

Confined Cards
I found it a bit annoying that I had to press "F" to see the cards that were confined. I think you can remove this and just show the cards on click similar to when you have a lot of agents on the card mat.

Power Balance
I have played a few games with the Almalexia deck. I found the confine action to be super strong. I'm wondering if we put a maximum limit on the number of cards you can confine? It might not be as big of problem when playing other players rather than just the NPC. Also, Mournhold Clergy is crazy strong. It can pull in a lot of Prestige if you rotate through a lot of donations. I'm not sure how to balance this one, but just providing some feedback.

Thanks for reading and happy ToTing!

Necrotech_Master · May 2023

i think there was another thread that also was discussing the power of confining cards

i can see how it would be powerful to snowball, but what about all of the other actions that do similar things, such as rahjin spam are not limited

seeing some of the cards like that agent and that confine can be triggered multiple times in 1 turn, i see how that could be very potent and too easy to snowball, if you could confine 4-5 of the opponents cards every turn, it would be difficult for them to fight back

if confine was tied to the patron and could only trigger once per turn, i dont think it would be as powerful, but seeing how the card is setup, i think that could definitely be too powerful, if you had 3 agents you could basically absorb 4-5 cards per turn and leave the opponent with virtually no deck

Raijindono · May 2023

I'm wondering if the thinking behind confine being balanced is that it only applies to the cooldown pile? There are times where you play a confine card and nothing happens because your opponent's cooldown pile is empty.

As a note of UX, It'd be nice to see some feedback when these types of "dead" actions occur. It does feel very anti-climatic to play a card that you know does a thing, but then falls flat. I feel like this when all of my cards are either in my hand or in the cooldown pile and your draw card "doesn't work". I know this is more of an edge case, but these "dead" actions seem to be more frequent with the confine/Almalexia deck.

Necrotech_Master · May 2023

well generally speaking your opponents cooldown is always going to have cards in it

at the end of the turn all cards you played (or drew in the case you didnt play them), which would be a minimum of 5 cards per turn that you could confine on your next turn (unless there are stuff which is "not confineable", which is part of my next question below)

does confining even work on stuff like tavern cards (gold or writ of coin)?

if it does not, you could easily shut an opponent down very early on if you picked up a couple almalexia agents and could confine every card they bought

kevkj · May 2023

"Up to" is still a relevant disclaimer to have because you have the option to select 0 cards.

Raijindono · May 2023

kevkj wrote: »

"Up to" is still a relevant disclaimer to have because you have the option to select 0 cards.

Good point. I think that's confusing, especially to new players. Maybe a "Skip" option would make more sense.