Back in version 0.77 i had made such a list, some of you may remember. I will now update it with my latest 0.86 experiences.
First of all maybe i should define what I, Maxwar, mean when I say "annoyances" . In the context of a game, for me, an annoyance is a small thing with a big impact. They are very often at the UI level but can also be a bug or a glitch or a strange behavior of something, they can even be the lack of a small feature, for exemple the build queue edit entry.
Fixing annoyances is not supposed to alter the game balance and conception in anyway other than making it more smooth and enjoyable to play. For this reason, I believe an annoyance should not be arguable. They should always be something worth fixing for everyone. In some cases someone may feel unconcerned by a particular annoyance but even in such a case, fixing it should not be a problem for this person either.
Now lets take a look at the annoyances I had listed for 0.77. Here is the original list.
1. Pre-explored stuff in the fog of war disappears when reloading your game : This is my worst annoyance so far, each time i quit the game and come back, all areas in FOW are blank (Terrain with no features) ... Some of it eventually comes back by itself for some reason...
2. Mouse hold on scrollbar in hiergamenon ( and other menus ) : As soon as your cursor gets away from the scrollbar while doing a hold and drag, it just stops to work until you stop holding the button and start over. Really annoying. ( Should work like in my web browser )
3. Build queue priority editing. If it is possible to do it, i could not find how. In any case i feel this should be an option that is easy to figure out. I propose the possibility to simply drag and drop the icons in the build queue in whatever order you like.
4.Party formation : Once again, if it is possible, idk how. It really annoys me that in every battle my ultra initiative boosted warrior with like 6 movement gets first turn but cannot do anything because all the riffraff is always in the first row and blocking his way.
5.The equip menu: When you have several heroes in your army, it really annoys me that you cannot switch over to the next one via the menu.
6.The equip menu ( part 2) : Well, i actually dont even use it... I always use the trade menu, as you can not only trade but also equip and shop in the same menu. The equip menu seems useless but for the additional information it gives about your character. I feel it would be better to somehow integrate all this info in the trade screen.
7. Flee from combat : I keep building scouts. I send them to explore but they always end up being attacked by some craps. Scouts have 3 mov but can barely fight. They should be able to GTFO due to their faster movement but they can't (unless i simply did not figure how to) . As it is now they are doomed as soon as they are engaged.
8. Unit upgrades: Thank you for your loyal service lev 6 warriors! But just go suicide yourself now, your impossibility to use new armors or weapons just made you obsolete...
9: Floating info boxes in the map screen.: I like the idea of floating info boxes ( Namely the terrain informer and the faction power box). However when i click drag to move the map around, if i have the ill luck to hit one of those floating info boxes it stops moving the map and moves the box instead. Did not happen often but ever times it made me "Tsssssk! :
10. I really like hotkeys but... I don't know what they are in this game. The overlay menus are not much help, the Hiergamemnon *Gawd i can never remember how to spell the word) Is not much help either. The culmination of awesomeness regarding shortkeys imho is to have a menu in the option where you can see and configure them as you will.
11. Event Icons at the right: The master icon does not disappear by itself once you have clicked off all the secondary event icons it contains. Its not a big deal but still somehow annoys me.
12. Spacebar in map view : Ok not really sure about this one. Somehow i did not get how it worked so far. Seems to usually not do anything, even though i have idling units with no orders. However sometimes it will selects a unit with no orders, usually a fresh built one. Maybe there's something i did not understand yet...
What got fixed:
I have the pleasure to announce that pretty much all these annoyances are still there but there are some improvements.
Let's take a look at some improvements.
-Pre-explored stuff in the fog of war disappears when reloading your game : This is still there but somehow appears to fix itself more quickly after you press next turn.
-Unit upgrades: The option to upgrade armor and weapon is now more accessible and is only grayed out if you cannot afford it. I could probably remove this one from the annoyance list at this point. However, i still get the feeling that my old trained units are useless because they get replaced by larger groups. I wish the group size could be upgraded too.
-Hotkeys: We now have a basic idea of some hotkeys, some of em are now listed in the game and some unofficial lists exist on the forum.
-Spacebar: We now know that it is supposed to be the pass function but it still does not work properly. It will seemingly do nothing when you use it, movement points are still listed but in fact thay are 0, and it wont switch to the next unit by itself. Interesting part is that clicking the Pass box however works as intented. This is clearly a UI bug and i expect it to be fixed eventually.
So this is the extent of what was improved, all the other annoyances are still there. Im not too worried at this point as i believe that SD are busy working on more fundamental stuff, but i will still keep this updated until the annoyances are fixed. Too many games are released with severe annoyances and it really annoys me. WoM had many of them, some quite severe, and i do not wish FE to be the same.
New annoyances:
Now i have listed several more annoyances while playing 0.86.
1. No cancel button in the settings. You cannot just cancel your modifications. As soon as you touch a setting, whether you return to main menu or resume game or press ESC, the choices are seemingly always saved. This is actually pretty bad.
2. The city informer boxes disappear when you zoom out to the far view map ( the one that looks like paper ). Really i have yet to see a use for this zoomed out view, it needs to offer more information.I would like to be able to use it as a quick way to see what is being built in my cities.
3. Tactical spell icons : When i get to late game there are just so many spell icons in the tactical spell bar that i get confused and wastes alot of time searching the spells i want in there. I have a big screen with fine resolution and it gets quite scary seeing all the little boxes at the bottom. Furthermore they all look a bit alike so it gets hard to quickly identify them by the drawing and i end up eye straining.
IDEA: Considering how I seem to always use the same few spells over and over, I think the ideal system would be something similar to what games like Dungeon siege or Titan quest have. You have a configurable quick bar with say 10 spells in it. You can easily launch these spells using number keys. To use the other spells you can open up a small menu that contains all the spells, classified by magic school. From here you can also reconfigure you quick spell bar by dragging and dropping the spell icons in it.Add to this a nice and colorful icon for each and i say its win.
4. Centering view on a city using the icons at the left. It only works if no part of the city is currently in the screen. It took me a while to figure this out. It would not center on a city because on the upper right corner of my large screen was part of a building that belonged to the said city. It should always zoom to center the city info box no matter if part of the city is visible or not.
5. Roads. They are really thin and hard to see, i often have to strain my eyes to see where they are. Its even worse on the paper map view, they are like a hair.
6. Clarifying Tech requirements in the tech tree. Some of em are very unclear such as one tech needing a prerequisite tech that is in a different tech tree. The problem here is that this is not indicated anywhere on the tech box or mouse-over info.
7. Research completed pop ups are not very obvious. I am a dim person and sometimes I do not remember what tech i am researching. Bam! I get this popup and i want to know what tech i have discovered. I have a big drawing that very seldom is clear and i have a block of text in which somewhere is the name of the tech i have researched. I often have to read this bloc of text to find the little word i want in it. I think a big, bold, obvious title is needed, for the dim people like me : YOU HAVE RESEARCHED ARCHERY! Ok Cool!
8. The event Info boxes at the right: I have a couple issues with them. In my previous list i mentioned them a little but i will push it a little further now. I understand they are very important as they are your real time informer for what is going on in your kingdom ( or empire) .
-I very often do not notice them appearing. ( Remember that i am a Dim Person, I need obvious or i am Oblivious ). Sure they are important and i should always be looking for them but they are only small grayish boxes in a Vibrant world full of Colors and stuff and i sometimes do not notice that they appear. ( Remember that i am a Dimwit with a very large screen, and the world if full of both dimwits and large screens. ) There is a small sound that tells you when a new box appears but its very soft and I hear it pretty much every turn because there is always some creature in my border somewhere. Of course i do not care about the creature so i get used to the sound and no longer notice it. Maybe have a different sound for each kind of event would be great like, idk, sounds of hammers when a building is completed, sound of boots marching when a unit is trained. You know, to help the dimwits like me realize something happened, so they no longer realize that their city has been on idle for the past 3 turns.
-You can only click-to-center those info box on the far right. Thats a whole lot of wasted click estate!
Conclusion:
Ok thats it for now. I realize fixing all this stuff may be considered to be "polishing" and is left for later. I still do this list now so these issues are not forgotten. As testers and players and I imagine, developers, it is just too easy to get used to the annoyances and eventually forget them. Its the new players who will notice them the most and who will be annoyed by them the most, and this new player might happen to be a game reviewer. It is also quite impressive to see the amount of annoyances I can find in many released high budget games. Some companies have better track records than others at this, mostly they are the companies that can afford a long development polishing times, BUT NOT ALWAYS! Still, its quite scary how sometimes small issues can impact a game. As i play FE, I always have a paper near me and writes the annoyances as i see them.
