Community Discussion - UI/UX and Tutorials

[redhookjohn]

Hey everyone! It’s Tuesday which means it’s time to come together and talk about a specific area of the game to encourage good focused discussion. But first, some housekeeping!

Last week I posted a discussion on a “Class Tier List” and if you head over here, you can see the results. While that discussion won’t lead to immediate changes in the game, know it is going to help fuel discussions when the Dev Team gets closer to doing the next pass on the class balance. We are super thankful to everyone who participated.

This week, I want to focus on an area of the game that is slightly more actionable in terms of feedback. It is also an area that in my 2 weeks has cropped up a few times, and we feel it would be a good time to bring everyone together to discuss.

Let’s talk about the game's User Interface, Menu Flow, and the user experience.

Darkest Dungeon serves up a lot information to players and we want to make sure we are doing it in the best possible way. There are also many menus that players will be interacting with commonly and finding graceful ways to make navigation easier and more robust is also super helpful.


So let’s talk about it. While we are looking for what you have been thinking about, here are some specific issues we are thinking about:

Surfacing hotkey commands (i.e. T for torch, and H for help)
Holistically, what is still confusing?
Do we need more/better/improved Tutorial Popups (i.e. Selling Trinkets)
Are there any Wording Changes needed?
Do we need more Confirmation Dialogues? (i.e. Forgot to equip Trinkets)
Can we better present information for clarity?

[vred]

Something that I only discovered on the forums is that you can sell trinkets, a simple pop up message explaining that you can sell them the first time you get one would be nice.

[gcp3000]

Hi John,

One thing I would love to see is the option to look at and manage my 25 man roster on one screen with a lot of ways to organize and shuffle them around. Maybe a wee button in the top right corner that expands the "roster screen" that pops it out and lets you see all 25 characters at once. At that point you could lock in teams, manage trinkets a lot more effectively, etc.

I think there should be some indicator when a character has a disease as well.

[lirust]

The term "rank" is a little confusing. Initially, I thought it was referring to resolve level. Even knowing that it means position, it isn't immediately clear which number applies to each spot.

[foxhound438]

Originally posted by lekeku:

The term "rank" is a little confusing. Initially, I thought it was referring to resolve level. Even knowing that it means position, it isn't immediately clear which number applies to each spot.

perhaps "rank" is too easy to confuse with "level", due to the dual-meaning of rank. maybe "row" or "position" would be better.

[Satoru]

Probably a few things that need clarification as they come up as common questions

1) Clarify how to sell items in the store and trinkets with tooltip/tutorials. Its a common thing that's asked

2) Clarify or somehow make the retreat UI element easier to understand. Right now many people seem to miss this entirely. It comes up in the tutorial but I think it's not obvious to players, or they skip over it osmehwo.

3) Turn markerrs, I dont' recall if there's a tutorial popup for that? Might be something worth making more explicit somehow.

4) I've advocated this before but the food mechanic is confusing to users (they are infact just 'traps'). I think some different flavor text would go a long way to aleviate that. Instead of "You're hungry" maybe something like "Rats have infested your backpack! You need to eat the food now or lest it spoil!" I think just changing the flavor text would make users not so confusd when they get multiple food events in succession.

Or even have different events like "Rats block your way! You can use food to distract them".
* Giving no food damages you "The rats attack you instead causing damage!".
* The middle option lets you sneak by "You are able to distract the rats with your provisions!".
* The highest food option you can say something like "You are able to avoid teh rats. You find some maggots as an alternate sustinance for now" kind of thing.

[ZiN]

Just a few feature ideas:

- Trinket locking (unequip all skips these)
- Small indicator on characters, with equipped trinkets
- Map and inventory on the same screen (see here)
- Customizable order of ability buttons/hotkeys (1-4)
- Screenshot hotkey
- Trinket filter by stat bonus/penalty
- Shift-click in store to buy/sell whole stack

[Pothocket]

When I'm ready to spend money on heroes at the sanitarium, it takes a lot of clicking around in order figure out who could best use treatments. Some option to sort heroes with diseases from those that don't have any would be a big help.

In the dungeons, there needs to be some way to cycle through hero sheets. It's very annoying to check everyone's disarm chance, for example, with the way it is now.

It would also be much appreciated if I could search through trinkets using keywords. This game hands out lots of trinkets so it's a lot to look through 1 by 1 just to find all of them that provide a certain bonus. If I'm trying a new speed strategy I should be able to type in "speed" and it'll show me every trinket related to speed sorted with highest positive bonus first to highest negative penalty last.

[Kerensky]

Originally posted by ZiN:

Just a few feature ideas:

- Trinket locking (unequip all skips these)
- Small indicator on characters, with equipped trinkets
- Map and inventory on the same screen (see here)
- Customizable order of ability buttons/hotkeys (1-4)
- Screenshot hotkey
- Trinket filter by stat bonus/penalty
- Shift-click in store to buy/sell whole stack

F12 to take screenshots.
Also, you can customize the order of ability buttons. The order you select them is the order they appear. Might be good to explain this somewhere though. Like trinket selling, it's somewhat hidden.

[JessRivers]

Originally posted by Pothocket:

When I'm ready to spend money on heroes at the sanitarium, it takes a lot of clicking around in order figure out who could best use treatments. Some option to sort heroes with diseases from those that don't have any would be a big help.

In the dungeons, there needs to be some way to cycle through hero sheets. It's very annoying to check everyone's disarm chance, for example, with the way it is now.

It would also be much appreciated if I could search through trinkets using keywords. This game hands out lots of trinkets so it's a lot to look through 1 by 1 just to find all of them that provide a certain bonus. If I'm trying a new speed strategy I should be able to type in "speed" and it'll show me every trinket related to speed sorted with highest positive bonus first to highest negative penalty last.

By default, Q and E cycles through your party. While you have the hero sheet open, you can cycle through everyone to see their disarm chance quickly. There are also some arrow buttons in the bottom right that are hard to see. They do the same thing.

I wouldn't mind having an icon that tells me a hero is diseased. That way I don't need to scroll through all 25 heroes because I've forgotten who's diseased.

The other major complaint I've seen: trinkets can be sold and heroes refuse to do dungeons when they are +2 levels above them. You might also want to include a note that, despite their whining, heroes can still be taken into dungeons they underlevel.

[JessRivers]

I also wouldn't mind if, after the hero and dungeon selection screen, I get taken to a trinket equipment screen. The whole trinket screen could use some work since I don't often sell them. Ideally, I'd be able to search my trinkets by stat (ie Dodge, Acc, Damage, etc).

[robgordo]

If there was a tab on my characters to see if they had a disease or negative quirk, tha'd be great.

[Pothocket]

By default, Q and E cycles through your party. While you have the hero sheet open, you can cycle through everyone to see their disarm chance quickly. There are also some arrow buttons in the bottom right that are hard to see. They do the same thing.

Thank you, had no idea lol!

[RopeDrink]

UI specific feedback:

a) The Q & E buttons never work for me, therefor I have to click the arrows on an open tab to scroll through characters 100% of the time. Not sure why this is - but there you have it. (Minor)

b) As many have said, having to scroll through the entire roster to check for diseases that need cleansing (via above method) is a large timesink. Some sort of indication similar to stress affliction (such as a glowing green orb version instead of the red-affliction version) would make it easy to pick out and inspect them for treatment. (Moderate)

c) More sorting options for trinkets would be handy. After each run, I remove all and sort by quality (if going to change group) - and it can still be a bit of a time-sink to have to find those small few I want that are buried in the masses. Maybe an ability to 'hide' or 'show' specific trinkets that meet X or Y criteria would be good? (Minor)

d) When a character gets diseased via curios or combat, having it popup in the same place as other core text (top-left) can sometimes go unnoticed. Furthermore, sometimes you do notice it but the text cuts out too early so you can't see what it was, or sometimes not see it at all. Maybe a more obvious indication of anything beyond bleeds & blights? (Minor)

e) This is more of a personal quirk than an issue with the interface - but I spent a lot of time sorting my inventory when my bags are full. Maybe a sort button? Trinkets > Heirlooms > Resources > Gems > Gold (Minor)

f) During party creation pre-dungeon, there are two tabs you can scroll through. The characters you put into the group - and the entire roster on the right. This isn't a big deal - but considering both tabs are identical, if you open it the wrong way, it won't be immediately obvious which tab of characters you're scrolling through. It's easy to manually notice this after a while - but maybe a "PARTY" and "BARRACKS" tag on the tabs would make it all the more obvious? (Minor)

g) Shuffling Characters in dungeon mode. Seeing as I play with the mouse specifically, there are a LOT of times when I go to move a character (click on them & press '5', then click on the character I want them to swap position with) it will actually swap them with someone else instead. I have no explanation for why that is but it can make organizing the ranks a bit frustrating at times. Maybe mouse users could click & drag a character in a 'direction' they want to move in the rank? (Minor)

h) Would love to see weather effects in Hamlet. It's a nice touch that it already rotates between night and day - but having the occasional miserable rain storm etc. would really pump up the polish and atmosphere (Minor)

That's about the brunt of it. As it stands, the UI currently looks clean and functions pretty well as it is, so a few teeny weeny changes would go a long way in making go from good to great.

[Fluffy Daemon]

Being able to sort trinkets by stats would be great.

Having a little slidedown menu where you could pick the preferred positive stat(s) and a second one where you could pick which negative stat(s) you don't want would do the job quite well.

For example: I'm looking for a trinket that increases DMG, but don't want a decreased ACC.
The slidedown menu's would make that a lot easier.


Also the trap disabling range is way bigger when using the mouse instead of W.
It should be equalized for convenience's sake.

[Arcadian Del Sol]

I would like to be able to custom name my teams so that instead of individually selecting them, I can select that team name, and it knows what four I want and in what order.