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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #74 - UX Improvements

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Hello, my name is Henrik, and I am one of the UX Designers on Victoria 3. For 1.2 I have been fully focused on improving the user experience of the game. Before we go into the details of what has been worked on for this update, I want to give a special thanks to the community, all the modders, and anyone who posted feedback here on the forum, Discord, Reddit, Youtube, or any of our other communication channels. Your feedback, ideas, and discussions have all been instrumental in helping the team prioritize our time and efforts for this update.

Trade Routes​

One of the first things we started with immediately after 1.1.2 was improving the usability of the Trade Routes panel. In addition to the current view of grouping Trade Routes by Goods, you can now get a sortable list of all Trade Routes in the Market, or get a view where they are grouped by Country. All of these lists can also be filtered to exclude any Routes not owned by you. The Country grouping is especially useful when setting up Embargos or Trade Agreements.

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Message Settings​

Our new Message Settings window lets you decide how you want a specific Notification to be displayed, and if you want the game to automatically pause when it gets triggered. In future updates, we are planning on expanding this to cover more functionality, like the Current Situation panel, Alerts etc.

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Parallel to adding Message Settings, we also made a pass on making sure that the Notifications we post to the player are informative and have a reasonable default setting for how to present them. Among the tweaks we have done are:

  • Make the “Interest Activated/Deactivated” Notification into a “You can now conduct Diplomacy with X” Notification that only triggers if the activated/deactivated Interest is the first/last one that overlaps with any of your Interests
  • Moving the Price Report to the Market Panel (turned off by default, can be turned on in the Message Settings panel)
  • Splitting up Trade Routes Notifications into significant and less significant versions (Significant is turned on by default, less significant is not)
  • Only show “Mobilization” and “Declare Neutrality” Notifications if you are committed to the Diplomatic Play in question
  • Only show resource related Notifications if they happen in your Market (previously Strategic Regions in which you have an Interest in)

All of these changes should, according to our benchmarks, reduce the number of Notifications by roughly 50% for most Countries. In addition to this, we have also tweaked the animations for the Notification feed, so the overall user experience of the entire system should be much improved.

Rebindable Keys​

Our shortcut system has been replaced by a new system that can leverage rebindable keys. When adding this new system also made a pass and added a few more shortcuts, as well as hooked in a few existing ones in more places.

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Pop Needs​

Another fully reworked panel is the Population overview, which now gives you more information about who your Pops are, how many they are, how much money they make, what they spend it on, and how much that goes to increasing/decreasing their Standard of Living (the last one not included in the screenshot, but visible without scrolling when the Taxes and Needs sections are collapsed).

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In addition to creating this new panel, we have exposed more information in the Pop Lists used throughout the game, and improved a few of the Pop Need tooltips. They should now surface more of the relevant information higher up in the information hierarchy. We also exposed the top five Goods a Pop spends money on in this list, inspired by the Visible Pop Needs mod by Apprehensive-Tank213

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Economy​

Martin has already discussed some of the changes regarding Construction in DD #71, and in addition to these changes we have improved the user experience of the gameplay loop by providing better contextual information in several places. For example, we have added Infrastructure, Available Labor, and Qualifications to the Map List that is shown when expanding Buildings. In the screenshot below you can also see that we have restructured the layout of the Map Interaction panel to make it possible to navigate directly to another panel, which in the case of the Construction Interaction is the Building details panel for the specific Building. This layout also allows for more reasonable tooltip positioning, making it easier to navigate into a nested tooltip without accidentally opening another tooltip when moving the cursor towards the tooltip you wanted to dig into the details of.

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The most recent improvement that made it into the game is the Reset Production Methods Map Interaction, a PDT project by our Lead Designer Mikael and myself. It should make it much more efficient to streamline the production in your Country, which is especially useful if you have just acquired a few new States. This is currently somewhat of a work in progress, and we are hoping to expand this to work on Buildings and Building Types in the future.

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One of the most popular mods for the game is currently Visual Methods by FUN, a mod that we liked so much that we decided to make our own, slightly tweaked, version of.

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The Investment Pool is now being more prominently displayed in the Buildings panel.

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The tooltips for Market Access have also been improved to give more detail as to why a State is not fully connected to the National Market.

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Radicals and Loyalists​

We have improved the presentation of why your Pops turn Radical or Loyal, who they are and which Interest Groups they belong to. Information regarding this has been exposed in several tooltips and panels, like the Interest Group panel.

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Convoys​

Your current Convoy balance has been added to the Top Bar, making it much easier to keep track of and access when needed. This item will be hidden for landlocked Countries and unlocked as soon as you gain access to a coastline.

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Map Modes​

We have added three new Map Modes (Literacy, Population and Infamy), and given the transition between two Map Modes a configurable fade in/out to make it smoother. One of the first mods I personally subscribed to at release was Practical Heatmaps by Ronin Szaky, and an ever-so-slightly tweaked version made its way into the base game in 1.2.

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Diplomacy​

For Diplomacy, we have improved how we show AI Acceptance and signal more clearly if offering or using an Obligation would convince them to accept.

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We have also exposed all types of Diplomatic Plays on the Country details panel, not only the ones you can currently start, making it easier to figure out what is blocking you from starting a particular Play.

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Military​

When it comes to the Military system, the focus for the UX improvements in 1.2 has revolved around making it clearer how the Battle systems work. We approached this by exposing more data related to Battles, as well as, improving some of the tooltips presenting breakdowns of the calculations involved. Some effort has also been made to decrease the amount of visual noise from multiple Front Markers.

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Work in Progress tooltip for the breakdown of the initial number of troops each General was able to bring to the Battle.

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We have also surfaced the information regarding which HQ a Commander considers their Home HQ and made some improvements to the information presented in the Naval Invasion user flow.

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Outliner​

The Outliner has gotten some polish, with pinnable Goods and non-Military Characters being the biggest additions. Interest Groups are now showing their Approval value, and States show their Available Labor and Qualifications.

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Tech Tree improvements​

The Tech Tree Improvements discussed in DD #70 also made it for 1.2.

Closing words​

In addition to all of these changes listed above, we have also made over 100 smaller UX tweaks and bug fixes, which you will either have to wait for the full patch notes to explore, or experience for yourself during the Open Beta. Once again, thanks for all the feedback, it really helps us make the game as great as it deserves to be!

Next week, Martin will be showing us diplomacy improvements coming in 1.2!
 
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Really great changes. However, one thing that has bothered me about map lists is that in some map modes it shows just the data for my country while others for the entire world. For example, I thank that the list attached to the literacy map mode shows literacy in all the states of the world. Couldn't we have available a filter to show only my states? That way, I could know easily in which states I need to implant an edict.
 
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Can we please get a literacy over time graph in the tooltip like we have with GDP and Radicals/Loyalists? I like to see how much progress I’ve made.
 
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Not sure if this is known but I noticed an edge case regarding the new proposal acceptance icon. "Will accept for a favour" also shows for take on debt.
This is probably unintend because you can't offer a favour for that interaction, since you're supposed to get one for it.
 
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Personally I hope the "fade in/out" could be faster. I've to wait about 0.5s to keep on. It indeed looks much better but interrupt my thinking.
 
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Are there any plans to allow us to see tax capacity per state when building Government Administrations so that we know which states have deficits that need to be resolved? Don’t like having to look at situations or clicking on each state to know where I need to build them.
 
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Dimo87 said:
According to the tooltips explaining land routes, you use convoys for your land route when you go over your maximum. So shouldn't the Convoys bar be left on even for landlocked countries? Also, I'd love to hear a little bit more about how land routes works as I don't think it's been mentioned by any devs.
Click to expand...

If you're landlocked is it even possible to have convoys?
 
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Please make the infamy states cost to conquer scale with gdp and not population, since that would make more sence and incentivize countries to develop their economy. in 1836 people would be more upset if you invaded beugium than if you grabbed a piece of india from britain(also make the raj and EIC be transferable in a cheaper way please)
 
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ZircomSkull said:
Please make the infamy states cost to conquer scale with gdp and not population, since that would make more sence and incentivize countries to develop their economy. in 1836 people would be more upset if you invaded beugium than if you grabbed a piece of india from britain(also make the raj and EIC be transferable in a cheaper way please)
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It used to be like this, the problem is the way GDP grows exponentially over the course of the game. I've been eyeing a solution where I compare against the average state GDP in the world, but it's a little trickier to explain to the player.
 
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hagerhink said:
Our new Message Settings window lets you decide how you want a specific Notification to be displayed, and if you want the game to automatically pause when it gets triggered. In future updates, we are planning on expanding this to cover more functionality, like the Current Situation panel, Alerts etc.
Click to expand...
Thank you so much for this!

As a shameless self promotion: if anyone would like some customisation right now to the bolded part, I have made a mod for it (currently supporting 1.1.2):
forum.paradoxplaza.com

[Mod] Alert Settings

THIS MOD IN NOW OBSOLETE AND NO LONGER SUPPORTED! Patch 1.5 implements better alert customisation functionality than this mod can ever provide, so this mod is no longer needed and will not be supported further. Sincerely thank you, Paradox...
forum.paradoxplaza.com forum.paradoxplaza.com
 
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As someone who was skeptical about bringing back message settings, I have to say I like these. They let you customize what you want to and don't want to see, without being fiddly and poorly-explained like the old ones often were.
 
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Wizzington said:
It used to be like this, the problem is the way GDP grows exponentially over the course of the game. I've been eyeing a solution where I compare against the average state GDP in the world, but it's a little trickier to explain to the player.
Click to expand...
How about looking for primary culture pops of recognized nation?

So if Germany takes Elsass it isn't as bad, ad there is a sizeable german pop there and less french ones. But if they take more territory like the Champagne, this is pretty much purely French pops, so much more Infamy to take such territory.

This should also make taking colonies cheaper, unless the overlord resettled there and also take high pop states from unrecognized powers, especially if they aren't even primary pops (like taking Armenian land from Ottomans after they fail the tanzimat)

State GDP could also play a role, but I would look for cultured pops first.
 
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BrotherJonathan said:
As someone who was skeptical about bringing back message settings, I have to say I like these. They let you customize what you want to and don't want to see, without being fiddly and poorly-explained like the old ones often were.
Click to expand...
I am withholding judgement on the message settings until I see what they do to (fix) the Current Situation panel.

Might have to start a 'I still don't like the Current Situation panel after playing it' thread to make sure my silence isn't taken for acceptance.
 
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Hey amazing job at this rework! I have 2 questions on the trade panel:
1) What is the "revenue" column? If it is the revenue I get as tariffs, then wonderful because that info is much needed; if it is something else, then I don't know.
2) How can I quickly now set the export/import tariff for that good up/down? The buttons are still available?
 
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I don't like the idea of UI staff learning at players' expense to do their work.
This trash circle is still here and still eeeeeeeverything flows there, with endless clicks just to see same messages. Message spam is somehow fixed but UI simply became "less awful" rather than "better".
Click circle read what is new
Click circle read what is new
Click circle read what is new
Click circle read what is new
Click circle read what is new
Click circle read what is new
Just add new messages into separate circles, if you like them so much! At least even basics of UI tell us that intuitive visual solutions are always better in that case.
Make players intuitively understand what happens instead of bogging us with worthless popups.
vFOe16W.png
 
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CassCD said:
First, I appreciate the two of you for informing about this.

Secondly, I'm GONNA start ranting: There is NO SHOT that this is a common term. I have never ever heard of this even ONCE in my 30+ years of living with this cursed English language. There has GOT to be a better term for this that actually adequately describes the meaning of this word. You wanna talk UX improvements, "toast" is NOT it. That is not an intuitive term at all.
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I remember digging into basic Android programming about 10 years ago and "toasts" were a term used for pop up messages, so while you may not know the term, it's been around for a while at least in that context.
 
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On pop info, I wish it was possible to easily do pivot tables. There are so many things I would like to know from my pops that now I can't (or I have to painfully calculate mentally)... some things are strategic and others just for my own national storytelling. For example:
  • By culture, proportion of them in lower/middle/upper strata (now only we know for the total pop)
  • Also for each culture, proportion by jobs (this can help explain a bit the radicalization of some groups when you realize they all work as laborers and the upper positions are coopted only by your primary culture).
  • We know the average SoL for the total pops and for the low/middle/upper strata and even by state; but it would be great to have a graph/histogram of the distribution by SoL levels (e.g. 20% are between 0-5 SoL, 15% between 6-10... the hated 1% between 50-60 SoL -- and then be able to know who are they culture-wise/what are they working as, etc.).
  • More disaggregation and visibility of average wages would be wonderful (even more useful than "income" maybe?)... same, by strata and culture, even by job. Right now I only have the average wage by building (in the building tab, which makes it not comparable with similar buildings in other states) and by state (in the tooltips of the budget tab or by using the "more spreadsheets" mod).
 
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Major Malfunction said:
I don't like the idea of UI staff learning at players' expense to do their work.
This trash circle is still here and still eeeeeeeverything flows there, with endless clicks just to see same messages. Message spam is somehow fixed but UI simply became "less awful" rather than "better".
Click circle read what is new
Click circle read what is new
Click circle read what is new
Click circle read what is new
Click circle read what is new
Click circle read what is new
Just add new messages into separate circles, if you like them so much! At least even basics of UI tell us that intuitive visual solutions are always better in that case.
Make players intuitively understand what happens instead of bogging us with worthless popups.
vFOe16W.png
Click to expand...
I massively endorse your point that the orange circle (literally copied from CK3 but not functional for V3) has to disappear asap.
Edit: a EU4 system with the flags would be waaaay more suitable.
 
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Looks fantastic. One more column that would really make the construction planner shine is the number of buildings already queued for construction in that state. This was included in a UI mod I've been using, and it's just indispensable.
 
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