Can this terrible UI design be next on the chopping block?

[Syt]

On the one hand I can understand this, on the other hand it has the opposite effect on me. I like to "clean up" my alerts. And I'm more or less constantly checking if there are new (sub)alerts (another state lacks in market access, for example) that I actually _can_ clean up.
If, for example, I had a separate "market access is lacking" icon with a number I'd see immediately if the number changed and I wouldn't have to check constantly.

Indeed. In times of high radicalism I mostly check in the alerts if the # of states in turmoil is going up or down (esp. when the number gets big), and just leave the list item closed otherwise. In times of low turmoil I might look at whether it's crucial states in turmoil, and if not just leave them be, maybe looking at the list every few in-game months. But yeah - I keep opening/closing the items list A LOT, and maybe act on 25-50% of items on average. Occasionally there's items I can't do anything about (expensive government/military goods, like Opium, but limited access .... yeah, working on it, but it's not going to be solved any time soon ... but if I dismiss it, chances are it will just pop up again short time after).

I like the very similar system in CK3, actually. It's a quick way to not only highlight situations that require attention (inheritances of vassals leading to loss of territory, pissed off vassal who wants to be on the council), but also opportunities (who can I declare war on, and what are my chances against them). V3's system needs some tweaking, but I thnk it's on the way to get there. But a "panel" of sections that can light up if there's something desrving attention (one for trade, one for turmoil, one for armies/navies in reserve) would be good. Maybe integrate into the menu bar on the left, i.e. highlighting Market with a number indicating the number of notifications there.

 

[Olaf Trygvasson]

For a complex grand strategy game, a successor to famously Excel-like production, coming from a studio touting its love for intellectually challenging games, there was feedback "the game is overwhelming in the first hours", it was treated as "critical". It's like treating seriously "too much game overs" in a roguelike, "too much shooting" in a first person shooter, or "too many cars" in a racing game. FPS developers don't lose people who are overwhelmed by fast mouse movement because that audience doesn't buy such games in the first place. It was poorly selected focus group, wasn't it? Don't tell me this reasoning was also behind originally hiding pop needs into nested tooltips!

I definitely agree with this. I am not advocating for gatekeeping GSGs, but GSG companies have to understand that they are appealing to a fundamentally niche audience. Staring at a map to make line go up is never going to appeal to the majority of the video game community. No Victoria, Hearts of Iron, EU, or CK game will ever be competing with Call of Duty or Halo for the same playerbase, or be in the same wheelhouse for number of players. PDX will not have a huge number of people who play their games on a super casual basis, where they buy the game with the intent of playing it sporadically and never getting too into it. GSGs are for anybody, not everybody.
I appreciate that PDX is trying to expand their audience, and I don’t think that is a bad thing. But trying to make your game appeal to people who don’t have an interest in the genre is just going to make your game worse at fulfilling the expectations of the genre it is in. Call of Duty is shameless in being exactly what it is, and appealing to, and only to, people already interested in the genre. If someone wants to play a Paradox game, they will take the time to learn the mechanics and interface- and if they are turned off by the interface within 1 hour of gameplay, then the odds are high that they were never likely to stick with the game in the first place, as there will be much more complex things to learn later on.

 

[Arachnoincubi]

I fully support OP, this "design" have no redeeming features.

 

[Tvarog]

Allows for clearer separation between "This should be fixed immediately" (Alert) and "You should probably look into this" and "You could look into this if you want to" (Current Situation panel). Even though this is signaled in our other games, like the Red/Yellow/Green system in EUIV, that separation is much less clear, especially for newer players, but also to players with color blindness.

As i understand lack of market access is crucial to Victoria gameplay and is cramped in that cute little button, shouldn't it be fixed immediately?

Another thing is: now it is one icon with random (not saying anything) number;. Maybe it can be long info panel showing this issues like in the bottom of news TV?
Maybe in style of telegraf tape or newspaper title.

Or make it 2 buttons - one red ( Important), one yellow (minor) and let players move topics between those panels?

Or maybe just make it still, integrated element of the interface, right now it looks like temporal alert that is easy to "clean up" but in reality it is not easy to clean it and you actually you shouldn't do it at all.

 

[MyLordFellington]

I'm still a fan of eu4's design with the topbar notifications. Never really warmed to CK3's issues tab thing. But that's just my taste.

 

[DragonAtma]

I always found it annoying that if I want to remove the exclamation mark from the current situation, I have to click the button, then open the tab, and then scroll down to mouseover the latest state with turmoil (for some reason people don't like being conquered >_>). It's even worse when I load up a saved game, as I have dozens of states in turmoil (All State independent mod + 200ish states conquered) and often a couple dozen with imperfect market access, all of which need mousing over. Wouldn't it make sense to put new states of note (>25% turmoil, <100% market access, etc.) at the top of the tabs?

And like multiple people, I'd rather have a separate button for each situation instead of sticking all of them into a single button with a 6 on it. It shouldn't be too hard to let the player choocse between everything under one button (vic3 now), important situations have separate buttons while minor ones all share a button (CK3), and separate buttons for everything (EU4).

And as it's been said in other topics, I feel too much space is used on large graphics; I know, you like having fancy pics for each building, but when you have a list of twenty buildings and each is dozens or more states, something needs to be done.

 

[ClavintheGreat]

I always found it annoying that if I want to remove the exclamation mark from the current situation, I have to click the button, then open the tab, and then scroll down to mouseover the latest state with turmoil (for some reason people don't like being conquered >_>). It's even worse when I load up a saved game, as I have dozens of states in turmoil (All State independent mod + 200ish states conquered) and often a couple dozen with imperfect market access, all of which need mousing over. Wouldn't it make sense to put new states of note (>25% turmoil, <100% market access, etc.) at the top of the tabs?

And like multiple people, I'd rather have a separate button for each situation instead of sticking all of them into a single button with a 6 on it. It shouldn't be too hard to let the player choocse between everything under one button (vic3 now), important situations have separate buttons while minor ones all share a button (CK3), and separate buttons for everything (EU4).

And as it's been said in other topics, I feel too much space is used on large graphics; I know, you like having fancy pics for each building, but when you have a list of twenty buildings and each is dozens or more states, something needs to be done.

Exactly the giant graphics make it very difficult to look at everything at the same time because now you have to scroll.

We really need the option to get everything out of the CSB.

 

[Jespoke]

Far too much different information is collected into this one menu, resulting in the relevant time to have it open being near-constant. But it also huge while open, so I find myself opening and closing it multiple times a minute on average. That can't be right.

At the very least I would like the expensive goods into their own banner item, preferably one where I can also see at a glance if there is a shortage in there because that is an immediate action point instead of a soft pointer.

 

[betseg]

Also you can't permanently prevent a certain notification from appearing either, right?

 

[Lord Lambert]

Even though this is signaled in our other games, like the Red/Yellow/Green system in EUIV, that separation is much less clear, especially for newer players, but also to players with color blindness.

The fix to this is colourblind modes where you can change the traffic light alert colours, not scrap it and hide it all behind one single button.

This is a baffling take, in all honesty, that makes absolutely 0 sense whatsoever.

 

[TrainMachine]

Also you can't permanently prevent a certain notification from appearing either, right?

Not that I've observed. Suppressed notifications come back after a while unless the root cause is fixed. Not a bad thing in and of itself, but the fact remains that even if you could permanently suppress any particular item under the Everything Button, there are enough issues that really matter that you basically always have to be engaged with the thing.

Open it up, scroll around, try to figure out why it turned orange this time, queue up a few buildings to try and fix the problems, wait a few ticks, repeat.

• Your colonists are causing tensions with the natives. Would you like to permanently halt all colonization? No? Your loss, I guess. We'll ask you again next week, which is in approximately 10 real time seconds.
• 20 states don't have enough infrastructure. Here's the percentage they do have. How much is that shortfall in new railroads? Did the owners just fire everybody again for no reason? Better put on your detective hat, Holmes!
• There's an input shortage in three critical industries. You might want to look into this... or not. Whatever. It's not like it's important.

So. Much. Hate.

 

[Haresus]

I will say that I appreciate the devs responding with a well-reasoned post in this thread.

That being said, I disagree that the situation bar is a good solution. Maybe with some improvements, like being able to permanently turn off certain notifications (colonist causing tensions? Who cares, I didn't send him there to hand out cookies!) and being able to make other alerts more urgent/visible outside the bubble (lacking input goods! Kind of a big deal in a game about the economy), the situation bar could become tolerable.

 

[Desolator Trooper]

Can we have this one next? Why do we even need 3d portraits, taking good 33% of tab's space when it could be filled with relevant information?

 

[Baalzamon85]

So it seems paradox knows this is a very inferiour UI for the game but chose this anyways in order to not scare off some new to paradox customers within the few first hours but instead infuriate them along with everyone else later with this unknown mystery box that you must constanly click on just in case it says something useful.

Honestly I think you lost more potential dlc buyers than gained with this move. I would argue that the vast majority of customers who would get overwhelmed by EU4 style notifications are not potential long term investors in your dlc schemes anyway.

If paradox is too stubborn to change their mind, can we potentially get a toggle in the settings to switch these training wheels off for something more useful and less infuriating for the rest of the 95% of the player base.

 

[TrainMachine]

So, apparently they've set an intern at the task of discovering what else needs to be dumbed down so they can save us from ourselves.

Is it just me, or are those questions totally loaded?

 

[Desolator Trooper]

So, apparently they've set an intern at the task of discovering what else needs to be dumbed down so they can save us from ourselves.

Is it just me, or are those questions totally loaded?

Ithink their intern should be taught how tabs work first

 

[dr_AllCOM3]

If a notification has to be hidden inside a collective container, it's not a notification worth showing in the first place.

 

[Oglesby]

Ithink their intern should be taught how tabs work first

I am not even sure what this 'question' is asking

 

[Gawquon3]

I am not even sure what this 'question' is asking

That's because half of the question is missing.

 

[Gawquon3]

So, apparently they've set an intern at the task of discovering what else needs to be dumbed down so they can save us from ourselves.

Emphasis mine. Edit: Italicized instead of bold for clarity.
Wrong order, the intern is asking PDX if they can collect data for thier schoolwork from the looks of it. Schoolwork about information overload in strategy games where some... leading questions are asked. But it tells us nothing about PDX's intentions.