Collection of things to think about

Feedback and Suggestions
1

Just wanted to make a post about some things I think could need some finetuning.
I am aware that most likely some (or even most) are things that you already know of and/or are planning to change anyway. Some may even be so obvious I should not have to name them, but I still wanna write them down for feedback. I will go from things I deem “most important” to “less important”.

!! Please note that I obviously don’t want you to tell how to do your jobs. I like the game how it is already. But I also know from experience that even the most obvious feedback may be useful if not simply to remind people of the basics. !!

First some general stuff:

  1. Why do the crafting essences go into your normal bag first?

Having to click a button just for them to automatically move to the other bag is not really usability friendly. I don’t know if it is a technical issue, a size limit issue (size limit on your crafting bag so you have to gather them at your other bag or stash at some point) or a simple design philosophy thing. If it is the last thing, all I can say is, it is annoying and unnecessary. Either go full PoE and let people figure out what to keep and what not themselves or go full Diablo and just let them drop in the crafting bag immediately.

  1. Add more information towards the skills in specific

What I mean with that is that I can’t really see how strong my skill is or what changes when I put a skillpoint somwhere.
For example I still don’t know if putting a skillpoint in a skill that passively adds ignite chance to my melee attacks actually works on my Flame Reave. It would be way easier to have an interface that just shows you the most important stats of that specific skill (aka. DPS, ignite chance etc.).

  1. Remove post restriction on bug section

A forum related thing. I noticed that as a “new account” I am limited to 4 threads a day. Which is useful to some extent, I get it. But at the same time I read that you tell people to make an extra thread for every bug and no bug collections (correct me if I am wrong here). So this is kinda contradictory to what the system allows you to do.

3.1. or add a “Report Bug” feature ingame. That would be even better.

  1. Removed

I thought about this point and realised that I did an oopsie while thinking. Move on :^)

  1. Responsiveness and “feel” of the menus:

I think that one is kinda obvious, considering it is alpha I expect it to get better with time, but right now it just feels clunky (especially the inventory).

  1. Add a preview of how much you actually get more when you level up a skill

We see WHAT gets the bonus but I cant preview how much it actually will go up if I put another point in it (correct me if I am wrong here and I just were too stupid to find that function).

  1. Lootfilter

Add one :^) Even if it is just basic like “ignore xxx quality”.

I did not play THAT much so I may add some things here and there if I find it worthy of mentioning.

2

Guess I am reserving one space for eventual future uses :slight_smile:

3

Take the current number, divide by the number of points, add the new number back into the current number.

There is one in development.

4

I don’t really get what you trying to say here, it is either sarcasm to say it is always linear and logical or I am just too dumb.
let me explain my problem with it currently a bit deeper:
most of the skills go up in a logical order, meaning when the first points gives you 5% chance of sth., the next point will net you another 5%.
BUT even if there are absolutely no outliers to that rule, having a bit of confirmation what you actually get BEFORE investing a point in it and potentially have to respec is just annoying and not really usability friendly. (I mean you can respec here which makes it not that important, but still)

1 Like
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Thank you for your detailed post.

I don’t have time to cover everything, but to go over a few points;
 

In game development adding tutorials is usually one of the last things done, because otherwise they can become outdated and need to be changed later. With the game’s current amount of tutorialization we’re concerned about people picking up items only to later find that they “aren’t there” - particularly with a game that’s currently in development, where they may be overly quick to decide that it is a bug and think they didn’t get those items.

Closer to launch it would be feasible to have a one-time pop up explaining what you’ve looted and where’s it’s gone - and at that stage we’ll discuss having items go straight to where they are regularly stored rather than initially going to the inventory.
 

We do plan to have much more informative tooltips.

It’s one of those things that takes a lot of time so we haven’t yet gotten them where we’d like for them to be - but we do want the game to be something you can play without needing to check third-party resources to learn how things work. Expect improvements here. :slight_smile:
 

This is not something we can do - at least not without it requiring a substantial amount of development work which our web developer doesn’t currently have time for.

So we have what are referred to as ‘trust levels’ for two main reasons: the first is containment (you’d be surprised how many spam bots visit on a daily basis!) and the second is making the forum more accessible to people not familiar with this forum package.

When you first create an account, you are trust level 0. You cannot message other members of the community, report posts, post more than 10 times, or create more than three threads. Also your posts will be screened by the Akismet spam filter. There’s also a limit on your ability to post links - and a few other restrictions with similar goals in mind.

Your account reaches trust level 1 when you have spent ten minutes reading posts on the forum - including at least 30 posts - and entered at least five threads. This is designed to be something that new members of the community will quickly achieve so that the limitations are soon removed, but will snag most bots which tend to regularly create new accounts due to the assumption that it won’t take long for moderators to ban previous ones.

As soon as you reach trust level 1, your forum posts will no longer be subjected to the spam filter and the limitations on your posting should be removed. The forum then gradually gives you additional features which previously weren’t visible (the UI was hidden) so that people can gradually learn how the forum works instead of abruptly being shown everything. The only restrictions at that point are the inability to create group PMs (unlocked later), the inability to ignore other users (also unlocked later), and reporting forum posts as spam resulting in the moderators receiving a report, but the post not being hidden - the people who have been around the longest reporting a post as spam will result in being hidden until their report has been reviewed. (Abuse of this results in them being reduced to a lower trust level.)

I’d like to clarify that I completely understand where you’re coming from - and what you said does make complete sense. It’s just that the trust level system wasn’t designed for some sections to effectively ‘opt-out’, and the people who would be working on this are currently working on a mountain of work related to how MTX are handled on our back-end, facilitating interactions with certain third-party services, and so on.

I would be really interested in your input on the requirements to reach trust level 1. It’s trivial for us to adjust those, so perhaps that might be an acceptable compromise?

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Well like I said I kinda understand where you are coming from with the whole limitation system.
I also think that this trust system in general seems like a good idea to prevent spam.

What I kinda miss is a good indicator where you actually stand with your “trust”.
I clicked through all the obvious menues and didn’t find any indicator at which level I stand, I can only guess.

Also I got a PM from your system a few days ago that said that my trust level has risen (after scrolling through threads) so I already should have been trust level 1 right? Still I got the limitation.
I mean I guess it was something technical given that I was already writing stuff and was creating threads in the bug section or it is generally capped at the first day to preven “advanced abuse” given that the requirements for reaching level 1 are something that is achievable in a short time.

A bit of advanced thought:
I am kinda torn with this system on a “basic level”:
On the one hand I understand level 0 and level 1, trying to make it hard for bots or trolls to just create accounts and spam, on the other hand there is level 3 and 4 which, a do not seem to have any real relevance for your “normal everyday user” which makes it more of a tool for the moderators to kinda “recruit” new “civilian moderators” that can try to help keep certain parts of the forum clean.
(Well tbh. the only REAL problem I have with that system that is not on a “basic level” is not being able to ignore people for at least 15 days. I mean, I always try to be positive but we all know how the internet can be in 2019.)

Again, don’t get me wrong. This is just how I see things and I especially don’t want to sound like the guy who thinks who knows everything better (especially a written opinion can sound condenscending if the reader wants to read it like that), I just like to sprinkle in some things I think could be nice ideas to improve usability or gameplay (even though I have no fucking clue if they are actually implementable given that I have no effing clue about programming :D).
Especially the advanced part is more rambling over stuff I find interesting to ramble about and not actual objective information :^).

Also I am aware that while using a third party hosting service (assuming that you are not the owners of discourse, correct me if I am wrong) for your forum gives you sort of a frame to work in/around and it makes no sense to even try to change fundamental services of that hosting service even if you could do it (ignoring that the cost/time factor would just not be worth it given that you are still in alpha state.)
And at the end of the day it is fine with being able to achieve trust level 1 that quickly. It might even be too easy given that you actually do not hav

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Your current trust level should be visible on your profile page.
 

So there’s a few related settings.

One is that you can only create three threads within the first 24 hours after your first. That should have ceased to apply to you very recently. When did you last encounter this limit?
 

Please understand that we are not ourselves the developers of the Discourse forum package, so just because a feature is implemented does not necessarily reflect a desire on our poart to use it. I will always be happy to answer any questions regarding which features we do or do not plan to avail of, as I believe transparency is important.

The only moderator-like functionality for trust level 3 is that the forum posts they report as being spam (and only those reported as spam) will be hidden by default, whereas for most users this is not the case. A post reported by users below trust level 3 will be hidden if reported by enough individual users. In both cases this is only done until staff have a chance to review the reports. If a user with trust level 3 is found to be abusing this, we can set their account to trust level 2 and lock it so that they will not regain trust level 3 without explicit action on our part. If they have a history of abusing it, such action is unlikely.

Trust level 4 is only obtainable through staff manually assigning it to someone - and to date we have never given it to someone other than members of Eleventh Hour Games.
 

The problem with ignoring other users is that the internet tend to naturally create echo chambers - and this can damage the discourse that takes place on it. If you take Twitter for example, someone is much more likely to follow politicians whose views they share rather than politicians with whose opinions they regularly disagree with. This can lead to their opinions on subjective matters rarely being challenged, but regularly reinforced. Their online interactions teach them that most people (whose tweets they actually see) share their views, and few don’t. This gives them the impression anyone who claims to disagree with them is either trolling or an extremist - and they are thus less likely to approach a discussion with good faith and an assumption the other party is doing likewise.

Every forum post and every message you receive from another user will be accompanied by a Flag button you can use to bring their activity to our attention. We will absolutely revisit the current (default) settings if toxicity gets out of hand - but if at all possible, we really would like to see people politely engaging with those they disagree with. This allows us to see the pros and cons of various suggestions, how relatively popular they may be, and may even result in some members of the community changing their mind on various topics. If the average user just ignores anyone they disagree with, the forum will lose much of its value.

(The above is written with ‘the average person’ in mind and does not refer to any one person.)
 

I have never gotten that impression from you - and I hope you haven’t gotten that impression from me (apologies if you have!). I greatly value your input and sincerely hope that you will stick around to give us feedback over the long-term. Feedback - particularly critical feedback - is the only way a company has of learning where it can improve.

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Oh yeah, I found it. Didn’t see the “expand” button tbh…
Would be a bit better if it would actually be written down together with the stats that are in your sight immediately after opening the profile page. But well, like you said, working with discourse or any third party hosting is always bound to some limits I guess.

Just to make sure that I get that right: Are you able to fully change requirements for each level? Because I go off the official blog post (Understanding Discourse Trust Levels), and in my opinion there are quite some functions that are really moderator like “Recategorize and rename topics”. At least imho.

You are completely right about that one. But like I said, I try to see things positive and think that people are smarter than that. But also I know that I may be naive by thinking that :confused:

Me neither, I mean its nice to actually still be in a phase where you actually can go around personally and discuss with people. I know that can get a bit hard when games get traction and more users.

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So what Discourse refers to categories I would refer to as forum sections. The idea behind the ‘secure category’ is to have a private place people can chat about the forum itself. We don’t actually have such such a forum section at the moment.

We actually disabled the ability for users with trust level 3 to rename / move threads posted by other people when transitioning to Discourse. Sorry - it was so long ago that I forgot all about it entirely. I’ll find time sometime this month to look over the various settings again.

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Ah ok, interesting!
No stress. Like I said, it was more of a ramble, nothing that will seriously disrupt people using your site or anything.

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