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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #29 - User Experience

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Hello, my name is Henrik and I am a UX Designer on PDS. I have been a part of the Victoria 3 team for almost the entirety of the project, and since I am about to take a few months of parental leave I wanted to leave you with a brief summary and overview of the thoughts and ideas that form the foundation of the User Experience (UX) design in our game. Also, say hello to Aron whom I have written this dev diary in cooperation with. Aron has been my UX padawan for the past year and will be shouldering the UX while I am gone.

First and foremost, why do we do what we do? Basically, our end goal is to make the game more approachable and accessible, so that we can make it even deeper and more complex. Complexity should not come from not knowing where to find something and why something happened, but from the deep simulation and game mechanics at the core of our game. The more accessible the information and interactions can be, the more complex we can make that information and those interactions.

In order to get there, we have three UX Pillars

  1. The right information at the right time
  2. Clear feedback about cause and effect
  3. Clearly separate Actions from Information

What tools do we have at our disposal to provide a user experience that satisfies these lofty goals? In this Dev Diary we will walk you through some of our main tools and approaches.

Nested tooltip, as made famous by Crusader Kings 3​

There is one piece of technology we can not see this game without: Nested Tooltips. We use it both for Game Concepts, and for getting more detailed breakdowns of numbers, and boy do we have numbers! This allows us to achieve parts of the first UX Pillar, The Right information at the right time. Instead of having to explain every single detail and anecdote in a single humongous tooltip, we can focus on the most essential and important information for the current context and leave any information that might not be directly tied to this context for the nested tooltips to cover. This is crucial in Victoria 3 where every single thing affects a whole bunch of other things, some very important and others simply knock on effects.

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Of course Nested Tooltips come with their own set of challenges. This is where we are happy to allow for a lot of customization and tweaking. For example, how do you want the tooltip to lock? Mouse Tendency, Timer Lock, or Action Lock? If you choose the Timer Lock, how long do you want that timer to be? Etc.

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Another thing we show in these tooltips is the next thing on the agenda and what y’all been waiting for - graphs!

Data visualization​

One of the more challenging areas is to clearly give feedback of a value’s change over time. In a game with as many interlocking systems as Victoria, giving feedback on how something has changed over time becomes an essential part of the game-loop. How can we take several values and show you exactly how it has changed over time? You guessed it, line graphs.

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We would never make a Victoria game without the proper amount of graphs and charts! (Yes, you can switch to show pie charts for the Victoria 2 purists.)

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Numbers that update in real time and Predictions​

In most cases in our previous games, you have to tick the game in order to see the effects of things. In Victoria, we try to make all the immediate effects of your actions available the second you take them. When taking actions that have consequences spreading far and wide throughout the game's systems, it can be really hard to parse if this is a good idea or not without excessive use of spreadsheet software. So we predict things for you. (With a nested tooltip breakdown of that prediction value of course!)

The Building panel provides you with all the raw building data you could ever need, for you to analyze however you like. For whatever action you may desire, we provide our warmest support in your calculating endeavors with predictions such as the Weekly Balance when changing Production Method and predicted Earnings of the building if you were to expand it.
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DD29 08 Production Methods tooltip.png


DD29 09 coal mine.png

Focus on the Map​

Our map is gorgeous and we want to put more emphasis on it. For example, all Events in the game have a location on the Map, and if you hover over a State name in any text, that State will be highlighted on the Map. This makes it easier to connect the names of things with their representation on the map, giving context to the text and the map. However, one of the coolest contextual information we are creating are Map Modes. We have Map Modes connected to most of our information panels, triggering when you open each panel which gives you the right contextual information at the right time. With the use of icons, numbers, and different heatmaps, we enable you to see several layers of contextual information at the same time without things getting too cluttered and without you having to scroll through a big sheet of data. Albeit, all Map Modes also exist in list form, making it possible to sort the information that is shown on the map, not entirely unlike a visual Ledger.

DD29 10 Fabric goods heatmap.png

The Lenses​

Every action you can take on the map, you can take from the five Lenses. Production Lens, Political Lens, Diplomatic Lens, Military Lens, and Trade Lens - each Lens comes with its own Map Mode! Basically, it is like viewing your country from a specific point of view.

DD29 11 Diplo attitude v2.png


DD29 12 Iron Mines v2.png

Right-Click menus​

The Map Interactions in the Lenses are our take on the Macro Builder, that is when you know what action you want to take and then you select what type of entity to perform that action on. On the other side of the coin, we use Right-Click menus for when you know what entity you want to perform an action on and then select an action from a list of potential actions. We have this for States, Markets, Characters, Buildings, Interest Groups and Goods. So any time you see any of those in the game, you can right-click on them to get a list of actions you can perform.

DD29 13 Right-Click.png

Empty States​

Often forgotten, but extremely important. This is the feedback of dead ends, such as looking at the Urban Buildings tab of a State with no Urban Buildings. A useful empty state will let the player know what’s happening, why it’s happening, and what to do about it. In a State with no Urban Buildings we should of course tell this to the player, but also include the potential Urban Buildings which the player can build in that State. This is only one of many examples and you’d be surprised how often this simple yet important UX design aspect is forgotten. The empty state tells the player what that screen could be populated with and what the player can do about it.

DD29 14 No urban.png

Should you get an economics degree before you play V3?​

Far be it from us to ever discourage anyone from getting an economics degree! Yet, despite Victoria 3's immense depth and complexity, our intention is still to allow you to learn even the most advanced concepts the game is based on as you play. One aspect of this is the tutorial, which we are putting more focus onto than ever before and will cover in detail in a future Dev Diary. Another aspect is through tooltippable Game Concepts, which work much like an integrated dictionary or rule book. Whenever you see such a Concept in text, such as Pops, Dividends Taxes, or Market Price, you can tooltip it to get an explanation of what it means and references to related concepts and mechanics. This powerful tool together with the Nested Tooltips allows us to design and explain anything in the game without writing a novel in each tooltip, and as a player, you can choose to deep dive into any peculiarities as you see fit.

DD29 15 pop tooltip.png

Accessibility features​

Last but not least, we can not talk about UX without mentioning Accessibility and boy are we happy to have something never before seen in any PDS game - Colorblindness mode for text! We have it on our roadmap to make this feature work with more things in the game as well. We have also worked hard to get to a point where the UI scaling should work even better out of the box than previous releases.

Default mode, Tritanopia mode, and Protanopia/Deuteranopia mode
DD29 16 Colorblind 1.png

That’s all for the first dev diary of 2022 folks. What an exciting year we have in front of us with so many tooltips to design and improve on! We’ll be back next week where Kenneth, our 2D Art Lead, will guide you through a closer look at the UI design of Victoria 3. See you then!
 

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This comment is reserved by the Community Team for gathering Dev Responses in, for ease of reading.


Eddie121 said:
Looks gorgeous!
Will there be some country-wide overview like the V2 production menu?
So you can see all the coal mines at once, and switch them all to nitroglycerine in one click.
Yes, there will be a country-wide overview of each Building Type where you can macro switch between Production Methods.

Eruth said:
They most likely do not know the release date yet, and announcing one now would either mean crunching/delaying/releasing a half baked game OR keeping the ready-for-shipment game out of our hands for longer than nessasary.

As for the Dev Diary itself, my only feedback is that, as the twitter teaser thread is going on about, PLEASE show the percentages as well as the raw numbers below all pie/square charts.
Don't worry! The percentages are on their way. :)

shoebird said:
Thanks for the DD. A few questions come to mind.
1-When plotting line graphs, can we choose te time interval? Are we going to be able to see a graph showing the evolution of GDP, for instance, from 1836 to 1936?
2-When using the lenses to build factories or other economic buildings, can we see the predicted economic impact of those actions?
3-It is possible to know the amount of people living in a city or only it’s size?

If you can answer at least some of these questions I would be thankful. The UX looks really great.
  1. As of right now, the interval is usually set from the beginning of the game, with either daily, weekly, or monthly sampling. However, some graphs make more sense to have shorter intervals on and for those we have that, although there are constant ongoing tweaks and improvements on this. Customizability of this is on our roadmap. As for your second question: For GDP, we do have the interval from the beginning of the game as you can see in the screenshot, so, yes you will be able to see a graph with your evolution of your GDP.
  2. Yes, the predicted Earnings of you building or expanding a building will be in the tooltip of that action, regardless if you do it through the panels or on the map through the lenses.
  3. Tagging in @lachek to answer this one! - "While Population numbers are state-based, we know which Pops work in which buildings and we know which buildings belong to which cities. At the moment we don't slice the data such that you can see how many people live in what city since it doesn't do anything for gameplay, but we're looking into ways of visualizing this breakdown of state populations as well."

Yagami913 said:
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I really like this DD overall, except this image. This kind of visualization always give me more questions than answers and just piss me off overall. Why GDP is yearly if the graph show weakly? Why Y axis goes 36.6K? What is the two date? Why there is no horizontal or vertical lines helping me measure. Why there is no more data on the X,Y axis? Why not zoomed in when half the Y axis empty?
I can't see the context of the image, therefore maybe i totally wrong and i obviously biased by other games so take my comment with a pinch of salt.
This graph shows the GDP from the beginning of the game to the current in-game date, which means you can at least get a hum of how your GDP has changed over time. Graphs are a constant work in progress and we have it in our roadmap to be able to hover on any point in the graph and display the date and data of that point. Regarding the graph not filling up all the way, that is currently not working as designed, it should fill up all the way.
 
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Sad time with dev diaries, nothing too much interesting or surprising after this long break. And next one UI design :( I wonder, when can we expect dev diaries about issues like trade? Revolutions?
 
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Are charts interactive (pie or not)? Can I hover mouse over an area in the chart to see some details? If not- is this something that's being considered?
 
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Nice dev diary, however there is one thing that slightly upsets me and has been upsetting me for some time: the quality of the graphs. I like how you are making more intensive use of this data visualisation, but the usage of it could be improved a bit somewhat I think.

  1. Include or have the option for a grid: this is probably a point where even economists and scientists can't agree on, but it would be nice to at least have the option to have a grid in the graphs so you can easier see where all the data points are, this could even be as simple as a background change.
  2. Better axes: just having 2 values on axes at the min and the max make it hard to understand where values exactly are. I understand that this is probably a design choice since it is quite hard to fit axis ticks and their description properly.
  3. Axes ticks: Maybe it is my eyes deceiving me, but it would be nice to have proper ticks on the axis so we can easily see how far certain data points are (i.e. if you have a data on the x-axis and on the left is 1836 and the right is 1870 then it would be nice if there are 5 ticks or so, so that we can easier see what is where).
  4. Don't make axes start on 0 if you don't have to: Once again, this is probably a design decision, since if you make axes (such as the amount of money you have) not start at 0 then it might seem like you have less money than you expect (since the distance to 0 matters), however in some cases it would be nice to see the graph in more detail and when the difference between 0 and the max value is very high it can be hard to notice it.
  5. This is probably extremely hard to do design wise but being able to move around and zoom in on graphs would be great, would automatically solve some of the design compromises that I mentioned above. However, I understand this would definitely not be an easy thing to do, but just felt like I should include it on my wishlist.

EDIT:
someone on reddit made a nice mockup which includes some of my points
 
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I love everything about this dev diary but the square pie charts are a sin. If they were more stylized I may buy into them, however if they're gonna look anything like what they look now I suggest to enable circle pie charts by default.
 
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I love everything about this dev diary but the square pie charts are a sin. If they were more stylized I may buy into them, however if they're gonna look anything like what they look now I suggest to enable circle pie charts by default.
I'm pretty sure that you have to take "WIP" literally.
 
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I love everything about this dev diary but the square pie charts are a sin. If they were more stylized I may buy into them, however if they're gonna look anything like what they look now I suggest to enable circle pie charts by default.
Obviously WIP. Just look at those lovely pie charts.
 
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