Usability and New User Experience Notes

February 26, 2012 2:05 AM from

Greetings, I am very excited to see Fallen Enchantress shaping up to be a more solid experience then E:Wom.

I thought it might be useful to play test the game from a new users perspective with a focus on usability along with a few other observations.

Brief – immediately clicked on play game, fumbled around for a few minutes and then was killed by a group of fire naga. Played through tutorial skipping most of the videos.

Turn 1

I picked up a shield but I did not know what it did, how to use it, or if it was automatically assigned to my character.

Turn 2

I began learning knowledge, I have no idea what this means, and looking at the menu I only have an incredibly vague idea of what these things do for me.(reading some of the flavour text was engaging and helped me better understand what a given tech did)

Turn 3

I bought a champion, I wasn't positive what he did but the little UI buttons told me some interesting things about the character(he is a coward!) and all his statistics where readily displayed.

Turn 4 – Combat

I fight my first monster, a spider. The tooltip said they are weak.

-During combat (which felt pretty solid and quickly paced) I could move my character but I had no idea how to get my other character selected, I could not click on him or anything. I had to discover a small dark icon on the bottom left next to my character.

From a usability stand point this was pretty terrible as the turn button on the overland UI is on the right, making the switch in battle very unusual. Moving the button would be good or flashing the button when a character has used all movement or attacks.

-I also noted that sometimes you will automatically switch characters.

My champion died from the spider and I was upset until I discovered that he was revived after combat with amnesia! That was super cool because I got my character back and he has a new trait, helping me get immersed and not punishing me too harshly for being bad at combat.

Turn10

I have researched both of the pre-highlighted options in the knowledge section. I'm still unsure what they do.(I haven't built a city)

It might be helpful to display the lowest cost research option for each tech branch so I can compare without needing to switch tabs. Additionally lighting up the UI element might be helpful if there is a cheaper option.

Turn 12

I found a scroll over an inn that then caught on fire When I interacted with it. I decided to fight whatever it was even though all I knew about the creature is that they were considered fire-y.

I was utterly crushed in combat and watch the end game screen. I felt cheated because I didn't know just how strong those fire snakes were to make an informed decision.

I decided to play the tutorial.

I love the tutorial videos, ala Dues ex. The only suggestion I have is to include scrolling text to accompany the video. This will help engage all three primary learning styles (Modeling, auditory, and visual) to accommodate more players.

Selecting my City

During the tutorial I was unsure how to select a city. I could select my hero but not the city. I finally was able to select it by seeing the moving zzz's on my city icon.

Constructing a Building

I was unsure if the placement of my new building was affected by the terrain bonuses or if it was more important to just have my city placed within its vicinity. Does it matter what building I place on a tile? Do I get contextual bonuses based off of the mundane resources produced by a tile?

Research Mining Tutorial

The embossing on the tutorial window made me think the research button was in the top right corner not the top left, due to the embossed edges highlight being in the bottom right.

Excellent thinking limiting my ability to research technologies!

Finding equipment

I found an awesome spear that thirsts for troll blood but I still have no idea how to use it or what its statistics are...

Use Spell Book

The screen grab used to show the location of the spells is inaccurate(there are 2 buttons in the grab, three in the UI)

Casting Spells

When casting spells you must Left click to cast. But in order for me to move or attack I must Right click this inconsistency is jarring, unintuitive, and I hate it. I hope the Kumquat engine is robust enough to make that an easy fix.

Finding treasure

This UI element looks great and communicates it's purpose nicely with out breaking the visual aesthetics of the game.

Doom Club

I received a simple quest to kill rats. The NPC says they will give me a doom club. When I return I am offered 3 choices Gold, Doom Club or Diplomatic Capital. I have a rough idea of what gold will do for me, absolutely no idea what the doom club does besides sounding cool to beat things with, and the idea of Diplomatic capital is completely new and wildly irrelevant to where I am in the tutorial.

By scripting a tooltip display that tells me what the Doom club will do for me(stats special abilities etc.) I can better evaluate my choices, this will reinforce my player agency through meaningful choice (because I have the knowledge to evaluate all of my choices), the inclusion of Diplomatic capital is not necessary here.

-Consider expanding the tutorial later on to include enemy relations.

Combat Tutorial

I skipped the Combat tutorial When it was first offered but wanted to view it while I was in combat. I could not find a way to reopen it in the combat screen.

Tutorial Thoughts

1)Offer the tutorial if this is the first time playing.

2)As in the tutorial, consider making the founding of your first city a quest, you might even incentivize this with gold or a unit.

3)Consider giving the player the option to play through the tutorial after they have built the world they want to play in so they aren't needlessly slaughtered.

4)Consider placing the Tutorial button first in the main menu.

5)Consider turning the Tutorial on by default in the options menu.

Bonus Thought

Supporting the arrow keys for overland map scrolling with be very useful and I assume easy to implement. It gives me an alternative to using the mouse to scroll and potentially speeds up my game play interactions, and for those of us with multiple displays makes it so we don't have to click on the Mini-map to move to the left.

It appears that each time I make a new game there is consistently a champion to recruit and a spider to fight. Both times I have fought this spider with my champion in tow. The champion has died but I have won the fight, if this was designed in it is very well done, following the interest curve of; get new champion, fight monster, lose champion, kill monster, resurrect champion, and then get loot.

Thanks for your Time I hope this helps and I will attempt to play through some more in the coming week.

Much appreciated

Keith Leiker

[email protected]

1,547 views 2 replies

Reply #1 February 26, 2012 2:19 AM from

Elemental Forums Top

Thanks for the input.

I agree that in tactical combat ... the 'skip turn' button might possibly be highlighted a little better.

-> Skip turn button even bugs out sometimes, especially when auto-spells are activated. I have to auto for half a second and then go back to manual to get the action buttons to reappear. For instance after insta-Mass Curse or Wall of Fire activates.

Some Notes:

You can click on cities to select them. The most important buttons are Train, Build, and Details.

The Govern Button in the bottom right hand corner, next to end turn button, is very important.

Through the Govern button you can easily access many things, such as Diplomacy, Unit Designs, and Research (although Research can be easily accessed through a number of ways).

Sometimes the govern button is the best (or only) way to conduct diplomacy. Especially if trying to end a war.

When you have a character selected, you have the Equip and Trade buttons. The Trade button lets you switch items between nearby Champions, while the Equip button is your "Character Screen" which gives all the details you need, and lets you equip and use items and equipment.